“Which there's no such thing as.”
“That's what I'm finding out.”
Nice quest, he thought. “And you're finding more coincidences per mile on the road than you do in your office?”
She nodded.
“You don't find it dangerous, hitchhiking? An attractive woman asking to be picked up by anybody on the road?”
A that's-impossible laugh. “I don't attract danger.”
I'll bet, he thought. Are you so sure of yourself, or are you just naïve? “How's your hypothesis holding up?”
“I'm not ready to call it a law, but I think it'll be my theory, at least, before long.”
She had smiled about attracting danger—he wouldn't understand that yet.
“Am I a coincidence?” he asked.
“Is Jamie a coincidence?” She said it as though she were asking someone he couldn't see. “Of course not. I'll tell you later on.”
“I think you're a coincidence,” he told her. “And there's nothing wrong with that. I wish you well on your journey.”
“There's been no word across th
is table of any meaning to you,” she asked, “nothing that's changed you so far?”
“‘So far’ is the operative term,” he said. “Tell me something that shocks me, ma'am, something lifechanging I can't possibly know, and I'll agree you're not coincidence.”
She thought about that, a little smile. “I'll tell you something,” she said. “I'm a hypnotist.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Once in a while, some word found the power to tumble Jamie Forbes and he could hear it happen, like white noise on the airplane radio when nobody's transmitting, all of a sudden the volume spikes and a rush of static in the mind.
Maybe it's thought slammed into overdrive, spun against something there's no explaining. He counted without counting . . . in seven seconds he could hear again.
How does this odd person pick my table to sit down at, the one time ever that I'm wondering did I hypnotize Maria Ochoa in the air, and remembering when it happened to me?
—The café’s crowded, that's how.
How does she know what I'm thinking? She reads minds? She's somebody who looks human but maybe isn't? Why is the Unexplained happening to me here in North Platte, Nebraska some alien's got me trapped? How'd she guess my life's changing when I've never seen her before?
—Chance. Coincidence, is why. Most likely she's not from Mars.
It had been a long silence. He glanced up at the sky outside the window, then back to her eyes. “So what makes you think I think your job's going to change my life?”
The waitress arrived with breakfast. “Will there be anything else?”
He shook his head no.
“No thank you,” said the hypnotist.
Alone with their toast, he looked his question at her again—why'd you think I'd care?
“I thought you'd find it interesting,” she said. “I'm getting out of my own way. I'm trusting imagination instead putting it down every minute, saying it's silly. And sure enough, you're interested.”
“I am,” he said. “May I tell you why?”