Full House Read online

  Basically, they settle patients into a very light, conversationally induced hypnotic trance and, using hypnotic language patterns and embedded commands, convince them that the traumatic experiences that haunt their dreams really aren’t so bad, after all.

  Of course, it wasn’t long before the more entrepreneurially inclined among us—used car salesmen come to mind—saw neurolinguistic programming as a tool of persuasion, as a means of selling just about anything to anyone—even the notion that men without looks, personality, charm, intelligence, money or power would be able to have sex with any woman they wanted.

  “You hypnotize them,” I said over dinner at a restaurant where I was sure no one would know me. “You hypnotize women into thinking you’re some kind of stud-muffin instead of a loser.”

  “I’m not a loser. Bitch.”

  “Don’t call me names. I’m the one carrying a gun, remember? And if you’re not a loser, why do you need to hypnotize women to get them into bed?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “A bit unethical, don’t you think?” I said.

  “I have tens of thousands of students around the world who don’t think so.”

  “And how much money do you make off each?”

  “It’s not about money.”

  “What then?”

  He set his fork carefully across his plate and looked at me as if he was about to say something profound.

  “I didn’t get laid until I was twenty-three and when I did, the girl was drunk,” he said.

  I had to ponder that for a moment, surprised by the conclusion I reached.

  “Payback?” I said. “You’re doing all this because you didn’t have sex when you were a teenager?”

  His eyes flared at me.

  “Women like you, who look like you do, you’re the kind that torment men, aren’t you?” he said. “Men see you and know they can’t have you. I bet you were the most popular girl in school—teasing the football heroes and basketball stars who lined up to spend their money on you. Other girls wanted to be just like you…”

  I shook my head. That was someone else’s experience.

  “You never gave a thought to people like me, I bet,” the Sultan said. “Never even glanced at anyone who didn’t have good looks or money or a nice car.”

  In my mind, I flashed back to my high school heartthrob, the cute but geeky president of the chess club who drove a battered Ford, but I kept the memory to myself.

  I said, “So to get revenge, now you claim to be this big-time seducer of women. You claim you can teach any man how to get any woman anytime.”

  “I’m not claiming anything. My program works.” He glanced around the restaurant as he spoke. “It’s about word patterns. It’s about using words to capture and lead the imagination of your target. A guy can get oral sex from a complete stranger just by saying the right words at the right time, by making certain suggestions.”

  Only there was much more to it than that and he proceeded to show me, watching my eyes as he spoke, changing the tone of his voice, matching his body language to mine. I could feel him breathing at the same pace as I was. And although he was doing nearly all the talking, it was as if he had vanished and I was sitting there listening to the sounds in my own head.

  It wasn’t until a thin smile played over his lips that I realized what the Sultan was doing.

  “Hey,” I shouted.

  He laughed.

  “Still don’t believe me?” he asked.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a woman as she moved to the bar. She was in her early twenties, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. Her black skirt slid upward as she squirmed onto the stool, revealing a glimpse of her upper thigh. She pulled down the hem as she settled into place.

  “Oh, yeah, bogey at two o’clock,” the Sultan whispered gleefully. He made the sound of a World War II air raid siren as he slid out of the booth. “Watch and learn.”

  He sauntered confidently to the blonde’s side. It was like the situation in the airport. The young woman’s defense mechanisms went on alert, but slowly lowered as he spoke to her. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, yet his words had a profound effect on the woman. She smiled dreamily and a look of bliss came over her face.

  The Sultan leaned in close, still talking. The woman’s eyes widened, her lips parted, she seemed to be remembering something that filled her with joy. The Sultan’s eyes never wavered from hers. He continued to speak. The woman’s cheeks flushed and her entire body trembled. Her hand moved to her crotch and she squeezed herself through the material of her skirt. A look that could only be described as amazement crept over her face.

  The Sultan laughed at her. He turned his back on the woman and walked back toward me, chuckling loudly.

  “See,” he said.

  I watched the woman over his shoulder. The look of amazement on her face was quickly replaced by one of bewilderment and then shame. She spun on her stool toward the bar, her face in her hands. She was shaking; she couldn’t possibly understand what had just been done to her. A moment later, she ran past, heading for the door. Tears streaked her cheeks.

  “Bastard.”

  The Sultan seemed surprised by my reaction.

  “What?” he asked. “You’re upset because of that bitch? How many guys has she screwed over, I wonder. How many guys did she make feel like dirt because she wouldn’t talk to them, go out with them; give them the time of day? Huh? She got what she deserved.”

  I had nothing more to say to him. For a moment I hoped someone really was trying to kill him.

  The Sultan was on a roll now. All the way to the evening seminar, he kept cracking sexist jokes at the rate of about fifteen a mile, laughing loudly until we hit the parking lot. We made our way through the lobby doors. He spied the desk clerk.

  “Bogey at twelve o’clock high,” he said and started doing the siren thing again.

  The clerk greeted him openly; he was a guest after all. The Sultan leaned in and started speaking earnestly. A quizzical expression appeared on the woman’s face. And after listening to his patter for a moment, she began to laugh. The Sultan wasn’t laughing, though. For some reason, his sense of humor, such as it was, disappeared. He retreated hastily from the desk, the clerk’s laughter stabbing at his back.

  “Hey,” she called to him. “If you’re so hard up, why don’t you just order Pay-For-View and jerk yourself a soda.”

  But that was then. Now he was basking in the adoration of The Believers, savoring their applause.

  When it finally subsided, he asked, “So, are you guys getting any?”

  The applause erupted again. At least a dozen of The Believers had stories to tell and the Sultan wanted to hear them; he wanted to add to the collection he posted on his website.

  The room was far too big for the size of the crowd. Rows of chairs set in front of the low stage—most of them empty—had been divided into two sections with an aisle running between them. I found a seat in the back corner opposite the front door. It allowed me to take in the entire room with just turn of my head.

  A black leather bag with a thick strap hung from my shoulder. Inside the bag was a Beretta Model 85 .380 double-action semi-automatic handgun. I made sure it was close to my hand. I was still convinced that there was no danger, that I had been hired merely as a prop to flash in front of the media. But I was a professional and I chose to act like one—especially among these screaming post-adolescents.

  Most of the seminar participants were in the eighteen to twenty-four demographic group, the one most desired by advertisers for its lack of discretion in making impulse buying decisions, although there were more than a few in their thirties. Some of them glanced at me nervously; others with greedy smirks pasted on their faces. One man sitting in the back row didn’t fit the demographic at all. I figured him for mid-fifties. He looked like someone’s father.

  He was wearing a workman’s zipper jacket with the logo of the AFL-CIO stitched on the shoulder. He sat with his
arms folded across his chest. He didn’t cheer or applaud. If anything, he seemed bored, his head down, his eyes locked on the back of the chair in front of him. His right hand was pressed against the side of the jacket.

  The Believers were telling their stories. One described how he shagged a hard-body at a coffeehouse just off the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. He had taken her in the backseat of her car parked just down the street from a church. That led to another success story from a guy who claimed he played under the skirt of a coed on a bench just outside a church after talking to her for less than five minutes.

  The mention of a church brought the workman’s head up. He leaned forward, his hand on his knee. With his other hand, he unzipped the jacket.

  Now it was the Sultan’s turn.

  “The last time I was in Minneapolis, I slushed a twenty-year-old inside a church,” he said.

  The rowdy crowd cheered, then quickly quieted as the Sultan continued. The workman was sitting straight up in his chair now, his head turned so that his left ear was tilted toward the speaker.

  “It was the big church off, what’s the name of the street, Milton?” the Sultan said.

  “Yeah, Milton Avenue,” someone shouted. “Near the movie theater.”

  “This woman was a real tease, sitting in a pew toward the back,” the Sultan said. “She wasn’t kneeling or praying, just sitting there looking straight ahead. The place was empty. I moved next to her, started to work on her…”

  The workman rose up higher. He was only half-sitting on his chair, straining to hear.

  “She had a beautiful mouth, very sensuous,” the Sultan said. “So, you know I just had to run the BJ pattern on her.”

  The Believers applauded. The workman was on his feet.

  “I had her eating imaginary chocolate-covered cherries out of my hand,” the Sultan said. “Had ’em exploding in her mouth…”

  The workman reached under his jacket. I eased the .380 out of my bag, holding it against the black leather, the safety off. I moved along the edge of the chairs, watching his hands—I always watch the hands. I was about eight feet away from the workman when he pulled out a white cloth from under his jacket.

  My hands came up, my feet spread. I was in a Weaver stance, ready to shoot the workman in the center of his chest.

  He brought the cloth to his nose and blew hard.

  I lowered the gun and quickly shoved it back into the bag. A quick glance told me that no one had witnessed my mistake. The Believers were all too busy hanging onto each and every word that spilled from the Sultan’s mouth.

  I took a step backward. The workman glanced up at me and shook his head sadly.

  “You believe this shit?” he asked.

  I thumbed the safety of the Beretta into place and removed my empty hand from the bag.

  “Did a ventilation job for the hotel,” the workman said. “Guy gave me a ticket, said I should check out this Sultan guy. Only there ain’t nothin’ here but talk, you know? Guy tryin’ to make you think he’s somethin’ with the ladies. Same B.S. I heard on the street corner when I was a kid; when I was in the army. Only this one, he’s gotta bring the church into it. Fuck ’im.”

  When the workman left, I nearly went with him. But a job was a job and the Sultan was just getting warmed up.

  He moved into the meat of the seminar, giving some background on the professors in California and their theories and explaining what it all meant for regular Joes like them—and the products he had for sale that would give them the power over women that they craved. A microphone was set up in the aisle between the chairs and The Believers lined up to ask questions. The line moved slowly.

  Finally, a young man reached the mic. He could have passed for sixteen and maybe he was. Everything he was wearing—slacks, shirt and tie, sports jacket—seemed too big for him.

  “I’d like to talk about the morality of all this,” he said.

  His remarks brought hoots from some of The Believers, yet a surprising number nodded their heads as if it was something they wished they had said. The Sultan waved him off before he could continue. He had heard it before and he had a ready answer.

  “When we put a woman into a neurolinguistic trance and run patterns on her, we’re opening her up to suggestions. But we’re not forcing her to do anything against her will. We’re only getting from her what she would probably give to someone else who had the looks and money and other advantages that we lack.”

  The boy would not be dismissed, though.

  “That girl in the church,” he said. “You took her into the vestibule and had her kneel in front of you…”

  “Was she consenting?” the Sultan asked. “If she was, I don’t see what the ethical question is.”

  “You play with a woman’s emotions so she will do things that, under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t do.”

  “Oh, she’d do them. Only not with us, right?”

  “Right,” many of The Believers answered.

  “But would she?” the young man asked. “The girl in the church, why was she there? It wasn’t to get picked up, was it? It’s not like she was hanging out in a bar…”

  “I think it’s time to move on,” the Sultan said.

  “No. Listen to me.” The young man’s sudden outburst silenced The Believers. Even the Sultan stopped to listen from his perched on the low stage.

  “Maybe she wasn’t at the church to meet guys,” he said. “Maybe she was there because she had lost a guy. Maybe that was the church where she would have been married if her fiancé hadn’t been killed in a car accident one week before the wedding. Maybe she was lonely and hurt and confused and depressed to the point where suicide was an option and she didn’t know what to do.

  “Then you come along, acting so sincere and caring. Maybe she thought you actually were sincere and caring. Maybe you convinced her that she had found someone to fill the hole in her aching heart. And then you run your patterns on her, and in her vulnerability, she succumbs. And then you say, ‘I’m finished with you, get lost.’ And maybe in her horror and humiliation at what she had done and her betrayal—in church—of her one true love, she ends her life. And you—you brag about it.”

  I could see from the expression on the faces of many of The Believers, the kid had struck a nerve. Yet most of the guys were smirking; waiting for their guru’s reply.

  “That reminds me of a story,” the Sultan said. “A girl calls a guy and says, ‘Remember me? We met at a party two months ago and you said I was a good sport. Well, I’m pregnant with your child and I’m going to jump off the Lake Street Bridge.’ And the guy says, ‘My, you are a good sport.’”

  The Believers broke into laughter and applause.

  That’s when the kid pulled the wheel gun.

  The first shot froze us all into silence. The second had us diving for cover. The next four brought screams and a mad dash for the exits. I rolled to my knees while I fumbled for the Beretta. I brought it up, set the sights on the kid and realized in the split second before I squeezed the trigger that he was a she—and that the hammer was now falling on empty chambers.

  “Drop the gun, drop it.” I was screaming at her, attempting to startle her into compliance. She looked at me as if I had barely whispered.

  “Drop the gun.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  The gun slipped from her fingers and fell on the carpet at her feet.

  “Step back.”

  She stepped back.

  I scooped up the gun and dropped it into my bag. It was only then that I looked for the Sultan. He was curled into a fetal position on the low stage and whimpering. I called his name, yet he did not respond.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  His reply came in a whine. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Six shots at close range and the young woman had missed him. Goes to show, it’s not as easy as it looks on TV.

  I was still pointing the Be
retta at her. I noticed for the first time that the large room was empty except for us.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m not telling.”

  “What’s your name?”

  She shook her head.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She pointed at the Sultan, still rolled into a ball and weeping.

  “I told him what would happen if he came back,” she said.

  “What you said about the woman in the church—was that true?”

  “My big sister.”

  I glanced down at the Sultan. To say I was disgusted with him would have been too lenient.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” the young woman asked.

  “I doubt it.” I lowered the Beretta.

  “He’s loathsome,” she said.

  “I can see how you might think that.”

  “I wish I had killed him.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to let you go.”

  “What?”

  “Quickly now, before the cops come. Go out that door.” I pointed to the exit in the back of the room. “Hang a left in the corridor and keep going until you see a set of emergency doors. Hit ’em hard and keep running. Don’t stop. And don’t look back. Go now.”

  “Why…”

  “Now.”

  She went.

  I waited until I heard the whooping sound the emergency doors made when they were opened before I bent to the Sultan.

  “Hey, there, big fella,” I said. “It’s all right now.”

  “Where’s the man, the man with the gun?”

  “It was a woman.”

  “A woman?”

  “A hysterical feminist. She got away.”

  “A woman?” he repeated.

  “Hell hath no fury, sir,” I told him. “Hell hath no fury.”