Love Creeps (25 page)

When Lynn saw how much the other two had done for the homeless man, she wanted to surpass their gestures, in order to impress Alan, but she didn't know how to. Then she figured he needed a social circle, so she gave him one by throwing a party at Ray's place.

Roland was in a corner, at the party, talking to a man he didn't know. “We've created this creature by the force of our group energy. It's as if we've given birth to a being. It is our child,” he said, referring to Ray.

“Isn't that a little presumptuous?” replied the man, popping a peanut into his mouth. “I mean, giving food and shelter to a homeless person suddenly makes you a creator of life?”

Ray talked to the guests politely, but they didn't interest him; they were just ordinary people—not like his nuts. His eyes couldn't help seeking out the nuts and observing them. He was falling for them, he realized. If he were to discover now that their core was banal (and he still thought it probably was), he would be frustrated. Therefore, he continued not asking them questions. People's business was their business. Knowing was disappointing.

Curiously, what was almost as extreme as Ray's curiosity about the nuts, was the nuts' lack of curiosity about him. They felt guilty about their complete disinterest in him. They knew they really should ask him one or two questions about his life, his past, whatever, just to seem polite, but they kept procrastinating, afraid of a long answer, a boring answer, afraid of getting to know him. During the party, decency didn't allow them to postpone asking him a question any longer. They formed a semicircle around Ray. Roland held his hand behind his back and dropped a paper clip.

“So, what did you used to do before you became homeless?” Alan asked. The others nodded.

Ray didn't want to tell them the truth, that he used to be a psychologist and could analyze them if he wanted to, and could even, perhaps, help them. So he told them he used to be a locksmith.

“Ah, a locksmith!” they said, with civil enthusiasm. “And what happened? How did you become homeless?”

“I became disillusioned.”

“About life?” Lynn asked.

“No. About locks.”

“Really? How so?”

“I used to think locks were complex and exciting, but the complexity hides dullness. I was hoping for a lock that was somewhat difficult to unlock, to understand, relatively unpredictable, and therefore interesting, but no such lock.”

“What made you become a locksmith in the first place?” Roland asked.

“I like having the key to things. And unlocking things. If I had been Bluebeard's wife, I'd be dead, too. I would have done what she did. I would have used the little key to open the forbidden room and see what was inside.”

“You're a very curious person?” Lynn asked.

Ray lowered his eyes and softly confessed, “Yes.” He added, “But unfortunately, what's inside is almost always disappointing.”

“You do sound like a disillusioned locksmith,” Roland said.

Weeks passed. Ray gradually got to know a fair amount about the nuts' situation, because even though he never inquired, bits and pieces were inevitably revealed along the way. On top of it, the nuts were not particularly secretive about their feelings.

Ray still hadn't been disappointed in them, but he remained skeptical. Every time a new layer fell off, he was surprised that it hadn't hit dullsville yet. Anytime one of them said to him, “Let me tell you about myself,” or the equivalent, Ray replied, “Ugh, please don't.”

Eventually, Ray began having the urge to exercise his influence on them. He saw how deeply unhappy and dysfunctional they were, and he was curious to see if he could improve their lives. He reasoned with himself that this was not as dangerous as asking them lots of questions. Asking questions had landed him in jail, but he had never really tried actively to improve someone's life, unless one counted the therapeutic comments he had whispered to them in the street. The most obvious way he could think of to improve their lives was to find them mates.

For a month, he searched. He met singles on buses, gathered e-mail addresses and phone numbers, he recontacted old friends who used to be single back in the days when he was a psychologist, to see if they still were. He asked around.

Finally, he threw a matchmaking party at his winter studio.

The nuts did not find mates, but others did. He was encouraged to throw another matchmaking party. He did. More people found mates. Not the nuts. Ray got sucked into the matchmaking business.

The nuts started to find Ray more interesting. They were impressed when people clamored for another matchmaking party. The nuts became curious about him. It didn't hurt that they overheard an old friend of Ray's at one of his parties say to someone, “Ray used to be a psychologist.” Stunned, they went up to the man who'd just spoken those words, and asked him if this was true. The man, realizing he had made a blunder (for Ray had instructed all his old friends not to reveal his true ex-profession and to stick to the story that he was a locksmith), fixed his blunder by saying, “No, you mis-heard, I didn't say psychologist, I said psycho locksmith.”

“Ahhh, okay, that makes more sense,” the nuts said. “But in what way psycho?”

“Compulsive need to open things. Picking at locks until they give.”

Ray threw more matchmaking parties. Word spread. He began charging a fee. People sought out his matchmaking services. Someone helped him build an Internet matchmaking site called ChockFullONuts.com, which took off beautifully even though people had advised him against that name, saying it would scare off potential clients, especially women. He was glad he had finally found a profession he was good at.

No matter how many times he repeated to himself that the nuts weren't that interesting, they were always on his mind. And to make matters worse, they'd been hanging around a lot since he'd become successful with his matchmaking business. They were growing to admire him.

They came up with excuses to visit him—not that they needed excuses, since the studio belonged to Roland, the furniture to Alan, and the food to Lynn. Sometimes they were all three hanging out at Ray's place at the same time. Their obsession with each other had been slightly diminished because a portion of it had been transferred to Ray.

Ray looked at them, seated side by side on his couch. He asked them nothing, listened to them, and answered their questions.

Eventually, Ray felt things couldn't go on this way anymore. No one should have to live in such skins. He could see they were still not happy, and neither was he, really. He spent many hours trying to come up with a solution to help his friends. He took long walks around blocks, staring at the pavement, thinking.

He came up with the solution—a cure of sorts. He hadn't worked out the details of his idea yet, but he had the general concept. It was an unusual one. It would make them happier and make them realize there was more to life than each other, while preserving their unique nutty flavor.

At the attorney general's office, Roland was called into his boss's office, the solicitor general, Mary Smith.

She said, “I recommended you for the committee for policy on Section 71 cases, and now Suzan Kahn told me you haven't shown up for a single meeting.”

“They don't need me on that committee.”

“That's not an excuse.” She stared at him in silence before going on. “And that's not all. It appears that you lie. You said you had an oral argument in Seligman against the Department of Health, but Jerry Corman was at court for an argument and told me that the Seligman case was submitted without argument.”

Roland kept his eyes downcast.

“You say nothing. That's fine, I don't especially want to hear your excuses.” She sighed. “Look, this is happening too much. You're sacrificing the interests of the client, you're missing court dates, and your mind is obviously somewhere else when you're editing briefs. I just don't have any other choice but to let you go.”

Thirteen

Ray invited the nuts to dinner at a restaurant. They were delighted.

After ordering their food and engaging in some small talk, Ray got to the point. “I don't think we live wisely. We are bored. You may not think you're bored, but I believe you are, we all are. Our lives are the equivalent of a sensory-deprivation tank, and that's not healthy. It makes many of us go nuts.” He gave them a significant look. They were not aware that he thought of them as nuts, but that look was meant to be a hint. He continued. “Human beings evolved in a manner that makes them well suited to a certain kind of lifestyle, which involves danger in daily life. Through the ages, human beings managed to significantly decrease the frequency of dangerous occurrences. Do you follow me?”

They nodded. They thought he spoke well for a locksmith.

He went on. “This decrease in dangerous occurrences may have seemed like a good idea. It made our lives happier and more pleasant on a certain, immediate level. But the lifestyle that originally made us into what we are was not a safe lifestyle. Therefore, by inflicting upon ourselves a safe lifestyle, we experience certain unfortunate side effects,” he said, pulling a small chalkboard out of a bag. “These side effects are, I believe, the following.” He wrote on the chalkboard:

He propped the chalkboard up on the table next to his plate for them to see and said, “Have you noticed how even just reading a book about miserable physical conditions is enough to increase your appreciation of small ordinary comforts? Well,” he snorted, “just imagine how much more potent the effect would be if we actually lived those miserable conditions. I think it's pretty clear where I'm headed, right?”

The nuts stared at him without responding. Alan was sitting on his hands.

“In a nutshell,” Ray said, “once a year we should try to endure something extreme in order to come to our senses. It's psychologically hygienic. Just like getting your teeth cleaned, or taking a shower. To maintain optimum mental health, we've got to have strong stimulation occasionally. And since our modern life doesn't provide that, we must manufacture it. What do you think?”

“Well, it's an interesting idea,” Lynn said, thinking of Judy. “It reminds me of a friend who got hit by a truck and said it was revitalizing. So eventually, she did it again, and died.”

“That may well be, but can you imagine how much better off she would have been had she lived?” Ray said.

“Better off than dead?”

“No. I meant, if she had survived without being seriously hurt, she would have been better off than if she hadn't been hit by the truck.”

“I disagree,” Alan said. “I don't believe in that dumb quote ‘What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' I think the truth is the opposite.”

“To a certain extent, you're right,” Ray said. “What doesn't kill you usually makes you weaker. But some things that don't kill you do make you stronger. And happier.”

“Like what?”

“Like certain types of dangerous situations.”

“But like what?”

“I think we should pick one all together,” Ray said.

“I think it's an excellent idea,” Roland said, fingering his empty locket.

The food arrived.

“We could drink sour milk,” Alan said.

Roland dropped his head in his hands.

“I'm not sure I understand,” Ray said to Alan.

“Well, aren't we supposed to subject ourselves to more danger and unpleasant things?” Alan said.

“Yes, but I think we should pick something a little more dangerous than expired milk,” Ray said.

“We could chain ourselves inside a burning house,” Roland said.

There was silence.

“That's a bit extreme,” Ray said. “Ideally, I think there should be a 25 percent chance of a negative outcome. Not much more and not much less.”

“What do you mean by ‘negative outcome'?” Alan asked.

“I'm not sure we should be speaking so explicitly,” Ray answered, “but by negative outcome I mean death.”

“I'm not wild about this idea, Ray,” Lynn said.

Ray stroked the stem of his glass pensively and said, “Let me ask you an awkward question. Are you happy?”

“I've been worse,” Lynn replied.

“That's great. I'm really happy for you,” Ray said.

Of course he had a point with his sarcasm, Lynn thought.

“Listen, I don't think any of you are as happy as you should be,” Ray said.

They could not argue with that.

He continued. “We want to put our lives at risk, not squash them. Do you have any ideas, Lynn?” Since she didn't answer, he added, “Hypothetically?”

Finally, she said, “I didn't mind Alan's idea so much, of eating something bad. Something we might pick out of the woods.”

“Like what?” Ray asked.

“Poisonous mushrooms, of course!” Roland said. “That's a cool idea, Lynn. I think we should do it.”

“Is that what you meant, Lynn, poisonous mushrooms?” Ray asked.

“It crossed my mind, but I think the risk is too high,” Lynn said. “I'm sure it's higher than 25 percent.”

“I'd say so,” Alan said. “Count me out.” He ordered a glass of wine in the hope of getting carded, but he wasn't.

Ray put his chalk away. “I think we should give it some thought until we come up with an idea we can all live with.”

“Or die with,” Roland said.

“Yes, or die with,” Ray said.