Amanda Filipacchi - Love Creeps

Alan asked himself what would it matter if he had a friend to talk to, anyway. He couldn’t talk to him about his thoughts of murder. Maybe he should get a pet. He could tell a pet about his thoughts of murder.

He went to a pet store and looked at the various animals, trying to imagine himself talking to them about murder and seeing what kind of expression they’d have on their faces. He did this little exercise with the kittens and puppies first, but they were too cute and floppy. The snakes and lizards were not bad, but he felt they were mocking the mildness of his evil, which gave him a feeling of inferiority. The rabbits posed the opposite problem. The fish just turned their backs to him. And the mice were oblivious.

He was sure he would never murder anyone, but thinking about it was helping him get through this tough period.

As Alan walked out of Petland petless and looked down at the curb, he thought of the ideal animal to confide in. He went back and asked, “Do you have any rats?”

A rat would be perfect. He could send it murderous thoughts for hours on end and get satisfying vibes back. He was certain of it.

“We have just one.”

It didn’t look like the ideal type of rat to receive murderous thoughts, for it was mostly white with a few brown patches, but the mere knowledge that it was a rat would more than make up for its prim coloration. If he ever felt uncertain, he’d just stare at its eyes and nose and repeat the word “rat” in his mind, and he’d get a metaphorical hard-on. He just knew it.

He bought the rat. The love affair began immediately. It was torrid. That evening, they watched TV together, the rat lying spread-eagle, flat like a pancake, on Alan’s stomach. Alan was stroking its back while the rat practically purred with contentment and fell asleep. When it woke up, Alan fed it chocolate pound cake, and they checked the stairwell doors together.

Alan took a bath with the rat. Then he combed it and talked to it and named it Pancake. The rat’s small abrupt movements were slightly annoying, and Alan thought Pancake would look more intelligent if only he didn’t move so jerkily. That was really the pet’s only flaw: bad body language.

Alan held Pancake on his chest, his hand over the rat’s back, his fingers around the rat’s face, to hold it in place and prevent it from making those movements that made Pancake look as though he had Parkinson’s disease. Alan stared into the rat’s eyes and said, “What do you think? Should I kill them? Should I?” He stared deeper into the little black eyes that reminded Alan of periods.

Lynn called Charlie Santi and asked him to bring over all his new work.

“You mean all that stuff you called crap?” he asked.

“I didn’t say it was crap, I just didn’t … But yeah, bring it over, would you?”

A half hour later, Lynn was staring at Charlie’s work. “Oh, Charlie.”

“What?” he said, coldly.

Her hand was over her heart as she kept staring at the little shape that was either strangling or hugging the other in the midst of all the white. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

He waited for her to elaborate.

But all she said was, again, “I’m so sorry.”

“That’s what you said the last time I was here.”

“I was sick. These are magnificent. Your best work yet, by far. You’re now my best artist. I hope I haven’t lost you.”

After a long moment, he said, “I guess not. But I don’t want to go through that nightmare again.”

“Me neither.”

“I felt like I had lost you.”

“You haven’t,” she said, hugging him. She noticed Patricia giving her a little smile and raising one eyebrow.

The following day, thanks to the rat’s company, Alan felt slightly better and was able to eat. He skipped work again, and by the end of the afternoon, he felt strong enough to get started on a little stalking of Lynn and Roland: the couple.

Alan intended to quit stalking soon. He knew it wasn’t healthy for him. He would stop it, cold turkey. He already had an idea of how he would do it. But before reforming, he wanted to sink into the most gross behavior he could manage.

“Traitors!” he shouted at them, when Roland picked Lynn up at her gallery after work.

Carrying a small white basket, he followed them down the street. He didn’t even try to make the stalking good. “You stink, you pretentious asshole. And you, Lynn, you’re ugly! And what is this crap about you trying to want him! And about you stalking him insincerely! You sicko! You are both fucked-up sickos!”

They walked more briskly. Roland dropped a button on the sly. He and Lynn gave change to Ray. Alan did, too. The redheaded, ex-psychologist, homeless man scrutinized them and tried to repress his curiosity. He restrained himself from throwing the change at their backs.

He heard Alan scream at the two others, “And look what I have here!” He saw Alan take a squirming animal out of his basket, and say, “It’s a rat!”

Pancake was on a leash and halter, so there was no risk of his running into the gutter to join the other rats. “He wants to kiss you, Lynn! Won’t you give him a little kiss? I know you like kissing vermin.” As was often the case with people who intended soon to quit something cold turkey, Alan was binging on his addiction.

Roland suddenly stopped in front of a fabric shop and said, “I need to go in here for a second.”

“Why?” Lynn asked.

“I’m out of buttons.”

Alan did not follow them into the store. Roland picked out some buttons and paid for them.

Lynn examined the buttons and couldn’t think which of his clothes they would suit. Some were red, some yellow, some were suede, some were tiger’s eye, and some were covered in fabric. They were all small. “What are these buttons for?” she asked.

“For nothing. I just need them.”

“Do you collect them?”

“No, I lose them. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Why does something have to be wrong with you? Everybody loses buttons.”

“But not as many as I do.”

Alan stalked the couple again the next day, after work. Roland begged him to stop, and promised he’d go out with him to help him meet women. But Alan wanted Lynn. The couple decided to endure the stalking. They didn’t think Alan was dangerous, and they felt sorry for him.

Alan was frustrated by their newfound indifference to his stalking. After what they had done to him, they could at least do him the courtesy of acting annoyed. He toned down his stalking to make them nervous. When neither subtle nor obvious stalking was unsettling them, Alan shut himself up in his apartment and didn’t go to work or eat for days. He sat facing his window hour after hour. Sometimes he held Pancake on his lap. Finally, one afternoon, weak from not having eaten, and yet not hungry, he put on his boots and went to a meeting of Stalkaholics Anonymous.

Most of Lynn’s fifteen artists came back to her. A couple of them even cried from joy that she wanted them. She only lost two, who were by then committed to other galleries, but even they were disappointed that their ties were severed.

Opening Lynn’s mail one morning, Patricia saw that Lynn had not lost time in using her rejection method to prevent the future loss of her desire.

Patricia popped her head in Lynn’s office and said, “You just received your rejection from the Over Seventies Club in southern Florida.”

During the next seven months, something extraordinary happened. With the help of Stalkaholics Anonymous in conjunction with the emotional support he was getting from Pancake, Alan began to believe that perhaps he could turn his life around, improve it drastically.

The beginning of Alan’s transformation happened on the subway one day, when he was thinking about an article he had read that morning entitled “Looking for Alternatives to the Rat Race.” He had recently realized that he was not, at this point in his life, interested in climbing the corporate ladder and making lots of money. He wanted to be happy, sane, and not stalk. But happiness could be expensive. Not to mention sanity. He had therefore followed the article’s advice and checked out the Web site FrugalLifestyle.com, but had been turned off by the method called Alternative Acquisition Methods, or Dumpster Diving, which translated as rummaging through garbage.