The Nudge

"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.