Out of the bushes appeared a little pointy face. A raccoon. She threw bread at the raccoon, not quite far enough, in order to lure the animal closer. It worked.
“You should not feed this animal. It’s vermin,” Roland said.
“I strongly disagree.” Lynn kept feeding it, bringing it closer.
“You’re not even trying to like me. Why did you bother coming this weekend?”
“I am trying,” she said.
Roland used another tactic. “I’m hungry. I want to eat your bread. Please give it to me.”
“I don’t have much left.”
“Will you choose to give your bread to an animal rather than to a hungry man?”
“Yes.”
Lynn continued feeding the raccoon. How much more she enjoyed taming than stalking. Perhaps the world was divided into two kinds of people: the tamers and the stalkers. She was clearly a tamer. Taming was a more evolved activity. Stalking was a more animalistic activity. Like eating. Like fucking.
“It might have rabies,” Roland said, looking at the raccoon, who was a foot from Lynn’s leg. “You better be careful.”
By then the raccoon was eating out of Lynn’s hand. It gave her a strange feeling of sadness that this was the level at which things could feel right and good. Roland better not move a hair and ruin this one sweet moment for her, or she would kill him.
He did not.
And the raccoon bit her.
She yanked her hand away, looking at the animal with shock as it ran into the bushes. He had bitten her out of the blue, the brute.
“Is it bleeding?” Roland asked.
“Yes.”
As they walked back to the hotel to find the manager, Roland furtively dropped a button and said, “I told you that you should have fed me the bread. I wouldn’t have bitten you.”
“There has been one instance,” Max said, “in these parts, of someone catching rabies from a raccoon. The only way you can tell if someone has it is to do an autopsy. If you’re not sure, you have to get six shots over the course of a month. Was the raccoon aggressive? Or strangely forward? Did it approach you without fear? Sort of like … oh, I don’t know … a stalker?”
“No, not without fear. It took a while for it to eat out of my hand.”
“That’s a good sign. But I still think you should see a doctor on Monday. Symptoms don’t often appear before two weeks, but if you wait until they do appear, there’s no treatment, you die.”
“What are the symptoms?” Roland asked.
“Irritability, headaches, fever, spasms of the throat muscles, and, eventually, convulsions and delirium. The girl who died of rabies had everything going for her. It’s a very painful death. And, obviously, it’s contagious.” Max looked at Lynn. “If you start acting strangely, I will have to put you down.”
“You mean kill me?” Lynn said.
“If I see no alternative.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Just don’t act strangely.”
All three stared at each other for a few seconds. Abruptly, Max said to Roland, “Simon Peach called for you again. He wondered if you had gotten his first message.”
Lynn had an introspective, preoccupied look on her face during dinner. She was trying to detect rabid feelings in herself, feelings of aggressiveness. She worried that she might be salivating more than usual. And she felt strangely drawn to her knife.
She complained of these things to Roland, who tried to get her mind off them. To get one’s mind off a worry, there’s nothing like replacing it by another worry. So Roland talked to her about her desire for nothing and how unpleasant it must have been and must still be, and soon she was no longer complaining about strange attractions to knives.
Max had prepared them vegetable lasagna. He joined them for a few minutes, addressing Roland while looking at Lynn. “Earlier she mentioned being your stalker. I know it’s probably wrong of me, but in my mind I tend to equate stalker with whore.”
Lynn and Roland looked at Max, thinking he was completely insane.
Roland came to Lynn’s defense. “Lynn stalks me not because she desires me, but because she doesn’t.”
“Whatever,” Max said, nodding, and looked at Lynn. “I guess the reason I equate female stalkers with whores is that I assume they’re desperate to have sex. So at some point if I happen to say to you, ‘Do you want to sit on my cock?” please don’t take it personally. I would say that to any female stalker who’s not one of my own stalkers. Oh, and as you may have noticed, I wear a codpiece, which shouldn’t frighten you. It’s true I have a larger penis than most men, particularly in these parts, but it’s not quite as big as the codpiece might lead you to believe.”
“Is this some sort of show you put on to entertain your guests?” Roland asked.
“Now I’m offended.”
“You’re offended!”
Max nodded. No one spoke, so Max got up, and said, “It’s okay, I’ll get over it.” He walked away.
Lynn wondered if her annoyance at Max was a sign of rabies or if a normal, healthy, nonrabid woman could have become equally annoyed.
Later, she mused to Roland, “Does the madness take hold of you suddenly or gradually? I mean, do you have time to realize what’s happening?”
After dinner, they said good night and retired to their separate rooms. Roland dialed Alan, who picked up instantly.
“You didn’t call me!” Alan wailed, his voice tinged with hysteria.
“I’m sorry, I was thinking about it all day,” Roland said.
“Have you been unattractive?” Alan asked.
“I think so.”
“Did you wear that hideous shirt you showed me?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh, please wear it. Have you been offensive?”
“Uh, I think so.”
“Like what? What did you say?”
“Um, well, when we took a walk, I criticized her for running after a hare. I told her to repress her stalking instincts.”
“Ah! That’s good. She ran after a hare? That’s cute!”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean, ‘Yeah’?”
“I’m just agreeing with you.”
“You are?”
“Yes. What are you getting at?”
“You’re agreeing with me that Lynn is cute to run after a hare.”
“I guess I was, but I misspoke. I don’t really think it’s cute. It was just an automatic response.”
“You don’t really think it’s cute. That’s still more positive than how you felt about her before. You found her repulsive, before.”
“You’re being nitpicky.”
“Are you falling for her?”
“No!” Roland said, emphatically and indignantly, which made Alan feel better.
“I wish I was in your shoes, man. I wish I was with her right now,” Alan said.
They hung up, and Roland went to bed.
All through breakfast, Roland seemed sullen. Lynn didn’t inquire about it. She had her own preoccupations. At the end of the meal Roland suddenly broke the silence with, “I’ll help you to like me. We can both work toward that goal. Tell me what to do, I’ll do it. What do you like in guys?”
Lynn turned her gaze out the dining room window. After a few seconds, she said, “I think we should hang out with the hotel manager.”
“Max? Why?”
“Because you seem more appealing to me when he’s nearby.”
Roland frowned. “You mean by comparison?”
“Yes. You’re enhanced by him.” She said this because it was partly true, but also because she didn’t want Roland to know the main quality that made him more appealing was his distaste for her.
They found Max and invited him to have tea and a snack with them in the sitting room. He made the tea, brought it to them with cookies, and seemed glad for their company. They were about to ask him questions in order to bring out his repulsiveness, but when they heard the words that came out of his mouth, they knew it would not be necessary.