Love Creeps: A Novel Page 24

  Roland lost interest and turned back to the easier target. “My poor Alan, I’m worried about you, about your expectations. Ask yourself, why would a near supermodel ever want to be with you, let alone stay with you?”

  Alan looked pained. Everyone turned to Victoria, even though they didn’t have much hope she’d be able to fix this vicious comment.

  After a couple of thoughtful seconds, Victoria said, “Roland is right. Asking yourself why a supermodel would want to be with you is a very therapeutic exercise. You should make a list of all the reasons you come up with—and there will be many, no doubt—such as your kindness, sense of humor, charming innocence, piercing blue eyes, feathery blond hair, and you should study that list religiously. It’ll keep your confidence up, your anxiety down, and enable you to enjoy your relationship more fully.”

  Ray placed his hand on her arm. “Victoria, I like you, and I don’t want to see you get hurt. Every time you utter one of your lovely translations, I tremble for your safety. Roland has a temper. I warn you that one day he may turn around and slug you.”

  Roland’s face turned red. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating!” he said, slapping the table and rising slightly out of his seat, threateningly. “Are you implying that her translations are annoying? That they’ll get on my nerves? Well you’re wrong! For the first time in my life I feel free! I don’t have to watch what I say anymore. I don’t have to walk on eggshells and be careful not to hurt people’s feelings. As long as she’s with me, I can just be myself, and she’ll fix the damage before it even has time to register!”

  “You were walking on eggshells?” Lynn said.

  “Yes, for your information. Spare me your amazed air,” Roland said.

  Everyone was silent for a few long seconds, mulling over the concept that Roland had been walking on eggshells.

  Later during that same meal, they talked of Max’s suicide. Roland was not so interested in the topic, since he had murdered Max. Plus, the subject made him uncomfortable. Had it been a suicide, though, he would of course have been very interested, as was the case a moment later, when Alan’s model girlfriend generously revealed that one of her old boyfriends who suffered from depression had committed suicide three years ago. Roland was dying to ask her how he had done it, but he restrained himself, fearing it was tactless. No one else asked either.

  Alan was perturbed, because he had noticed that while they had been talking about Max’s death, Ruth had begun staring at Roland rather insistently. Alan hoped it did not mean she was attracted to him. He told himself he was just being paranoid.

  The days and weeks passed, and Alan worried about the looks his soulmate and Roland kept giving each other when they all got together.

  Alan thought there was something terribly wrong in his relationship. That any human being could possess such a high degree of perversity as to be a near top model and be attracted to him seemed extraordinarily shady. Who knew what else she was capable of? Infidelity, perhaps. It was all too easy for him to imagine, after having lived it with Jessica.

  Nevertheless, he chose to fight his fears. He believed that if he had strong enough faith, blind faith, his love would endure, and so would his soulmate. He wanted true love to be possible, and he wanted to be one of the lucky few who had it.

  Alan had no way of knowing that the actual reason Roland was staring at Alan’s girlfriend was not because of her pronounced beauty, nor because of her fame, nor because he was attracted to her (he was not especially), but because her ex-boyfriend had committed suicide and Roland wished he could think of a way to ask her how.

  Alan had no way of knowing that the reason his soulmate stared at Roland so frequently and insistently was not that she found him handsome or charming or had any interest in dating him or even talking to him (she did not), but because of how obvious it was to her that he had killed Max. She was amazed that it wasn’t obvious to the others, but then again, how could it be—they didn’t know what it felt like to have murdered someone.

  Her ex-boyfriend “committed suicide,” but Roland hadn’t picked up on the quotation marks when she’d mentioned it that night she first met Alan’s friends at the restaurant.

  But when they’d mentioned Max’s “suicide,” she’d noticed something about the way Roland moved, or blinked, or breathed, or perhaps it was a downward glance. She didn’t know what it was, but whatever it was, she understood it, felt it viscerally. And she knew, at that moment, that Roland had killed Max. She hadn’t said anything, because she didn’t feel she was in a position to judge, having herself murdered her old boyfriend and passed it off as suicide when his lack of logic and tendency to contradict himself had become too annoying to her.

  Alan was convinced his soulmate would dump him, leaving him to live the rest of his days alone, while Roland and Lynn would live happily ever after with their soulmates. Alan was dead wrong.

  Roland soon discovered that his soulmate, his Translator, his Picker-Upper, was HIV positive. He had been looking for aspirin in her medicine cabinet and had found some Combivir, AZT, and other pills, which he knew were used by such patients. He double-checked on the Internet and confirmed it.

  Furious at his Translator for not having told him, for not having cared about his safety, he said to her, “In case you weren’t aware of it, AIDS is a fatal disease that is sexually transmittable.”

  “So are lots of things,” she said. “Life is a fatal disease that is sexually transmittable.”

  After a long silence, Roland said, “I’m waiting.”

  “For what?” she said.

  “For you to mention that you just quoted Jacques Dutronc. Or were you going to pass that off as your own?”

  “Chill out,” she said.

  “You didn’t care that I might catch AIDS!”

  “I always insisted we use condoms. And plus, my viral loads are low.”

  “It’s still risky!”

  “Barely. And what were you doing snooping in my medicine cabinet? And what are you doing now, acting mad! You’re supposed to be all sad that your soulmate might die!”

  “My soulmate is supposed to be truthful and not hide that she has a contagious disease! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted you to get hooked on me before I told you. So that you wouldn’t leave me.”

  Roland walked out on his soulmate.

  As for Lynn, an unfortunate day arrived for her and Jim.

  “I can’t see you tomorrow. I’m meeting Trista,” he told Lynn.

  “Who’s Trista?” Lynn asked, thinking it might be a sister he hadn’t mentioned or his accountant.

  “She’s a girl I see sometimes.”

  “A girl?”

  “Well, a woman, whatever.”

  “You see her alone?”

  Jim looked amused. “Yes.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “I was actually set up with her on a blind date by a friend, three years ago.”

  “Oh? Did you guys ever date?”

  “Yeah, I just told you I’m seeing her tomorrow night.”

  “That’s a date?”

  “Some people would call it that. I’m not sure I would. I mean, it’s not as though we go through the whole official dinner slash conversation thing. That stage is long gone.”

  Lynn’s body was suddenly freezing cold. “What do you mean? You’re teasing me, right?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘teasing.’”

  “Are you sleeping with this woman?”

  “That’s a vague question. It’s hard to answer. I mean, the present tense you’re using is confusing. I’m not sleeping with her right this second, as you can see.”

  Lynn’s freezing body was suddenly becoming very hot. “Tomorrow. Will you be having sex with her?”

  “I can’t predict the future. I’m not a psychic.”

  “Have you had sex with her since I’ve known you?” Lynn asked.

  “Yes.”

  Lynn was s
ilent for many long seconds. “You’ve been cheating on me?”

  “Cheating? Have we been taking a test? I don’t understand how the word ‘cheating’ could even apply to the situation?”

  “You weren’t faithful to me?”

  “You mean sexually exclusive? No. We never spoke of such a thing.”

  Lynn knew then that she couldn’t be with this person. It broke her heart. What made it easier was the fact that it got worse.

  “You mean we had to talk about it before you’d feel the desire to be faithful to me?” she said.

  “No.”

  Fleetingly, Lynn felt a tiny bit better. Until he elaborated.

  “Talking about it wouldn’t make any difference,” he said. “I’d never feel the desire to be faithful to you. Or to anyone. I’m not interested in monogamy. It’s not for me.”

  “You misled me.”

  “How so? It’s not my job to assume that you are presumptuous, nor to protect you from your own presumptuousness. I choose to think the best of people. Anyone who egotistically imagines that her preference for monogamy is everyone’s preference and who gets hurt as a result has only herself to blame. Protecting those people will only slow down the progress our society is making, the process of becoming more evolved and accepting other belief systems. That progress has been made with holiday cards, which now rarely say Merry Christmas. They say Season’s Greetings. That’s the way it’s gotta be with love, too.”

  Lynn told her friends what happened.

  “What do you expect when you fall for a faggy florist,” Roland said, untranslated and unsoftened.

  Since Alan was the only one left with a soulmate, Ray, Lynn, and Roland waited to see what would happen. The question was, would she stay good or not?

  A couple of weeks passed. Alan was starting to act victorious. Therefore, Ray, Lynn, and Roland decided to look into Ruth’s background to see if she had a dark secret. They called up Jessica in the Midwest and hired her to do the digging. They said they were concerned about Alan and wanted to find out a bit more about his new girlfriend to make sure she was trustworthy and decent. Jessica, who couldn’t resist the opportunity to do something for Alan, agreed to dig for free.

  Jessica did discover a secret in Ruth’s past, but it was a secret that made the model, if anything, more impressive.

  They had suspected drugs or alcohol, maybe some extreme sexual kinkiness, which would explain her liking Alan. But instead, she had a doctorate in economics that she had gotten secretly in her spare time and which was all the more impressive considering that her life had been full of such traumatic events as the suicide of her boyfriend three years ago and the death of her sister in a fire the year before that.

  When they informed Alan that they had dug into his girlfriend’s past, he was angry.

  They defended themselves. “We wanted to make sure she was as good as she seemed. We were looking out for you.”

  “How dare you!” he said.

  “Our soulmates turned out to suck. We thought yours might, too. We care about you.”

  “You are such assholes.”

  “Well, she did turn out to be hiding something significant.”

  Alan stared at them with sheer hatred.

  “Yes, there’s something she never told you,” they said, dragging it out.

  Alan waited, lips clenched.

  “She has a doctorate in economics.”

  “Assholes.”

  “What. Aren’t you happy? She turned out to be even better than we thought.”

  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

  Feeling guilty and wanting to make up for having snooped, they told him they’d throw him and Ruth a party to celebrate the fact that their snooping hadn’t turned up anything negative and that Ruth was not a bad soulmate so far.

  The party took place at the home of one of Ray’s clients, who was glad to lend his ground-floor duplex to the founder of Chock Full O’Nuts, for a celebration at which he was hoping to meet some good romantic matches.

  Alan searched for his model soulmate at the party. She’d left his side soon after they’d arrived together. He found her on the second-floor balcony, sitting on the balustrade, looking down at the garden. When Alan approached her, he saw that she was gazing down, specifically, at Roland, who was standing alone with a glass of white wine, facing the potted trees. Every time Alan saw his soulmate staring at Roland, his gut hurt. He could already see it coming: roaming interest, flirtation, infidelity. He didn’t want to go through that again.

  In fact, Ruth did not have those specific impure thoughts or disloyal intentions. She was only marveling at that thing she and Roland had in common, which was visible only to her. Having things in common naturally increases people’s interest in one another. That interest is not necessarily, or even usually, romantic. Just basic human interest. The more significant that thing which people have in common is, the more intense the interest is likely to be. Therefore, Ruth’s degree of interest in Roland was perfectly continent and respectable considering that what they had in common was murder.

  Ruth sensed that Alan was feeling jealous. She wished she could reassure him. With time, he’d understand she was a faithful person. If he knew she’d killed her ex and her sister, he’d probably be even more worried, but there was no need for him to be concerned about that either. His life would not be in danger as long as he didn’t annoy her with (a) self-contradictions, (b) lack of logic, (c) an inability to hold his side of an argument, or (d) other irritants.

  She told Alan she was going to get another drink and left his side.

  In another corner of the party, Roland approached Lynn. “Have you noticed how Alan’s girlfriend doesn’t stop staring at me?”

  “No,” Lynn said, even though she had.

  “She wants me,” he said, looking at Ruth, who was now staring at him while standing near the drinks table, chatting with Ray.

  “Well, you shouldn’t stare back,” Lynn said.

  “Why not? She’s hot for me. I may do a lot more than stare back.”

  Lynn looked at him sternly. “Just because things didn’t work out for you and Victoria doesn’t mean you should spoil things for Alan. You should wish him well.”

  “I do wish him well. That is why I want to test Ruth’s fidelity. To make sure she won’t cheat on him.”

  “I don’t want to hear about this,” Lynn said, and went to talk to Alan, who was near the staircase, alone, stirring his drink morosely.

  “Congratulations on your relationship. I’m really happy for you,” Lynn said to Alan.

  He smiled faintly.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  After a moment, Alan said, “Have you noticed how much she looks at Roland?”

  “Maybe a little bit.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t believe in monogamy. She may be just like your ex, only less honest about it.”

  Lynn took Alan’s arm and said to him sincerely, “I wish you the best, but if the best doesn’t happen, the good still can. With someone else or just with friends. And the good isn’t so bad.”

  Alan looked unconvinced, so Lynn went on. “I don’t believe that finding a great love is guaranteed for everyone. I hope I’ll find one, but I may not. And who knows, you may not either. But there are other things that are good. Friendships, relationships that are supportive and comforting and fun, even if they’re not romantic or passionate. And you can find passion in other areas. No matter what happens between you and Ruth, you can count on me, on Ray, on your other friends to support you if you need us.”

  Alan nodded, too moved to answer.

  Roland joined them. “Hey, your girlfriend keeps staring at me. Have you noticed?”

  Alan turned red. “No, I haven’t noticed.”

  “Yeah, right. Aren’t you afraid she’ll cheat on you? Kind of like Jessica did?”

  Alan gazed at the triumphant banner strung across the ceiling, on which Ray had written “Not-A-Bad-Soulmate Party.” Alan tr
ied not to feel mocked by it. At that moment, he realized he had two choices.

  He could expect the best and be rewarded by a long and happy life with his soulmate, who would love him with all his faults, forever, no matter what.

  Or he could give in to his jealousy and negative thoughts, lose his girlfriend—the best thing that had ever happened to him—fall into a downward spiral, and perhaps even become suicidal again.

  No.

  He would not be defeated. He was victorious. He had everything he wanted and was determined to enjoy a long life of happiness with Ruth. Roland, Lynn, and Ray had tried to find something bad about her, but it seemed there was nothing bad to be found. She was a good soulmate, his soulmate. He would not let his paranoia ruin everything. Ruth was faithful. She loved him. She was not yearning for Roland.

  Alan finally answered, “No. I love Ruth, and I trust her. I think only good things of her.”

  “That’s great!” Roland said. “People say that attitude can really make a difference in how things turn out. You’re harnessing the great American power of positive thinking!”

  “Yes. I’ll give it a shot. What have I got to lose? It can’t hurt.”

  They gazed at him.

  He added, “I know I’ll be extremely happy with Ruth. I’m really looking forward to growing old with her.”

  His positive outlook seemed to suffuse the room with a rose tint. Lynn and Roland were feeling more optimistic about their own lives. They left Alan’s side and mingled with the party.

  Alan felt better, too.

  Ruth brought him a refill of his Bloody Mary. They chatted intimately, commented playfully on the other guests. They were having a good time. Things were already lighter between them, less strained than at the start of the evening. His positive attitude really was working! If he stuck to it, Ruth would be more likely to stick to him. He wouldn’t have to be single, ever again, looking for a new love, as Lynn and Roland were doing. He would try his best to stay on the positive path and wouldn’t let small things, like Ruth’s glances at Roland, bother him. She was so wonderful in so many ways.

  Alan was right. His girlfriend had many wonderful qualities. She was intelligent, beautiful, faithful, supportive, protective, fun, funny, warm, athletic, artistic, cultivated, generous, logical, consistent, and nature-loving. Being evil was her only fault.