“I’m tired. You’re being unreasonable. I’ll drive back in the morning.”
Roland sighed. “God, you’re such a jerk.” He could not wait for an opportunity to beat up Alan. He came up with a way he could treat himself to it after visiting Max. “Okay, I want my car back tomorrow morning. I’ll be going to the field of Lynn’s love, because, you never know, maybe that map-reading professor was right and it’ll increase my chances of Lynn falling back in love with me. The field is on your way back into Manhattan. You can pick me up there, and we can drive together.”
He gave Alan directions to the field and told him to meet him there at eight-thirty the following morning. He added, “Do you think you’ll find it, with your poor sense of direction?”
“I’ll find it,” Alan said.
“By the way, Max is kind of a jerk, isn’t he?” Roland asked.
“Yeah, he goes a bit overboard with the preferential treatment and the luxuries and the compliments.”
Roland was reassured that he had neither misunderstood nor misinterpreted what he had heard through the window.
Alan was still lying by the pool. Max came up to him and said, “I’m sorry Lynn left in such a huff.”
“Oh, I know, it’s a shame, but probably unavoidable. Maybe for the best.”
“What time will you be checking out?”
“Seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“You’re welcome to help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen when you wake, in case I’m not up yet.”
Alan squinted up at him, at his kindness. The descending sun shone behind him.
“Thanks.”
Max planned to have sex with Jessica in the sitting room at about 7:00 A.M. He didn’t tell her that was when her boyfriend would be coming down. What he said, as he lured her down from her room, was that the public aspect would add tremendous excitement to the situation. The truth was that he was smitten with her and wouldn’t mind having her for himself. He was hoping Alan would break up with her.
At 7:00 A.M., Alan caught them.
He pushed Max off his girlfriend, screaming, “What have you done to her! She’s ill! You are fucking with an ill person!”
Max screamed back, “Shit! What does she have? Herpes, gonorrhea, HIV? Please don’t tell me it’s HIV!”
“She’s a sex addict,” Alan hissed.
Jessica said, “I’m sorry, but it’s over, Alan. I can’t be with anyone for very long. Being with you this long was my record, and I thank you for it, but it was becoming too hard for me.”
“You’re dumping me for him?”
“No. I’m not interested in having a relationship with Max. I have no intention of ever seeing him again. It was just a fling.”
“I’m not breaking up with you over this,” Alan said. “I’ll help you get back on track. You were doing so well, so many months. You mustn’t let one slip-up ruin everything!”
“I wasn’t doing well. I was having sex with other men almost every day.”
“No.”
“Yes! You thought I was jealous about this weekend. Well, you were wrong. I was upset with you going away, because I wouldn’t have the willpower to resist sleeping with a dozen men.”
Alan thought he might collapse. He staggered to his borrowed car and sped off.
Without so much as a word or a glance back at Max, Jessica rushed to her rented car and followed Alan, not only because it was in her nature to follow, but because she wanted to make sure he wouldn’t do anything self-destructive.
Alan cried as he drove. He could feel his stalking urges, but he tried to fight them. He would not stalk Jessica. He did not want to want her. Anyway, he knew that the urge to stalk her was an absurd urge, since at the moment he could see in his rearview mirror that she was stalking him, and on top of that, after learning of her ongoing infidelity, he didn’t really want her back at all. And not wanting her back was strangely more painful than wanting her.
His only comfort was that he had been sexually abused as a child. It was a relief to blame his problems on his abuser. Since he had an urge to fix something in his messed-up life, he suddenly made the decision — which lifted his spirits slightly — to go and confront his abuser, scream at her, show her how she had ruined his life. Things could only get better after one lashed out at one’s abuser.
Alan drove straight to Cross, forty-five minutes away. He tried calling Roland to tell him he’d be at least an hour late for their meeting in the field of Lynn’s love, but Roland didn’t answer his phone, so Alan left a message.
He parked his car at his abuser’s house. Jessica parked a ways away.
He rang Miss Tuttle’s doorbell.
Miss Tuttle had aged a lot in thirty years. She stood in the doorway, tying her bathrobe.
“Am I disturbing you?” he asked, and before she could answer, he added, “Not that I care.”
She looked him up and down in a snobby way, he thought, and said, “You caught me in the middle of taking monthly nude photos of myself to observe the aging process.”
“You are a sick woman. I’m surprised you haven’t committed suicide.”
“Why say such a horrible thing to me?” Miss Tuttle asked.
“You made me touch a mangofish. Remember? I was only five years old, for God’s sakes! At least Seymour never made the little girl touch the bananafish.”
“That’s because there is no such thing as a bananafish,” Miss Tuttle said. “But I did have a mangofish. I still do. It’s in my bedroom. Go in and see, if you want.”
He went into the bedroom, expecting her to either strip for him or attempt to murder him.
But in the bedroom was a fifty-gallon fish tank that shone in the darkness like a gigantic jewel. Inside was a fish that was about six inches long, and had whiskers and wrinkled skin, like a basset hound.
“But how did you have the fish in the water with you? You can’t hold a fish on a leash.”
“I had it in a plastic bag, and I opened the bag a little under the water to let you pet it.”
Alan apologized to Miss Tuttle for having accused her of such a heinous crime. He had an irrational urge to apologize to the fish as well but knew it wasn’t the exact fish, because fish didn’t live that long.
They went back into the living room. Alan seemed deflated. In an attempt to make him feel better, she brought in a muffin from the kitchen, and asked, “Do you want to taste my pussy? It’s nice and warm.”
He blanched. She burst out laughing. “I’m teasing! You are too funny. You must come and visit me again. People around here are so jaded, let me tell you. But you!” She left it at that.
He confessed to her that he would have liked her to have been his abuser and that now he couldn’t help resenting her a little because she wasn’t. He explained how bad his life had been, and how it had gotten better, and now bad again, and how blaming it all on her had eased his suffering.
And he rushed out, disgusted with himself.
Ten minutes later, Alan had to pull over on the side of the road to cry some more. Jessica pulled over behind him. She looked at him through her binoculars. She felt sorry to see him cry but knew this was how things had to be.
As he cried, Alan felt like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. All the wonderful things in his life had turned back to crap. He had lost his girlfriend and his abuser. And to top it all off, he hadn’t even registered for the fall semester. If only he had classes to fall back on, perhaps things wouldn’t seem so dire.
He thought of calling Lynn and using her for sex, but first he would check his messages to see if any suicidal friends called who might cheer him up. There were nine new obsessive messages from Lynn, which made her unappealing, and therefore useless, even for a rebound.