Love Creeps (5 page)

Roland said, “The notes she sent me are in my briefcase in the locker room. Let's check.”

They went. Alan's chest was puffed out, his stride brisk with indignation. Roland took a penny out of his shorts' pocket and covertly dropped it on the floor.

When Roland opened his briefcase, Alan gasped and clenched the fabric covering his heart. It was no longer acting. “These are the
actual notes
I sent Lynn,” he said, picking up a note and scratching off the Wite-Out. “What else did she send you?”

“Flowers, candy, a bonsai tree, lingerie.”

“She copies my stalking mindlessly, without even thinking or making sense. She's a machine, a factory of stalking. Why would she send you lingerie? For you to wear?”

“No, her note said she could wear the lingerie for me.”

“Hmph. What did it look like?”

“Yellow with a pink lace border.”

“I bought it at Victoria's Secret. It was expensive.”

“I can give it back to you if you want.”

“That would seem fair. It's not the money I'm concerned about. The item was special to me. And it's weird that you would own it.”

“I agree. In a roundabout way, Alan, all of this makes you my stalker.”

Alan turned red. “I asked you not to call it that.”

“Very well then—my admirer.”

“How ironic, then, that I don't admire you.”

The two men stared at each other. Alan finally added, “No offense.”

“Fine, none taken. Listen, if you've been following this woman a lot, why didn't you notice she was following me?”

Alan had to be careful and persuasive. “I stay a certain distance behind her and she probably stays a certain distance behind you, so the distance between you and me is pretty significant.”

Roland nodded.

“Plus, I lack powers of observation,” Alan said, “especially in those crowded streets and when I'm focused on Lynn. Also, I have poor skills in recognizing people, particularly from the back. I do remember noticing she had an air of self-centered single-mindedness—which I found very appealing—but I didn't attribute that to the fact that she was following someone.”

Alan noticed Roland was staring at him with an air of suspicion, which was exactly what Alan had feared.
Think! Think!
he told himself. And then he got an idea.
Turn the tables
.

“This is all strange,” Alan said. “Is it really just a coincidence, or are you in on this with Lynn? Are you a friend of hers who's helping her get back at me for stalking her?”

“No, I'm not a friend of hers! And I could say the same to you!”

“Well, I'm not a friend of hers, believe me. I wish I were.”
Good. Now, use distraction
. “But there are two questions that are driving me crazy. The first one is, Why is she copying my stalking method?”

“Well, that seems pretty obvious,” Roland said. “This woman wants me, but she's too lazy to come up with her own stalking methodology. Too cheap to buy me her own lingerie, and probably her own flowers, too, and her own candy.”

Alan was surprised by this theory, but it made some sense.

“We can't let her get away with this,” Roland said. “What she's doing calls for retaliation.”

Alan was even more surprised by this comment, but his fixation on another issue prevented him from getting sidetracked. “And the second question that's driving me crazy is, Why does Lynn prefer you to me?”

Roland stared at the Humpty-Dumpty man addressing him. He shrugged modestly.

They played their game of racquetball. The Frenchman won. Before leaving the gym, he took a shirt button out of his pocket and dropped it on the floor. He always had a fresh supply of buttons, pennies, paper clips, and movie stubs in his pockets to avoid the discomfort of finding himself with nothing to lose.

One of Lynn's artists was showing her a just-finished abstract painting composed of brilliant colors and geometric shapes. Lynn was gazing at it without liking it, making polite but unenthusiastic sounds.

The artist suddenly said, “The title of this painting is,
You Should Stalk More
.”

Shocked, Lynn asked, “Why did you call it that?”

“Patricia suggested it. Said you'd like it.”

Ray the homeless man found himself overcome by the urge to whisper therapeutic comments to Roland, Lynn, and Alan as they passed, but he tried to resist exercising his influence and deploying his power of suggestion. Sometimes he failed.

The first time this urge overpowered him, he whispered to Alan, “Get a life. Manhattan is a city rich in possibilities. Inject some variety into your stalking. Pick someone else for a day.”

Lynn was tired of Patricia's pranks. One time, Lynn took a bite of a sandwich she had bought earlier, but the layer between the ham and the cheese was not appetizing. She slid it out. It was a piece of paper on which Patricia had scrawled, “Why aren't you stalking?”

“How can I make you stop doing these things to me?”

Patricia handed her a typewritten document.

Lynn read.

STALKING ASSIGNMENTS

In order to avoid any further annoyances, at least one or a combination of the following has to be done daily:

Three

By the next time the two men met, Alan had come up with a theory as to why Lynn preferred Roland to himself, and he was excited to share it.

“It has to do with color,” Alan said, pausing dramatically, clearly waiting for Roland to say “Oh?” So Roland humored him and said, “Oh?”

Alan nodded with delight. “It's the colors you wear.”

“What colors?”

“Any colors. You wear those things called colors. I don't. I mostly wear black. I was watching a nature show last night on birds. And bingo. Our little Lynn, she's like a little bird, haven't you noticed? So it's normal that she would respond favorably to men adorned in bright colors.”

It was strange to Roland that Alan was so blind to Roland's more obvious attributes, but Roland didn't see how he could inform him of them without being offensive or sounding monstrously conceited.

Lynn came back to her gallery after having spent hours stalking. Exhausted and achy, she lay down on the floor.

Patricia stood over her without pity.

“Stalking makes me feel humiliated,” groaned Lynn.

“Good,” Patricia said. “As you said yourself, you've been on top of the world for too long. A little humiliation once in a while is healthy, it's part of the human experience. It's like gravity. If you don't have it, you're like those astronauts who've been in space for ages. Your muscles get weak. You start having problems, unless you're on a special exercise program. Your exercise program is stalking.”

Charlie Santi entered the gallery. Lynn promptly picked herself off the floor.

He wanted to show her some of his new paintings. Lynn had been representing Charlie for five years and had always been his staunchest supporter until the sudden disappearance of her desire. She took him to the dreaded light box, remembering when she used to call Charlie up almost every day, begging to know what he was up to.

Charlie began laying out transparencies of paintings. They were in his usual style. Charlie's canvases were always fairly large, covered in textured white paint. In a corner, or at least off center, was always a tiny shape, which looked vaguely like a person, but that was never certain. In Lynn's all-time favorite painting of Charlie's, the little shape looked as though it might be lying on its side, sleeping, possibly with its hands under its cheek. It was a very peaceful painting, which, along with all the other paintings in the world, she no longer liked.

Lynn stood rigidly over the light box, making polite but reserved sounds.

Her stalker, whom she hadn't yet noticed, was standing outside the gallery window, staring at Lynn through the glass fondly. He was wearing red pants, a green shirt, a blue tie, a yellow jacket, orange shoes, and a purple hat with a white feather sticking out of the top. He looked like an elf. Or a parrot.

When Charlie was done showing Lynn the transparencies, he said, “So, what do you think?”

She glanced at him almost pleadingly. “Oh, Charlie. I think you should trust your instinct. I'm not the right person to ask right now.”

“I want an answer. An honest answer. Yes or no. Do you like them?”

“Charlie, I'm not …”

“Yes or no, Lynn! Yes or no, goddammit!”

The cuckoo clock Patricia had recently bought for Lynn did its hourly thing. Its doors flew open, the yellow bird came out, but instead of saying “Cuckoo!” it said, in Patricia's voice, “Stalk! Stalk! It's four o'clock! Do you know where Mr. Dupont is?”

Unwilling to be distracted, Charlie said, “Just answer me, Lynn, do you like them?”

“No,” she said gently. “But it doesn't mean anything.”

“Shh! I brought two canvases with me.” He quickly unwrapped them. “This work is phenomenal,” he said. “I'm no longer asking you, I'm telling you. Because I don't have the slightest doubt.”

“That's great,” she said.

“Really? You like them?”

“Well … I meant it's great that you feel so strongly about them.”

“But do you like them?”

Lynn scrutinized the paintings, searching for the faintest speck that might thrill her. In one painting, Charlie had, for the first time ever, painted not one, but two tiny shapes. One appeared to be strangling or hugging the other. In the second painting, the single tiny shape was in a fetal position, or possibly just thinking in a position like
The Thinker
, by Rodin.

The little shapes became blurry through Lynn's tears.

“Can I ask you a question?” Charlie finally said.

Lynn nodded.

“Do you think I suck, or do you think you suck?”

“I think it's probably me,” she said.

“What do you mean it's
probably
you? I won an American Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim, an NEA, and an NYFA. I'm at the forefront of academic interest. Doesn't that speak for my work?”

Patricia laughed softly. Lynn frowned with alarm at the lack of tact.

“Did you take a look at your stalker today, Lynn?” Patricia said, pointing to the window.

Lynn looked at her stalker. “Why is he dressed that way?”

“Who knows,” Patricia said. “Maybe he watched that nature show last night on birds and decided to dress colorfully to attract your attention.”

Charlie packed up his art and left without saying anything.

Roland dropped quarters into the hand of the homeless man, who looked into his eyes, and whispered, “You're being followed.”

When Lynn gave him change ten seconds later, the homeless man said to her, “You're on a downward spiral of self-destruction. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.”

And after Lynn, he said to Alan, “Take a class, a vacation, a multi-vitamin. Take your mind off romance, take control of your life and your future.” Alan stared back at Ray, who was screaming, “Go and see a movie, take a self-improvement class. You're better than them!”

At a small café near the gym, before their scheduled game of racquetball, Alan told Roland that his color theory hadn't worked. Roland was pleased, and said, “That's terrible.”

Alan was silent, looking down at the table morosely.

To be nice, Roland tried to change the topic. “So, what did you do last night? Did you go out?”

“I walked down the stairs of my building, making sure the stairwell doors were closed on every floor.”

“Why?”

“In case there's a fire. It's really important for the stairwell doors to be closed. It prevents the fire from spreading too quickly. I check the doors every day.”

“Doesn't it take time away from your stalking?”

“It only takes about four minutes.”

“Did you do anything else last night?”

“No. I tried to understand why my color theory didn't work.” Alan looked disillusioned. “I really thought it was the key. I mean, it made so much sense. Look at us. Color was the only difference between us. Now that we're both colorful, we could be twins. Well, no, I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean. We're both fine-looking guys, relatively charismatic, intelligent, pretty well educated, somewhat athletic.”

Roland could no longer be polite.

“Where did you go to college, Alan?” he asked.

“Putnam.”

“I went to Harvard.”

“Same difference,” Alan said, nodding. “Both good colleges. Don't tell me you're going to quibble over which is better?”

“Who always beats whom in our games of racquetball?”

“I think we're pretty well matched. So far, you may have beaten me more often. I don't really keep track of these things.”

“Which one of us is a lawyer, and which one an accountant, not even a CPA?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Who is six-three, 190 pounds, muscular, with a full head of hair? And who is five-seven, 190 pounds, not muscular, and bald?”

In a small voice, Alan said, “Well, who has blond hair and blue eyes?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, who has blond hair and blue eyes?”

Roland stared at Alan for a few long seconds, then said, “You are a short, fat, balding man with blue eyes and a few patches of yellow fuzz. You're like Danny DeVito with blond hair and blue eyes.”