The Cure for Dreaming(5)

I opened my eyes, and the hum and the glare of the lights made me jump. I found myself standing upright at the center of the stage again.

“Let us give a warm round of applause for the lovely and cooperative Mademoiselle Mead.” Henri lifted my hand in the air, and applause assaulted my ears like the blasts of gunshots at a sharpshooter show. My legs wobbled as if made of sand, and I had to grab hold of Henri’s coarse sleeve to keep my knees from sinking to the ground.

Henri put his arm around my back and guided me to the stairs. I resisted the urge to lean against his shoulder to support my drooping head.

The clapping died down.

Genevieve finished her music.

The hypnotist let me go.

He didn’t say another word to me as I clutched the handrail and descended from the stage with my gloves somehow back in my hand—not a whisper in my ear or a simple Thank you for joining me. At the bottom step, I peeked over my shoulder and caught him watching me, as a doctor would monitor a patient he was releasing from the hospital after a surgery. But then he smiled. A warm smile that heated my blood and made me forget Percy Acklen sitting high in his box seat above the darkened theater.

The hypnotist then turned back to his show.

I returned to my seat.

Our relationship seemed to be over.





hen I sat back down, Kate covered her mouth as if she were stifling a laugh and Frannie whispered, “Oh dear, Livie. That went much differently than expected.”

“How do you mean?” I asked, but the woman behind us shushed us, and Frannie murmured that she’d explain later.

The next volunteers ventured onto the stage in a group of ten, and they were a motley collection of males and females of varying sizes, shapes, and ages. Under Henri’s spell they waltzed to “The Blue Danube,” forgot their names, and performed other embarrassing but relatively harmless feats.

During all the demonstrations, I was nothing more than a heap of melted butter that oozed against my red velvet chair in the audience. I felt as if I had awoken from a hundred-year nap, every part of me rested and content, aside from an odd, smarting sensation in one wrist. I almost possessed the confidence to go home and tell Father I had participated in a women’s suffrage rally in the center of the city.

Almost.


“SO, TELL ME, LIVIE,” KATE SAID WITH BARELY CONCEALED excitement after the theater lights stirred us back into reality and we rose to our feet, “what did it feel like when lovely Monsieur Reverie was on top of you?”

“I beg your pardon?” I halted in mid-stretch. “What did you just say, Kate?”

“You heard what I said.” She smiled with a glint in her hazel eyes. “He instructed you to stiffen, and then he laid you out between those two chairs and stood on your stomach to show how rigid you became.”

“What?” I pressed down for signs of bruises below the protective barrier of my corset. “He stood on top of me?”

Frannie nodded and bit her bottom lip. “He did, Livie. That’s what I meant by ‘Oh dear.’”

“Didn’t you feel him?” asked Kate.

“No.”

She laughed. “You didn’t feel a man at least thirty pounds heavier than you standing on your body?”

“No.”

“You were honestly that hypnotized?” Frannie put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t hear the cymbals he crashed next to your ears or feel the pins he poked into your wrist to see if you were alert?”

I rubbed my left wrist. “Is that why my skin tingled after I got back to my seat?”

“Oh, Livie.” Kate shook her head, her fair curls wobbling across her forehead. “You’re always missing the excitement, even when you’re smack-dab in the middle of it.” She swiveled toward the aisle and held up the hem of her skirt. “Come along, ladies. Let’s try to pull Agnes away from her suffragist troops and their election-day plotting and remind her she’s our chaperone.”

Frannie and I grabbed hands to keep from losing each other in the crowd, and I followed her swaying braid up the aisle, while she followed Kate’s bright green-and-black plaid. Strangers stepped on my feet at least three times, and I couldn’t help but think everyone was staring at me, the girl who had let a young man balance atop her stomach.

Out in the lobby we had to wait ten minutes to fetch our coats, and then we found ourselves swept along in a warm wave of bodies that pressed toward the theater’s exit. On all sides of me people buzzed about Henri Reverie’s skills.

“Quite a talented young man.”

“Such persuasion. Such power.”

“I would have liked to see him try that hogwash on me. My mind is far too sharp and alert for that sort of humbug—I can promise you that.”

I glanced over my shoulder, for I thought I heard my name amid the commotion.

“Olivia.” An arm waved, flashing a jeweled cuff link. Auburn hair and a handsome face with fine cheekbones came into view ten feet behind me. “Wait,” called Percy Acklen.

I squeezed Frannie’s hand in the crowd’s swift-moving current. “I think Percy is calling to me.”

She laughed. “What?”

“Percy Acklen is calling and waving to me.”

She turned as well, and although a parade of elbows and shoulders smacked against us, we stood there, frozen.