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 silent 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.