Love Creeps (20 page)

She hoped that spraying him would make him so mad that he would leave her alone for good and give up all hope of a reconciliation. Instead, he wailed and made her feel so guilty that she had to nurse him.

The weekend was turning out to be a fiasco.

Just before leaving the inn, Roland privately gave Max instructions.

“When Lynn and Alan come on their weekend, I want you to stay exactly the way you are now. Don't change a hair. Alan will pale by comparison.”

“Sure.”

Roland concluded with, “You and I will be in contact via cell phone the entire weekend. I'll want constant reports.”

The next day, Roland was called in to see his boss, the solicitor general.

She said to Roland, “You told me you were going to review David Lester's brief of the Garcia case and take out that shitty First Amendment argument.”

“I thought I told him to take it out,” Roland said.

“Also, you missed the deadline for filing a notice of appeal in the Freestone Industries case.”

“Yes, I know, I'm sorry.”

“What's the excuse this time?”

Roland considered saying, “I've been stalking somebody, and my job has been interfering.” What he said was, “I've had some personal problems. Health issues. I'm sorry. I've got things under control now.”

Eleven

After Lynn's weekend with Roland, she received a phone call from Alan. He invited her to join him and his girlfriend for dinner at his place.

Alan said, “I want to reassure Jessica that my upcoming weekend with you isn't a big deal and that you're not a threat to her.”

“What do you mean I'm not a threat?” Lynn asked, offended. “Why would having dinner with me convince your girlfriend I'm not a threat? Is it the way I look?”

Alan sighed. “No, just our interaction.”

The real reason Alan wanted Lynn to come over was for her to see that he and Jessica were very happy together and would not be torn apart by anyone.

Jessica was seated on the armless white easy chair, staring sullenly at Lynn and Alan, who were sitting across from her on the couch, talking to each other politely. Jessica was not participating much in the conversation, even though she was hosting the dinner.

Jessica resented Alan for planning to go on that weekend and leaving her in a position to be tempted. He was so blind that way. Like the times he'd given her gift certificates for massage appointments, insisting that she ask for “Roman,” who was supposedly the best, not suspecting for one instant that of course—of course—she would seduce this Roman dude, whoever he was. Poor little Alan. And who could blame her, in such an intimate setting? It had nothing to do with being a sex addict, which she was not.

She would have to negotiate the timing properly in order to maximize the use of that brief weekend. She had written out a list of men she would invite over. There were twelve. She was trying to show some restraint, even though, after much ruminating, she had decided that there was actually no limit to how many men she could have sex with on this particular weekend and still not have it mean she was a sex addict. Any self-respecting woman would be sure to stay home and have affairs if her boyfriend was spending a weekend with another woman. That was abusive treatment on his part. Twelve men did not signify sex addiction. They merely signified that she was a spurned, jealous, normal woman.

As she sat watching Lynn and Alan chat, Jessica realized she should force herself to make some displays of discontentment, just to put on a good show of jealousy and normalcy.

“So, you're going to try to seduce Alan and steal him from me,” she said to Lynn, while sipping her tea. She hadn't managed to convey the right tone of repressed hysteria or even edginess. This shortcoming in her delivery made her a little uneasy, until she realized no one had noticed her monotone, her words having been potent enough. Lynn and Alan looked very uncomfortable. This reassured her, and she was able to relax again. She stretched, arching over the back of the spotted white easy chair.

Jessica was lithe, Lynn noted.

“I'm really grateful that you're so understanding, so … accommodating,” Lynn said to Jessica.

Lynn attempted to entertain her hosts with descriptions of Max the hotel manager. A troubled expression came over Jessica's features. She softly asked, “He really says, ‘Come and sit on my cock'? And he really has a codpiece?”

“Yes!” Lynn said. “He's quite a character. He took it off recently—his codpiece—and was just wearing normal pants, but I'm sure anyone could ask him to put it back on. And he says he has a very big penis. Bigger than most penises in those parts.”

Jessica looked preoccupied for the rest of the evening.

Lynn knew that what she had done, tempting and tormenting Jessica that way, was cruel. She didn't care.

The truth was, Jessica was even more perturbed than Lynn imagined. Jessica had to use all her willpower to restrain herself from jumping into a car and going to the hotel manager.

God, how badly she wanted to hop on his penis.

But she was not a sex addict.

She was a normal woman, having affairs.

The problem was that now her mock-bordello fantasy seemed pallid compared to that hotel manager.

Suddenly, she realized that a normal woman would be too jealous to stay home having affairs and would instead secretly follow her boyfriend to that hotel, in order to spy on him, and would do her damnedest not to get caught by that sleazy hotel manager; otherwise, she'd have to beg him, no bribe him—with all sorts of off-color means—not to tell her boyfriend she was spying on him.

Roland had certainly had urges to beat up Alan since the first day he had met him, but never as much as now. He had just told Alan on the phone that Lynn had sprayed him with Mace, and Alan, the little jerk, still intended to go on the weekend with her.

“You should back out,” Roland said. “Out of loyalty to me.”

“I'm sorry,” Alan said. “I'm not like you. I stick to my word. We promised Lynn that if she went with you, then I would go with her.”

Roland promised himself that as soon as Alan came back from the weekend, he'd beat him to a pulp. But for now, he contented himself with hissing into the phone, “You want Lynn.”

Alan felt sorry for Roland. He said, “You should try to do something fun … and distracting during that weekend. I can tell you from experience that it's not pleasant to wait a whole weekend while the person you love is with the person she loves.”

“When are you going to stop rubbing it in my face that she loves you?”

On Friday, Patricia came waltzing into Lynn's office, waving a letter. “I have some strange news to relate.”

“What?”

“Disney World has accepted your application to play one of the seven dwarfs in their summer production.”

“But I'm not very short!” Lynn said, slapping her desk and rising out of her chair.

“No, not very.”

“That's really insulting of them to accept me!”

“Calm down. You shouldn't have applied if you thought you might get in.”

“I obviously didn't think I would get in, Patricia. I'm not short!”

“Yeah, but height is relative. Maybe they'll make you act on your knees.”

“Well, write back and tell them I've already committed to playing Mini-Me in a touring Austin Powers production.”

Early Saturday morning, as they had agreed with Roland, Alan and Lynn were driving Roland's Jeep to the inn. The leaves were brilliant, red and yellow.

Jessica, in a rented car, followed them. She had brought all her equipment—binoculars, disguises, Kleenexes—as a spurned woman would. Her radio was blasting as she bounced in her seat, and she occasionally grabbed her big binoculars and looked through them at their car to reassure herself that she was normal.

She couldn't wait to get to the hotel and was tempted to tailgate Alan to make him move faster. He was so unobservant, he'd never notice it was her.

As soon as they arrived, she would waste no time in trying not to get caught by Max. The mere words “get caught” made her let go of the steering wheel and wave her arms in the air to the beat of the disco music.

Max greeted Lynn and Alan warmly when they arrived. Lynn was surprised that Max had gone back to his old self. His codpiece was on as well as his ruffles. His long hair, of course, could not grow back immediately, and he had not resorted to a wig.

Lynn made the introductions.

“Max, this is Alan, the man whose girlfriend I told you about.”

Alan looked at Lynn. “You told him about Jessica? What did you say?”

“That she's a very pretty private detective,” Lynn said.

Max had been greatly looking forward to Alan's arrival and the opportunity of doing the opposite of what despicable Roland had ordered him to do. Max had put beautiful satin sheets on Alan's bed and the most expensive bath products in his bathroom. And the most luscious towels. And flowers and bowls of candy. He did everything possible to put Alan in the most flattering light, figuratively as well as literally. He even had someone come in to give him a massage and a facial. Alan was certainly not averse to the massage. Max explained that it was included in the price of the room. Why Lynn didn't get all those amenities was a mystery. When asked, Max said the luxuries happened to be included in Alan's particular room—room 5—not in any other. If you were lucky enough to happen to be the occupant of that room, which was not more expensive than the others, then you got those advantages.

Max had no desire to give Lynn any luxuries, because even though he had not been as offended by her as he had been by Roland, it hadn't delighted him to hear that she thought Roland shone next to him in contrast.

Alan offered to switch rooms with Lynn so that she could get the luxuries, since she was the one truly in need, the stalkaholic. He felt that sensual pleasures would do Lynn good. They always helped stalkers. Alan thought to himself that he should one day write a self-help book for stalkers. The number one advice he would give them was pamper yourself. Stalkers usually didn't pamper themselves enough. There were, of course, exceptions—cases of stalkers who pampered themselves too much, which increased the severity of their stalking. One needed a perfect amount of self-pampering in order to lessen stalking. Too much worsened it. Too little worsened it. But too little pampering worsened it more than too much did.

So they switched all their belongings and went out for a walk. By the time they returned, they were astonished to see that the satin sheets, the fancy bath products, and other luxuries, had switched rooms and were in Alan's new room. There was a note that said, “The management frowns upon guests switching rooms. Switching rooms will do no good. The room will follow him wherever he goes, for the remainder of his days. Unless he is discovered to be a prick.”

Alan stared at the note, shrugged, and said, “Whatever” to himself, intent on not letting the manager's quirkiness sidetrack him from the purpose of this weekend. Alan had a plan to be unattractive. Bad clothes, bad cologne. He tried once again to make facial expressions that were “too drastic,” as Lynn had put it long ago. He tried to recapture his nervous body language, but he found it just too disturbing, too frightening, like being repossessed by the Devil. He decided his body language was the only thing he would not mess with, for that was too dearly earned. Instead, he focused on speaking well of Roland. “He's energetic. He has a great metabolism. He's tan. He's French. Oh! And he used to beat me at racquetball every single time!”

During lunch, Max sat with Lynn and Alan while they ate the grilled salmon he had prepared for them. Max praised Alan incessantly, pointing things out to Lynn about Alan that he thought were wonderful. Lynn agreed completely.

As for Jessica, she roamed the hotel, spying. She kept trying not to get caught by Max, and he kept not catching her. She tried spying more vigorously, but she still didn't get caught. So she spied so fervently that she barely hid. And Max finally caught a glimpse of her at 3:00
P.M.
in the sitting room, wearing a black miniskirt and two pairs of binoculars dangling around her neck. She fled behind the sitting room's heavy door.

Max approached her and asked, “Why are you hiding?”

“I'm spying on my boyfriend.”

“Do you want me to help you?”

“No. I just really, really don't want you to tell him about it. I would do anything so that you not tell him.”

After a few seconds, he said, “Oh.” Not sure what to say, he finally just said, “Anything?”

“Yes. That's how much I don't want you to tell him.”

It was only then that Max realized this woman might be Alan's girlfriend, the terrific sex addict whom Lynn had raved about. “You wouldn't, by any chance, be Alan's girlfriend, would you?”

“Yes, I am.”

He frowned. He appreciated the situation she had set up for him.

“I highly disapprove of spying. So the price may be high.”

“I know,” she said, lowering her eyes bashfully and even managing to blush a little.

He was impressed.

“You may not be ready for what I have in mind,” he said.

She kept her eyes lowered.

“It may involve bringing my repulsive person near you.” He took a step forward.

“You are not repulsive,” she said, softly.

“Oh no? Flattery will not lighten your sentence, you know.”

“I know.”

His body was now very close to hers, and he dared to bring his hand under her skirt.

“Where is your underwear?” he asked.

“I lost it.”

“Where?”

“In the garden. It fell off when I was spying. I didn't have time to retrieve it.”

“How unfortunate for you. That will not help your case.”

He pressed her back against the wall, behind the door, and unhooked his codpiece. He whipped a condom out of his pocket and slipped it on.