Amanda Filipacchi - Love Creeps

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.

“Yes, there’s something she never told you,” they said, dragging it out.

Alan waited, lips clenched.

“She has a doctorate in economics.”

“Assholes.”

“What. Aren’t you happy? She turned out to be even better than we thought.”

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Feeling guilty and wanting to make up for having snooped, they told him they’d throw him and Ruth a party to celebrate the fact that their snooping hadn’t turned up anything negative and that Ruth was not a bad soulmate so far.

The party took place at the home of one of Ray’s clients, who was glad to lend his ground-floor duplex to the founder of Chock Full O’Nuts, for a celebration at which he was hoping to meet some good romantic matches.

Alan searched for his model soulmate at the party. She’d left his side soon after they’d arrived together. He found her on the second-floor balcony, sitting on the balustrade, looking down at the garden. When Alan approached her, he saw that she was gazing down, specifically, at Roland, who was standing alone with a glass of white wine, facing the potted trees. Every time Alan saw his soulmate staring at Roland, his gut hurt. He could already see it coming: roaming interest, flirtation, infidelity. He didn’t want to go through that again.

In fact, Ruth did not have those specific impure thoughts or disloyal intentions. She was only marveling at that thing she and Roland had in common, which was visible only to her. Having things in common naturally increases people’s interest in one another. That interest is not necessarily, or even usually, romantic. Just basic human interest. The more significant that thing which people have in common is, the more intense the interest is likely to be. Therefore, Ruth’s degree of interest in Roland was perfectly continent and respectable considering that what they had in common was murder.

Ruth sensed that Alan was feeling jealous. She wished she could reassure him. With time, he’d understand she was a faithful person. If he knew she’d killed her ex and her sister, he’d probably be even more worried, but there was no need for him to be concerned about that either. His life would not be in danger as long as he didn’t annoy her with (a) self-contradictions, (b) lack of logic, (c) an inability to hold his side of an argument, or (d) other irritants.

She told Alan she was going to get another drink and left his side.

In another corner of the party, Roland approached Lynn. “Have you noticed how Alan’s girlfriend doesn’t stop staring at me?”

“No,” Lynn said, even though she had.

“She wants me,” he said, looking at Ruth, who was now staring at him while standing near the drinks table, chatting with Ray.

“Well, you shouldn’t stare back,” Lynn said.

“Why not? She’s hot for me. I may do a lot more than stare back.”

Lynn looked at him sternly. “Just because things didn’t work out for you and Victoria doesn’t mean you should spoil things for Alan. You should wish him well.”