A short waitress with blue nails, a touch of baby fat, and sandy brown
hair arrived to take our order. Ross looked at her, and then winked at me.
These are my students," he told her. "I'm their guru."
"Really?" she asked, feigning interest.
"What would you say if I told you that I teach people how to use mind
control to attract any person they desire?"
"Get out of here."
"Yes, it's true. I could make you fall in love with any person at this
table."
"And how's that? With mind control?" She was skeptical, but bordering
curious.
"Let me ask you something. When you're really attracted to somebody,
how do you know? In other words, what signals do you get from yourself,
inside, that allow you to realize"—and here he lowered his voice, slowly pro-
nouncing each word—"you're . . . really... attracted... to . . . this guy?"
The purpose of the question, I would find out later, was to make the
waitress feel the emotion of attraction in his presence, and thus associate
those feelings with his face.
She thought about it for a moment. "Well, I guess I get a funny feeling
in my stomach, like butterflies."
Ross put his hand, palm up, in front of his stomach. "Yes, and I bet that
the more attracted you become, the more those butterflies rise up from
your stomach"—he began slowly raising his hand to the level of his heart—
"until your face begins to flush . . . like it is right now."
Twotimer leaned over and whispered: "That's anchoring. It's when you
associate a feeling—like attraction—with a touch or a gesture. Now, every
time Ross raises his hand like that, she gets attracted to him."
After a few more minutes of Ross's flirtatious hypnospeak, the wait¬
ress's eyes began to glaze over. Ross seized the opportunity to toy with her
mercilessly. He raised his hands like an elevator from his stomach to his face
every few seconds, smiling as it made her blush every time. The dishes she
was carrying were forgotten, balancing precariously on her weakening arm.
"With your boyfriend," Ross continued, "were you attracted right
away?" He snapped, freeing her from her trance. "Or did it take time?"
"Well, we broke up," she said. "But it took a while. We were friends
first."
"Isn't it so much better, though, when you just feel that sense of
attraction"—he moved his hand up like an elevator and her eyes began to
glaze again—"right away for someone." He pointed to himself, which I as¬
sumed was another NLP trick to make her think he was that someone. "It's
incredible, isn't it?"
"Yes," she agreed, completely oblivious to her other tables.
"What was wrong with your boyfriend?"
"He was too immature."
Ross seized the opportunity. "Well, you should date more mature men."
"I was just thinking that, about you, as we were talking." She giggled.
"I bet that when you first came to the table, I was the last person you
thought you'd be attracted to."
"It's strange," she said, "because you're not my usual type."
Ross suggested they get together for coffee when she wasn't working,
and she jumped at the opportunity to give him her phone number. His tech¬
nique was so different than Mystery's, but he seemed to be the real deal too.

I was ready to leave. But then I saw Mystery approach the people in the
corner. They were sitting on opposite couches across a glass table. The men
were on one side. One of them was Scott Baio, the actor best known for
playing Chachi on Happy Days. Across from him were two women, a
brunette and a bleached blonde who looked like she'd stepped out of the
pages of Maxim. Her cut-off white T-shirt was suspended so high into the
air by fake breasts that the bottom of it just hovered, flapping in the air
above a belly tightened by fastidious exercise. This woman was Baio's date.
She was also, I gathered, Mystery's target.
His intentions were clear because he wasn't talking to her. Instead, he
had his back turned to her and was showing something to Scott Baio and
his friend, a well-dressed, well-tanned thirty-something who looked as if he
smelled strongly of aftershave. I moved in closer.
"Be careful with that," Baio was saying. "It cost forty-thousand dollars."
Mystery had Baio's watch in his hands. He placed it carefully on the
table. "Now watch this," he commanded. "I tense my stomach muscles, in¬
creasing the flow of oxygen to my brain, and...."
As Mystery waved his hands over the watch, the second hand stopped
ticking. He waited fifteen seconds, then waved his hands again, and slowly
the watch sputtered back to life—along with Baio's heart. Mystery's audi¬
ence of four burst into applause.
"Do something else!" the blonde pleaded.
Mystery brushed her off with a neg. "Wow, she's so demanding," he
said, turning to Baio. "Is she always like this?"
We were witnessing group theory in action. The more Mystery per¬
formed for the guys, the more the blonde clamored for attention. And every
time, he pushed her away and continued talking with his two new friends.
"I don't usually go out," Baio was telling Mystery. "I'm over it, and I'm
too old."
After a few more minutes, Mystery finally acknowledged the blonde. He
held his arms out. She placed her hands in his, and he began giving her a
psychic reading. He was employing a technique I'd heard about called cold
reading: the art of telling people truisms about themselves without any
prior knowledge of their personality or background. In the field, all
knowledge—however esoteric—is power.
With each accurate sentence Mystery spoke, the blonde's jaw dropped
further open, until she started asking him about his job and his psychic
abilities. Every response Mystery gave was intended to accentuate his youth
and enthusiasm for the good life Baio said he had outgrown.
"I feel so old," Mystery said, baiting her.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Twenty-seven."
"That's not old. That's perfect."
He was in.
Mystery called me over and whispered in my ear. He wanted me to talk
to Baio and his friend, to keep them occupied while he hit on the girl. This
was my first experience as a wing—a term Mystery had taken from Top Gun,
along with words like target and obstacle.
I struggled to make small talk with them. But Baio, looking nervously
at Mystery and his date, cut me off. "Tell me this is all an illusion," he said,
"and he's not actually stealing my girlfriend."
Ten long minutes later, Mystery stood up, put his arm around me, and
we left the club. Outside, he pulled a cocktail napkin from his jacket pocket.
It contained her phone number.