Kreuzer gave her a fatherly smile. 'Are you ready to relax and lose your desire to smoke?'
She nodded.
'You may find it easier to relax if you lie down on the sofa,' Kreuzer said, 'or you may sit up if you'd like. This is your choice.'
She lay back on the sofa, adjusted a decorative pillow under her head, then straightened her dress to cover her knees.
Kreuzer slid a glass ball pendulum from his pocket. He hung it slightly above her eye level. 'Focus on the pendulum. You will find that as you do your eyes will become tired and want to close…more and more tired…more and more difficult to keep them open…' He repeated the phrases over and over again. In a minute she closed her eyes. 'Now you can feel the tension being released from the bottoms of your feet and a deep feeling of relaxation moving slowly along the muscles in your legs…now your arms are starting to feel heavy and so comfortable…and the muscles in your neck…so, so relaxed…relaxed and comfortable and more pleasant than you have felt in a long, long time.'
After a half hour of such patter Kreuzer noticed the deep abdominal breathing, the sure sign of a trance. 'You are becoming more and more relaxed with each and every breath that you take.' He stood up and strolled quietly around the room. He took a small notebook out of his back pocket and sketched a diagram of the living room.
Walking on his tiptoes, he crept up the stairs and into the master bedroom. He sketched another diagram. Back down the stairs. He thoroughly examined the paintings in the hallway, then returned to the living room. Mrs. Wallace swallowed. Kreuzer put the notebook and pen away. She was still breathing deeply. Because of the position of her head, a face-lift scar above her ear was evident.
'More and more relaxed with each and every breath that you take,' Kreuzer said softly. 'We are reaching the end of our pleasant period of relaxation. When you awake, the smell of cigarette smoke will remind you of the disagreeable smell of a hospital. You will be strongly repulsed and disgusted by the smell of cigarette smoke and you will find any contact with cigarettes to be an unpleasant experience. To you, cigarette smoke will be as acrid as the fumes of disinfectant on a contaminated hospital floor. In a moment I will snap my fingers three times. At the third snap you will come awake feeling relaxed and rested, as if you had a full night's sleep, but you will not consciously remember the suggestions I have made to you about cigarette smoke.' Emil Kreuzer snapped his fingers three times.
Mrs. Wallace stirred. She opened her eyes.
'How do you feel?' he asked.
'I feel rested.' Mrs. Wallace rubbed her eyes.
Kreuzner picked up the cigarette case. 'I'm afraid you won't be needing this anymore,' he said as she sat up.
Kreuzer took off his eyeglasses and cleaned them on his necktie before he stood up to leave. 'You were a very good patient. A fine, fine patient.' Kreuzer handed the cigarette case to her. She stared at it for a moment, then set it back down on the table. Kreuzer pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. He offered them to her.
Mrs. Wallace stared at the pack. She said 'No, thank you.'
'I want you to hold the pack to your nose and inhale.'
The woman obeyed. She coughed and dropped the cigarettes on the floor.
'They smell awful!' she said with features contorted.
'You have been a very good patient. I'll come back and see you in two weeks to check on your progress.' He patted her hands.
Mrs. Wallace gave him a check for four hundred dollars and he left. Outside, he started the Mercedes-Benz and followed the wide Beverly Hills streets to the freeway toward downtown Los Angeles. He glanced at his wristwatch. Unless there was heavy traffic or an accident tie-up, he would have just enough time to make it to his monthly appointment with his parole officer.
Emil Kreuzer parked the Mercedes-Benz in a parking lot next door to the Federal Building and made his way to the ninth floor. He entered the double doors of the Federal Parole Office and gave his name to a young black woman wearing designer jeans and a leotard top. She motioned him to one of the musty sofas lining the walls of the waiting area. The men and women sitting on the sofas had the familiar, more-than-bored expression that was the mark of those who shared the prison experience: the zombie face of those who shuffled in line to take a shower, had their feet fall asleep during dreary, chickenshit counseling sessions, read the same magazine for the fourth or fifth time and listened to the same smelly cons cud-chew the same bullshit stories over and over and over again month after boring month.
Emil Kreuzer took a seat on a sofa next to a lanky black man wearing a flat cap. The man stared at him for a moment. 'Remember me?' he said. 'I was in D Wing. You got released before I did.'
Kreuzer looked at the man disdainfully. He shook his head.
'You're Mr. Hocus Pocus,' the black man said.
Kreuzer flashed a cold smile. He leaned back and rested his head against the wall. Having closed his eyes, he took deep breaths until he sank deeply into restful relaxation. As usual when he practiced self-hypnosis, time seemed to fly. His name was called and he sat up. The black man was gone. Kreuzer stood up and wandered through an open doorway and down a hallway to his parole officer's office. Oddly, as he stepped into the messy office, he realized that although he had visited him monthly for five months, he had forgotten the man's name.
The parole officer, a prematurely bald, sunburned man who could not have been over thirty years old, held a Dictaphone to his lips. '…and I have found that the parolee's ego needs exceed her social abilities in effective terms as relates to her probable adjustment to family, general societal and job pressures…' He clicked off the machine and set the microphone on a cradle. He looked at Kreuzer as if he had walked in the office with a paper bag over his head.
'I'm Emil Kreuzer.'
The parole officer nodded. He swiveled around in his chair and sorted through a stack of files. He found a file and turned around to the desk. Having licked his thumb, he flipped through pages.
'Are you still employed?' the parole officer said without looking up from the file.
'Yes, sir.'
The parole officer opened his desk drawer. He pulled out the usual memo pad printed with little boxes. He filled one of the boxes with a check mark. 'Where?'
'The same place. The Magic Carpet nightclub.'
The parole officer made another check mark. 'And during the last month have you been arrested?'
'No.'
'Have you associated with any persons known to you to be convicted felons?'
'No.'
'Have you used any dangerous drugs?'
'No.'
The parole officer made another check mark. He looked up. 'Not even marijuana?'
'Sir, I don't need to get high on marijuana. Since I've been out of prison, I've been high on life.' You
The parole officer scribbled something on the memo pad. He paper-clipped it to the front of the file and tossed the file in an 'out' box. He pressed an intercom button. 'Send in the next one,' he said. As he picked up the Dictaphone and began to speak, Emil Kreuzer stood up and left the office.
On the way to his West Hollywood apartment, Kreuzer drove slowly along Sunset Boulevard. Though it was early in the day, the usual assortment of street hustlers, whores (they all seemed to be wearing straight skirts slit up the side), bun boys (tight jeans, tennis shoes and tropical shirts) and black pimps (outrageous hats and shoes) paraded about in front of the gaudy motels along the boulevard that once catered to star-struck tourists. Young hitchhikers of both sexes lined the curbs on both sides of the street like human ornaments. Everyone was waiting to meet strangers.
A teenage girl wearing a loose-fitting blouse and white shorts stood next to a bus bench with her thumb out.
