Everything in the airport was sleek and shiny, and Trinity’s heart pounded as she searched in the crowd of people around her. Crowds were never exactly her scene, and neither were airports. In fact, it was her first time in an airport in around two decades.

Strangers all around her milled in suits, or in sweatpants and hoodies, or in striped maternity dresses. Businessmen bumped her shoulder as they walked past, and Trinity couldn’t tell if it was intentional.

The airport wasn’t her scene, but she was there for what she deemed a worthy cause. Two of her friends were coming to stay in the small city: the friendly landscaper Harlan, and his charming hypnotist wife Victoria.

It was a ridiculous expense, thought Trinity, just to visit for a couple of weeks. Beyond the enormous cost of the plane tickets, there were also the hotel costs, food, likely a rented vehicle… Thinking of it all, it was no wonder Trinity never fancied herself much of an international traveller. Not that she couldn’t have used the change in scenery, and certainly weather, but a person grew used to living in a city that looked like Silent expletive Hill after doing so for long enough.

“Trinity.”

Startled, Trinity jumped. She expected the name to come out of someone she hadn’t heard it from, not audibly, but the source was her friend Dot.

“You’re meeting them here, too?”

“‘Course I am.”

“Good. They’ll recognise you, for sure, even if they don’t see me.”

Dot gave a flourish of her skirt, a black amount of fabric supported by a petticoat. Between her retro silhouette and her striking red lipstick and winged black eyeliner, there would be no mistaking Dot for someone else, and that was exactly what Trinity hoped for.

They were all familiar with each other. Trinity, Dot, Harlan, Victoria… also Marsh, who couldn’t make it to the airport, as they were busy writing a university exam. Sociology 1000, if Trinity remembered correctly. They had all connected online over an auction bidding war for a limited edition botched copy of the 41st volume of their favourite graphic novel, and became quick friends. And perhaps rivals. Victoria allegedly still had the volume in a special glass display case in the home she shared with her husband, which she liked to remind everyone from time to time just to boil their carrots, so to speak.

The sort of money that allowed Victoria to spend $136.21 entire dollaroos on a single volume of a graphic novel also allowed her and Harlan to pick up and end up in a city halfway around the continent with no particular attractions and no formal business matters to attend to.

Dot adjusted the scarlet headband perched atop her crown. “Do you think the plane’s running late?”

“Do planes run late? I don’t know how this works,” Trinity exhaled.

They wandered together through the airport. The floors were white and so shiny as to be nearly reflective, and accents on the wall somewhere between aqua and an average blue curled with the rounded corners of the airport’s interior. Dot walked carefully in her tall heeled shoes, careful not to slip, while Trinity shielded her eyes from the sunlight pouring in through the large glass windows ahead.

“Trinity. Dot. Over here.”

A hand raised above the crowd, attached to an arm dressed in a brown tweed jacket. Trinity followed the arm down to a shoulder, then fixed her gaze upon a pale head with light tan hair a bit longer than the last time she had seen it, which had been on a short video Victoria had posted on her social media a few months before. A smile crossed that face, alongside a couple of nicks from a razor from the last time Harlan shaved.

“Harlan? It’s incredible to finally meet you in real life.” Trinity broke into a power walk to close the space between herself and her friend. They met in a warm embrace, which lasted a moment before it ended.

Trinity was the closest to Harlan out of anyone. At night sometimes, they both liked to stay up and lob messages back and forth about their dreams, their homes, their jobs, and their love lives. Not that Harlan ever had much to say about that, except to remark in adoration of his wife, and Trinity wondered from time to time how much of all of that Victoria had hypnotized him to say. Victoria had a boastful streak, after all, and it was more acceptable to boast through the mouth of one’s husband than to risk saying it oneself and being perceived as arrogant.

Trinity flushed thinking about it. She wasn’t sure why thinking of Victoria hypnotizing Harlan caused her to feel any sort of way, and she brushed it off at being much too intrusive about the privacies of a marriage she was absolutely no part of.

“Even better to meet you. How is life treating you?”

Trinity eked out an answer she didn’t even listen to herself.

Dot bounded toward Harlan. “It’s the man of the hour,” she announced. “How was the plane?”

“As dreadful as your dress is lovely. Did you sew that?”

“Don’t flatter me,” Dot laughed. “I haven’t improved much since you told me over video call how to fix my sewing machine.”

Contentment swelled in Trinity’s chest. It was a fantastical meeting: friends in the one space together for the very first time. For just a moment, she could hardly tell they hadn’t all known each other forever.

But something was missing. Someone.

“Where’s Victoria?” Trinity asked.

“I could have sworn she was right behind me,” Harlan insisted.

“Better look, Orpheus.”

Harlan momentarily disappeared back into the crowd. He returned with a tall woman in a deep magenta button-up shirt and a black pencil skirt, whose dark cherry hair cascaded effortlessly over her right shoulder.

“Hello, strangers.”

“If it isn’t the graphic novel collector herself. Has volume 41 gathered any dust?” Trinity extended her hand to Victoria.

“You don’t want me to shake your hand,” Victoria insisted.

“Vice-grip Vicky?” Dot teased. “Nice to see you, girl. Did you do the whole plane ride in those clothes?”

“You would have done the same with yours. How’s the modelling?”

“Coming along well. I just had a shoot for one of the local clothing companies last week. You know what that means. Next time a volume goes up for sale, I’m out-bidding you.”

“Keep believing that.”

Listening to the two banter, Trinity kept her hand extended for a hand shake. Victoria had always seemed a little more poised, and therefore intimidating, than Harlan, so she wouldn’t risk a hug, but what sort of person would fly all the way out into a foggy city in the middle of nowhere to meet a friend but wouldn’t even so much as shake their hand?

“If you’re certain, but handshakes with me only end one way.” Victoria clasped her hand in Trinity’s. She gave only a brief shake before pulling Trinity forward with a snap of her fingers and a command to, “Sleep.”

Trinity sank into Victoria’s awaiting arms. Her mind reeled as she struggled to process what happened to her.

Victoria buried her face into Trinity’s iron-fried dark brown hair. “There you go. Very good. No need to think. No need to do anything, just listen to my voice and sink deeper for me. Feel your mind going so blank for me.”

“Oh my god,” Dot whispered. “Is she really doing it?”

“I can’t say I expected this,” Harlan admitted. “She’s not usually so forward about hypnotizing people outside of work, especially if they’ve only just seen each other in person for the first time.”

The voices so close to Trinity sounded so far away. All except for Victoria’s, as she hummed thought-terminating nothings into Trinity’s ear.

Victoria raised Trinity into an upright and stable posture. “One, two, three, four, five. Wake up for me. Very good.”

Clarity slowly returned to Trinity, though not all the way. “What did you do to me?” she murmured.

“Handshake induction. I warned you about my handshake, didn’t I?”

“I won’t do it again,” Trinity said, a brief smile coming to her lips. But as she said it, something strange stirred in her chest, like she either knew it was a lie or wanted it to be one. Her heart fluttered. She struggled to think. She needed a moment to think.

She drifted behind Dot, Harlan, and Victoria as they left the airport in animated conversation. They all boarded Dot’s little red car. Dot drove, Victoria called shotgun, and Trinity joined Harlan in the back.

“How are you doing?” Harlan whispered, taking the opportunity once Dot and Victoria sang along to The Boys in the Bright White Sports Car on the car radio.

“Very sleepy,” said Trinity with a wry laugh. “Don’t worry about me.”

Not that Trinity didn’t worry about herself. She stared into the back of Victoria’s head — what she could see of it instead of the headrest — like doing so would let her peek into Victoria’s thoughts. Was Victoria still thinking about what had happened, what had she done, or was it such a routine for her to hypnotize that Trinity was the only one left… what was it, awestruck? Affected at all?

Heat burned on Trinity’s cheeks, and she lowered her head so no one would see it through the rear view mirror or from beside her.

Dot shut off the radio before the song concluded. “Serious question. Where are we going for food?”

Trinity didn’t feel like she could eat. Her mind reeled. Even as it bounced back from the brief trance, that very trance had awoken in her the first flickeres of considerations she really didn’t need to be having at the moment. “I’m good with anything,” she replied.

“Is that so?” Victoria hummed. “I’d love to sit down at a restaurant. There’s one downtown, I saw it on the map. It’s not far from the cat café. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“I know the one,” said Dot, “but I can’t go. I’ve been banned.”

Harlan’s brow furrowed. “What do you have to do to get banned from a restaurant like that?”

“Marsh and I might have been a little dishonest during all you can eat Wednesdays.”

The anecdote returned Trinity to the present through invoking the past. “You brought in your acoustic guitars and hid kebab meat balled up in napkins in the hole. Did you think they wouldn’t notice?”

Laughter resounded through the vehicle, bobbing with the black fuzzy dice that dangled from the mirror. Despite the strange circumstances of their meeting, and the strange encounter at the airport, Trinity had a feeling the two people who had made the trip all the way from the sunny west coast in an entirely different country were going to change her life more than they already had.

Dot turned the radio back on to the sound of local furniture, car sales, and personal injury lawyer commercials. Then, one for a new hot dog joint that had opened right where uptown and downtown linked. “How about we go there?” she suggested.

“Fine with me,” Trinity agreed.

Victoria glanced back and smiled at her, only just enough to notice.

“As long as I can pick up some heartburn medication from the drugstore after,” Harlan added.

A white car swerved into their lane right ahead of them. It sped up to 80 kilometers per hour in the 50 zone. Dot and Victoria looked to each other.

“Do it,” Victoria said.

“What if I get the ticket?”

“You won’t. Hit the gas.”

Trinity’s stomach lurched as the car shot ahead with the intention of trailing the bumper of the other driver. She closed her eyes until she felt a hand on one of hers.

Harlan clutched her hand tightly in his.

“Are you scared?” she whispered.

He flicked his head up just a dash, but otherwise gave no formal response.

“I can tell her to stop.”

“Victoria set her on this. And once Victoria starts, there’s no stopping her.”

Only after three long minutes did the white car divert its course and turn off onto a narrow one-way street, while Dot’s car continued on towards the hot dog place.

It wasn’t how Trinity imagined their first day together going, but in hindsight, she wondered if she should have expected anything different.