A Meeting of Minds

"I was only calling you to let you know that he'd been here. There's nothing to his wild little story that I need to know about, is there?"

I thought furiously. I may be painfully awkward face-to-face, but I'm quite good over the phone. "Only that his girlfriend dumped him for me. I guess he just doesn't want to believe that she'd leave him of her own will. Of course she dumped me right away and went on to the next guy," I lamented.

"I remember going through that kind of thing back when I was your age," he said with another laugh. "Well, I sent him packing. I don't think I'm going to bother with a report on this one," he said.

"I really appreciate that, sir," I told him. "Greg's going through a pretty rough time emotionally right now and the last thing he needs is legal trouble. I'll see if I can talk some sense into him."

"You do that, Son. Thanks for being so cooperative," he said and hung up.

Jeez, Greg must have been pretty angry with me.

That was it; my talent was now strictly for my own personal use. What worried me was what Greg might do next.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Sure, he wanted some revenge on me, but what hereally wanted wasJill. He didn't know her last name, but he knew she was on the college swim team. It wouldn't take much of a detective to find her. Part of the work I'd had to do to repair the damage he'd done had included the instruction that she hadn't even seen him. For the next few days, her memory of that night would be in a pretty delicate state. If he found her, that could do some real damage. I had to stop him!

I raced over to the dorm and haltingly asked for her at the front desk.

"I'm sorry, but an ambulance took her to Mercy Hospital a couple of hours ago."

"The ho... ho... hospital? What ha... happened?"

"Well, I wasn't here at the time, but they say she had a nervous breakdown."

I got to Mercy as quick as I could. Jill had mentioned to me that her family lived out in San Francisco, so I knew they couldn't be here yet, but I'd better hurry. Once they got here, they'd probably sit in with her day and night. I needed to get her alone to repair the damage soon or it might become permanent.

According to the front desk, she was in the psych ward. I was up there in record time. Nurse Ratchet was sitting at the desk, guarding the ward's entrance.

"I'm sorry young man, but we only allow family to visit on this wing," she told me archly.

"I'm her... her little brother."

She raised a bushy eyebrow at me. I don't look Asian in the least. I said the first thing that came into my mind.

"I'm adopted. We're not b... b... blood relations," I stuttered. This was a particularly weak argument since this was back in the days when interracial adoptions generally only went the other direction.

"I'm sorry, young man, but I'll have to see some ID," she told me imperiously. My chances of getting in to see Jill were looking pretty poor. I needed another plan. I felt my back pocket and faked a look of dismay.

"Oops, I left my wallet in the c... c... car. I'll be right back." Her expression told me that she didn't believe a word of it.

I hid out in the restroom for a few minutes and then walked back up to her desk again, turning on the Charm this time. I don't like to use it for this kind of thing, but I was out of options. She looked up and her eyes went wide.

"Hi, I'm here to see Jill Hsueh. I'm her uncle."

She stammered for a second. Hopefully, being Jill's uncle would give me a wide enough age range to fit whatever faces the nurse was seeing. I was just glad that my Charm had worked. With her looks, I had seriously considered the possibility that she was really a man in drag.

"Why certainly sir. Um, but do you know something strange? There was a young man here just a few minutes ago that claimed to be her brother. He didn't look anything like her at all. Stuttered like all get out, too. I called security about him. He had this huge birthmark," she said, pointing to the right side of her face, "So he ought to be easy to find."

I saw a guard walking down the hall toward us, checking rooms as he went. He'd be here soon. I wouldn't be foolinghim. This was getting sticky now; I had to think fast.

"Oh, that must have been my nephew, Larry. I just saw him in the hall. He said he'd chickened out because he's not sure he can deal with seeing her this way."

"Oh, I'm so sorry about that. I'll call and cancel the search," she said, reaching for the phone. "Her teammates left for their practice a few minutes ago. You can go right in. Just hit the buzzer when you're ready to come out."

"Thank you very much, Ma'am. You've been wonderful." She blushed and batted her eyes at me.

I found Jill's room and peeked through the tiny little window set into the door. Jill was sitting up in bed, blankly watching Sesame Street on the color TV in the corner of the antiseptically bare room. I would have thought that the staff had more sense thanthat – Sesame Street couldputadults here! I turned on the Charm as I walked in, turned off the sickly sweet blather on TV and pulled up a hard plastic chair.

She was so far gone that the appearance of an impossibly handsome stranger didn't even register in her eyes. She was nearly catatonic. It took me a while to get the story out of her.

Evidently Greg had somehow gotten up to her room and asked her to let him complete the act that they had begun a few days before. Of course she had no memory of having sex with some dorky looking little high school boy and asked him to leave. He refused and stayed in her face long enough to where she suddenlydid recognize him.

The problem was that, apparently, only parts of it came back. It set up some kind of feedback loop in her mind that she couldn't resolve. (Computer analogies don't really explain it well, but I'm not a psychologist.) Eventually, her mind just shut out the outside world as a defense.

I worked with her until she was back on a more or less even keel. I got her to see that the awful boy who had burst in while she was with Jim had been his roommate. He was a bad person to have come back and done this awful thing to her.

As Jill's full function came back she asked me whoI was and how I knew all this. I told her that Jim was a friend of mine. I told her that Jim was desperate to come see her, but had taken a trip out of town and had asked me to come and make sure she was okay. I was desperately making it up as I went along, but with some gentle touches on her mind, I got her to believe me implicitly. Finally she seemed like she was going to be fine.

Visiting hours were ending, so I advised her to get a good night's sleep. She slipped into a restful slumber quickly and I released her. It was a decent fix, but again I was worried about her long-term mental health.

Fortunately, a different nurse was on duty as I walked out. She was officiously explaining to a middle-aged Asian couple that visiting hours had just ended and they'd have to come back to see their daughter in the morning. Man, that was close!

The first thing I did when I got out of there was to go look for Greg. I wasn't going to allow this to happen again. I checked the gas station where he worked evenings, but they said he'd gotten off a few minutes before and had started to walk home. I caught up with him about a block from his house and waved him over to the car. He looked rightfully nervous about getting in with me, but did anyway. Neither of us said a word as I drove him into the alley behind the local grade school.

He got out when I did. I walked around to his side, but when he saw the look on my face he started backing away.

"Come on, man. I just went to talk to her!"

I got right in front of him. He backed away from me until he bumped up against the car. I stayed right in his face. "I warned you to st... st... stay away from her, Greg."

He was really scared now. He hadn't ever seen this side of me. Neither had I.

"Don't do this, man. I'm your best friend, remember?"

"I don't have any friends," I hissed. My stutter was forgotten. Greg's eyes were huge with fear. He knew he was in deep trouble now. I didn't make him wait.

I hit him in the gut, hard. I may be a dweeb, but I'm a strong dweeb. The wind rushed out of him and he bent over. He stood right back up, though, when he took my knee to the face. He was only half conscious now and didn't even try and defend himself, but I showed him little mercy. I left his face alone now, but held him up against my car and beat him until there was no strength left in my arms.

I hadn't hit anyone since grade school, but this was a special occasion. He had callously hurt someone that I was starting to really care about. I was absolutely insane with rage. Finally, I grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled his rolling eyes to within inches of mine. His broken nose was streaming gouts of blood.

"If you ever go near her again, I'll know it and I'll kill you," I told him. I was quite serious. "Do you understand me?"

Greg managed to look at me and nod. I shoved him hard and he piled up against the outside of the playground fence. I got back in my car and drove away down the alley. In the rearview mirror, I watched him stagger to his feet and head for home.

After I pulled into the garage I sat in the car and cried like a baby. I had just beaten the holy snot out of my only friend over a girl that I had been willing to rape just a couple of days before. What was wrong with me?

Greg never went near Jill again, but he never spoke to me again either. I had lost my one friend in the whole world. I've never bothered to look for another. Who needs them?

Jill was released from the psych ward the next day when the doctors decided that she'd made a full and miraculous recovery. I was still worried about her, though. This was all my fault! It would have been easy to walk away, she had no clue who I was, but I felt I owed it to her to make sure that she was going to be okay. I decided on a plan of action.

For the next three weeks, Jill met a different gorgeous hunk every weekend. The funny thing was, the only thing that these handsome strangers wanted to do was sit and talk for a couple of hours.

For the first part of each encounter I only controlled Jill's mind long enough to evaluate and adjust her. Each time I found her mental state to be more and more stable. Then I'd ease up on the Charm and talk to her in her free state. She was bright and friendly and had a great sense of humor.

After the first session or two, she was back to normal. Better than that, actually. There were a couple of other issues that had been holding her back for years, but they were easily resolved. This was the first time I'd ever made permanent changes in someone's personality and I was taking it very slowly, just little bits at a time. It had worked well and she was past actually needing my help.

The reason I kept seeing her after that was simple. I had fallen head over heels in love with her. I couldn't stand the thought ofnot seeing her. Sadly, though, I knew it had to end. If I kept this up, it might start tocause problems for her.

Before what I had decided would be our final session, I debated with myself over whether or not I should sleep with her. Part of my brain said that since I had put in a lot of effort above and beyond what was necessary, I was entitled. Jill also seemed to genuinely like me when we talked.

But again I decided that it just wouldn't be right to take advantage of her like that. I had convinced her to wait for someone special. A serial rapist didn't qualify, so she would go unmolested, but I just had to see her one last time.

That evening I intercepted her as she came out of her last class of the day. It took very little Charm to get her to agree to come with me. We went for a bite to eat at this little diner on the other side of town that I had heard was good, but not particularly popular with students. It was unlikely that we'd see any of her classmates there.

After one last check to confirm that her mind was good to go, I eased up and we started to get to know each other again. Something was somehow different this time, though. I was about to go back in to see what it was, but before I could, her face got serious and she asked me a question.

"Ken, (I'd had to come up with some new names for my new faces) I'm sure I've seen you several times now. We haven't had sex since the first time. Aren't we ever going to do it again?"

I almost dropped my fork. "What are you talking about Jill? We just met."

She smiled a big conspiratorial smile. "Oh, come on Ken, if that's what your name really is. You somehow look very different on the outside every time I see you and you pretend to be someone else, but after last Friday I thought it through. It's the only logical explanation. I was almostexpecting you to show up after class tonight. It's been you all along, hasn't it?"

Jill had me dead to rights. I guess I had let my emotions allow me to show her too much during our dates.

I considered going back in and stomping down this development, but no, she had already been through too much. Monkeying with her mind now would be like that third plastic surgery on Michael Jackson's face.

"How did you figure it out?" I asked her gently. "And by the way, it's Jim." Okay, that's not quite true, but I was used to answering to 'Jim'.

"It was bunch of little things," she said, "but mostly it was that car of yours. How many men who look like models from the pages of GQ drive beat-up station wagons?"

You could have knocked me over with a feather. My stupidity was monumental! How could I have overlooked something as obvious as that? Maybe I had just been blinded by my feelings for her, but now it was time to come clean.

"Jill, I have this little mental trick I can do that makes women see me as someone I'm not. What you see each time is your mental image of your ideal man. I look nothing like that."

She thought about this for a while. "You know that your explanation is completely beyond the realm of sanity?"

"I don't know what I can do to make you believe me, but it's the truth."

"Oh, I believe you all right. It's exactly what I was expecting. It's the only explanation that fits."

I must have had my mouth hanging open. This girl had powers of logic beyond any I'd ever seen. I could feel her mulling over something I'd just said. At last she spit it out.

"So my image of perfection changes week by week?"

I managed to find my voice again. "As far as I can tell, a women's vision of her perfect man changes with her mood. But when I work my little trick and you see me, your image of me doesn't change until the next time I do it." She thought about that for a bit.

"It's more than just your appearance though, isn't it? When I started thinking about it, I decided that there was no way I would've had sex with you twenty minutes after meeting you, even as gorgeous as you were. You can control more than just how I see you, right?"

"I can influence your mind directly," I admitted, completely ashamed of myself, "but I'm not doing it now, except to mask my appearance."

Jill's beautiful brown eyes looked me straight in the face. She was taking my words at face value. For some unfathomable reason, she didn't look upset.

"Jim," she said, "I know I should really be angry at you. What you did to me that first night was inexcusable!"

I nodded, unable to even meet her eyes as she continued.

"You know something though? Over the last few weeks, I've come to know you well enough to understand that you didn't mean to hurt me. You somehow fixed me in the hospital and during these conversations, you've made me feel better about life than I ever did before we met. I'm doing much better in school, my ability to focus is ten times what it was and my friends all say they really like the changes they've seen in me. It's like a weight that I've lugged around with me for all my life is now suddenly gone."

I was almost speechless. "Jill, thank you for being so understanding. I don't know what to say."

Jill took a deep breath and went on.

"I hated myself for getting naked with Kyle. He was such a jerk, but he guilted me into it. I really wanted to save my virginity for someone special. When you were with me that first time, you explained to me that I was still a virgin and that I should keep it that way until I met a guy that really cared about me." Jill hesitated as if making an important decision. "Jim, it would have been so easy for you to just use me and walk away. Instead, you've given me a whole better life as well as returning my virginity to me. I'd like nothing better than to give it back to you as my thanks."

My mouth was probably hanging wide open. After all the awful stuff I had put her through, she wanted toreward me? I could tell that this was her honest, non-coerced decision, though. She'd had time to think about it.

Jill went on. "Jim, the only condition is that I get to see the real you."

Oh.

As much as I wanted to believe that love could conquer all, even at eighteen I knew that this was a relationship that had a very limited future. I knew how it would turn out if she saw my face and I didn't want that for us.

"Jill, you'd want that blindfold back if you saw what I really look like. Have you noticed the looks that the people around us have been giving you?"

Jill nodded. "Yeah, it's weird, like they don't think I should be here. I've been worried that it's a racial thing."

"No, they're trying to imagine why a girl who looks like you would be having an intimate conversation with someone who looks like me. If you really want to give me a gift, let me keep my mask. I want you to remember me as you see me now, not as the thing I am underneath it."

She thought about it for a bit.

"I'm not going to see you again, am I?"

Jill was one of the most perceptive people I've ever met. I reached out an took her hand. "Jill, you're the first girl I've ever really loved. It's going to hurt, not having you in my life. I'm going to remember you fondly forever, but trust me on this; there isno future for us."

She looked at me and smiled through her tears.

"Well then, Lover, if we only have one night, let's make the most of it."

I led her into my bedroom. She had insisted on wearing the blindfold on the drive over, saying that if we had to end it tonight, she'd better not know where I lived. I liked her sense of practicality. I sat her down on the bed and removed her blindfold. She looked around at the posters and other paraphernalia typical of a teen's room. Her surprise was transparent. She obviously hadn't even considered the idea that a man who looked like me might be living at home with his mom.

"How old are you Jim?"

"Eighteen. And a half."

She laughed, but it wasn't a cruel laugh. "I would have pegged you at thirty."

So she liked older men. Interesting.

I had gotten a crazy idea in my head as we had driven over. I was tired of using my Charm on her. The thought of going without it entirely was terrifying, but I desperately wanted to be completely natural with this girl.

"Jill? If you put the blindfold back on, I'll stop usingany of my talent's. I want this to be just us."

She thought about it for a few seconds. "How about if we just turn off the lights? I'll put the blindfold back on when we're done."

"Let's see if it's going to be dark enough," I told her, liking the concept of being with her with nothing but the darkness between us.

I turned off the lights while Jill closed the blinds. It was nearly pitch black in the room and I could barely make out her outline. She walked up to me and took my hands in hers.