168
Continued from previous page…
Wednesday, September 22nd, 1988, 9:52 P.M.
Kathy stuck her face right up to Gina’s as if to insinuate that Gina knew something about this whole hypnotism business that she was not letting on. The current situation was causing everyone to be suspicious of each other and Kathy was no different from anyone else. Gina reflexively retreated her head with confusion.
“I asked you if she had you hypnotized or something… I mean.. you get so weirded-out whenever I mention her name… What’s going on with you two?”
Kathy said nothing. She began looking around with furled eyebrows and a blank look on her face. Gina could easily surmise that she was trying to figure something out from her previous inquiry.
“She did,” Kathy muttered. “I mean, she does…”
Gina was blown-away.
“What?” she whispered with astonishment.
Kathy seemed as if she was just as surprised as anyone else would be.
“She had me hypnotized.”
Gina was speechless. She went through all the stereotypical gestures as she tried to figure out the appropriate words to speak.
“What? Why? Why would she do such a thing? When did this happen? Why would you let her do that to you?”
“It was.. about two years ago,” Kathy revealed, looking almost sick to her stomach.
“TWO YEARS AGO!!” shouted Gina. “And you’re just now telling me about it?!!”
“Well, I was trying to keep it a secret… You know… to protect Charlotte.”
“Oh, to protect Charlotte,” deadpanned Gina. “Well, that’s just great! That’s just wonderful! Poor, little Charlotte needs protection… as she rips our lives to shreds… Never mind what she’s doing to Belinda… Never mind that she’s in love with Belinda’s husband.”
For some reason, Kathy did not have one of her usual comebacks. She just sat there and let Gina rave about everything that was going on. She seemed to be absorbing it all in. She seemed transfixed, as if she were listening to a college professor.
“Well, that explains everything,” stated Gina as she began summing up her extemporaneous homily. “That explains why you do everything she says… That explains why you follow her around like some kind of puppy dog… Congratulations, Kath… I hope you’re proud of yourself… I hope you crushed a lot of people on your way to making millions of dollars.”
Kathy was far too overwhelmed by Gina’s accusations and grievances to do or say much of anything. She waited several seconds, then managed to conjure up a slight, almost contrived-like smile.
For those several seconds, Gina had chills race up her spine. She was unsure if she had just set Kathy off.
“Gina…” Kathy began.
Gina’s eyes widened. She was afraid Kathy was going to say something evil.
“What?” she answered in a comical way.
“Gina, Gina, Gina,” said Kathy as she rose to her feet.
“What, what, what?” Gina responded.
“It didn’t work, my friend,” said Kathy as she patted Gina on the shoulder for reassurance.
“What didn’t work?” asked Gina.
“The hypnotism… It didn’t work,” asserted Kathy in a smug way. “Come on, Gina… You don’t honestly think that Kathy Valentine can be hypnotized, do ya? I’m too smart for that.”
Gina dropped a dull, unimpressed expression on her face. She had heard this nonsense before.
“No, you’re not… You’re just as vulnerable as anyone else… Maybe even more-so,” proclaimed Gina.
“And how do you figure that?” asked Kathy, as she put her feet up on the desk and took another sip of her drink.
Gina decided to give Kathy a taste of her own medicine.
“Because you’re an emotional, whining, little cry-baby… who starts balling her eyes out whenever things get too sentimental.”
Ouch!
It was now Kathy’s turn to have widened eyes. She accepted Gina’s unusually harsh criticism of her personal psyche without flying off the handle. After all, she knew perfectly well that she was gloating about her own, superior, mental acuity, and realized that Gina was just giving her the same amount of shit back. However, making light of Kathy’s fragile, emotional background was not going to cut the mustard.
“Ohhh, Gina,” she sighed, as she again rose to her feet. “Your veiled attempt at attacking my childhood is not going to work with me… You and the other girls have tried that ploy before with limited success… But the fact still remains… I’m too fucking smart to be hypnotized… You got that?”
Again, Gina was unimpressed.
“Yeah… I got it,” she said.
A moment of silence emerged until the more blatant, obvious questions would surface.
This conversation was hardly over with.
“So! How in the world did this come about?” asked Gina in a somewhat snide manner. She was the first one to break the ice.
“You really wanna know?” offered Kathy. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Ohh, I wanna know,” answered Gina. “I really wanna know… I wanna know how such an intelligent woman can be such an obedient putz… and allow herself to sit in a chair and act like such a lapdog… You wanna explain that one to me, Miss Smarty-Pants?”
Kathy stared down Gina before speaking. In her mind, Gina was really coming up with some good ones.
“Okay… Okay, I’ll tell ya,” said Kathy. “Since you’re so curious to know everything that goes on in my life, I’ll tell ya.”
With a cold blast of stark reality, Gina could hardly believe what she was hearing. The truth was, this entire conversation had evolved into a scene from their T.V. show. They had spent so much time in front of television cameras, reciting trite, plastic lines like some kind of a robot, that their actual conversation had inadvertently become one of those exact same scenes.
And they both knew it.
“Come on, Kathy, gimme a break,” Gina gushed. “This is some of the juiciest stuff in the history of recorded man… I mean.. this would be juicy even if we were just normal people… And we’re celebrities, for Christ’s sake! You don’t think I wanna hear about this?!!”
“Hear about what?” asked a voice from behind.
Jane and Belinda had just entered the room.