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?”