Impossible. Four hundred miles from breakfast at North Platte, not in Arkansas where he said he'd be, no way for her to know, no way for him to know . . .
“You hitchhiked. To Ponca City.”
“A trucker. Eighteen wheels. Three-thousandpound pallets of North Platte sod to turn parched Ponca City green overnight. Some of the most caring, courteous people in the world. Do you know they have a Trucker's Code?”
“Come on, Ms. Hallock, this is not possible! You cannot possibly be here!”
She laughed. “Very well, I'm not here. May I join you for dinner or shall I . . . disappear?”
“Of course,” he said, half rising from his place. “Forgive me. Please join me. How did you . . . ?”
“Mr. Forbes, there's no how-did-you. It's coincidence. You're not going to tell me something different, are you?”
What does one say, this happens? Does one go on in word fragments, sputtering wrecked sentences, this can't be possible this can't be happening when it's calmly happening anyway no matter what's possible?
He decided to shut up about it, but his mind tumbled, rattling on within, an empty birdcage dropped from a speeding train.
There was nothing to do but pretend this was the same world as ever, no matter how clearly it wasn't.
“She says the salads are good.”
Dee laughed.
What was she thinking, the explorer of coincidences?
“Things happen for a reason,” she said. “This I know. Things happen for a reason.”
They ordered salads, a pasta of some kind, he didn't much care, and sat in silence. Things happen for what reason?
“I couldn't help thinking about what you said,” he told her. “That suggestions hypnotize us.”
“If we accept them,” she said.
“When we're two days old, we don't have much choice. Much after that, it's too late.”
She shook her head. “No. We always have choice. We accept because we want to accept. It's never too late to decline a suggestion. Don't you see, Jamie? It's no mystery: Suggestion, affirmation, confirmation. That's all there is to it, over and over. Suggestions from everywhere all funneled into consciousness by our own mind.”
Then he decided, all this hypnotism business, to tell her something that he didn't know at all.
“Remember you said we may have a mutual friend?” he asked.
She looked up from her menu, nodded.
“We do.”
She smiled anticipation. “Oh?”
“Sam Black.”
No surprise, no shock, the smile changed to loving.
“You know Sam . . .” she said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jamie Forbes watched her for a while, watched the face he hadn't a clue what was going on within. She just smiled that warm smile, as if, knowing Sam, he knew it all.
“How did Gwendolyn turn into Dee?” he asked. If he'd made the wrong guess about this person, that question would be crazy words.