The mobile rings, and for a moment, Jacqueline is confused. She never noticed it sitting down at the bottom of her purse, even though logically she knows that her fingers must have brushed against it on dozens of occasions while looking for her keys or her change or her nail file. It's a brand new phone, as well, an expensive purchase she feels certain she would have remembered making given her constant arguments with Tom over 'needless extravagances'. Not that she wants to think about the way he pays more attention to the credit card bill than to her.
But none of that changes the fact that the phone in Jacqueline's purse isn't hers. When she slowly lifts it out to look at the display screen, she doesn't recognize the phone number that's calling her. She answers it hesitantly, wondering for a moment if perhaps some other woman didn't accidentally put her phone in Jacqueline's purse during a sewing circle meeting or a book club get-together or any of the other little social activities Jacqueline uses to fill her day while her husband is busy with his practice. "H-hello?" she says, expecting to hear a stranger's voice asking about an entirely different person.
In a sense, they do. "Is Jackie Big Tits there?" Jacqueline's mouth forms a perfect 'O' of astonishment as she hears the crude, sexist question blurted out almost casually into her ears. Her eyes widen in amazement. And to her surprise, she finds that she knows exactly what this call is about.
*****
"So let's talk a bit about what you want out of this session," Doctor Hofmeister said gently, leaning forward in his chair with an earnest expression on his ruddy pink face. "You said that Bianca Stabler recommended you to me? Obviously, confidentiality concerns prevent me from discussing her issues, but if she's spoken to you about what she came here for, I can tell you that I can do something very similar for you."
Jacqueline shrugged, feeling self-conscious as ever about the gesture despite Bianca's assurances that Doctor Lawrence Hofmeister was fully respectful of women. 'Between you and me,' she'd said, a conspiratorial look in her bright blue eyes, 'I think he might be gay.' Even if he was, though, Jacqueline still half-expected him to start staring at her breasts anyway. Certainly everyone else did. She would almost consider surgery to get them reduced, if she didn't suspect that her husband would serve her with divorce papers the next day. $750,000 a year bought a lot of back massages.
"I guess I hadn't, I mean..." Jacqueline blushed, her pale cheeks going beet red for a moment as she felt the old insecurities creeping in. She hated sounding stupid in front of someone intelligent like a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist-it was what made Tom's parties so stressful for her. She was always terrified of saying the wrong thing and being instantly written off as Tom's trophy wife, bought and paid for with fancy dresses and daily beauty appointments and a maid to do all the work. And of course the stress made her babble to fill the awkward silences, which only made her feel dumber, which made her babble more in a death spiral of social anxiety. But she didn't think hypnosis could help with that.
She started over. "Bianca keeps saying that whatever my problems are, hypnosis can solve them. I mention that I forgot my car keys, and it's 'Hypnosis really improved my memory!' I say 'I really shouldn't' to the dessert cart, and it's 'Doctor H can help with those cravings.' I mention that I'm stressing out about Saturday night's party, and she says, 'You know what's really good for stress relief?' It's like she thinks it's magic or something. I finally agreed to a session with you just to get her out of my hair, to be honest."
Doctor Hofmeister chuckled. "The young woman is nothing if not persistent," he said, his hazel eyes twinkling in amusement. He didn't look like he should be calling Bianca 'young', though; the beard hid his baby cheeks a little, and guys always looked a bit older once they went bald, but he looked to be about the same age as Jacqueline and Bianca. "I really should discourage that kind of behavior, but it does wonders for my practice."
He chuckled, and Jacqueline let out a snicker right along with him-certainly Jacqueline wasn't the only woman in their social circle of bored housewives that had gotten an earful about the restorative powers of hypnotherapy with Doctor Hofmeister. She was pretty certain that some of the others had already been in to see him-Nancy was always ducking out of lunch for appointments now, and Millicent had skipped book club three times in the last four weeks with vague excuses. They probably didn't want Bianca to get even more smug than she already was by admitting that they had broken down and given 'Doctor H' a try. Certainly Jacqueline wasn't about to mention it, either.
"She's not wrong, though," Doctor Hofmeister said, once the moment of comfortable laughter subsided. "Hypnosis is really quite a versatile tool. If you'd like, I can put you under first, and you can let your subconscious guide you to the problem you don't know you have." He took out a pendulum, a simple polished amethyst on a silver chain, and held it just above Jacqueline's line of sight. "It'll only take a few minutes, and I think you'll find that even if you don't have anything much you want to talk about, you'll enjoy the experience of relaxing."
Jacqueline froze, her eyes fixed nervously on the swaying pendulum as if afraid that it would lunge for her. Somehow, the reality of hypnosis seemed a lot more unnerving than the abstract concept; once she was confronted with the idea of actually going into trance at the direction of a complete stranger, it seemed almost terrifying. "Um, well, I, I don't... I don't really think I have..." She trailed off into silence, embarrassed once again by her own verbal ineptitude.
"Oh, you'd be surprised," Doctor Hofmeister replied soothingly, his hand remaining perfectly steady even as the pendulum settled into a slow, easy rhythm across Jacqueline's field of vision. "Everyone has things that are bothering them from time to time, and everyone benefits from a chance to discuss them. Trance just lets you get out of your own head a little, allows you to relax and let go of your thoughts by focusing your attention somewhere else to help your brain unwind and take a little break. It's nice to have something to distract your mind from any worries and cares, so that you can just feel warm and peaceful and happy for a while."