Love Creeps: A Novel Page 2

  “Actually, no. I’m asking for medicinal purposes.”

  “Shall I inform Mr. Dupont of your alarming presence?”

  “No, don’t worry, my presence is neither alarming nor worthy of informing him about.”

  “Good. Then I really must get back to work, so if you’ll excuse me,” he said, averting his eyes slightly and unfocusing them.

  “I understand,” Lynn said. “You’re paid to do a certain amount of nothing every day, and you might get in trouble if your superiors see you haven’t done as much nothing as you were hired to do.”

  He remained standing perfectly still. So struck was Lynn by his resemblance to a Duane Hanson sculpture, that she instinctively brought her face closer to his, to marvel at his detailing, at the realistic imperfections of his skin, at the small hairs sticking out of his nostrils. He didn’t flinch under her scrutiny, so absorbed in his work was he.

  She walked away.

  Stalking Mr. Dupont every day required tremendous willpower for many reasons, not the least of which was that Lynn always wore moderately high heels not made for long walks at a tall man’s pace.

  Unfortunately, the more Lynn forced herself to want Mr. Dupont, the less she did.

  I need help, she thought. So she ordered her assistant to help her stick to her stalking, to be her coach in this matter, and harass her to follow the man.

  It didn’t take Lynn’s stalker, Alan, long to realize that sometimes, while he followed her, Lynn was following another man. Alan hoped it was his imagination, but he soon had to accept that it wasn’t. He was confused. This was not the way this type of thing usually unfolded. Granted, he’d never stalked anyone before, but from what he’d seen in movies and in books, a victim of stalking does not engage in stalking another man while she’s being stalked. Alan told himself not to worry about it too much, that it might pass.

  Instead, he turned his attention to finding a way to become part of her life. After a while he came up with this: he could try to sneak it past her, could try to let his love creep slowly into her life.

  She was the kind of woman not bothered by a stalker. In fact, she was so absorbed in other things that she might not notice if he entered her life. Before she realized, they’d be friends. One day she might even absentmindedly accept an invitation to dinner. And another time he might manage to have sex with her while she was doing something else. Before she knew it, maybe he’d move in. And one day, if an attractive man said to her, “I’d love to take you out to dinner. Do you have a boyfriend?” she’d think about it for a second and be forced to reply, slightly stunned, “I guess I do,” wondering when, exactly, it had happened.

  It was a perfect plan. He would seep into her life.

  Alan started sending Lynn gifts. First he sent her cookies, then movie tickets, then a bonsai tree, then pink and yellow lingerie. He also sent her notes. With the cookies was one that said, “I hope you’ll enjoy them. I know you don’t need to watch your waistline.” With the lingerie, the note said, “You are visually sleek. Your colors blend so well with each other. You look airbrushed. These colors should complement you nicely.” The note that came with the bonsai tree said, “Please take care of this small life-form, and know that it not only excretes oxygen, which is good for you; it also excretes my love for you, which is even better.”

  Alan could not help noticing that Lynn continued stalking the other man. Alan was extremely perturbed by this. He had never heard of such a thing. Was it just a weird coincidence, that the woman he happened to stalk was a stalker herself? Had she only begun stalking recently? He’d only noticed her doing it for a few days, but maybe she’d been doing it all along. To make matters worse, the man she was stalking was taller than Alan, better-looking than Alan, and had more hair.

  It didn’t take long for Alan’s degree of frustration to reach intolerable levels. He decided he had to meet the man Lynn was stalking. He wanted to see him, face-to-face, wanted to know what he was like, hoped to understand what was going on.

  Alan joined the gym the man belonged to and immediately found an ideal way to meet him.

  In the locker room, he saw the man adding his name and number to the signup sheet for racquetball partners.

  Two

  One day, Patricia had just left work and was giving a few coins to a red-haired homeless man at the corner. She’d seen him roaming around the neighborhood for two years, and she liked giving him money regularly because he wasn’t pushy or intimidating. Other than to say “Thank you,” he had never spoken to her. Until today.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “I know you work with that woman at that fancy gallery at the corner. I was just wondering if you might be able to tell me why she follows a man every day while she herself is followed by another man?”

  When Patricia had gotten over her surprise that he had addressed her, she asked, “Is it very noticeable?”

  “A bit. To me. Why do they do it?”

  “Who knows.”

  “You know.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But enough. You know enough. I would be truly thrilled to know. I’m a different kind of homeless person.”

  “Isn’t that what they all say?” she answered, hoping she didn’t sound mean.

  “No. They say, ‘Give me money.’ I say, ‘Give me answers.’ I beg you to give me an answer. It’ll keep me warm tonight.”

  “But I don’t really know.”

  “And I don’t really believe you. Have a nice evening.”

  Ray watched her walk away, disappointed that she hadn’t enlightened him. He really wanted to know why the elegant gallery owner was going around every day following a tan, unsmiling man while she herself was being followed by a man who managed to appear clownish despite wearing black; quite a feat, in Ray’s opinion. The three of them often gave him money, one after the other, as they passed him by. He’d seen them before in the neighborhood, but had never paid close attention to them until recently, when they’d begun following each other. He diagnosed them as nuts. Displays of this kind were not easy for him, considering the fact that he used to be a psychologist whose practice had been ruined by his unfortunate ECD, or Excessive Curiosity Disorder. Curiosity about the slightest peculiarities in human behavior. The opposite of those therapists who fell asleep while their patients spoke, Ray was too interested in the soap opera of their stories. The suspense was both thrilling and intolerable for him. He called most of his patients at home many times a day, to ask for updates on their situations. Once, he had a patient whose boyfriend had stormed out after a fight, and she was waiting for him to call. Ray phoned her every hour asking if her boyfriend had made up with her yet. His obsessive behavior destroyed his practice, not to mention the sanity of his patients.

  Two weeks after Judy had advised Lynn to take up addiction, Lynn and Patricia were shocked to hear from a mutual acquaintance that Judy had been hit by a truck. She was fine, with nothing but bruises. She had been kept at the hospital overnight for observation after the accident and was now home recovering.

  “It must be all the drugs,” Lynn said.

  Lynn knew she had to take her stalking more seriously. She began writing notes to Mr. Dupont. They were not as good as the notes her own stalker sent her. He wrote things like, “Your concentration blows me away. It is blinding. I love the way you stare at my gifts. I have many other gifts you haven’t seen. One in particular. It yearns for you.” It was disgusting. Why couldn’t she come up with something like that in her own stalking? Instead, she wrote things like, “You intrigue me. I hope you don’t mind my following you. I hope you are flattered by the attention I give you.” Another one she wrote was, “You look really intelligent and good. I mean ‘good’ as in ‘attractive,’ of course, for how should I know if you are good or not? For that matter, how should I know if you are intelligent, but you might be. And that’s good enough for me.”

  She was bad at writing notes, and on top of that, she had stalker’s block. She felt she had exhausted
all the obvious statements. She was amazed that her own stalker was able to come up with fresh ideas all the time.

  So, out of frustration, she began copying her stalker’s notes and sending them to Mr. Dupont. She sent the ones that said things like, “I watch you all the time. Even when I’m somewhere else, I watch you in my mind,” and, “To my little pooky bear. I pook you.” What did that mean? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she couldn’t have thought of it herself.

  Eventually, she got tired of even the transcribing process, and decided to save time by simply covering up her stalker’s signature with Wite-Out and signing “Your fan” over it, before sending the notes on to Mr. Dupont.

  Riding the elevator up to the courts, Alan looked at his new racquetball partner and broke the silence with, “Nice locket.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s inside?”

  “It’s personal.”

  They played for the first time. Lynn’s stalking victim won. Not a bad player, Alan thought, for a Frenchman.

  After their game, Alan suggested to Roland Dupont that they go to the juice bar for a smoothie. Roland hesitated, then accepted the invitation. They ordered their drinks, Banana Lipgloss and Blueberry Beach Sand, and sat at a table.

  Alan complimented Roland on his game. The Frenchman returned the compliment.

  They engaged in some small talk. It turned out Roland had only recently moved to the neighborhood.

  “How do you like it?” Alan said.

  Roland fingered his locket and looked at Alan without answering right away. “I don’t think I like it very much, actually.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “It’s the people,” he said. “The people are creepy here. Much more than where I lived uptown.”

  Alan’s heart was beating fast at how easy it was. The progress was rapid. “Creepy how?”

  “There’s a woman, for example, who’s been following me.”

  “Oh. Do you know her?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you think she’s following you?”

  “I have no idea. I guess she’s just a stalker, or something. And she’s been sending me notes. Stupid, weird notes.” He produced an exhausted chuckle.

  Roland Dupont spoke well for a Frenchman. This annoyed Alan. “What do the notes say?”

  “In one note she calls me a teddy bear, or pooky bear, or something like that. I can’t really remember.”

  Alan was silent. Was Lynn using his wording? Or was “pooky bear” very typical, universal wording among stalkers? Alan was perplexed. “What else does she say in her notes?” he asked.

  “Oh, let me think …” Roland stared down at the table while tapping it with his fingers. “She wrote something like, ‘Seeing you makes me happy every morning.’ And she follows me. And she’ll sit across from me during lunch when I’m with a client.”

  “A client? What do you do?”

  “I’m a lawyer. And you?”

  “Accountant.”

  Roland nodded. After a moment of silence, he said, “You know, in France, stalking doesn’t even exist. There isn’t a word for it in French. I was trying to tell my family on the phone that this woman is a stalker, and I realized a French translation of the word does not exist.”

  “That’s probably because in France stalking is such a normal part of everyday life that they don’t need a special word for it. They probably call it living.” Alan chuckled.

  Roland seemed taken aback. “It’s really horrible to be stalked. It’s one of the worst crimes.”

  Now Alan was taken aback. “Really? I don’t mean to belittle your experience, but it strikes me as one of the mildest crimes.”

  “How can you think that?”

  Alan stirred his smoothie, stared at Roland’s locket meaningfully. “I mean, I’m sure at some point in your life you must have been very interested in someone, unrequitedly, and engaged in similar behavior vis-à-vis this person.”

  “You mean stalking someone?”

  “If you want to call it that, sure.”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Naturally. Who hasn’t?”

  “Well, you’re very open-minded,” Roland said, “very forgiving, I guess. Of yourself. But then again, I doubt you’ve seriously stalked anyone.”

  “Your doubt is unfounded.”

  Had Roland been the type who ever laughed, he would have laughed. He rarely found anything amusing, and even when he did, such as now, he never felt comfortable laughing. Even a smile looked odd on him, as if the particular facial muscles that created his smile were nonexistent, and he had to resort to using a combination of surrounding muscles, such as the muscles of his neck, forehead, eyes, nose, and ears to produce one. It came out differently each time.

  “You’ve actually been a stalker?” Roland asked.

  “I wouldn’t call it that, no, but you probably would.”

  Alan didn’t want this man to call him a stalker. It was racist, or something. Hate language. The nice word was “admirer.” Calling him a stalker was like calling someone who refuses to risk his life “a coward,” instead of “smart.” Or like calling a promiscuous woman a slut instead or liberated or sensual.

  “When were you a stalker?” Roland asked.

  “If you don’t mind, please call it ‘admirer.’”

  “Okay, when were you that?”

  “Not long ago.”

  “But now you’ve quit?”

  “Of course not. I’m not flighty. I still admire the person.”

  Roland suddenly looked alarmed. “It’s not me, is it?”

  Alan burst out laughing. “No! It’s a woman. I’m not gay. Are you?”

  “No!”

  They stared at each other in silence.

  “I pity her,” Roland said. “You don’t know how unpleasant it is to be stalked.”

  “I pity the poor woman who’s stalking you. You don’t know how unpleasant it is to have one’s efforts be despised. Do you find her at all attractive?”

  “She’s not fat, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No … that wasn’t what I was asking.”

  “She looks good,” said Roland, “but I could never be interested in a woman who pursues me. And I think you should stop stalking your woman.”

  “Easier said than done. Anyway, I don’t see how it’s your business.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I’ve just become sensitive about this issue.” Roland got up, placed his unfinished smoothie in the trash. He then cordially took leave of Alan, until next time. No, the neighborhood was not treating him well.

  As Roland walked out of the snack area, he discreetly took a paper clip out of his shorts’ pocket and dropped it on the floor. Yes, he had some of his own eccentric habits, but he was decorously ashamed of them and would never dream of going around parading them. He was proper and continent and did not appreciate the absence of these qualities in others.

  Indeed, Roland Dupont had never had a high tolerance for weirdos.

  Alan was unusual in plenty of ways Roland did not even suspect. For example, almost every day, Alan walked down the seventeen flights of stairs in the stairwell of his building, stopping at each floor to make sure all the stairwell doors were shut. It usually took him about four minutes.

  Patricia didn’t enjoy playing the bully, but she couldn’t stand Lynn’s reproachful glances if she let up on pressuring Lynn to stalk.

  “Have you been taking care of yourself lately? Have you been stalking?” Patricia said.

  Lynn was pleased with Patricia’s pushiness. The extra lessons were paying off. “Yes, I have done more stalking.”

  “What stalking have you done?”

  “I followed him.”

  “You better have done more than that,” Patricia said.

  Lynn lowered her eyes. She understood that Patricia was tough not because she was a mean person, but because she cared, and because she knew how important it was that Lynn take her stalking seriously in ord
er to regain her desire.

  “I did do a little more,” Lynn said.

  “What was it?”

  “Notes and such.”

  “Notes? What did they say?”

  “The same things any stalker’s notes would say.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Patricia asked, squinting suspiciously under her bushy eyebrows and not letting go, just as Lynn had taught her.

  “What do you think I mean?” Lynn squinted back, mockingly.

  Patricia did not enjoy being parodied, especially when she was only following orders she didn’t want to be following in the first place and that were not part of her job description. In a gesture that was unexpected to the both of them, she grabbed a nearby flexible metal rod that was used to hang paintings, and whipped it against the top of her desk. It made a shattering sound. Lynn’s eyes opened wide, thrilled.

  “What did your notes say?” Patricia asked.

  “Oh, uh, one of them said, ‘To my little pooky bear. I pook you.’”

  Patricia frowned. “That’s what your stalker wrote you.”

  “Yes, I thought it was a good one. So I used it.”

  “You copied your stalker?”

  “Yes,” Lynn murmured melodramatically, turning her face away suddenly, her hair fanning out in the process.

  “It’s a crime to plagiarize. It’s illegal,” Patricia said.

  At that moment a man entered the gallery. The two women fell silent, watching Mark Bricks, who was one of Lynn’s rival gallery owners. He was in his late twenties. His gallery was three blocks away.

  They all smiled at each other, said hello pleasantly.

  He looked at the walls. “Ah. Still not feeling well?” he said to Lynn.

  “No.” Lynn felt embarrassed about her naked walls, but she would have felt even more embarrassed had they been clad in works she didn’t like. It was known throughout the art world that Lynn was going through a crisis. Her walls had been blank for two months.

  “That’s a shame,” Mark said. “Judy’s not well either. You heard about her accident?”

  “Yes, it’s terrible. My problem seems trivial by comparison,” Lynn said.