Love Creeps

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 order 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.

“Not at all. What’s more, Judy’s doing better, and you’re not. Isn’t there anything that can get you out of this funk? I want my competition back! I hope to see your walls with a little meat on them before long,” he said, sweetly. “What about your family. Can’t they help?”

“My family?” Lynn asked, puzzled.

“Well, I don’t know, loved ones? Can’t they give you advice? What do your parents do in life?”

People from the art world often asked Lynn what her parents did. “My mother’s a cop, and my father’s a collector,” she always said, as she did now, to Mark.

“Oh yeah? What kind of art?” he asked.

What constituted art was subjective. “He’s fond of objets trouvés.”

Lynn’s father was a garbage collector. Her mother was a police officer and had first met her father one night when they were both on duty. They had made eye contact, and it was love at first sight. Her mother had just stepped out of a patrol car that had gotten called about a ground-floor apartment’s shattered window. At the same moment, a charming man jumped out of a garbage truck, grabbed a trash bag from the sidewalk, and flung it into the back of the truck. He had spotted this pretty cop who was watching him. He felt shy, and he felt dirty, which he was. They just stared at each other, wondering who would speak first. Lynn’s father did. “Hi. Any idea who mighta broke the window?”

“Beats us,” she said. “Me and my partner were wondering if any of that trash was used to break it.”

Since the only trash around was sealed in plastic bags, the charming garbage collector knelt next to a bag of trash. “Let’s see if there are any shards of glass stuck in the plastic, which could indicate this bag was swung at the window in order to break it.”

They both knew the bag of trash could not have broken the window. It was full of soft things. But it didn’t matter; they needed it to keep talking.

When Lynn was young, her parents were coarse and jovial. They liked to go bowling. They liked motorcycles. And trailers. And they had a dartboard. They were full of mockery toward a dandified relative of theirs who was interested in art and dressed in an elegant manner that they found stuck-up. They scoffed at refinement.

Lynn loved her parents’ scorn of pretentiousness, but she also loved the pretentiousness they scorned. She derided the haughty with them, but secretly started accumulating elegant clothes. And she discreetly wore them. When her parents began making little comments like, “Those shoes you’re wearing, aren’t they a bit la-di-da?” she’d exclaim, “NO-O-O!” with disgust. And she’d turn away, her feet prickling with shame.

But it happened again. Not more than a week later, her mother noticed that Lynn was dressing rather well. She said, “Isn’t that a little ladylike, that style?”

Lynn said it was not ladylike in the least, but that was a lie, and she knew it. She was a closet ladylike-clothes wearer. She loved flipping through fashion magazines and followed their more conservative styles.

After college, Lynn got a master’s in art history at Columbia. She then spent a year working as a researcher for Christie’s in Contemporary Art sales, and spent two years working her way from a sales position at Luhring Augustine gallery to its director. There, she established such good contacts with important collectors that several of them agreed to back her when she moved to open her own gallery.

The first time Lynn’s parents visited her gallery, they looked at the paintings hanging on the walls and said, “Like father, like daughter.” It took Lynn a moment to realize they were implying she was a garbage collector, too. She wondered from whom she had gotten her good taste. Certainly not them. Maybe taste skipped a generation, like insanity.

Just as Mark Bricks was about to leave the gallery, Judy walked in wearing a red pantsuit.

“I was worried about you,” Lynn said, hugging her gently.

“We were just talking about you,” Mark said.

“Sorry I haven’t been in touch,” Judy said, “but life has accelerated. I’ll get to the point. Go and get yourself hit by a truck. All three of you. But you, especially, Lynn. I highly recommend it. It clears the head like nothing else. It will help you regain your desire for things, lots of things. Forget all the other tricks, the addictions and all that. This is much more effective. Foolproof. If your lack of desire ever drives you to the verge of suicide, first try walking in front of moving traffic.”

Mark said, “You’re not, by any chance, trying to eliminate your competition, are you?”

“No! I’m absolutely serious.”

“Hmm. You do seem well,” he said.

“Yes, you do,” Patricia said.

“I am well. It was a very violent blow, but evenly distributed over the length of my entire body, and therefore it was more traumatizing to my soul than to any one part of me. Now I have an incredible zest for life. There are all sorts of things I want to do, vacations I want to go on, people I want to meet. That’s why I thought of you, Lynn. I feel the opposite of you. Getting hit by that truck was the best thing that ever happened to me. But I’m aware that the benefits might wear off. The euphoria, the divine perspective might fade, so one day I may have to do it again to refresh my zeal.”

She paused, and they all watched her. “Well, I just stopped by to tell you that. Lynn, your walls are still empty, so think about it.”

She kissed all three of them and left.

Mark left shortly after that, and as soon as he was gone, Patricia said, “As I was saying, it’s a crime to plagiarize. Do you know that certain authors have committed suicide because people found out they were plagiarizers? They killed themselves out of shame. Have you done anything else, other than follow him and send him notes?”

“I sent some lingerie.”

“What? He’s a man! Stalking will never treat you well if you treat it with mockery.”

“I didn’t do it with mockery. I enclosed a note that said I could wear this lingerie for him. It was the lingerie my stalker sent me.”

“Lord! That is worse than derivative. You’ll get nowhere fast this way.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“Tell me you’ll come up with your own ideas.”

“I’ll come up with my own ideas.”

Lynn did try to come up with her own ideas, but in the meantime she simply continued following Roland down the street. And she, in turn, was often followed by Alan.

Ray, the homeless ex-therapist, continued observing them. People sometimes interested him, like this chain of stalking, but he had been disillusioned by so-called intriguing people. And they had cost him one year of his freedom. While trying to pierce a mystery of human motivation, he had overstepped the bounds of lawfulness and had ended up serving a one-year prison sentence for coercion in the second degree — a class-A misdemeanor — and getting his therapy license permanently revoked.

The incident had begun innocently enough when one of his patients had informed him that a female acquaintance had told him not to bother pursuing her romantically, because she was not interested in dating him.

“Do you have any idea why she didn’t want to date you?” Ray had asked.

“No. And I don’t care.”

“You don’t care? But it would be useful to know, for future reference, like the next time you meet a woman you want to date.”

“But I didn’t want to date her.”

“Then why did you ask her out?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why did she tell you not to pursue her romantically?”

“Beats me.”

Ray leaned forward in his seat and spoke very clearly. “What did you say to that woman that made her think you might want to date her?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? She just said that, out of the blue? She rejected you preemptively?”

“Yes. It hadn’t even entered my mind to date her.”

“It would be good for you to know why she said that. I think you should call her up when you get home and ask her.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do. It’s important that you do this. We can’t make much progress if you don’t.”

That night, Ray called up his patient and asked him if he had called the woman yet. The patient said no. So Ray called him back an hour later and asked him if he had called her yet. The patient said no. This went on a few more times, a few more days, until finally Ray managed to get the woman’s phone number from the patient and called her up himself and asked her why she had told the patient not to bother pursuing her romantically. There was a long silence. The woman said, “Who are you?”

“That’s not important,” Ray said.

“You’re a friend of his? Why didn’t he call me himself?”

“He didn’t want to, but I think it’s important that he know why you said that.”

“You think it’s important?” she said. “Who are you, his therapist?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “No, really, who are you?”

“I am his therapist.”

She snorted, still not believing him. “Listen, I don’t have time for this.”

“Wait, can’t you just, please, answer the question?”

“No. How’s that? No.” And she hung up.

No? No? Why, no? He punched his pillow.

“She’s a bitch,” Ray informed his patient.

“Yeah, she might be.”

“No, I’m telling you, she is. How can you not see it? I mean, that she would presumptuously tell you not to try to date her, for no reason! Why doesn’t that make you more mad? That’s not healthy.”

“Well, it did annoy me a little bit.”

“That’s my point. Why not more? That doesn’t make sense. It’s as though you’re hiding something, as though you perhaps know why she said that, know what you did to make her say that, and you just won’t tell me.”

“Yes, you’ve already told me you think that, but it’s not true.”

“Then why aren’t you more mad that she was so presumptuous? You don’t seem at all tormented by the mystery of it.”

“No, I guess I’m not.”

“Well, you’ve got to work on that.”

This patient, who at first hadn’t cared why the woman told him not to pursue her romantically, was gradually transformed, thanks to Ray, into a neurotic wreck who ended up resorting to alcohol and drugs to endure the stresses of life caused by his therapist.

As for the mystery of why the woman had told his patient not to bother pursuing her romantically, Ray pierced it. He found the woman, tied her to a chair at knifepoint, and forced her to answer the question. Her answer was: “He had asked me to dinner.” And for that banal answer, Ray served his one-year prison sentence. He had been disappointed before by patients, but this one took the cake. No matter how enticing patients seemed at first, they let him down. The human was a less interesting animal than he had thought. With little personality, no real character — the human was all just meat. Meat, meat, meat. And Ray had been fooled so many times. Now, when he saw nuts, he steered clear. He had become suspicious of strange behavior — he suspected it wasn’t as strange as it seemed.

Ray was sorry about the damage he’d caused so many of his patients. By being a homeless person, he had chosen to condemn himself to the hell of human banality. It was like standing in a stream of disappointment, day after day. He had become desensitized to strangeness and would not let this weird stalking chain — comprised of the three nuts — reawaken his curiosity disorder. He was comfortable with his new identity as a blasé bum and determined not to be seduced again.

Ray was relieved, in a way, that Patricia hadn’t answered his questions about Lynn. Asking questions was playing with fire. Patricia’s answers might have aggravated his curiosity disorder. He never again asked her any questions, nor did he accept money from her when she walked by.

Lynn was trying to get ready for a lunch appointment with a collector. She couldn’t find her tweezers. She never left home or her gallery without plucking a couple of hairs first. This preparation was mental more than physical.

She usually kept tweezers in her desk drawer, but they weren’t there; she had looked three times already. She searched on her desk, under her desk, around the light box, in the wastepaper basket, in the bathroom, all the while mumbling to Patricia that she couldn’t find her red tweezers. Patricia’s silence suddenly made an impression on her. Lynn looked at her assistant, who was staring back at her placidly. The tweezers were on Patricia’s nose, clamping it shut, pointing forward and up, like a strange beak.

“I’ve been looking for those for the past ten minutes. You know I’m running late for lunch!”

She marched toward her assistant, arm outstretched to grab her tweezers, but Patricia yanked them off her nose and hid them behind her back, shaking her head and saying, “No plucky before stalky. You haven’t stalked yet today. Stalk first, pluck later.”

They should put an expiration date on those pita rolls. There was no question about that. Those supermarket people were in the wrong. And they lied to Alan. They told him the pita rolls were replaced every day, but they were not, Alan was sure of it. To prove it, he had secretly marked them when no one was looking, made a tiny X with a pen on the label on the back of the package. And five days later, they were still there.

To soothe his nerves he added two six-packs of beer to his shopping cart and headed toward the checkout. The female cashier carded him. He thought she was just trying to flatter him, to make up for the lie about the pita rolls. He searched for his driver’s license but couldn’t find it.

She wouldn’t let him buy the beer without ID.

“But I’m thirty-four and look even older,” he said.

“I’m sorry, it’s our policy.”

“Okay, I’m flattered, I appreciate your attempt at making me feel better after the fiasco with the pita rolls, but please ring up this beer. I need it to help me get over the pita rolls. I need it more than flattery.”

She still refused.

“If you don’t ring up this beer I will be more pissed off than ever about the pita rolls, and you will have defeated your purpose.”

She didn’t seem particularly knowledgeable about the pita-roll reference. Perhaps not everyone was in on it.

“Okay, whatever. This supermarket sucks,” he said, paying for the rest of his merchandise.

Just as he had promised, he walked home feeling more angry than ever. The disappearance of his driver’s license didn’t help, but he knew he was also irritated at himself over an entirely different issue.

It was bad enough that the woman he loved and stalked loved and stalked another man, but that on top of it she was using his precious words to seduce her prey was tough on Alan. No matter how hard he tried to shrug it off, it came back, the torment. He came up with an idea he hoped would get her attention, perhaps even bring her to a halt in her pursuit of Roland.

At home, he screwed his Polaroid camera onto a tripod, took off his clothes, pressed the timer button, and stood in front of the camera. The flash went off and the picture slid out. He waited for his nakedness to appear. It did. His entire body and face were very clear. He slipped the photo into an envelope, got dressed, and dropped it off at Lynn’s gallery.

Later, Lynn opened the envelope, was assaulted by the sight of her naked stalker, and, refusing to remember that she had promised Patricia she would come up with her own ideas, she slipped the Polaroid into another envelope and addressed it to Mr. Dupont. She attached a little note to the picture.

Roland Dupont, later, opened the envelope and was assaulted by the sight of his racquetball partner naked. He grimaced and read the note.

Later, Alan waited for Roland at the racquetball courts. When Roland finally showed up, he thrust something into Alan’s hands and said, “Explain.”

Alan stared at the naked photo of himself. The volleying racquetballs in nearby courts sounded like explosives, blasting into his brain.

Alan had not expected Lynn to send Roland that photo. After he’d mailed it to Lynn, he’d deeply regretted doing so when he realized Lynn might copy his idea and send Roland a nude photo of herself. He’d felt like a complete idiot and was beating himself up about it. He, Alan, was the one who deserved a naked photo of Lynn, not Roland. He’d tried to comfort himself with the thought that maybe Roland would at least let him see the nude photo of Lynn. Maybe Roland would even let Alan buy it from him, or at least make a Xerox of it.

Alan had to think fast. He couldn’t let Roland know that their meeting as racquetball partners had been deliberate; otherwise, Alan was sure Roland would get paranoid, would want nothing more to do with Alan, would think Alan and Lynn were psychos who were probably in cahoots and purposely tormenting him. Alan was not ready for that to happen. He wanted to continue his acquaintanceship with Roland; he wanted to know him better and understand what Lynn saw in him.

In order for this to happen, he had to act at least as shocked as Roland by this turn of events.

“How do you explain it?” Alan shouted.

“I got it from my stalker. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Read the fucking note.”

Alan read, “Dear Mr. Dupont, Here is proof that I am a desirable person and that you should give me some thought. This is a photo of my stalker, which he sent me this morning. You see, I have one, too.”

“Are you my stalker’s stalker?” Roland asked.

“I am no one’s stalker. Apparently, the woman I admire may be the same woman who’s been admiring you.” Alan carefully changed his expression, trying to appear as though he were making a sudden realization. “Oh my God. She’s copying me! She’s sending you the same notes I sent her. I thought those notes you told me about sounded familiar, like when she called you ‘My pooky bear.’ I mean, that is not the universal language of stalkers, I don’t think.” Alan felt the need to discuss with Roland the strangeness of Lynn copying his stalking style.

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:

•

Follow Mr. Dupont for an hour.

•

Loiter outside his building for an hour and a half.

•

Say something to him. Make eye contact. Let your presence be felt.

•

Write him notes, call him, spy on him, go up to people he’s hanging out with, talk to his doorman some more.