“What?”
“Well, that added some spice for me.”
Alan just stared.
Roland added, “Now that you don’t want her anymore, it’s not the same. You don’t want her, right?”
Alan hesitated. “She’s … a very desirable woman.”
Roland snorted. “That answers my question.”
Alan tried to reason with him, sang Lynn’s praises, but it didn’t seem to do much good. He gave up and drank his beer.
Back at the apartment, Lynn did not rummage or snoop. She sat on the armless white easy chair, flipped through some fashion magazines she had brought with her, made a few phone calls from her cell phone. And then she thought.
When the two men returned to the apartment, Lynn raised her eyes, but not herself, from the white chair, and said, “I’m sorry, but it’s over, Roland. I’m not going back to the country with you. I want out of this relationship. I called Patricia. I’ll be staying with her.”
“Lynn, are you sure about this?” Alan asked. “We talked at lunch.”
“Very constructive, I’m sure,” she said.
Alan could not, in all good conscience, tell her that it had been very constructive. “I don’t know,” he replied.
“Well I do,” she said. “It’s better this way.”
Roland’s pride did not allow him to show that he was stunned, did not allow him to say much more than, “Okay, then, if that’s what you want. I’m off.”
When the door closed behind him, Lynn cried. She cried in Alan’s arms. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m not really sad.”
“It’s okay,” Alan said, holding her nobly.
When Ray saw Roland leaving alone, he didn’t know what to think. He tried not to think. He distracted himself by thrusting his cup at passersby more vigorously than usual.
Eight
After Roland left, Lynn and Alan talked all afternoon. Alan canceled his plans to meet up with friends in the park, so that he could stay and comfort Lynn.
They drank herb tea on the couch, facing the empty white easy chair, and talked about her problems. She apologized for the way she and Roland had treated Alan, and also for never having given him a chance romantically. She again expressed admiration for the way he had turned his life around and said she wanted to do the same with hers. Would he teach her?
He told her that one good way was to meet new people and that she might like to come on the set of the movie he was acting in, the filming of which was continuing tomorrow at the miniature boat pond in Central Park.
Lynn was noticing how even his voice had changed. It had become more relaxed, less tight, deeper. It was as if he had let go of his voice.
They continued talking until Jessica, done with her day’s work, came home. The two women were introduced and Lynn, intimidated by the idea of a private detective sex addict and not wanting to stand in the way of Jessica’s addiction, promptly departed.
That night Roland called Lynn, threatening that if she didn’t come home immediately it would be over between them. Not bothering to remind him that it already was over, Lynn said fine.
What gall, he thought.
The shooting of the scene set in Central Park ended up taking three days, because the director was a perfectionist when it came to filming kisses, and there happened to be two in this scene.
Many people came to watch the filming, including six recovering stalkers from Stalkaholics Anonymous who had come to support Alan. Outings were a big deal for these men, who ventured out rarely and only in groups in order to be stronger in case the need to fight temptation arose.
They arrived carrying folding chairs and checked out their surroundings to make sure they were relatively free of temptation. To their consternation they spotted, three benches away, a group of people equipped with binoculars and telescopes, which were pointed at a tall building across Fifth Avenue.
One of the stalkers grabbed a crew member’s arm. “What in God’s name are those people doing?”
“They’re bird watchers.”
“Why are they looking at a building?”
“There’s a huge hawk’s nest up there, on top of a window. In it is a red-tailed hawk family. The birders come here every day of every spring to watch the babies.”
The stalker grimly turned to his associates. “They’re stalking the hawk. They’re stalking the whole damn hawk family, even the babies.”
The stalkers slumped, defeated. They had not counted on running into bird watchers.
“Jesus, they’ve got five, no six, telescopes, and what, ten, twelve binoculars!”
They debated whether they should risk staying anyway. They decided that they would, as long as they positioned their folding chairs so that their backs would be to the birders.
The informative crew member walked by again and leaned over them. “And in the building next to the one with the nest is the apartment of Woody Allen and Soon Yi, who sometimes come out on their balcony to stretch, and when that happens, all the telescopes change direction.”
The stalkers glanced at each other, alarmed, and shook their heads with disapproval, but they stayed. They wanted to see their friend Alan perform.
As did Lynn, who was also there and very curious to see how much Alan had changed. She immediately noticed she was not the only one fascinated by him. There was a very sexy woman watching him, alternating between looking riveted and just sitting there looking at him suggestively.
Alan introduced Lynn to the crew and to the sexy woman at whose gorgeous apartment he said they had shot much of the movie. After the introductions he went back to makeup.
Lynn’s cell phone rang. It was Patricia telling her a curator wanted to have lunch with her next week. Lynn set a date. Before hanging up, Patricia said, “Oh, and I keep forgetting to tell you that you’ve been rejected by the World Wrestling Entertainment Training Camp.”
“I see,” Lynn said softly, absorbing this information, giving it time to seep into her emotional bloodstream and work its preventative magic.
They hung up.
Lynn observed Alan perform the kissing scene numerous times. She was particularly absorbed by the pause just before their lips met. She was also captivated by the way he had his fingers threaded through his scene partner’s hair, and the way he held the back of her head so tenderly. Lynn admired the fact that he repeated the kissing scene with endless patience and goodwill. And the fact that his scene partner didn’t seem at all bothered to kiss him. The actress was even kidding around with him, treating him totally respectfully, and she was quite attractive.
The sexy woman came and sat next to Lynn. They both watched Alan and his scene partner.
“He told me he used to be a stalker,” the sexy woman said to Lynn, not taking her eyes off Alan. “You wouldn’t think so, would you?”
“No,” Lynn said.
“I wouldn’t mind being stalked by him.”
Lynn laughed. “I was,” she couldn’t resist revealing.
The woman looked at her. “You were?”
Lynn just smiled.
“Did you go for him?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“I was messed up, then. And he was, too.”
They watched the filming in silence for a few minutes. And then the sexy woman said, “Look at the way she flirts with him. Shameless. She has no pride.”
It was between takes, and Alan’s scene partner was showing him her bra strap and giggling. Then she mussed up his hair.
“Uh-huh,” Lynn agreed.
“I guess I don’t blame her,” the sexy woman said. “There’s something about him.”
Lynn began flipping through a fashion magazine. The sexy woman leaned over and whispered to her, “If you could pick only one of those guys to stalk you, which one would it be? Not counting Alan, of course.” She was pointing to the six recovering stalkers.
“None.”
“Me neither.” She paused. “Although maybe that one a
t the end, just for the hell of it.” She licked her lower lip. “But it wouldn’t bring me much pleasure.” After a few seconds, she said, “I’m very naughty,” and got up. She walked over to the recovering stalkers and said, breathily, “You boys stalkers?”
They nodded; one uttered, “Yes,” and another specified, “Recovering.”
She slowly walked to the one sitting at the end, and said to him, “But, what if a girl wants to be stalked? Would you make an exception?”
To their embarrassment, the stalkers noticed they were breathing in unison, which they immediately tried to stop doing, causing some of them to hyperventilate and others to suffocate. And then they glanced at their buddy at the end, who could not bring himself to look up at her; he was staring down at her feet.
Finally, one of them asked the others, “Do you know the answer? Are exceptions allowed in cases of women who want to be stalked?”
“I seriously doubt it,” said the one at the end, still staring at her feet but jiggling his leg nervously.
“Are you sure?” the woman said. “I’d really like to be stalked by you. It would be so … titillating.”
Lynn listened, while pretending to be absorbed in her magazine.
“Just say no,” they whispered to the one at the end. They nudged him. “Recite the anthem.”
“Okay.” He shifted in his seat, cleared his throat, continued bouncing his leg, and began to recite, “Stalking is not for me, not my thing. That’s not to say I won’t ask a woman or man on a date. I’d say, ‘Would you like to go to the park? Stroll about? People watch, not stalk? Would you like to give me your number? Or would you prefer to take mine? I respect women’s privacy, men’s, too. I would never do anything you don’t want me to. Especially I wouldn’t stalk you.’”
He finally glanced up at her with apprehension.
“But I want you to do something I don’t want you to. I want you to stalk me. Stalk me,” she exhaled.
“OKAY!” he exploded, shooting up out of his chair. “I will stalk you! I will stalk you day and night, whether you want me to or not. Move! You have to move for me to stalk you. If you just stand there, I can’t. So move. Take a step, then another.” He was shouting in her face, so she took a step back, and he took a step forward.
The other five stalkers gasped and shielded their eyes from this tempting display of stalking.
Alan heard the commotion and came over. “What’s going on?”
The five stalkers couldn’t answer, as they were too busy protecting themselves from the bad influence. The sexy woman took another step back, and the man a step forward.
“Tom,” Alan said, shocked, “are you … stalking her?”
“You know I am!”
“How did this happen?”
The five stalkers pointed their fingers at her with their faces still averted from the spectacle. “She did it! Horrible woman!”
“Everyone here is insane,” Alan said. “Lynn, tell me what happened.”
Not wanting to get the sexy woman into trouble, Lynn said, “I didn’t really see. I was … reading.” She slightly lifted her fashion magazine.
“It’s true what they say,” the sexy woman said, throwing her head back defiantly, reminding Lynn of Kathleen Turner. “I did it, and I don’t regret it.”
“Not yet anyway,” Alan said.
“I like it, I tell you.”
“You like it so far. You’ve been stalked exactly two steps. Wait till it’s been a thousand.”
“I look forward to it,” she said.
Alan next addressed Tom, the relapsing stalker. “Just turn away. It’s not too late. You can still turn away.”
“No,” the stalker growled. “Don’t touch me. I’ve never been happier in my life.”
“You shouldn’t be hearing this,” Alan shouted to the five stalkers.
They all stuck their fingers in their ears.
“If this is what you both want, please go and do it somewhere else. I shouldn’t be exposed to this either,” Alan said. “I feel my resistance weakening.”
But they did not go somewhere else. They were too absorbed with each other, she taking one tiny step back, and he responding with one small step forward. It was a beautiful, enticing dance in the eyes of the stalkers.
One of them suddenly remembered he had an antistalking motivational tape—a tape especially made for stalkers faced with temptation. He yanked his Walkman out of his knapsack and shared half of his headphones with one of his buddies. They listened to the tape for a few seconds, then allowed the three others to hear some of it for a few seconds, like scuba divers sharing one mouthpiece connected to one air tank, to survive. The headphones ended up breaking in half, because of the hysterical energy with which they were handled, but they still worked.
The stalkers calmed down. The commotion was over. The fallen stalker was finally gone with his prey, and the only bothersome thing left in their surroundings were the birders, from whom they occasionally heard distracting exclamations, like, “They’re both on the railing!” and “It’s been a very busy birdy day.”
Although the stalkers bad-mouthed the birders, they repositioned their chairs in order to hear the annoying things the birders were saying, such as: “I like the way the pigeons fly in that direction, then see the hawk and they go, ‘Uh-oh, uh-oh, never mind!’”
But most of all the stalkers heard talk of the babies. Whenever anyone caught a glimpse of a fuzzy white head in the nest, the birder shrieked, then the rest of them shrieked.
The stalkers rolled their eyes and shifted in their seats uncomfortably.
One of them seemed more nervous than the others, less cavalier. He began to repeat, while perspiring, “I will be the next one, I just know it.”
“Don’t think so negatively. Here, use the tape.” They thrust the Walkman into his sweaty palms. He pressed a broken half of headphone to his ear, but he could still hear the dangerous birding chatter in his other ear. His frustration increased. His desire to see the hawk’s babies was becoming intolerable.
Suddenly, there was a great commotion at the birding benches. Many of the birders exclaimed, “Soon Yi just came out on her balcony! Look! There’s Soon Yi!”
The pent-up stalker threw the Walkman at his compatriots, leapt out of his chair, and ran to the birders, tripping over the leg of a tripod, almost knocking over the expensive telescope. Not wasting a moment, he grabbed someone’s binoculars without bothering to remove the strap from her neck, and shouted, “I want to see the babies and Soon Yi!”
Nine
That evening, Lynn received another call from Roland. He sounded softer, contrite. He apologized for the way he had treated her, and said, “Come on now, hop on a bus and come home.”
“No.”
“Fine, but don’t come crawling back in two days then!” He hung up.
Lynn attended three more days of filming. And then it was over. It was time for Alan to get back to work at the accounting firm. When Lynn made little hints that she’d be depressed without his company to fill her days, he just chuckled and didn’t know what to say—he couldn’t very well invite her to the office to watch him work. Little did he suspect that she probably would have accepted the invitation, so fascinated was she by his new self. Since he had not extended the invitation, she settled for secretly following him to his job and “accidentally” bumping into him when he came out for lunch. She then suggested they have lunch, but he couldn’t because he had to have lunch with a client. He added, “You can walk with me there, if you want.” So they walked together, and when they arrived at the restaurant and he said good-bye to her, she said, “Well, I’ve got to have lunch, too. This looks like a nice place. I often come here myself. I’ll just sit at another table, if you don’t mind.”
He couldn’t very well say no. So they both went in, he a bit puzzled, and she picking out a table with a good view of him. During lunch, she watched him while pretending to read a fashion magazine. It was hard for her to pinpoint what
enchanted her so much about him. Maybe it was simply the contrast between what he had been and what he was now. She remembered having been seduced by contrast before—the contrast between Roland and the hotel manager, and contrast within the same person was even more provocative.
As for Alan, he was dismayed, not only that Lynn had come into the same restaurant, but that she was sitting there, staring at him. What was wrong with her? He wondered why he found her so puzzling, having himself engaged in her type of behavior once or twice. He recognized the symptoms. She was stalking him! It broke his heart.
He was still nice to her when she called him on the phone, knowing too well the anguish of stalkers.
As Lynn did not come crawling back in two days, nor in six, Roland called again, sounding sorrier. For the first time, she was a mystery to him.
“I miss you,” he said. “Let me come and get you. I could drive in, right now, and pick you up, and we could drive back and start things over.”
“I’m sorry, Roland, I’m not interested anymore. I’m in love with Alan.”
“What! The bastard! What has he said to you? What has he promised you?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t even know I love him. Or maybe he suspects, but not because I told him. Good-bye now, Roland. Take care.” She hung up.
He called back. “You little bitch! You get your ass on a bus this second and come back, do you hear? Or I’ll come and get you myself, and you don’t want that!”
“Please leave me alone. Get on with your life.” She hung up.
Oh! Indignation and outrage burned the roots of Roland’s recently thinning hair.
He called back. “You were the one stalking me! You were the one humiliating yourself, degrading yourself, like a little whore, following me down the street, panting, and now you have the gall to—” She hung up on him. He slammed down the receiver and screamed. He picked up the phone with both hands and shook it, and squeezed it hard. “Putain d’bordel de merde!” he said. He placed the phone down and redialed her number, breathing deeply.
“Please do not hang up on me,” he said to her. “Please let me finish my sentence, that’s all I ask. As I was saying, you were the one following me down the street, and now you have the gall to play Miss Hard-to-get, Miss I’m-gonna-go-and-be-a-whore-for-someone-else-now!” he screamed. “You are a fucking slut!”
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