Made for Love

by Alissa Nutting

  “I am sorry to hear that. You weren’t that bright or industrious but you sure didn’t have anywhere else to be. I’ll miss your sulking face reminding me of all I have to be thankful for. I hope you win your soul back in a bet or something. Let me give you some cash for what you’ve worked this week, adjusted for the very short notice of you quitting. Do you have any resources? Do you want to take one of those big bags of rice with you? Are you strong enough to carry it?”

  Hazel accepted the cash and the rice. Maybe she could figure out a way to duct-tape it to her torso and it could be dual purpose: If someone from Gogol came to get her in the middle of the night, it could serve as a makeshift bulletproof vest. Though it would probably just slow the bullet down enough that it would take longer for her to die, and be a lot more painful. But if they were apprehending her and taking her to another location to kill her, maybe she could reach up under her shirt and slit the bag open and a trail of rice would be left, should anyone try to find her. But there was no one who would.

  She left and began to walk, taking the long way home. After a few minutes, she noticed that a man talking on a device was walking behind her. From what she could see in her periphery, his suit wasn’t made of Gogol-issued fabric, but he wasn’t giving her much space.

  Hazel turned down an unnecessary street. The man followed. Her heart began to race.

  “Yeah,” she heard him say into his device. “Yes. Byron Gogol.”

  There was a puddle on the ground that she glanced into to eyeball his height. He was tall and muscular. But for Jasper’s sake, for what he risked and did, she felt she had to give it everything she had.

  Hazel whipped around with the bag of rice and hit the man on the side of the face. His device went flying and hit the ground with a loud crack. She took off running.

  She heard him yell out twice as she sprinted off—first for his face, and then for his phone.

  But as she passed a large electronics store, she saw that photos of Byron were flashing all over the multiple television screens.

  Had something happened?

  Something had happened. He would not be looking for Hazel anymore.

  23

  IN THE MORNING, HAZEL RETURNED TO THE DINER AND PUT ON HER apron. It was right where she’d left it the night before.

  “Hey, you!” Ms. Cheese called out from the office. “I know it’s you. The quiet way you shut the door and then walk all silent. Like you’re a wildlife photographer or something. I assume you’re back on a volunteer basis? Will work for patty melts? Ha. Haha. Just fooling. They’re doing an AM fryer clean-out. To celebrate your continued employment you can go help scrub the heating coils.”

  Hearing the news yesterday had been like snorting a drug, some kind of upper that coated euphoria with a firm layer of panic. Mid-afternoon, the line cook Benny noticed Hazel’s hands and arms trembling at regular intervals despite the heat of the kitchen. “You know how being tickled too long starts to hurt?” she asked him. “I have felt like that for hours now but without the tickling.”

  Benny nodded. “Did you know it’s impossible to tickle yourself? That’s because your brain knows what’s up.”

  “Have you ever taken too much cold medicine—”

  “Y-e-s,” he said.

  “—and had that scalp thing where it feels like needles are connecting your hair to your head?”

  Just then, Ms. Cheese entered the kitchen. “Hazel, some guy came in asking for you in the middle of lunchtime rush. ‘Does this look like an office building?’ I said to him. ‘Do you have a noon appointment with Hazel? Did you get an e-mail reminder? I don’t think so!’ Then he grabbed a pen and wrote out a note on a napkin. Winked at me and then started to leave without ordering a thing. I called out after him. ‘There’s no return address on this correspondence, sir,’ I said. ‘You expect me to deliver this without a stamp?’”

  Hazel’s whole body began trembling now, so hard that she worried she wouldn’t be able to swallow. She tried speaking, but couldn’t. It felt like her mouth was filling up with water. So everything on the news had been an elaborate trick. Elaborate for anyone but Byron. Of course he’d want to fill her with hope just before he came to get her.

  “Why are you shaking?” Ms. Cheese turned to the line cook. “Did you give her something?”

  He shook his head no and shrugged. Ms. Cheese theatrically lay the napkin down on a cutting board and pinned it down with the tip of a large knife.

  “I’m just trying to run a business here,” she said. “As you can see, good help is hard to find. Take a moment. Get yourself together. And next time you see this joker, tell him not to drop by during your shift,” she said.

  Hazel sat down on the floor. That would actually be a great thing to say to Byron just before he killed her or took her away or whatever his plans were: I’m not allowed to have visitors at work.

  “What does the note say?” she asked Benny.

  “It says, ‘Now you’re free.’” He paused. “Did you just get dumped?”

  Hazel stood and reached for the knife. Benny began to move away from her. “Don’t act in anger,” he said.

  She lifted the blade and picked up the note. It wasn’t from Byron.

  JASPER WAS OUTSIDE WAITING WHEN SHE GOT OFF HER SHIFT. “HUZZAH!” he yelled. He climbed up on the hood of his car, raised his hands in the air and started yelling again, yipping sounds of victory.

  Hazel looked back toward the diner. Ms. Cheese was peeking out through the blinds. Hazel watched a curl of cigarette smoke drift up past the set of scowling eyes.

  “Let’s go somewhere else to celebrate,” she said. “My place? We can watch the news?”

  For hours in Hazel’s motel room, they pounded beers and took in the media’s coverage. There was the leaked video of Byron’s death, from The Hub’s bedroom security cameras (the ones Byron swore shut off at night when Hazel had first moved in—of course they didn’t). It featured Byron and Fiffany in bed side by side, both sleep-helmeted, when Byron sat upright moaning, intermittently gripping at his helmet and his chest. Fiffany removed her helmet and shook out her hair, then tried to figure out what the problem was. Byron couldn’t get his helmet off. Something was wrong—it was hurting him.

  “This could not have been a malfunction like they’re claiming,” Hazel said. The story being told was that the helmet wouldn’t come off. Due to a software glitch or another technical failure, perhaps it had even been messing with his brain waves. He’d apparently panicked to the point of giving himself a heart attack. “There’s no way,” Hazel said. “Safeguard after safeguard prevents it. Whatever happened was intentional. Fiffany killed him. He must’ve realized that right before he died. That she’d outsmarted him.”

  “Ah. How sweet is that,” Jasper said.

  It was nice, Hazel had to admit, that the world at large thought Byron’s death was due to an error of technology he’d created. But the worst part of Hazel wished this had been the case. “It sucks that he knows he didn’t fail, though. At least not in his technology.”

  “But he’s dead. He didn’t exactly win.”

  “You’re right,” Hazel agreed. “I guess part of me still doesn’t believe it. But there’s a lot to appreciate here.” It was great to watch Byron’s escalation of panic in the video: his black-and-white image attempting to break the helmet off by hitting his head against the wall, first standing and then on all fours, knocking his head against the ground until he no longer could. If he was trying to speak actual words, they didn’t come through on the recording. Not with the helmet’s muffling and Fiffany’s supposedly frantic screams. She was a good actress.

  Hazel decided to pretend the context of the video was Byron realizing the error of his ways and beating his head into the ground accordingly.

  “Do you think it was really someone at the police station who leaked the footage?” Jasper asked. The way he was shoveling peanuts into his mouth made Hazel feel like they were at a movie theater.

  Ma
ybe this was true, but the threat of a lawsuit from Gogol would be too scary for most workers to risk it. “I feel like maybe Fiffany had a hand in that too,” Hazel said. If so, the act almost seemed like an apology meant just for her.

  Jasper raised his bottle in the air. “Hail to the new CEO.”

  Fiffany was “requesting privacy during this difficult time,” but all channels were confirming that she was going to be named as the new CEO of Gogol.

  Hazel had had Fiffany all wrong. Fiffany’s ultimate pursuit had been the company, not Byron. And in killing him, she’d probably saved the world a little. One of her new VPs was already discussing what speculative changes the company might undergo with her leadership, and none of the projected initiatives included brain melds. She’d likely be bowing out of several of Gogol’s weapons contracts and wanted to increase the company’s humanitarian initiatives. “She’s quite interested in expanding development for art and education technologies,” the television said.

  “Hail to the new CEO,” Hazel agreed.

  Later that night, Hazel and Jasper ended up at the small green pool behind her motel. Jasper cannonballed into the water without hesitation. “Second chances,” he said when he surfaced. “So what are you going to do now?”

  After all the mistakes Hazel had made, it was real magic to be there, in front of a pool and under a sky. “Well. I can make some friends. I don’t have to worry about Byron hunting them or burning their house down now.”

  “I think I want to try having friends,” Jasper said.

  “What I want to avoid, I suppose, is getting trapped in another emotionally fake relationship where my daily life is a false performance tantamount to self-harm?” Hazel said.

  “Yes.” Jasper began floating toward the middle of the pool. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  On impulse, she took off her dress. Jasper lifted his head. “You should get in,” he said. “You really should.”

  Hazel smiled, holding his gaze, then slowly took off her underwear and bra too. “It’s not that I hope other hotel guests are looking out their windows and seeing me doing this,” she said. “I hope they aren’t. I know voyeurism is a thing, a sexual thing, sometimes, and after Byron’s surveillance I’m way more into whatever sexual thing is the opposite of voyeurism.”

  “I think you’re naked in public right now,” Jasper said.

  “Yes. But Byron can’t see me.” She jumped in; the water was bathlike. When she surfaced, Jasper smiled in a way that made her feel playful. “Why don’t you get naked too?”

  He laughed and slid his boxers off then threw them up on the sidewalk. They landed with a wet slap.

  Hazel cleared her throat. “So if we fooled around right now, you’d really feel like you were having sex with a dolphin?”

  Jasper gave her an embarrassed shrug and nodded. “It might not be that great for you. If you’re into emotional connection and stuff. I kind of go off to another world.”

  Hazel thought for a moment. “But I wouldn’t have to pretend it was great, right?” Prior to Liver, she’d pretended to be in love with everyone she slept with, at least initially, although that never turned out well. Especially not with Byron. When had she so internalized the feeling that if something wasn’t great she needed to bridge the gap between reality and idealism with her own manufactured enthusiasm? Her enthusiasm was like one of those faux snow machines at a ski resort. For most of her life it had been churning out synthetic delight. It had basically forgotten the original recipe.

  She’d been surprised at how much she’d liked sleeping with Liver: having it be mediocre then not acting like it wasn’t mediocre. “I’m kind of excited to sleep with people I don’t love and not pretend to love them,” Hazel admitted. She was looking forward to this: having sex and saying, That was uninspired but pleasant or We have less in common than I thought in a way that makes it more fun to be alone than be with you or My needs are opposed to your innate daily habits; let’s go try other things separately and then not report back.

  “Me too, actually,” said Jasper. “And you know I’m not trying to get your money since you don’t have any.”

  “Plus I’m not interested in loving you at all.” Hazel smiled. Their bodies started bobbing toward one another.

  When she’d married Byron, Hazel thought she could figure out a way to stand being with whoever would have her; after her childhood she felt fortunate to be wanted by anyone. She assumed that for the right payoff, there were endless situations she could slip into and purport to feel at home. She could feign an interest in anything.

  But pretending all the time was a different sort of virtual life, as fake as any of Byron’s technological simulations. Her lips met Jasper’s, her tongue. “It’s starting,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and she decided to close hers too—she didn’t need to watch him for feedback cues. He wouldn’t be looking to her to perform. These were all good things, so Hazel kept kissing him. What she most wanted to do with her second chance, she decided, was never fake anything ever again.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANKS TO AGENT EXTRAORDINAIRE JIM RUTMAN FOR CREATING THE opportunity to write this book, and to Lee Boudreaux, the book’s first fairy godmother.

  I could not have written this novel without Megan Lynch. Through her guidance, clarity, and insight, the manuscript became better and more itself with each revision. She understood the book long before it was “there,” and was a tireless copilot in helping it arrive. I am so grateful for her editorial genius. Thanks also to Emma Dries, Eleanor Kriseman, Ashley Garland, and everyone involved at Ecco for their fantastic work.

  Amy Martin and Julie Nichols generously opened their home to me when I needed a quiet work space; I wrote much of the first draft there. There is no aspect of my life they did not help me with, from childcare to reality television. The second draft of this book was finished at the beautiful Maple Wood Lodge thanks to the generosity of John Fetters and Coleman. I wrote multiple revisions of this book in the home of Birdie and Maile Chapman, who held me together and kept me going in ways I can never repay.

  Many writers, artists, academics, and heroes served as critical sources of inspiration throughout the writing of this book, especially Jami Attenberg, Natalie Bakopoulos, Lynda Barry, Kate Bernheimer, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Jeremy Chamberlin, Dan Chaon, Dave Hickey, Roxane Gay, Lindsay Hunter, Kiese Laymon, Annie Liontas, Carmen Maria Machado, Danielle Pafunda, Jeff Parker, Lee Running, Ralph Savarese, Vu Tran, and Richard Wiley.

  At John Carroll University: George Bilgere, Anna Hocevar, Dave Lucas, John McBratney, Phil Metres, Tom Pace, Debby Rosenthal, and Maria Soriano; at the NEOMFA: Mary Biddinger, Mike Geither, David Giffels, Caryl Pagel, and Imad Rahman; at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas: Megan Becker, Olivia Clare, Lynn Comella, Carol Harter, Anne Stevens, Doug Unger, and Maritza White. To all my former, current, and future students—you keep me in love with the process of writing.

  To Team Bakoponutt: Amos Bakopoulos, Lydia Bakopoulos, and Sparrow Nutting. No one makes me laugh harder or feel happier. Having the three of you in my life is the best and luckiest part of being me.

  And thanks to DB, whose steady encouragement gets me through everything. I’m no good, but I love you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALISSA NUTTING IS AUTHOR OF THE AWARD-WINNING COLLECTION of stories Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls and the novel Tampa. Her work has appeared in the New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Elle; Tin House; Fence; and Bomb, among other venues. She is an assistant professor of English at Grinnell College, and lives in Iowa with her husband, author Dean Bakopoulos, and their blended family of three kids.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  ALSO BY ALISSA NUTTING

  UNCLEAN JOBS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS: STORIES

  TAMPA: A NOVEL

  CREDITS

  COVER DESIGN BY SARA WOOD

  COVER ARTWORK © PAT GAINES

  COPYRIGHT

  This is a work of fiction. Names
, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  MADE FOR LOVE. Copyright © 2017 by Alissa Nutting. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  EPub Edition © July 2017 ISBN 978-0-06-228057-2

  Print ISBN 978-0-06-228055-8

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