Amanda Filipacchi - Love Creeps

“What is it?”

“Addiction.”

Lynn frowned.

“I highly recommend it,” Judy said. “One of my greatest pleasures is promising myself I will not drink, or smoke, or take coke, or do heroin, or eat cookies, then doing it. It’s a pleasure that can be repeated daily. The desire renews itself incessantly, and you can always rely on it unless you screw it up by going to rehab or something. But even then, the damage is not irreversible. The key, though, is making the resolution, making yourself think that you will be deprived, and indeed depriving yourself for a couple of hours to allow the desire to build up, then, suddenly, caving in. I bet heaven is caving in.”

“You’re dangerous,” Lynn said. “Your weapon is logic.”

“Thanks, but it’s really just common sense. And I’m not dangerous. I mean, you know I’m not a huge junkie. Just a little hooked on coke, a little on alcohol, a little on heroin; just enough to have that interesting tension in my life between wanting and satisfying.”

Judy’s attention was distracted by Alan. “Who’s that man? He’s been standing there peeking in this whole time.”

“I don’t know, some creep, just ignore him,” Lynn said.

Judy obeyed. “So anyway, as I was saying, my addictions are all under control. And yours can be, too, as long as you remember to maintain that all-important balance between deprivation and allowance, needing and fulfilling.”

“I’ll remember that, but I’m just not sure addiction is what I need at the moment.”

“Fine. It’s always something you can fall back on if you find nothing better. Let me ask you this: Have you really, really searched? Is there nothing at all that you desire?”

“I desire to desire, but I don’t think that counts as a desire.”

“I think it counts,” Judy replied, to be nice, even though she didn’t really think it did count.

Lynn shrugged. “So, you don’t have any other ideas, along the same lines, only more … humdrum?”

“How about antidepressants?”

“I don’t want to resort to those. They don’t seem right for my problem. I mean, I used to feel desire. There’s no reason I can’t recapture it.”

“Do you know why you lost it? Have you thought about it?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it! Haven’t we thought about it?” Lynn said, turning to Patricia.

“Yes,” Patricia said, “we’ve discussed and analyzed and dissected it for hours. We couldn’t come up with a cause.”

“Desire for what, exactly, did you lose?” Judy asked Lynn.

“All sorts of things. Various men. Travel. Discovering new artists, launching their careers, seeing my efforts pay off. Shopping. Acquiring things, beautiful clothes. I used to look forward to the ballet season, to certain parties, to hearing updates on my friends’ lives. I used to feel really passionate about all these things. And I got a lot of pleasure out of wanting them. I miss yearning strongly for something. I used to be like him,” she said, motioning toward her peeping stalker, then adding, “Inwardly.”

Judy nodded. “You’re suffering from anhedonia.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I still derive as much pleasure as ever from all sorts of things, like the smell of a rose, the company of a good friend, the feel of a beautiful day.” Plucking , Lynn added, in her thoughts. “And I still have strong emotions, I experience happiness and sadness. I’ve just lost the great hunger. I crave the hunger. I don’t even feel ambitious like I used to feel. And a sort of nausea washes over me at unexpected moments.”

“Sounds like a pain. I’ll try to come up with more ideas, but right now I’ve got to run. I’ll call you.” Judy left.

“Listen, I’ve got an idea,” Patricia said. “Perhaps it would help if you tried to be interested in something outside yourself, in another human being, for instance. People often do volunteer work for this purpose.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure that would make any difference. Do you suppose he does any volunteer work? And yet look at him, he’s happy,” Lynn said, pointing at her peeping stalker.

“Well, he is interested in another human being.”

“Oh. Maybe I should become a stalker, too, since I’m sure you’d think it would make me less self-centered. At least there’s some pep to it.”

Patricia stared at her with an expression Lynn read as exasperation. Lynn had learned from experience that the only way to cope with being stared at by her assistant was to ignore her and charge right ahead. So she muttered, “The problem is that to be a stalker, you have to want someone …”

Patricia had learned from experience that the best way to deal with Lynn’s annoyingly sensationalistic comments was to top them.

“Not necessarily,” she said, feigning absentmindedness and absorption in her work, in order to add authenticity and innocence to the sensationalistic comment she was about to make. “The chicken or the egg. Maybe to want someone, you have to stalk him first.”

Hearing no response, Patricia looked up to find her boss staring at her, unblinking. Lynn murmured, “What you just said is completely absurd and lame, yet it has great depth, and you don’t even realize it. It reminds me of that old theory about smiling, which says that people can feel happier by smiling first, instead of waiting until they feel happy before they smile.”

Lynn did not lose time. She frequently lost other things, like her keys, her hat, her desire, her wallet, but never time.

She chose a man in a Chelsea bakery, across the street from her gallery, thirty-seven minutes after she had decided to find someone to stalk. She had bought herself a meringue to get energy in her quest for a victim, and then— boom! — it happened. He walked in, and she thought, He’ll do . She had seen him before in the neighborhood. He never smiled. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties and was good-looking in a bland way, dark-haired, tall, and tan. She disapproved of tanning but was willing to disregard it for now. Her only concern was the sweater tied around his shoulders. A gay man was not the prime choice for heterosexual stalking. She held out hope that maybe he was just European.

With relief, she noted a slight French accent when he asked for a pain au chocolat and a croissant and a palmier . Despite his large order, his body was muscular. The pastries were possibly for friends. Or perhaps he was an obsessive gym-goer. When he turned around to leave, she was ruffled to notice that around his neck he wore a locket. She remained standing, uncertain for an instant, but decided to chalk up the locket to his French citizenship as well, then followed him out of the bakery.

She was glad she’d seen him before in the area. It was convenient if he lived nearby. She had no intention of stalking someone who lived far away. Long-distance stalking had to be annoying.

Right then, possessed by the enthusiasm often accompanying the onset of a new hobby, she was willing to follow him far, which was why she was unpleasantly let down when he entered a building less than a block away. She almost muttered “Ow” from the sheer discomfort of being left standing on the sidewalk with her stalking enthusiasm still swollen.

At a loss as to what an average stalker would do next, Lynn took out her cell phone and instructed her assistant to replace her at the building until her prey reappeared. She returned to her art gallery to wait for her assistant to call and tell her the prey was ready for further stalking.

At five-thirty Lynn got the call and resumed the tailing herself.

The man walked a few blocks and entered an apartment building with a doorman.

This new postponement was maddening. She really wanted to get going on her stalking project.