a l v i n 's s h o r t s t o r i e s :
`` T h e N u d g e ''
(From The Electric Adventures of
Simon didn’t know exactly when it was that he first began to Nudge the minds of those around him. But he was certain that the first time he realized he was doing it was one recent summer day at the Save-Rite grocery store, when the clerk showed him her breast.
She was about 40, dark-haired with a little curl of bang in front, a short woman with wide hips and wide breasts, all covered by her Save-Rite grocery store uniform, which included a button-down blouse. The top two buttons of the blouse were already unbuttoned when Simon arrived at the head of her line with two cans of salmon and a bottle of dishwashing liquid. A sliver of pink bra showed as the clerk leaned over to scan the soap, and Simon saw, too briefly, the soft shadow of cleavage before she stood straight again. He would remember, later, that he had had a brief thought – right between thinking that salmon is too expensive and I wonder if `Jeopardy’ is on yet – that she appeared to have pretty breasts and he wished her blouse was opened wider so he could see them better.
The thought, he recalled later, lasted maybe one second, so short that he wouldn’t even remember, until hours later, that he had thought it. The thought wasn’t accompanied by any kind of comment or look from him that the grocery clerk could possible have noticed. He had already moved onto other thoughts (I hope `E.R.’ isn’t a re-run tonight) when she looked at him, smiled a small grocery-clerk smile at him, asked him if he wanted paper or plastic, and then, without waiting for an answer, unbuttoned her third and fourth buttons, pulled the right half of her blouse and bra aside and fully exposed her right nipple to him.
Simon stared dumbly at the nipple. It was dark red and rigid, with raised, dimpled red skin around its base, a crimson oval on the cream-white surface of her breast.
``Plastic,’’ Simon said, weakly, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. ``Sure,’’ she said, still smiling her just-polite smile, still holding her blouse and bra aside and exposing her white breast and candy-red nipple to him. She stood like that a moment longer, then closed and buttoned her top as casually as she had opened it, grabbed a plastic bag from the metal stand next to her cash register and jabbed it in the air twice to open it.
Simon looked around him, feeling disoriented at the event and at the lack of any proportionate reaction to it. The elderly woman in line behind him was going through a stack of coupons in her hand, and apparently hadn’t noticed. The other clerk, a young man, was ringing up a customer at the next cash register, and neither of them apparently had noticed. Simon was beginning to convince himself he had imagined the whole thing when he looked back at the wide-breasted clerk, saw the pale stillness in her face, and knew it had really happened. She was just realizing it herself, it seemed; her eyes had that inwardly focused, concentrated look of someone who is going back over the very recent past, second by second, reviewing every moment to make sure there hasn’t been some mistake. Then she looked at Simon, wide-eyed and confused, and Simon made his face politely blank. I know nnn-othing!, he thought, in a sitcom-German accent, and he made his face look like someone who knew nnn-othing. You showed me your what? his face said. No, I don’t think so, ma’am. I’m sure I would have noticed that. Maybe you imagined it.
He concentrated on keeping the polite-blank look on his face until he could see, in her face, that she was coming around, beginning to believe – because she had to – that it hadn’t happened, that she hadn’t done that just now, that she had just imagined it. By the time Simon left the Save-Rite, the plastic bag hanging from two of his fingers, heavy with salmon and soap, the clerk had, with Simon’s silent help, completely accepted that it hadn’t happened. But there was no longer any doubt in his own mind: This 40-ish, black-haired, wide-breasted clerk had definitely exposed one of her wide breasts to him, had exposed it as surely as there was salmon in this bag hanging off his two fingers. She had done it, and then she had been surprised at herself for having done it. Of that much, he was certain.
What he couldn’t understand was why she had done it – until hours later, lying in bed, looking at his ceiling, going back over some of the dialog from the ``Cheers’’ episode he had just watched, when it came to him like a fly in his ear: She did it because I wanted her to do it!
* * *
``I think maybe I’ve been doing this for a long time,’’ Simon told his fat white cat, Desi Arnez. It was after
Desi Arnez, sitting on the countertop, sniffed once at his food dish, but the salmon was long gone. So he sat and twitched his tail and watched Simon’s shadow pace the room.
``I think maybe I’ve been doing this for years,’’ Simon told Desi Arnez, who said nothing.
Thinking back now, trying to pinpoint the day and hour that he believed he first employed the Nudge, Simon theorized it might have been four years earlier, when he had been packing up his bedroom into two cardboard boxes and preparing to leave his mother’s house, where he had lived for thirty-four years. They had had that fight, him and his mother, about the car and the mechanic’s bill and some other things. None of that mattered now, except for the last part, when she had given him the money. Simon had been navigating out the door, a cardboard box under one arm, Desi Arnez curled up under the other, preparing to leave without saying goodbye – that would show her – when he had suddenly thought: I don’t have any money. I don’t even have enough money to eat tonight. He remembered specifically that he had thought that, because two seconds later, there was his mother, standing in front of him and holding out a small stack of cash folded in two. She had offered it without saying anything, and he had, a moment later, accepted it without saying anything, and then he had left. It had seemed odd to him at the time, because she had stopped giving him money years earlier, and because he had just been thinking that he needed some when she had offered it. The timing had been odd enough to make him wonder, momentarily, whether he had said it rather than just thinking it – but, no, he was sure he had only thought it.
``Desi, I think maybe I made her give me that money,’’ Simon whispered now. Desi Arnez said nothing.
Simon paced some more and began retracing the four years since, reviewing all the times when people had done things just when he had been thinking he had wanted them to do those things. There were, it seemed, many of those times. He had been hired at the library a week after leaving home, just a janitorial job, nothing supernatural about it at all, except that the older man who had given him the application form had told him, almost rudely, that they were looking for someone older. ``We generally like to give this job to seniors,’’ the man had said, coolly, as Simon took the form. ``It’s something they can do. Have you thought about something in the trades? Construction or something?’’ Simon had understood the hint, and was preparing to hand the form back to the man, even as he thought: I really want this job. He liked the library, the silence of it, the smell of the books. Cleaning the library would allow him to think, something he liked to do when he wasn’t watching TV. I really want this job, Simon had thought again, as he handed the blank form back to the man. And then, strangely, the man hadn’t taken it. He had looked at the form, looked at Simon, and said: ``I can see you really want this job. Fill out the form.’’
``Desi, I think I made them hire me,’’ Simon whispered now, as he paced his kitchen. Desi Arnez said nothing.
Simon had had sex twice in the four years since leaving home. The first time had been with a short, big-thighed blonde woman named Mary, who had come into the library the first year Simon worked there and had asked him if he knew where the self-help section was. Simon had pointed out the area in the rear stacks, and she had smiled a thank you and turned and walked over there and began examining the books. Simon had watched her there, a few feet away, trying not to be obvious about it. She was busty, and he had been hoping she would turn a little so he could see the jutting profile of her breasts, and – yes, remembering it now, he was sure of it! – that’s exactly when she did turn. He had looked at her bustline a moment, then at her face, which was still facing the books, and he had thought: She had a pretty smile. I wish I could see it again. Pacing the kitchen now, he searched his mind, challenged the memory, making sure it was accurate; yes, he had definitely been thinking that. And just then, she had turned her head, for no apparent reason at all, and had smiled at him. He had smiled back, unable to believe his luck. They had had coffee after the library closed and had had sex in his apartment after the diner closed. She had left in the morning, after giving him a tense kiss and a smile and a vague promise to call, and he had never seen her again.
``Desi,’’ Simon whispered, horrified, ``I think I made her have sex with me!’’ Desi Arnez blinked, and said nothing.
The second woman he had had sex with in the previous four years was a tall, dark-haired college student named Carrie, who he had met at a party given by his young upstairs neighbor. She had been very drunk, and Simon had been half-drunk, and they had teased and flirted half the night before sneaking down to his apartment and having sex on the gray couch. She had vomited later in the night and was gone when Simon awoke.
``Okay,’’ Simon told Desi Arnez in his kitchen, ``maybe that was just a regular one.’’
But there had been nothing regular about all the times he had seen Mrs. Foster naked in the apartment across the courtyard from his. As he paced his kitchen, Simon had purposely been avoiding thinking about that, because it was, he knew, the most damning evidence yet that he was, in fact, Nudging people with his mind.
Mrs. Foster was a widow, about fifty years old, pleasantly heavy, with short brown hair and a round face. Simon had passed her a few times in the courtyard between their buildings. She had been polite, but nothing more. The first time Simon saw her naked was a pure accident; he had been sitting on his couch early one night, watching a ``Happy Days’’ rerun, with his lights out, which is how he preferred watching TV, when he happened to glance out his window to Mrs. Foster’s lit window, twenty yards away. The window opened to her living room. He saw a shadow move in there and then, as he watched, her naked pink figure appeared there. She was walking across the room with a towel in her hand, completely naked. Simon had only caught a glimpse of her – full left breast, round and heavy and topped with a wide pink nipple, and a thick black spray of hair between her legs – before she had noticed the open blind, startled, and stepped out of view. A moment later, the blind had gone down.
That had been that, until two nights later, when Simon had again been sitting on his couch, watching TV, occasionally glancing at the closed, lighted blinds of Mrs. Foster’s window. He saw a shadow move behind the blinds, a head and, it seemed, the square angles of a towel. It was the same time as the earlier night, and he supposed her routine might involve showering at that time. He had specifically thought (he remembered it very clearly now): I wish she would raise that blind and stand naked in front of that window again. And then he had looked at the TV (``Green Acres’’) and then back across the courtyard, and there was Mrs. Foster, standing naked in the window, looking like framed art. She was facing directly forward, so Simon saw everything there was to see from her knees up: creamy white thighs, a thick black triangle of pubic hair, a notable but not unpleasant bulge at her navel, both heavy breasts, hanging low and forming a deep fissure of cleavage between them, light-pink nipples pointed slightly off to either side. Simon had stared, opened-mouthed, as she had stood there like that – naked in the window, for no apparent reason – for two minutes. He stared hard at every curve and crevice in his view. Then she had closed the blind and turned out the lights. He had turned off the television, slipped into bed and masturbated furiously, letting himself believe that she had known he was watching and had stood there for that reason. Why else would she have been standing there?
``Oh, Desi,’’ Simon said now, standing in his kitchen, running a hand through his short, graying hair. ``I – I didn’t know.’’ Desi Arnez said nothing.
Simon had seen Mrs. Foster naked four times after that. Each time it had been the same: He had been watching TV in the dark, he had seen her lights on behind closed blinds, he had seen a shadow move, he had said to himself, I wish she would stand there naked again, and then she had opened the blind and done just that. She had never looked directly at him or gave any indication she knew he was watching. The final time, he regretfully remembered now, he hadn’t waited to go to bed before masturbating, he had done it right there on the couch, staring at her fully displayed naked body. When he was finished, he had closed his eyes for several seconds, confronting post-orgasmic guilt, and when he had opened them again, her blinds were down and her lights were off. He had passed Mrs. Foster in the courtyard the next day. Her brow was tight and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She had moved out two days later.
``Desi, I think I drove Mrs. Foster out of here,’’ Simon said now, pinching his eyelids with his fingers. ``I think she couldn’t understand why she kept standing naked in front of her window. I think it scared her that she kept doing that. I think I made her leave.’’
Desi Arnez said nothing.
* * *
Simon set out the next morning to test the Nudge, to determine, scientifically, whether it was real. He doubted it now. He had finally fallen asleep at
He decided the best place to test the Nudge would be a window seat at Ned’s, a noisy corner cafe with good coffee and a bus stop in front. It gave Simon a perfect vantage point from which to conduct his experiment. He wasn’t sure how he should start; he was more less counting on opportunities for mental Nudging to present themselves, and he would record the results. He had a small pocket notebook and pre-sharpened pencil, bought from the Wal-Green’s down the street, tucked in the breast pocket of his shirt, ready for his notes.
``Coffee?’’ the thin orange-haired waitress asked him. She was in her late 30s, with bony hips and small, high breasts and a perpetual scowl on her face. Simon had seen her there before, and had wondered if perhaps she lacked the physical ability to smile.
``Yes, thank you,’’ said Simon. Show me your breasts, he added, mentally.
``Cream and sugar?’’ the waitress asked. Simon noted that she wasn’t making any apparent moves toward disrobing.
Show me your breasts, RIGHT NOW! ``Just cream, thank you.’’
``All right, then.’’ And she was walking away, every bit as clothed as she had been before. Simon watched her walk to the counter, say something to the cook, take a steaming white coffee cup and a handful of thimble-sized cream containers, and walk back – and still, no breast exposure.
``Coffee, with cream,’’ said the stoic, orange-haired, fully clothed waitress, setting down the coffee and the handful of cream containers. ``You decided on something?’’
``Yes,’’ said Simon. I’ve decided I want you to show me your breasts, dammit! ``I’ll have the number four. Over-easy.’’ And she nodded and left – again without exposing her breasts.
Simon took out his notebook and pencil, opened the notebook importantly to the first clean white page, touched the pencil point to the page, then lifted it off the page. Everything he thought of writing was some variation of, ``The waitress won’t show me her breasts,’’ a scientifically worthless observation and one that would take some explaining if anyone happened to look over and read it there on his notebook. So instead, he doodled with the pencil on the paper – a circle with a shadow behind it, a stick-person giving some kind of salute, two overlapping squares connected at the corners so that they looked like an ice-cube – and he thought of Jennifer.
She was one of the librarians, a soft, pretty, woman with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes and soft curves and a soft voice. Jennifer exuded softness, in Simon’s view. She worked late afternoons, after her college classes, so that the end of her shift overlapped the beginning of Simon’s. She was friendly to him. She’d ask him how he was doing, and she’d occasionally ask how Desi Arnez was doing (Simon had told her about his cat, and he knew she owned a parakeet, that’s how much they’d talked). Even when they didn’t talk, she would always look up and smile her soft smile at him once or twice. Later, when she closed up the library and left and Simon was cleaning up in the back stacks, he would think about whatever conversations they might have had and would come up with ideas for new ones next time.
Now, sitting in Ned’s and doodling on his notebook, Simon allowed himself to think what he’d been avoiding thinking since the previous night, since the moment he first entertained the theory that he had the power to mentally direct the actions of those around him: Might this have some ramifications on his future with Jennifer? He hadn’t wanted to think it before, because he knew how it sounded, but now he explored the notion, carefully. It wasn’t like he had to use his Nudging powers to make her have sex with him or show her nipples or stand naked in a window; they could start with a cup of coffee, right? Certainly, there would be nothing inherently wrong with Nudging her into a cup of coffee. (This was all assuming, of course, that he even could Nudge people; the unsmiling waitress was approaching with his order now, and she still hadn’t unveiled her breasts!)
``Number four, over-easy,’’ she said, setting the plate in front of him with a ceramic click. ``More coffee?’’
``Yes, thank you,’’ said Simon. Maybe she’d respond better to the experiment if he broke the ice with a little joke. ``You know,’’ he said, ``these meals might taste better if they were named something other than numbers.’’ And by the way, why don’t you show me your breasts now?
The waitress stared at him blankly, as if waiting for some further explanation about the meal comment. Simon reddened, looked down at his plate and thought, Christ, lady, it wouldn’t kill you to smile! He picked up his fork, jabbed it into the hashed browns, put a little clump of them into his mouth, and looked up. The orange-haired waitress was still standing there. On her face was the biggest, toothiest smile Simon had ever seen.
* * *
``I think I’ve got it figured out,’’ Simon told Desi Arnez, cheerfully, as he scooped two cans of tuna fish into the bowl. Desi Arnez stuck his nose into it before Simon had completely emptied the cans.
``I think there are limits to how far I can Nudge people,’’ Simon said. ``I think I can only make people do things they might be inclined to do anyway, with the right circumstances.’’ Desi Arnez said nothing; he was busy eating. He was the fattest cat that most people who met him had ever seen.
Simon believed he did, in fact, have it figured out. He could Nudge people into working his will, all right; he just had to understand the limits. His mother giving him money was unlikely, but not impossible, Simon reasoned. ``So I was able to Nudge her into doing that,’’ he explained to Desi Arnez. The man at the library might not have really wanted to hire Simon, but he wasn’t opposed to it any fundamental, categorical way; it wasn’t something that he would never, under any circumstances, decide on his own to do. Same with the big-thighed blonde woman from the self-help stacks who’d had sex with him. ``These were things they might all have done on their own, under the right circumstances,’’ Simon said. ``So I was able to Nudge them into doing those things.’’
Mrs. Foster standing naked in the window, and the grocery clerk showing her nipple – those remained harder to explain. ``I think maybe they both had exhibitionist tendencies,’’ Simon theorized to Desi Arnez. ``I think that’s why I was able to Nudge them into doing those things. Some part of them was sort of leaning in that direction already.’’ This morning’s orange-haired waitress had been another matter, of course; clearly, this was a woman who wouldn’t willingly expose her small, high breasts in public in a million years, not for the biggest tip imaginable, not for anything. So no amount of Nudging, Simon reasoned, would make her do it. ``But anyone can be Nudged into smiling,’’ he said, cheerfully.
Simon was cheerful because people had been smiling at him all day. The incident at Ned’s had showed him that smiling was the one thing he could Nudge anyone into doing, no matter what their other individual boundaries of behavior might be. After the waitress had smiled (a smile that had quickly turned to a look of what-the-hell-am-I-doing? confusion), Simon had walked down
An older, angry-looking man in a stiff business suit had been the first to approach Simon as he walked. The man had his face aimed squarely at a folded-over newspaper, and he had no reason, absolutely none, to suddenly look up from his paper and grin stupidly at Simon – no reason except that, at that moment, Simon had deliberately thought: Look at me and smile!
Then there had been succession of similar smiles tossed at him, on his mental command: A short black woman with a gold tooth, an older white woman with dyed black hair, a brooding teenage boy who looked like he hadn’t smiled in maybe four years, several others – they had all looked right at Simon and grinned like idiots as soon as he mentally ordered them to. The timing was always dead-on; there was no mistaking the cause and effect. On the sixth one (a heavy red-haired woman with big earrings), he had gotten fancy and made her turn her head completely around and smile at him after he had passed her on the sidewalk. With the next woman who approached him, he had commanded her to wave at him in addition to smiling, which she did, giving those around them the impression that they were old friends, when in fact they’d never seen each before.
Desi Arnez was almost to the bottom of his bowl.
``Every single person I passed, I was able to Nudge them into smiling,’’ said Simon, smiling. He was thinking of Jennifer. He didn’t need the Nudge to get a smile from her – she smiled at him, routinely, on her own – but his plan of suggesting a cup of coffee suddenly seemed less reckless than it had before, now that he had the means to all-but-guarantee that she would accept. ``It’s just a cup of coffee,’’ he said out loud. ``She might already be inclined to have a cup of coffee with me, right?’’ Desi Arnez licked stray particles of tuna from his teeth and said nothing.
* * *
They had coffee at Ned’s two mornings later. Simon had haltingly issued the invitation as Jennifer had been gathering up her things to leave the library the night before, an invitation followed by the wordless command: Say yes.
``Yes. Sure,’’ Jennifer had said, wearing that expression of inward-looking confusion that Simon had started to recognize on the face of every person he Nudged – the expression that said, What the hell am I doing?
Despite her expression, Simon had been so relieved when she accepted that he leaked a surprised little laugh (right in front of her!), then had turned red, said goodnight and walked urgently to the back stacks to finish the dusting. He was relieved because he had learned in three days of Nudging that it was, in fact, possible to say ``no’’ to a Nudge, if the thing being mentally suggested was fundamentally abhorrent to the person being Nudged. It was, Simon supposed, nature’s circuit-breaker, a way to prevent Nudgers from sending Nudgees diving off bridges en masse. This had raised the stakes of the Jennifer-coffee project somewhat, so much so that Simon had almost backed out of the thing. If she had said ``no,’’ he knew, it would have been a real ``no,’’ an irreversible ``no,’’ a ``no’’ on par with the orange-haired waitress’ icy opposition to showing her breasts in public. Wouldn’t it be ironic, Simon had mused the day before, if the sum result of his new-found Nudging ability was to demonstrate just how strongly Jennifer didn’t want to have coffee with him?
But now, here they were, having coffee. Jennifer sat across the booth from him, sipping her coffee and radiating softness, not the least bit aware, it seemed, that she wasn’t here entirely of her own free will. She wore a light blouse that showed the swelling shape of her bra underneath, which had made Simon look away and silently vow to behave himself.
The orange-haired waitress had shot Simon a vaguely accusing glare as they had entered, which had made him ponder (not for the first time) whether Nudgees could know that they have been Nudged; that could have ramifications, he worried, on his future with Jennifer. But looking at Jennifer now, it was clear to him that she had gotten past the issue of why she had accepted his invitation. She softly stirred some cream into her coffee, and talked (softly) about her college classes.
``Psychology is my favorite,’’ she said. ``The professor is great. Bill – that’s his name, Bill – he really knows how to explain this stuff. Do you know how much psychology is involving in yawning?’’
``Yawning?’’ Simon asked. He was concentrating on Jennifer’s soft eyes, and wondering, idly, whether the Nudge could induce a person to fall in love.
``You ever notice that seeing a person yawn, even talking about yawning, makes you want to yawn?’’ she asked. ``Bill’s been exploring the psychology behind yawns. He’s actually written a few articles about it. It’s really amazing.’’
Simon felt a yawn coming on, and he stifled it, fearing it would be rude. Jennifer was saying: ``A yawn is one of the most basic physical reflexes. Your mind can trigger one just from thinking about yawning.’’ And then she yawned.
Simon stifled another yawn, then noticed the orange-haired waitress taking an order at a table across the room. The waitress glanced over at him coolly and he thought he saw, again, a hint of accusation in her stare. Jeez, lady, all I did was make you smile, he thought, aggravated. She was still staring a moment later, and it was then that Simon decided he’d had enough. Smile! he commanded, and the waitress did, so wide and leering that the people at the table she was waiting looked questioningly at each other.
That’ll teach you to stare at me, thought Simon.
``Bill says yawns are a great illustration of psychology in action,’’ Jennifer was saying. ``Yawns cause yawns.’’ Which gave Simon an idea. Yawn! he commanded the glaring, grinning orange-haired waitress, who immediately yawned in mid-smile. Behind her wide, leering, grinning yawn, her eyes held confusion and, Simon noted, a touch of fear. What the hell am I doing? her eyes said. The two people at her table watched in awe the facial contortions of their waitress. Then they both yawned.
``What about you, Simon?’’ Jennifer was saying. ``What are your interests, outside the library?’’
This was the part of the coffee project that Simon had been afraid of: keeping up his end of the conversation. Most of Simon’s conversations were with his cat, and then they mostly involved the plots of television shows.
He looked at Jennifer’s hands, folded on the table. He thought they were the softest hands he had ever seen.
``Well,’’ Simon said, ``you, um, you know about Desi Arnez. He’s my main interest.’’ He noticed that four people at two tables next to the orange-haired waitress’ table were yawning now.
Jennifer laughed. ``That is such a great name for a cat. I love that. What does he look like?’’
``He’s fat,’’ said Simon, looking back at her soft, folded hands. ``He might be the fattest cat I’ve ever seen.’’ Spread your fingers out, he added mentally, and she did, unfolding them and stretching all ten of them out on the top-table as casually as if it had been her own idea.
Simon looked up from her fingers, so as not to draw her attention to them. A group of nine people at two tables pushed together on the opposite wall were yawning now. The yawn was moving through the room at a counter-clockwise direction.
``That fat, huh?’’ Jennifer said, smiling and still spreading her fingers on the table. ``What are you feeding him, twinkies?’’
``No, fish and hamburger, mostly,’’ Simon said flatly, a moment later. He was watching the soft, fluid movement of her ten soft fingers, quivering like reeds in the wind, which they had started doing right after he had thought: move your fingers.
``Fish and hamburger? Are you kidding?’’ Jennifer said as she moved her fingers. Simon was so busy concentrating on their movement that he wasn’t sure at first what she was referring to.
``Yeah. Hamburger. And fish,’’ Simon said. He briefly allowed his eyes to brush, again, over the soft swell of her chest. No sign of her nipples behind the soft bra and soft blouse. ``He really likes fish.’’
``Most cats do,’’ Jennifer said, with a small, curious smile that was entirely of her own making. Her fingers were still moving softly. ``That doesn’t mean they get to have it. You really go out and buy fish for your cat?’’
Simon shrugged. ``That’s what he likes,’’ he said. And then, before he could stop himself, he thought: I wish your nipples were erect. And three seconds later, to his amazement, they were.
``Well, that must be one happy cat,’’ Jennifer said, instinctively leaning forward as her nipples pushed rigidly through the fabric of her bra and blouse. Even with her leaning like that, Simon could see clearly the hard little twin shadows they created on the soft curve of her breasts. Her fingers were moving, and he let himself indulge for a moment the thought of what he might command those fingers to do.
It was then that the room-wide yawn broke over their table like a wave. Suddenly the table to their left was yawning, then the table to their right, and then Jennifer and Simon themselves both yawned. As Jennifer yawned, her fingers stopped moving and her nipples retracted and disappeared.
``Yeah, I’d say you have a pretty lucky cat,’’ Jennifer said again, after she finished her yawn. Simon didn’t answer. He was watching the orange-haired waitress, who was looking back at him stonily, her Nudge-induced smile long-gone now. On her face was the look his mother used to give him, when she thought maybe he had done something wrong but couldn’t prove it. It was for spite and no other reason that Simon mentally ordered the waitress to stop right in the middle of the restaurant and crane her neck to look stupidly up at the ceiling, which in turn caused a room-wide wave of ceiling-looking.
* * *
Simon’s hands shook as he crushed the broiled whitefish into Desi Arnez’s bowl. It was oily on his fingers.
``It’s not that big a deal,’’ Simon snapped, as the cat dove into the bowl. ``It’s not like I tied her down or anything.’’ Desi Arnez ate ferociously, and said nothing.
``She must have wanted to, anyway. Or else she wouldn’t have,’’ Simon told Desi Arnez, the edge still in his voice. ``It’s not like I forced her.’’
The woman had been brunette, young (about 25, Simon guessed), slim but not skinny, average in every way, certainly not as soft or pretty as Jennifer. Coffee with Jennifer had gone well, all in all. She had agreed to meet again the next morning, and though he knew he had Nudged her into agreeing to meet again, the fact that she had agreed meant that she wasn’t internally opposed to the idea as strongly she would be to, say, diving off a bridge. He had been feeling pretty good about the thing, sweeping the stacks and considering what to say during their next date, when he had noticed the brunette.
She had been browsing the Fantasy-Fiction section, on the next aisle over from Simon. The bookshelf between them was missing books in sections that made the top half of her face and the lower half of her waistline visible to him in two separate square holes through the rows of books. There was something about the image – her eyes and, a few feet lower, her hips and upper thighs, framed like two pictures on a wall – that had stirred him and made him remember Jennifer’s protruding nipples. They had protruded at his command! What might that mean, in terms of what was possible, sexually, with the Nudge? Just how long was he expected to ignore the possibilities?
The brunette wore light khakis that accented the sharp curve of her hips through the green fabric, behind the hole in the books. Simon had looked around him. Only one other customer was in the library, up in the New Age section. Simon had looked again at the two eyes through the square hole in the books, and then, knowing he shouldn’t but unable to stop himself, had thought: Look over here.
She did. She had stared right at him through the bookshelf. He had stared back a moment, noticing how pretty her dark eyes were. Smile, he had thought, though he couldn’t see her mouth. He had then seen her eyes crinkle upward, evidence of the hidden smile he knew was there now. As she kept looking at him (Keep looking at me, he had commanded), he had let his gaze move slowly down the bookshelf, past ``The Hobbit’’ and ``Dune’’ and the collected works of Terry Brooks, to the lower square hole in the shelf, where her hips and thighs hovered. They were soft, curving hips, announcing femininity at every bend.
If she really doesn’t want to, he had reasoned to himself, then she won’t.
He had looked once more at her dark eyes. What was the harm in just seeing if it would work? He had stared at her dark eyes and her curving hips a moment longer, and then, trying not to consider too deeply what he was doing, he did it.
Take down your pants, he had commanded.
A moment later, the green khakis had been gone and all that was visible through the lower square hole in the books was her soft peach-colored skin, the shadow of her navel, and, below that, the plush black triangle of her pubic hair.
After considering this sight for a moment, and willfully ignoring the rising pleas of his higher mind, Simon had thought: Stay there. Just like that. Then he had stepped toward the shelf and reached through the square hole in the books, slowly, until he felt hair in his fingers. He had stood there like that, his arm snaking through the bookshelf, his hand nestled between her legs, his eyes locked on hers. He had stayed there half a minute, before pulling his arm out of the bookshelf and walking quickly away through the stacks and out the back entrance, and home, his hands shaking.
Simon watched the fat white cat pull a last white chunk of fish into its mouth. Then it sat up and blinked at him. ``It’s not like I forced her,’’ Simon said, again.
Desi Arnez said nothing.
``Quit looking at me like that,’’ said Simon.
* * *
``What would you do if you could influence people with your mind?’’ Simon asked Jennifer the next morning over coffee at Ned’s.
``What makes you think I can’t influence people with my mind?’’ Jennifer answered, smiling with mock insult.
``No, I mean, if you could control their actions, use your mind to make them do things. What would you do?’’ The orange-haired waitress appeared to be off today. Simon was relieved. He had, without planning to, made two more women disrobe earlier that morning – one had exposed her heavy pink breasts to him from backseat of a passing cab, and the other had tugged down her jeans and flashed her dishwater-blonde vagina at him on the bus – and the guilt was sharp enough already without having to face the accusing stare of Miss Sunshine.
``So, you mean,’’ Jennifer was saying, ``like hypnosis or something?’’
``Right. Sort of,’’ said Simon, cupping his hands around the coffee. ``Only, with just your mind. If you could look at a person and just think something – say, `smile’ or `frown’ or `look up’ – and then the person would just do it. What would you do?’’
Jennifer laughed. She was wearing a summer skirt that came just above her knees, shorter than what she usually wore, Simon noted to himself. They were seated off the same corner of the table, and looking down discreetly, he could make out two or three inches of her bare inner thigh in the shadows of the skirt. He wondered fleetingly if the Nudge could be employed to induce a person to dress in a specific manner in the morning.
``I guess I’d never have to work again,’’ Jennifer said, after her laugh. ``I guess any time you needed money, you could just walk up to a stranger and think, `Give me money,’ and they would.’’
Simon stared silently at this. It was something he hadn’t considered.
``No, I guess I wouldn’t do that,’’ Jennifer continued. ``That’d be just like mugging someone. But it’d be a good thing for a woman to have. Say some guy is following you, and you’re nervous about it and you want to lose him? You could just think, `Hey, you better stop and tie your shoes.’ And while he’s doing that, you make your getaway.’’
Simon nodded. He hadn’t thought of that, either.
``I think if you had a power like that,’’ Jennifer continued, ``you’d have to do good deeds with it.’’
``Good deeds?’’
``Yeah. Like – I don’t know – stopping crime, stopping poverty.’’
``How could it stop poverty?’’ Simon asked, glancing surreptitiously down at her soft knees.
What was the harm?
Move your skirt up a little, he thought, and she did, casually, pulling it halfway up her thigh without pausing in the conversation.
I shouldn’t have done that, Simon thought. But he didn’t make her pull it back down.
``Maybe you could hypnotize rich people to give tons of money to charity,’’ Jennifer was saying. ``Or when you read that some big company is about to shut down a plant or something, you could find the company president and hypnotize him into keeping it open.’’
``I hadn’t thought of that,’’ said Simon, feeling guilty that he hadn’t thought of that. Guilt was the emotion of the day, it seemed. He felt guilty about the black-haired woman in the library and about the woman in the cab and about the woman on the bus. He had vowed that each one would be his last. He felt guilty that Jennifer’s skirt was hiked almost to the tops of her legs now. Simon thought her thighs were possibly the two softest things he had ever seen.
``You could do all kinds of stuff,’’ Jennifer said, getting enthusiastic about it. ``You could end prejudice. Think about it. You could pretend to join one of those skinhead groups, and then when you go to one of their meetings and they’re all there at once, you could just put out one big hypnotic command to cover all of them: `Quit being prejudiced.’ ’’
``I don’t know if that would work,’’ said Simon. He honestly didn’t. Jennifer’s upper thigh was completely exposed now, and it was all Simon could to do keep from staring openly at it. Just a little more, he thought, and her hand idly pulled the skirt higher, and suddenly there was her underwear. It was pink and shiny.
``How would this power affect a person’s love life, I wonder,’’ Jennifer said, her hand still holding her skirt up almost to her waist.
``Good question,’’ said Simon, as he commanded her to part her thighs, just a tiny bit. ``I guess it could come in handy if you really wanted someone to notice you.’’ Simon could just make out, under the pink, shiny fabric between her legs, a soft, billowy mound, with hints of blackness showing through the weave.
Stop it! he told himself. But he didn’t command her to stop it.
``You know what I would do?’’ Jennifer whispered, looking off into the restaurant and smiling. She looked as if she had completely forgotten Simon was there. ``I’d make Bill kiss me. Just kiss me after class, for no reason, and then I’d let him wonder why he had kissed me.’’
``Bill?’’ said Simon. Who’s Bill? he thought. And suddenly Jennifer closed her thighs and pulled her skirt down like she was slamming a door.
``Bill. You know, my psychology professor,’’ Jennifer said, smoothing out her skirt. ``He’s married, so ... you know, I wouldn’t. But sometimes I wonder – .’’ She laughed self-consciously, the laugh of someone who has said too much. ``You think it’s possible to hypnotize someone into falling in love?’’
``I don’t know,’’ said Simon. He honestly didn’t.
* * *
Back in his apartment that night, Simon reached into his pocket and came out of it with a small stack of money, and laid it on the table and looked at it. The fat white cat looked at it, too, then returned to the mound of diced beef liver in its dish.
``Three-hundred twelve dollars,’’ Simon said to the money. Desi Arnez said nothing.
``The guy looked like he had some money, but I didn’t think he had that much,’’ Simon said. Desi Arnez ate, and said nothing.
``I didn’t say that he had to give me all of it,’’ Simon explained, in his own defense. ``It’s not like I thought, `Give me all your money, mister.’ I just kind of vaguely thought something about money. And all the sudden, he’s handing it to me.’’
Desi Arnez said nothing, but Simon thought he saw a look on the cat’s face. ``Well, fuck you,’’ Simon said. ``Your meals aren’t cheap, you know.’’
* * *
Jennifer’s breasts were practically falling out of the red dress, so much so that Simon wondered if maybe he had gone too far. It had looked revealing on the rack – that’s why he had mentally picked it while they had browsed the mall together the previous afternoon – but he hadn’t believed it would be that revealing. She hadn’t liked the thing (``Tacky,’’ she had called it, which had made Simon feel a little insulted, though he hadn’t said a verbal word in defense of the dress), but something had made her buy it anyway, and then something had made her put it on for their dinner together. Even now, sitting across from him in the tacky, revealing red dress, she didn’t look like she liked it; she kept squirming and slumping, trying to rein in all the escaping breast tissue. Her breasts were fuller than Simon had thought, he could see now. The top half and inner third of each one hung softly before him in the amber light of the restaurant.
At least she couldn’t call the restaurant tacky. She had clearly been awestruck when they had stepped into the place, looking at the glittering silver on the tables and hearing the quartet in the corner and feeling the atmosphere of richness to the place. ``Simon, I have to ask – is this really okay?’’ she had said, her eyes darting around the room. ``I mean, maybe we should go somewhere less ... um ... ’’ He had cut her off with a smile and a shake of his head. It made sense that she would wonder how he was paying for this – she knew where he worked, after all – but she didn’t know about all the men in suits who had been generously handing him money lately. The new suit and tie Simon now wore made him feel like one of them.
Jennifer was edgy, and not just from the expense of the restaurant or the openness of her dress. Simon noticed it immediately, and it annoyed him. He hadn’t been sleeping well, and was edgy himself from the loneliness that, he had decided, must be a side-effect of the Nudge. Few people around him seemed real anymore; it didn’t make any sense to him, but if anyone had asked him, he wouldn’t have been able to put it any better than that. The more he Nudged the less real they seemed. Except Jennifer, who remained as real as ever. He needed that tonight, needed her realness, and now she was acting edgy. ``Jen, is something bothering you?’’ he asked, trying to hide his annoyance.
Jennifer laughed tensely, then breathed out, then said: ``Oh, I have to tell someone. Simon, you remember I told you about Bill?’’
Simon nodded. ``Your psychology professor.’’ Who I’m getting sick of hearing about.
``Remember I said I wanted him to kiss me?’’
``Mmm-hmm.’’
``Simon, he did kiss me. After class yesterday.’’ She paused, and added, so softly that he almost couldn’t hear it: ``And I kissed him back. Twice.’’
Simon shifted in his seat, wondering how the conversation had gotten so completely out of control. ``Isn’t he – um – married?’’
Jennifer looked down and said: ``Yes. He is. And I don’t normally do that, okay? It’s really bothering me now.’’
Simon nodded, relieved at the opportunity to seize the moral high ground. ``That’s your conscience talking. You should listen,’’ he said. He smiled, and added for good measure: ``I mean, he’s marr-rried.’’
``It’s not just that,’’ she said, still looking down. ``It’s – oh, god, it sounds so stupid. Simon, remember what you said the other day? About what it would be like to be able to make people do things? Just by thinking it?’’
``Yes?’’ Simon answered, as casually as possible. Where was she going with this, he wondered. He was almost afraid to hear more. He felt dizzy
Jennifer leaned forward, enough so that Simon could almost see the inner edges of both nipples – though he hadn’t commanded her to lean like that – and she whispered: ``Simon, it seemed like that was exactly what happened. I was thinking, `I wish you’d kiss me,’ and suddenly he did!’’
Simon shrugged. ``Well. Coincidence.’’ He was acutely aware of his own dizziness, and was worried that it showed. Could they really, really be talking about this? Was this a good thing? He realized he felt like vomiting.
``It wasn’t only the kiss,’’ Jennifer said, still whispering urgently. ``It was other stuff, too. He kept looking at me in class, right when I wanted him to. He came back in the room after it had cleared out, right when I wanted him to. It was like every time I thought I wanted him to do something, he did it. Simon, it was spooky.’’
Simon knew the feeling. Spooky. That’s how it had been at first, before it had evolved into a less dramatic but more encompassing feeling of loneliness. In the flood of feelings that came over him at the thought that Jennifer might have the Nudge, the one that spoke loudest to him was empathy. He wanted to warn her: It’s lonely, Jennifer, so lonely to look into faces every day and see nothing but the reflection of your own thoughts, so lonely not to see real smiles. But of course he couldn’t say that.
``So you think you – um – maybe `hypnotized’ him into doing those things? With your mind?’’ Simon said, slowly, to make her hear the ridiculousness of it and laugh the thing off.
Instead, Jennifer looked down at her own breasts, displayed like ice cream in a dish. ``I hate this dress,’’ she said. ``I have no idea why I bought it.’’
* * *
The pizza stunk. Simon could smell it even before he opened his door.
The pizza delivery person was a young woman, twenty-one or twenty-two, Simon guessed, a short skinny thing with black frizzy hair and a young face and an earring in her nose. She wasn’t especially pretty, nor homely. Her breasts were tiny. Simon almost swore out loud when he opened the door and saw her standing there, holding up the stinking pizza; why’d it have to be a woman? Why tonight did it have to be a woman?
``Cheese with double anchovies?’’ announced the woman, making a face that said she wanted to unload the stinking pizza as soon as possible. It smelled like a pond.
Simon looked her over, and decided, immediately, that she was definitely Nudgeable. Not that he intended to Nudge her – he very much didn’t intend to do that, didn’t intend to make her peel off her red pizza-deliver shirt and peel down her jeans and put her small breasts in his mouth and wrap her skinny legs around his waist, he had absolutely no intention of doing that, he wasn’t the kind of person who would do that, despite recent events – he was just noting that it was possible, that’s all. The earring in her nose was his first clue. In a week of Nudging he had learned to tell, from the eyes and mode of dress and mannerism, and things like earrings in noses, just how far a woman might be Nudged. There was no doubt in his mind that this young woman could be Nudged all the way, the whole nine yards, home-plate, right off the bridge. Not that he intended to do that.
``How much do I owe you?’’ Simon asked. Rub your breast, he added, mentally. Not that he intended to make her do anything more than that.
``Nine-fifty,’’ she said, bringing her right hand up and massaging the small left bump in her shirt. ``Lotsa anchovies on there,’’ she added, still massaging. ``You’d be surprised how few people get anchovies. Seems like no one likes ’em. You must really like ’em, though.’’
Simon despised anchovies. Desi Arnez brushed fatly against his shins, and meowed.
``Pretty cat,’’ said the tiny-breasted pizza delivery woman, taking her hand off her tiny breast and handing Simon the pizza.
``He’s too fat,’’ answered Simon, peeling a fifty-dollar bill off a two-inch-thick stack of them in his pocket. ``Keep the change.’’
The pizza delivery woman paused at the enormity of the tip, and Simon wished she would get over it and leave, quickly. He had already Nudged four women that day: Two college students who had fondled and kissed each other’s mouths and breasts in the elevator at the library that morning, while Simon had stood and watched; a gray-haired woman who had given him fellatio in the third-floor men’s room; and a busty black woman with red-tinted straight hair who had had sex with him after closing time, straddling him on the reading chair in the Gothic Fiction section. With each one, he vowed it would be his last. Each one had done progressively more for him, each one had felt less real, each one had made him feel progressively lonelier. The black woman had had an orgasm right after Simon had thought, have an orgasm, which had opened up a whole new store of possibilities, Jennifer-wise, but still the loneliness and guilt tugged at him. Of course, they had all wanted to, at some level, otherwise they wouldn’t have, Simon reasoned, but he still couldn’t quite reason away the guilt. The last thing he intended to do was add to his mountain of guilt and loneliness by Nudging the pizza-delivery woman to put her small breasts in his face. He supposed – just idly, not intending anything by it – that her breasts were small enough for him to get one entirely inside his mouth.
Simon’s mind had been wandering lately, going places it had no reason to go, and now it went, for no reason, from considering the pizza woman’s tiny breasts to remembering a book he had read in the library over the course of a few weeks once, one of the few books he had ever read. Breakfast of Champions. He remembered the title because it had confused him, as had much of the book. One part he had understood was that a man in the book comes to believe that everyone else in the world is a robot, that the man himself is the only actual human, and that that belief makes him dangerous. Yes, Simon mused now, such a belief could have that effect.
``You know this is a fifty, right?’’ the pizza delivery woman asked, looking cautiously at the bill in her hand.
Leave! Simon thought. And the woman did, so quickly that it startled Desi Arnez and sent him lumbering behind the couch.
* * *
The small-breasted pizza-delivery woman had been almost to the bottom of the stairs when Simon had called her back. Come back. He had undressed and sat on the couch, cross-legged, so that when she had opened the door and walked back into the apartment, the naked Simon was the first thing to greet her. She had stared a moment, before silently removing her pizza-delivery uniform, one ingredient at a time: red shirt, blue jeans, tiny bra, beige panties. He had made her leave her red socks on (keep the socks) because he liked the sight of a young, naked pizza-delivery woman wearing nothing but red socks. He had looked at her standing there for several minutes (turn left; turn right; smile; tease your hair) then had mentally invited her to straddle him on the couch and, of course, she had accepted. He had been correct about her small breasts fitting entirely inside his mouth.
He had also been correct about the possibility of Nudge-induced orgasms. The pizza-delivery woman had had four loud ones in an hour as he had worked her body and mind like wet clay. By the last one, she had sounded so weak and breathless that he had wondered if maybe there was such a thing as too many orgasms, medically speaking, so he had stopped and sent her to sleep (sleep). Now, looking at Jennifer’s soft eyes across the table at Ned’s, Simon wondered for about the hundredth time that morning how Jennifer might sound during an orgasm, Nudge-induced or otherwise.
But Jennifer didn’t look like she was headed toward any orgasms this morning. She looked terrified, as she had from the moment she had seated herself at the table. The story had immediately spilled out of her like coffee from a pot: How the young man in the loud car had pulled alongside her as she had walked home from the library the night before; how he had whistled and catcalled and suggested she sit on his face; how she had thought, idly, not meaning anything by it, Asshole, I wish you’d run your car into that pole! And how he had done just that.
``Do you think I could be in trouble?’’ Jennifer was asking Simon now. ``I mean, do you think he could go to the police?’’
``Even if you really caused this,’’ Simon said – slowly, so she could hear how ridiculous it was – ``how would he prove it? And what would they charge you with? I don’t even know if it’s illegal to control someone with your mind.’’ He honestly didn’t. He couldn’t believe they were talking about this again. He felt exposed, and his stomach again felt like it might come up.
The orange-haired waitress was serving them, uncomfortably. She and Simon had glared at each other briefly when he had first come in, and she had gone out of her way not to look at him since, even while pouring his coffee. He supposed she feared she might suddenly start smiling stupidly or examining the ceiling if she looked at him. He wondered how she had explained it to herself.
``It wasn’t just the car accident,’’ Jennifer was whispering. ``There’s been other stuff. Lots of it. With Bill. He keeps calling. Yesterday he called while his wife was in the next room. Every time I wished he would call, he suddenly did.’’
``So stop wishing he’d call,’’ said Simon. It sounded like excellent advice to him. At the next table, the orange-haired waitress scooped up a ten-dollar tip from under the salt shaker, which made Simon wonder what the generous patron had been eating, and whether that person might still be in the vicinity. He was getting low on cash.
``Simon, all of this started right after you asked me that question,’’ Jennifer was saying. ``About hypnotizing people to do what you want? Simon, what did you mean by that question?’’
Simon looked at her and struggled to keep his breathing steady. Jennifer’s voice and eyes made it clear this wasn’t idle chat anymore, she was demanding explanations. It was the one thing Simon had never expected, that someone would ask him point-blank, in essence, Simon, are you Nudging people? He found, to his surprise and discomfort, that it wasn’t something he wanted to admit to. He wondered if a person could be Nudged to get the hell off a given line of questioning. Then he decided on a different strategy.
``You got me,’’ he told her, smiling and spreading his hands out in surrender. ``My secret’s out. Yes, Jennifer, I’ve been controlling people with my mind. And I somehow passed it onto you. It’s like a yawn: when you do it to someone, that person starts doing it, too.’’
He notice the orange-haired waitress scooping up another oversized tip from an adjacent table. It looked like a ten and two fives.
``I used my mind to make you start having coffee with me,’’ Simon continued, sarcastically, ``and now you’ve used your mind to cause a car accident. I think that guy could sue you for reckless hypnosis.’’ His tone had been so heavy with sarcasm by the end that he sensed he had overdone it. He smiled wider, in truce, inviting her to join the smile. She didn’t.
``Simon, you used to be sweet,’’ Jennifer said, rising from her chair. ``I have to go now.’’
Sit down, Simon thought.
Jennifer immediately sat back down, as if it had been her own idea.
Kiss me, Simon thought. And she leaned across the table, slowly, and kissed him.
Tongue, Simon thought. And then he felt it snake wetly into his mouth.
Then Jennifer sat back down as casually as it she hadn’t just frenched him in a restaurant. Simon was just starting to plot out what might be next for him and Jennifer today – a movie, some clothes shopping, then to his apartment to test out his new orgasmic Nudging techniques – when the casualness drained from Jennifer’s face. What was left there was a look that made the hair on the back of Simon’s neck stand up like a cat’s. It was a look that made him feel naked.
``You son of a bitch,’’ Jennifer whispered. Then she was out of her seat and out the door.
* * *
Simon was almost home before the thought hit him. Surely he hadn’t tipped her that much. There was no way. He stopped, opened his wallet, looked at the sidewalk, looked at his feet, looked in his wallet again. Yes, he could remember it now, could remember doing it and not thinking it strange. That’s the part that seemed so strange now: that he hadn’t thought it strange at the time, that he had done it as if it was normal. He looked in his wallet a third time, and moved it around to make sure there wasn’t a bill hiding somewhere. No, two ones and a five were all that were there. He did the subtraction, and it jibed with his new-found memory. Sure enough, he had tipped the orange-haired waitress seventy dollars on a four-dollar tab.
* * *
Simon heard the lock click and heard the front entrance door open and knew that Jennifer was in the library. He had been silently calling to her all evening (Jenn-nn-ifer! Jenn-nn-ifer!) but he hadn’t been sure she would show; she lived eight blocks from the library, and the issue of range was one of the many things about the Nudge that Simon still hadn’t quite worked out.
He was sitting on the floor in the New Non-Fiction section, his back against the new non-fiction, his knees to his chest, the lights out. He stood, hearing his knees creak, and ran his hands through his hair to smooth it down. He didn’t want to look like someone who had just spent two hours in a sexual encounter with three women at once. They had stepped into the library one by one, a few minutes apart, as Simon had caught sight of each of them walking by on the lit sidewalk and had called them in (Go into the library) and had unlocked the door for them. He knew nothing about them, except that one appeared to be in her 20s and the other two in their 30s; that they were brunette, brunette and fake blonde, respectively; and that, whatever illusions they might previously have harbored about their own limits of conduct, all three knew now that they had some hidden button in their minds that made them capable of participating in a directed lesbian orgy and then having sex, one by one, with a man they’d never seen before.
Simon had found the buttons, and had pushed them, over and over, like a child playing with a machine. All three had had multiple orgasms; the fake blonde had had three in quick succession, and finally had begged Simon to stop, although he hadn’t even been touching her at the time – which made him wonder, again, if Nudgees could know they were being Nudged. He found that the idea didn’t bother him as much as it had before. He sort of liked it, in fact, liked the notion that, even as a person carried out his mental commands, that person could understand that Simon was doing the commanding. He was becoming frustrated at the role of the powerless janitor; what fun is making people do your bidding if they think it’s their own idea? He supposed this was how television Superheroes felt when they were off-duty, having to act like mild-mannered civilians, quietly accepting the indignities and abuses of daily life as if they had no choice.
As Simon greeted Jennifer at the door, he thought randomly about a boy who used to beat him up in junior high; he wondered, randomly, where that boy was today, and whether he might be able to locate that boy, and whether that boy might have any self-injuring tendencies.
``Hi, Jennifer,’’ Simon said, smiling calmly, as she stepped into the lobby. She was wearing jeans and a blouse that appeared too thick to show her nipples through the fabric. No problem, thought Simon; that’s what buttons are for.
Jennifer didn’t return his smile. ``I just came by to say goodbye, Simon,’’ she said. ``I’m quitting, and moving. I won’t be seeing you again.’’
We’ll see about that, thought Simon, adding verbally: ``Oh? Where are you going?’’
``Bill and I are getting a place together.’’
``Bill the married professor?’’
``He’s leaving his wife.’’
Simon was surprised at how little impact her words had. Words like, ``I won’t be seeing you again’’ would once have been devastating, but now they seemed irrelevant. Her words were based on the faulty premise that she could decide, without his input, whether she saw him again or not, whether she kept her clothes on or not, whether she moved her fingers or jumped off a bridge. He made her move her fingers (move your fingers) just to make sure. He smiled as he watched them move.
``Simon,’’ Jennifer said evenly, ``I know what you’ve been doing.’’
Apparently not, thought Simon, watching her moving fingers. ``Oh? What have I been doing, Jennifer?’’
``You’ve been hypnotizing me,’’ she said, slowly, making it clear she wasn’t going to be laughed off this time. ``You’ve been doing that thing you asked me about that day, with your mind. You hypnotized me into wearing that dress, and you hypnotized me into kissing you.’’
``And how do you know this?’’ Simon said, wearing his most sarcastic smile.
``Because I’ve started doing it, too,’’ Jennifer said. ``Ever since you started doing it to me, I’ve been doing it to others. Bill, and the guy who hit the pole, and lots of others. I’ve spent the last two days testing it. It’s real, Simon. I’m hypnotizing people.’’
Simon laughed, fighting back the panic that had suddenly appeared in his throat; he was wondering if it could be true that Jennifer had acquired the power to Nudge and, more to the point, whether that would impede his ability to Nudge her. He noticed, to his surprise, that the thought was blackly terrifying to him, in a way that nothing else was anymore.
``You’re a psychology student, Jennifer, ’’ Simon told her, still laughing. ``How can you buy this stuff?’’
``I think there may be a scientific explanation,’’ Jennifer said, still refusing to join his laugh. ``I think maybe it is like a yawn, something you pass on to others. I think that’s what you did to me; you passed it on.’’
She stared at Simon a moment longer before adding, evenly: ``You had no right to make me kiss you, Simon. You had no right to do that.’’
Simon’s smile collapsed. He tried to rebuild it but couldn’t. You had no right. God, why did the words hurt so much? It was like she had found a wound he was trying to ignore, and had probed it with a stick. He wondered if she knew about he had done with her fingers, and with her nipples; he wondered whether she had any notion of where his money had been coming from or what he had been doing with his nights. Oh, if she knew all that there was, so much more than one kiss. You had no right. He had been avoiding that conclusion for days, reminding himself about the limits of the Nudge, about the necessity of pre-existing hidden desires for the Nudge to work – the waitress wouldn’t show me her breasts, he had kept reminding himself – while willfully ignoring the issue of whether it was morally permissible to rummage through strangers’ hidden desires as if they were drawers. Now the issue was rising like a corpse from the grave. Jennifer was staring at him coolly, and he felt like a predator suddenly captured and caged and displayed in full light, to the ogling of its would-be prey. His face felt red.
``Jennifer, I – His breath caught, and he tried again. ``I just wanted a kiss. That’s all. Was it that bad?’’
``You had no right,’’ she repeated. Then she turned toward the door. Simon stepped in front of her.
``Jennifer, don’t,’’ he said. ``I won’t do it anymore. I promise. I love you. Please, let’s just talk. Let’s – let’s – ’’
``Bill’s in love with me, and I’m in love with him, and I’m going to go to him and pretend I never saw any of this,’’ Jennifer said, stepping around Simon. ``Goodbye, Simon.’’
``How do you know he’s in love with you?’’ Simon demanded, and Jennifer stopped turned back toward him. Yes, that was definitely the button. Simon pressed it again: ``How do you know he even likes you? Maybe you made him like you. Maybe it’s all hypnosis. How can you know?’’
``You think I haven’t thought about that?’’ Jennifer said, defensively. ``Yes, I think it’s possible I made Bill to fall in love with me. And that bothers me. But I really love him, and I know he’ll really love me, in time. I’m not taking anything from him without giving something back. That’s the difference between you and me, Simon. I’m giving back.’’
She turned again to leave, and Simon again darted in front of her, blocking the doorway. ``Jennifer, don’t leave,’’ he said, ashamed of the desperation in his voice but unable to cleanse it. ``Please. God, I need you. It’s so lonely – he was aware that he was babbling now, trying to Nudge her with talk, trying to avoid having to do it the other way – ``you’ll see how lonely it is, you’ll see how empty you feel when you look in people’s faces and see nothing there but what you’ve put there. Jennifer, we can help each other, we can learn to live with it, control it, use it to do good deeds. I can give back, I swear I can. I’ve been meaning to; I just – God, please don’t do this.’’
Jennifer looked past him. She tried to push past him. He moved his arm into her path and, before he could stop himself, he thought: Step back!
She did, immediately, as if it had been her own idea. Then she stared at him, tears appearing.
``Oh, Simon,’’ she breathed. It was the deepest look of betrayal he had ever seen, but he no longer cared. Anger was rising in his throat like vomit, and he made a conscious decision to let it rise. He could make waitresses smile, he could make people give him money, he could make women have sex with him, he certainly didn’t have to stand idly by while the woman he loved walked out of his life. He could give back; he’d show her how much he could give back, whether she liked it not. She thought she wanted to leave, but decisions like that, Simon knew, were made of wet clay, were pliable things waiting for the right hands to come along and work them. His arms were blocking her way and his mind was blocking her way, and still she was trying to leave, but that was no problem. She would re-think it. Maybe seven or eight orgasms would change her mind.
But there was, he suddenly realized, something he needed to take care of first: His black gym shoes needed re-tying. He didn’t know why he suddenly looked down at them, but when he did, he noticed it immediately: The dirty white laces were, technically, already tied, but they definitely weren’t tied correctly. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something about the way they were tied that irked him. He knew he had to deal with Jennifer, had to stop her from making this huge mistake, had to Nudge her into the Non-Fiction Reading Section, had to Nudge her clothes off, had to Nudge her into orgasm after orgasm until dawn, had to test this theory of hers that the Nudge could be used to make a person fall in love; but first, his shoes needed re-tying, right now! They needed re-tying like no shoes ever had. This was an emergency re-tying.
It took Simon a full minute to re-tie both shoes, that’s how meticulous he was about it. They were going to be tied right this time. Somewhere in the lower layers of his mind he wondered why he was doing this, why he was stooped over re-tying his shoes at a critical juncture in his life, but the thought was like a thin, wispy thread that he couldn’t quite follow to its source. The shoes needed re-tying, period. He was putting the final touches on the left one when he felt the weight of empty air in the library.
He stood up in his newly re-tied black gym shoes, knowing even before his eyes confirmed it that she was gone. He stared at the empty doorway for a moment before leaning weakly against the wall and sliding slowly down to the floor, crying savagely.
* * *
``I’m never Nudging anyone again,’’ Simon told Desi Arnez, sniffling. The fat white cat was plowing through the chunks of lobster meat Simon had bought while crying openly right in front of the dark-haired, wide-breasted grocery clerk, not caring what she thought. ``Are you okay?’’ she had asked, and Simon had thought for a moment about making her show her red nipple again, just because it was there, but had stopped himself.
``I’m never doing it again,’’ he repeated now, to his cat. ``I swear.’’
Simon sat on his floor, his arms around his knees, watching Desi Arnez eat. The loss of Jennifer loomed like cloud cover, made it hard to breathe, made him want to jump out the window. Sitting on his floor, thinking of Jennifer, of her softness, of never seeing her again, it occurred to Simon that it wouldn’t take much of a Nudge to send him out the window right now. He remembered wondering if Nudge-induced suicide was possible, and he knew now that it probably was. Jennifer had made someone drive into a pole, after all, after she had gotten the Nudge from Simon, after he had gotten it from – from where?
``It was mom. It must’ve been. That bitch,’’ he whispered now, to his cat. Desi Arnez said nothing. Simon knew there were holes in the theory – he remembered all the times his mother had tried to get him to do things that he wouldn’t do, how angry she had always been at her lack of control over him, not exactly strong evidence for the premise that she had been Nudging him and had infected him with the Nudge – but who else would it have been? No one else in his life was close enough to him to want to control his mind.
I’m never doing it again. How would it be to live without the Nudge? Simon felt his wallet digging into his upper thigh. He was down to his last few fives. He could live on his paycheck, he knew, but barely. Money crossed his path every day in the pockets of Nudgeable minds, and he was going to leave it alone from now on, watch it walk on by, try to pay for his rent and his coffee and his cat’s outlandish appetite without any help from the Nudge. Women crossed his path every day, too, Nudgeable women, saturated with softness and femininity and mystery, doorways to pleasure and excitement for those who knew the password, as Simon did, but he wouldn’t whisper it anymore. He would watch them walk on by, red nipples and all. And when one did offer herself to him anyway – hey, it could happen – he’d know the offer was real.
He’d start watching his TV shows again; he missed the characters there. He’d stop seeing a predator when he looked in the mirror. He’d see fewer smiles, true, but they’d be better ones when he did see them. Smiles had become too cheap lately. He’d stick to watching his TV shows and sweeping the library and feeding his cat, and stay away from that lonely playground he had discovered, just stay out and try to forget it was there. Yes, that’s what he would do, just stay away from it.
As for Jennifer – well, if it was possible to Nudge oneself, Simon would have Nudged himself into forgetting her completely. As it stood, he would have to live with the memory.
At least he would always have the kiss. It wasn’t possible to Nudge someone into doing something that the person found to be fundamentally abhorrent; he knew that. He would always have that.
It must have been his mother. That bitch. Maybe he’d use the Nudge, one last time, to get the truth out of her.
Simon sniffed and wiped his nose with one thumb and forefinger, and looked at the fat white cat. Its girth seemed to bulge out in a hundred directions, as if its skin was having trouble containing it all.
Simon sniffed again and said, ``You’re the fattest cat I’ve ever seen.’’
Desi Arnez licked the last specks of lobster from the bowl, and said nothing.
(END)
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