Love Creeps (10 page)

They went through hundreds of slides sent by artists over the past few months. Lynn wanted to see if her desire had been restored in areas of her life other than romance, particularly that area in which she made her living.

It didn't take long for her to feel certain that it had. She had regained her taste and judgment in art. She felt smart and confident, like her old self.

Patricia asked a delicate question. “Do you think you can fix things with all those artists you've alienated?”

Lynn thought about it.

Patricia added, “Do you think you can lure back the ones who've joined other galleries?”

Alan sat on his white chair for hours after Roland told him of his betrayal.

His love for Lynn was the only thing that had given his life meaning. His father had died a year ago. His cat had died soon after. His ex-girlfriend, who had been his best friend, had become a successful secretary and apparently gotten bored with him, because she no longer called and rarely returned his calls.

Roland had been wrong when he had said, “It's not that big a betrayal. It's not as if we're even much of friends at all.”

Roland was Alan's only friend. And, therefore, his best friend.

Alan asked himself what would it matter if he had a friend to talk to, anyway. He couldn't talk to him about his thoughts of murder. Maybe he should get a pet. He could tell a pet about his thoughts of murder.

He went to a pet store and looked at the various animals, trying to imagine himself talking to them about murder and seeing what kind of expression they'd have on their faces. He did this little exercise with the kittens and puppies first, but they were too cute and floppy. The snakes and lizards were not bad, but he felt they were mocking the mildness of his evil, which gave him a feeling of inferiority. The rabbits posed the opposite problem. The fish just turned their backs to him. And the mice were oblivious.

He was sure he would never murder anyone, but thinking about it was helping him get through this tough period.

As Alan walked out of Petland petless and looked down at the curb, he thought of the ideal animal to confide in. He went back and asked, “Do you have any rats?”

A rat would be perfect. He could send it murderous thoughts for hours on end and get satisfying vibes back. He was certain of it.

“We have just one.”

It didn't look like the ideal type of rat to receive murderous thoughts, for it was mostly white with a few brown patches, but the mere knowledge that it was a rat would more than make up for its prim coloration. If he ever felt uncertain, he'd just stare at its eyes and nose and repeat the word “rat” in his mind, and he'd get a metaphorical hard-on. He just knew it.

He bought the rat. The love affair began immediately. It was torrid. That evening, they watched TV together, the rat lying spread-eagle, flat like a pancake, on Alan's stomach. Alan was stroking its back while the rat practically purred with contentment and fell asleep. When it woke up, Alan fed it chocolate pound cake, and they checked the stairwell doors together.

Alan took a bath with the rat. Then he combed it and talked to it and named it Pancake. The rat's small abrupt movements were slightly annoying, and Alan thought Pancake would look more intelligent if only he didn't move so jerkily. That was really the pet's only flaw: bad body language.

Alan held Pancake on his chest, his hand over the rat's back, his fingers around the rat's face, to hold it in place and prevent it from making those movements that made Pancake look as though he had Parkinson's disease. Alan stared into the rat's eyes and said, “What do you think? Should I kill them? Should I?” He stared deeper into the little black eyes that reminded Alan of periods.

Lynn called Charlie Santi and asked him to bring over all his new work.

“You mean all that stuff you called crap?” he asked.

“I didn't say it was crap, I just didn't … But yeah, bring it over, would you?”

A half hour later, Lynn was staring at Charlie's work. “Oh, Charlie.”

“What?” he said, coldly.

Her hand was over her heart as she kept staring at the little shape that was either strangling or hugging the other in the midst of all the white. “I'm so sorry,” she said.

He waited for her to elaborate.

But all she said was, again, “I'm so sorry.”

“That's what you said the last time I was here.”

“I was sick. These are magnificent. Your best work yet, by far. You're now my best artist. I hope I haven't lost you.”

After a long moment, he said, “I guess not. But I don't want to go through that nightmare again.”

“Me neither.”

“I felt like I had lost you.”

“You haven't,” she said, hugging him. She noticed Patricia giving her a little smile and raising one eyebrow.

The following day, thanks to the rat's company, Alan felt slightly better and was able to eat. He skipped work again, and by the end of the afternoon, he felt strong enough to get started on a little stalking of Lynn and Roland: the couple.

Alan intended to quit stalking soon. He knew it wasn't healthy for him. He would stop it, cold turkey. He already had an idea of how he would do it. But before reforming, he wanted to sink into the most gross behavior he could manage.

“Traitors!” he shouted at them, when Roland picked Lynn up at her gallery after work.

Carrying a small white basket, he followed them down the street. He didn't even try to make the stalking good. “You stink, you pretentious asshole. And you, Lynn, you're ugly! And what is this crap about you trying to want him! And about you stalking him insincerely! You sicko! You are both fucked-up sickos!”

They walked more briskly. Roland dropped a button on the sly. He and Lynn gave change to Ray. Alan did, too. The redheaded, ex-psychologist, homeless man scrutinized them and tried to repress his curiosity. He restrained himself from throwing the change at their backs.

He heard Alan scream at the two others, “And look what I have here!” He saw Alan take a squirming animal out of his basket, and say, “It's a rat!”

Pancake was on a leash and halter, so there was no risk of his running into the gutter to join the other rats. “He wants to kiss you, Lynn! Won't you give him a little kiss? I know you like kissing vermin.” As was often the case with people who intended soon to quit something cold turkey, Alan was binging on his addiction.

Roland suddenly stopped in front of a fabric shop and said, “I need to go in here for a second.”

“Why?” Lynn asked.

“I'm out of buttons.”

Alan did not follow them into the store. Roland picked out some buttons and paid for them.

Lynn examined the buttons and couldn't think which of his clothes they would suit. Some were red, some yellow, some were suede, some were tiger's eye, and some were covered in fabric. They were all small. “What are these buttons for?” she asked.

“For nothing. I just need them.”

“Do you collect them?”

“No, I lose them. I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“Why does something have to be wrong with you? Everybody loses buttons.”

“But not as many as I do.”

Alan stalked the couple again the next day, after work. Roland begged him to stop, and promised he'd go out with him to help him meet women. But Alan wanted Lynn. The couple decided to endure the stalking. They didn't think Alan was dangerous, and they felt sorry for him.

Alan was frustrated by their newfound indifference to his stalking. After what they had done to him, they could at least do him the courtesy of acting annoyed. He toned down his stalking to make them nervous. When neither subtle nor obvious stalking was unsettling them, Alan shut himself up in his apartment and didn't go to work or eat for days. He sat facing his window hour after hour. Sometimes he held Pancake on his lap. Finally, one afternoon, weak from not having eaten, and yet not hungry, he put on his boots and went to a meeting of Stalkaholics Anonymous.

Most of Lynn's fifteen artists came back to her. A couple of them even cried from joy that she wanted them. She only lost two, who were by then committed to other galleries, but even they were disappointed that their ties were severed.

Opening Lynn's mail one morning, Patricia saw that Lynn had not lost time in using her rejection method to prevent the future loss of her desire.

Patricia popped her head in Lynn's office and said, “You just received your rejection from the Over Seventies Club in southern Florida.”

Six

During the next seven months, something extraordinary happened. With the help of Stalkaholics Anonymous in conjunction with the emotional support he was getting from Pancake, Alan began to believe that perhaps he could turn his life around, improve it drastically.

The beginning of Alan's transformation happened on the subway one day, when he was thinking about an article he had read that morning entitled “Looking for Alternatives to the Rat Race.” He had recently realized that he was not, at this point in his life, interested in climbing the corporate ladder and making lots of money. He wanted to be happy, sane, and not stalk. But happiness could be expensive. Not to mention sanity. He had therefore followed the article's advice and checked out the Web site FrugalLifestyle.com, but had been turned off by the method called Alternative Acquisition Methods, or Dumpster Diving, which translated as rummaging through garbage.

Nevertheless, he would seek out fullness in his life, even if that meant decreasing his chances for a promotion. He would do things that were enriching. Perhaps he would even try to demand three-day weekends. He wanted to balance work and personal life.

He was standing in the middle of the subway car, holding on to the pole, letting his body sway gently to the movements of his train of thoughts. Feeling uplifted, his eyes naturally lifted, and happened to land upon an advertisement for NYU's continuing education program. The timing could not have been more perfect for either Alan or the advertisers. Alan got off at the next stop and took the subway to NYU and got their course catalog. He then got catalogs at Parsons, the New School, and the YWCA. And then he got more catalogs from bins on the street for the Learning Annex and the Seminar Center. He went home and stretched out on his couch with Pancake and his catalogs.

He was immediately drawn to classes like, How to Get Anyone to Return Your Phone Call, and Create Your Ideal Life, and The Confidence Course.

But he was also extremely attracted to a section in the NYU catalog entitled “Fire Safety and Security in Buildings,” and particularly to the class called Disaster Management for High-rise Office and Residential Buildings. He dwelled on its description: “This intensive workshop surveys the appropriate and necessary procedures to minimize injury and avoid loss of life in the event of major fires and explosions, bomb threats, terrorist actions and hostage situations, earthquakes, toxic accidents, and nuclear attacks.”

Building safety and getting his phone calls returned were not his only interests. There was a third. He envied artistic people and had a great desire to explore his artistic side, which, as far as he knew, did not exist. He just wanted to poke it gently and see if it moved. He didn't want to take an art class that was too difficult and would highlight his incompetence. He was therefore delighted to find a fair number of classes that would probably not put too much pressure on him: Tin Decorating, How to Create a Tabletop Fountain Garden, Puppetry, and Potpourri for Beginners, to name but a few.

Alan read the catalogs for so many hours that he began coming across classes that sounded even more intriguing—downright fascinating—and he was always disappointed when, on second glance, he'd realize he had misread the classes' names, and that the school did not offer courses called Internship in Poverty, Be a Maggot to Money, How to Tempt Your Way to the Top, Decorative Yoga, and Intuitive Poisoning for Beginners. The schools did, however, offer pale versions of those classes, such as: Internship in Property Management, Be a Magnet to Money, How to Temp Your Way to the Top, Restorative Yoga, and Intuitive Positioning for Beginners (also Yoga).
Reality is so dull
, Alan thought.
Any mistake in one's perception of it is inevitably more interesting than the real thing, and lucky are those who remain uninformed of their error
.

When Alan's bloodshot eyes finally made contact with How to Access the Goodness Within You, in the Seminar Center catalog, he was stunned. Goodness: what an idea. He suddenly felt that goodness was the way to go. What was more, the class met just one time and took place the very next day, which was perfect for Alan, who was eager to begin his transformative journey.

Alan slept well that night and arrived early Saturday morning for class, held at the Hungarian Church, in a room containing a large table around which the students sat. He was the only man. He hoped the women appreciated how rare it was to find a man who had any interest in accessing the goodness within him, and therefore how special a man he was.

The teacher arrived. She was middle-aged, heavyset, nunlike. Her gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun. He could easily picture her helping him access his inner goodness.

She stood at the head of the table, and began: “I will show you how the knowledge, passion, and nurturing of the goddesses can help transform your life.”

Alan didn't really understand why the teacher was referring to goddesses. He glanced down at his school catalog, which he had brought along. His pupils constricted when he saw that he had misread the title of the class.

He rose and began tiptoeing out.

“Where are you going!” the teacher exclaimed.

“I'm sorry, I thought this class was, How to Access the Goodness Within You, not the Goddess.” He chuckled sheepishly.

“If you leave, you are doing a disservice to the women in this room. You are creating negative energy—the energy of withdrawal—which men love creating, and which is why we need classes like these. And you will certainly
not
have achieved your goal of accessing the goodness within you.”