Hypnotizing Maria

instructor. I don't advertise, though. You called an unlisted number.”
    “I want to learn to fly. Can you teach me?”
    “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, “I’m not that kind of teacher. How’d you find this number?”
    “On the back of a flying magazine. Somebody with a marker pen wrote your name and the number and ‘Good instructor.’”
    “That’s nice to hear. I teach the sort of things you want to know after you’ve got your license, though. Seaplanes, tailwheel aircraft, advanced flying. There’s plenty of flight schools around, and if you want some extra training, later on, give me a call and we’ll talk about it.”
    “Don't hang up!”
    “I was planning to wait,” he said, “till you said goodbye.”
    “I’m a good student. I’ve been studying.”
    “That makes a difference,” he said. “What’s a sideslip?”
    “It’s a maneuver . . . that seems odd, at first,” she answered, glad for the test. “You bank the airplane in one direction, but yaw it in the other. A sideslip keeps you from drifting in the wind when you’re landing, it’s the only way to go straight in a wind that would blow you off the runway.”
    “Nice definition.” He had expected the textbook: “a way of losing altitude without gaining airspeed,” which is only partly true.
    “I’ve always wanted to fly. So did my mother. We were going to learn together, but she died before . . . before we did.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.” It would have been fun for them, he thought, learning together.
    “I talked to ... I dreamed about my mom, last night. She said I can learn for us both, she’ll be flying with me. Then this morning I found this magazine in a grocery cart with your number on it. It’s as if... I know you teach some first-time students, don’t you? Almost never?
    Careful interview? Those who have to learn for two, they study twice as hard?”
    He smiled, at that. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, he thought. She’s got the right attitude, for sure. Attitude , choice , desire to make it true.
    They talked for a minute, set a time to meet.
    “Mom said you choose your flight instructor by the color of his hair,” she said, relaxed now, happy. “I know I’m being silly, but you do have gray hair, don’t you?”
    “In all modesty,” he said, “I do. And by the way, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your name?”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, “I guess I got a little carried away, there. I’m Jennifer Black O’Hara. My friends call me Jennifee.”
    When the call was finished, plus seven seconds till the shock of her name no longer paralyzed, he wrote it, neat shaky letters, in his flight schedule.
    Coincidence shall lead me to others who bring lessons for me to learn , and for whom I have lessons to give , as well.
    He didn’t mention it to her, but he thought it likely that the hypnotist’s daughter would pass her interview and learn to fly. That they’d pass it together—Jennifee and her mother, both.

    —END—

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