A ballroom goes very quiet when a chief financial officer clucks.
I have heard many silences in my career. The silence after a bad joke. The silence of a county fair crowd when a man realizes he is not, in fact, a famous opera singer.
This one was different. It was the silence of a hundred and forty people trying to decide whether they were allowed to laugh.
Kevin stood frozen at the microphone. Gordon Pratt turned slowly in his chair. Ingrid Thorne sat perfectly still, both hands flat on the tablecloth, staring at her bread plate.
"Ingrid?" Gordon said.
"I sneezed," Ingrid said.
Nobody in the room believed this. A sneeze does not have a second syllable. A sneeze does not rise at the end, like a question from a farmyard.
Kevin, to his credit, kept going. He was a professional. He had nine badges.
"So, um, as I was saying." He cleared his throat. "This weekend has been about bringing our teams together. About real, measurable synergy."
Bawk.
It was not loud. It did not need to be. It was a crisp, round, well-supported cluck, the kind a hen would be proud of. Ingrid clapped a hand over her mouth a full second too late.
That was when the laughing started.
I want to say I handled the next ten minutes well. I did not.
I stood at the edge of the stage in my tight velvet jacket and did nothing at all. My mind had split into two halves. One half was horrified. The other half, a small and long-neglected half, was quietly whispering: It worked.
Bev, beside me, spat a sunflower shell into her palm.
"Leonard," she said. "Fix it."
"I'm thinking."
"Think faster. That woman has a calculator, and she knows where you live."
Kevin wrapped up his remarks in record time. He did not say the word again. I watched him visibly steer around it, like a driver swerving around a fresh pothole. "Thanks for three days of, um, togetherness," he said, and fled the stage.
People began collecting their coats. Several of them were still wiping their eyes. Ingrid stood, picked up her calculator, and walked straight past table one, past the stage, and out the side door toward the service corridor.
I followed her. It seemed like the least I could do, and also the most.
The service corridor behind the Harborview ballroom smelled like industrial dishwasher and leftover chicken. I felt this was unkind to Ingrid, given the circumstances.
She was standing by a stack of folded banquet chairs, pressing buttons on her calculator. I don't know what she was calculating. Possibly the cost of my funeral.
"Ms. Thorne," I said.
"Mr. Suggestio."
"Pask. It's Leonard Pask. The N fell off."
She looked at me over the top of the calculator. "I don't know what that means, and I don't want to."
"I owe you an apology," I said. "A big one. This is my fault, start to finish."
"Nothing happened," Ingrid said.
"Ms. Thorne."
"I had a frog in my throat. Two frogs." She clicked the calculator off.
"Hypnosis isn't real, Mr. Pask. It's a confidence trick with a pocket watch. I am forty-nine years old, I have an MBA, and I do not cluck."
At that exact moment, two young men in Northgate polo shirts came around the corner. They were deep in conversation and did not see us.
"Honestly, the breakout sessions had great synergy," one of them said.
Bawk.
The two men stopped. They looked at Ingrid. Ingrid looked at the ceiling. A long moment passed in which nobody in that corridor moved.
"Good night, Ms. Thorne," one of the young men finally whispered. They backed away around the corner.
Ingrid closed her eyes.
"All right," she said. "Fix it."
I explained the problem as simply as I could.
A suggestion goes in during trance. The release goes in during trance too. When I give a suggestion, I attach the release to it. That way the person carries both out the door, a lock and a key together.
"And the key," Ingrid said, "is your snap."
"Technically." I held up my right hand. "My snap has been silent since 2011. I normally use a clicker."
Bev came around the corner just then, holding the brass cricket aloft like a lost earring she had found under a couch. "Got it," she said.
I took it. I held it up in front of Ingrid. Click.
Ingrid waited. She looked at me expectantly.
"Synergy," said Bev.
Bawk.
"Beverly," I said.
"I was testing it!"
"Ask first."
"Sorry, Ingrid," Bev said. She did look sorry, in her way. She offered Ingrid the paper bag of sunflower seeds as a peace treaty. Ingrid declined.
"The clicker doesn't work out here," I said. "You were awake when I tried to release you. The key only fits in the trance. I'd need to put you under again, properly, and do it right."
"Then do it."
"Here?"
Ingrid looked around the corridor. The banquet chairs. The rack of dirty dessert plates. A sign reading EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS, under which someone had written and hearts.
"No," she said. "Not here. Not tonight."
"It might be easier now. While it's fresh."
"I have been awake since five. I just clucked in front of my entire company. Now a man in a velvet jacket wants me to look at his watch."
She tucked the calculator into her purse. "I'm not going to relax, Mr. Pask. I'm going to go home."
I couldn't argue with that. I have hypnotized a great many people. I have never once hypnotized someone who was furious with me. It is like trying to fall asleep on a trampoline.
I gave her my card. It said THE GREAT SUGGESTIO, with my phone number underneath. She read it with an expression of deep pain.
"I'll be fine by Monday," she said. "These things wear off. Correct?"
I considered lying. I have lied professionally for thirty-five years, but only about things like whether a man is a chicken. Not about whether he'll stop being one.
"I don't know," I said. "Most of the time they never take in the first place."
"Most of the time," Ingrid repeated. She did a quick calculation in her head. I could see her doing it. "And how many times has it taken?"
"Counting you?"
"Counting me."
"Five."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she turned and walked down the corridor toward the parking garage, heels clicking on the tile. She did not look back.
Bev drove us home. She always drives. I have a valid license, but she says I take corners like a man being hypnotized.
For the first twenty miles neither of us said anything. The only sound was the crack of sunflower shells and the soft rattle of my old sign in the back of the van. I'd brought it to the gig for the first time in years. It had felt like a special occasion.
"You're smiling," Bev said.
"I'm not."
"You're smiling in the dark like a man who found twenty dollars in his coat."
I stopped smiling. It took effort. "It's not a good thing, Bev. A woman is going to work on Monday, and she's going to cluck."
"I know."
"In front of people. In meetings."
"I know, Leonard."
"I put that there." I looked out the window. "I didn't think I could put anything anywhere anymore."
Bev was quiet for a while. She drove with both hands on the wheel, the way she has since she was sixteen.
"You'll fix it," she said finally.
"What if I can't?"
"Then you'll keep showing up until you can." She spat a shell out the cracked window. "And Leonard? Don't you dare enjoy this."
"I'm not enjoying it."
"You're smiling again."
I was.
I spent Saturday and Sunday in my kitchen practicing my snap.
I soaked my hand in warm water. I tried my left hand, which had never snapped in its life and was not about to start. I watched a video of a twelve-year-old explaining snapping technique. He was very patient with me.
By Sunday night, I could produce a sound. It was not a snap. It was more of a damp little tuk, like a raindrop hitting a paper plate. Bev listened from the living room and said it was "almost there," which is what she said in 1994 about my mustache.
I didn't hear from Ingrid Thorne all weekend. I told myself this was good news. Maybe it had worn off overnight, or would become a story people told at Northgate holiday parties. Remember the hypnotist? Remember Ingrid?
On Monday morning, at 7:02, my phone buzzed.
It was an email. No greeting. No sign-off. Three lines from Ingrid Thorne, Chief Financial Officer, Northgate Integrated Partners.
Come in. 9:00. Fourth floor.
Bring whatever you need.
Kevin has called an all-hands.
Up next: The S-Word
Continue to Part 3 →