Ask a Shadow to Dance (17 page)

Bob indicated the couch to David, a chair across the room for Joe. Nervous chatter ceased. Fish or cut bait.

Bob sat in a chair adjacent to the couch, just out of David’s peripheral vision.

“Well, Doc, am I crazy or what?”

“If you’re having second thoughts—”

“No, no. Just kidding. I’m nervous, that’s all.”

“Nervous isn’t the word for it,” Joe said.

David glanced around in time to see Bob give Joe the quiet sign. David settled back on the couch and tried to relax. He had to be calm and put his mind at rest for hypnosis to be possible at all. The last thing he wanted was to screw everything up by being agitated. He wanted this to work, damn it. Time was running out.

Bob got up, reached for a book of matches lying on the table at the far end of the couch, lit a candle on the same table,
then went to the window.

“All right, David, I want you to look at the candle and relax.”

David heard the blinds close. The room darkened until the only light was the candle. He stared at the flame.

“Let your mind be still. Think of nothing but the flame. You’ll be able to hear only my voice—nothing else. At no time will you be unconscious or out of the hearing of my voice, do you understand?”

“I understand.” David felt as though he might be sinking into the couch. The timbre of Bob’s voice soothed and simplified everything. David could see nothing in the room but the candle. He didn’t want to look away. Everything else seemed to blacken until nothing was visible except the candle’s flame. It was extremely peaceful.

“You’re becoming more and more relaxed. You cannot separate yourself from the flame. You are the flame.”

He felt the warmth of the flame, willingly projecting himself into the center of it. His eyelids felt heavy, but he continued to stare at the candle.

“When I tell you in a moment to close your eyes you will, but you’ll still be able to see the image of the flame, even with your eyes closed. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” His eyes fluttered closed for a long moment, then back open again.

“I know your eyes are heavy. Close them, and see the flame in your mind.”

He closed his eyes, relieved not to have to hold them open any longer. Heavy. So heavy. The flame continued to flicker. The light and warmth surrounded him.

“Now, David, you’re going to dream tonight.
About Lisette. In the dream you will be able to talk to her, and she will see you and hear and respond. You will be able to stay with her as long as you continue to dream. Right now, though, you are going on a journey. When I tell you that you can, your mind is going to take the journey while your body rests here on the couch. You’ll be able to speak to me, and you’ll be able to hear my voice, no matter where the journey takes you or how far away. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He could hardly speak; the relaxation was so complete. It felt wonderful. He wished he could stay this way forever.

“Where you go on this journey will be up to you. You may choose any place—or any time—you want to visit. You may visit Lisette if you wish.”

David didn’t answer. A vision of Lisette formed in his mind.
“Lisette.”

“Good. Think about Lisette. Think about where she lives.”

“Memphis.”

“Think about the year in which she lives. Does Lisette live in Memphis now?”

“No. Eighteen eighty-five.”

“Is that the year you dreamed about?”

“Yes. She was on the riverboat. The one that disappeared.”

“And you spoke to her?”

“Yes. But the phone rang and I woke up.”

“No one will wake you this time. It’s all right to visit Lisette now. Go back to 1885 and find her. Tell her whatever you want her to hear. You’ll be there as surely as
you’re here now. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“It’s time for your journey.”

Something happened.
A separation. Then there was the sensation of weightlessness. David opened his eyes and looked around. There, below him, was Bob, and across the room, Joe. David had never seen Joe look so serious and concerned. And there, lying on the couch, he saw himself. It amused him. What an odd feeling, this sensation of floating—not in some mechanical device, like an airplane, but free flight, with no boundaries and no tethers to hold him back.

He looked above and below, to either side, then straight ahead. He saw Joe and Shawna. Joe’s hair was shot with gray. Marilu was there, too, but older. She held a baby in her arms. Someone else was in the room, but David didn’t recognize him. Was he seeing the future? The scene puzzled him so he turned around and marveled at the panorama he was about to witness.

There were faces he recognized and some he didn’t. Everything changed as he watched. There was no sense of travel or movement. Instead, the landscape below him moved, carrying him into the past. Houses and people were getting younger. The pyramid by the river shrank until it disappeared. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was there, alive and well. Then, farther on, David saw people and places he recognized from Memphis history. A red-haired man was speaking with great animation to a crowd of people. They chanted his name: “Boss Crump! Boss Crump!” Of course! Edward Hull Crump—the man who had shaped Memphis politics for almost fifty years. David had argued with Joe for years about whether Crump had been a positive or negative influence on Memphis. They’d had so many arguments at the North End that the owner had outlawed Crump’s name in his restaurant.

The Peabody Hotel shrank, disappeared and reappeared in another location. Then Mud Island disappeared!

David had reached the turn of the twentieth century.

By this time, things were moving and changing so fast, he could hardly stay focused on the faces and buildings flashing past. But then the changes began to slow. David descended among them. He could hear Bob’s voice, faint, but clear, at a great distance, telling him to find Lisette.

David saw the
Cajun Star
below appearing out of a bank of mist in a brilliant flash of light and fire. It moved backward on the river, north, toward Memphis, until it eased in beside the dock. David blinked. There, on the first deck, stood Lisette and Andrew Westmoreland. Dear God, no!

“Lisette!”

She couldn’t hear. Time seemed to be moving forward again. They left the deck and disappeared inside. Andrew reappeared, without Lisette, and headed for the ramp, but a man stopped him, struggled with him. This new man seemed familiar.

A chill crawled through him. David was seeing himself on the doomed riverboat. The boat left the dock, headed south toward New Orleans. It would disappear forever, into the mist.

David closed his eyes, felt dizzy for a moment. When he opened them again, the riverboat was gone. He went farther into the past, searching the city of Memphis.

David hovered near a huge house facing south. It was four stories, the color of terra cotta, trimmed in gray. He couldn’t say how he knew it was Lisette’s home. He just knew, even with darkness enveloping the house so completely, muting the colors, disguising details he instinctively knew were there. The arched windows, gray shingles on the roof, and the stained-glass window in the front door were all familiar. Each story led upward to a single room with three arched windows on the east, south and west sides. The house resembled a wedding cake. The only light visible was a dim lamp glowing in an east window on the second floor.

David’s heart pounded with anticipation. Would she be able to see him? Bob said she would. His voice was terribly faint now. David could scarcely hear him. How was he supposed to enter the house? Must he stand on the wide, covered front porch and knock at the front door?

Bob told him to enter the room in his mind.

There. In the shadows.

She lay in her canopied feather bed, a velvet patchwork quilt mounded
over her, red-brown hair scattered across the pillow, just as David had imagined. If only he could touch that silky hair, feel it between his fingers.

She pushed the quilts back and went to the window.
Opened it. Stood there with the night breeze caressing her the way he wanted to.

Fear made him hesitant. Would she be frightened? Or would she think she was dreaming?

Ask her.

Call her name.

“Lisette . . .”

Chapter Ten

After Aunt Portia said goodnight—finally—Lisette couldn’t sleep. Images tumbled through her mind like rocks cascading down a steep hill.
Andrew’s fist against her stinging cheek. Her father’s blank face. Tears glistening in Aunt Portia’s eyes. The seizure, Jacob’s mouth twisted to one side, eyes glazed with pain, then with oblivion. If only David had been there . . .

She thought carefully about Doctor David Stewart. He’d surprised the daylights out of her at the Peabody when he hugged her in front of everyone, even Aunt Portia. Yet, remembering, she could not fault him for his forwardness. He’d been so glad to see her. And it was the first time she’d ever been held by a man and …

She frowned, struggling to put into words the way she’d felt. Different than ever before, that was a certainty. Warm. Secure. Loved. But how could he love her when they’d met such a short time ago? She thought about her feelings for him. David intrigued her more than any man she’d ever met. She couldn’t wait to see him again. Was that love? Or the beginning of love? Or was it just a normal reaction to being treated with affection instead of cruel disregard?

David was exactly the opposite of Andrew. Where Andrew’s eyes were cold and dead, David’s eyes softened with emotion when he smiled, and they glistened in the moonlight, and made her want to stare into them for hours. Andrew’s touch left her repulsed. David’s touch made her yearn to be touched again.

How would it be, she wondered, for David to touch her cheek, her shoulder, the back of her neck? What would she feel if he touched her in other places, where even her husband had never touched her before? As his wife, she expected to be touched by him, but James could never relax around her. Even when they were in bed together, their coupling took only a few minutes. James had never spoken to her during those rough and sweaty couplings, never kissed or caressed her with affection. He claimed his rights as her husband just as he would claim a piece of baggage he possessed.

The hug David gave her at the Peabody proved he would never be nervous about touching her. He would probably want to kiss her too. In fact, she thought he might have, but Aunt Portia interrupted and introduced herself to him. The thought was scandalous. For him to kiss her when they were not betrothed was unthinkable. Wasn’t it?

Suddenly too warm, Lisette pushed back the sheet and two quilts and got up to open the window. She gave the heavy frame a sharp rap with the heel of her hand, then lifted it as high as it would go. Pushing her hair back from her face, she drank in the earthy fragrance of the river and was reminded of that night on the riverboat when she met David. The southerly breeze fluttered through the crocheted curtains and shivered around her shoulders. Now the quilts would feel good.

“Lisette.”

She drew in a long, slow breath and turned around slowly. Only a few feet away, on the far side of the room, stood David Stewart. She should have been startled but wasn’t. It seemed right somehow that he should be here. She was thrilled to see him, even though his presence in her room would give Aunt Portia apoplexy if she knew. Lisette thought about trying to cover herself, but he’d already seen her flannel nightgown in his clinic. The gown covered her as much as any dress.

“Please don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not. How did you get in without using the door?”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“Because the hinges squeak like a passel of mice in a corncrib no matter how quickly or slowly you open it. And you couldn’t have come through the window because I would have seen you. So, how did you get into my room?”

She couldn’t help smiling, amused. She’d never allowed any man—not even her father—into her bedroom. In New Orleans she had shared James’s bedroom but never considered it hers. The idea of this man being here at exactly the time when she’d been thinking about him was like something from a dream.

Of course. She had to be dreaming. Many times she’d been aware of dreaming while in the midst of some fantastic concoction. Yet, David seemed as real now as he had at the Peabody and at the strange clinic in her other dream.

“I know my being here is hard to explain,” David began,
then stopped suddenly. “Have I said something funny?”

“I know I must be dreaming. Does that mean I am in control, or does the dream have a life of its own?”

He laughed softly, came around the end of the bed and stopped just in front of her. “I think you’ll find I’m very much alive.”

Thank heavens this was only a dream. She didn’t have to worry about starting a scandal by having a man in her bedroom. The fact such behavior was forbidden made his presence exciting, even thrilling. She would scold herself in the morning.

“Lisette, listen carefully. I want you to meet me tomorrow. Will you do that?”

There was no reason why she shouldn’t go along with the dream.
“Of course. At the Peabody?”