Plan B (13 page)

It was so obvious to all of us from the beginning how in love with Jack Alison was, he’d have to have been a complete idiot to miss it, and Jack was no idiot. Yet throughout college and the years after, he never made a single romantic overture, never seemed to even entertain the notion that there was gold to be mined in his friendship with Alison. I know how frustrating it was for Lindsey, Chuck, and me to watch, so I can only imagine what it did to Alison. Lindsey was the only one who was able to talk to Alison about it, to encourage her to move on and look elsewhere for love, but she never met with any lasting success. Her sessions with Alison could become so heated that the two of them would get into fights, sometimes not speaking for days afterward. “Any other guy here would die to have her!” Lindsey would say, her eyes bulging in disbelief. “They’d be fucking lining up at her door! And instead she has to fixate on the one guy who’s too damn stupid to realize what he’s got! What is she, a freaking masochist?!”

Alison did occasionally go out on perfunctory dates, but it didn’t take very long for the new guys to figure out that they were competing against someone they could never beat. Lindsey, so independent and strong-willed, couldn’t stand to see Alison in such a submissive state, and she rarely passed on an opportunity to plead her case. These periodic battles served to forge a strong bond between her and Alison, although it didn’t do much for Lindsey’s friendship with Jack. If Alison wasn’t going to be pissed about the way he treated her, then someone had to be. Lindsey blamed Jack for not loving Alison, or for not letting her go, and while I don’t recall her ever addressing the issue with him, I know she harbored a strong resentment toward him. “He goes out and does every girl on campus,” she complained to me once while we were under the arch in Washington Square sharing a falafel between classes. It was winter, and her cheeks were burnished from the wind and I was wondering how much damage it would do if I leaned over and kissed one of those cheeks. “And then he comes home and goes out for coffee with his
friend
, Alison.”

I remember thinking that there might be an obvious parallel to be drawn with Lindsey and myself, but in a rare display of discretion I chose not to point it out. “They really are friends,” I said instead.

“Come on, Ben,” she said. “He knows what he’s doing. She’s his, I don’t know what, his safety net or something, and it’s not right. It’s emotional enslavement.”

I know she wanted me to take issue with Jack, to talk to him about it and try to make him see what he was doing to Alison, but I didn’t see things that way exactly. Jack rarely discussed his past, but I knew his mother had died when he was very young and he didn’t get along with his father. Something he’d once said had left me with a vague notion of abuse, but I couldn’t recall exactly what it was. Either way, there was clearly a powerful, maternal
aspect in the way Alison cared for Jack, something undeniably nurturing. Jack took great comfort in that facet of the relationship, and he wasn’t willing to risk losing it by turning it into something sexual. Even though it often looked to us like Jack treated Alison poorly, I think he actually loved her more deeply than any of us imagined, and her warmth and approval were his sanctuary. To defile that with sex might have been unthinkable to him, treating her like any other girl on campus. In a strange way, I think Jack felt himself unworthy of Alison when it came to a true, sexual relationship.

On some level, Jack must have realized that Alison had needs, too, needs that weren’t being fulfilled because of her unwavering commitment to him. Maybe that meant there was an element of selfishness to his relationship with her, but he rationalized it away since she was too important to him to lose. I don’t know if I understood this then, or if I only had a faint notion and I’m imposing years of subsequent analysis on my memory, but I’m pretty certain that both of them understood the true nature of their relationship. They were simply powerless to do anything about it. Jack and Alison loved each other, but needed different things from that love, which put them at tragic cross-purposes. Relationships don’t come with a warranty and being in love is no guarantee of a happy ending. Just look at me and Lindsey. If anything, love is just a starting point. Then life intrudes, along with the personal baggage you’ve spent years packing, and things get royally and irrevocably fucked up. You can get bitter or you can keep trying. Most people do some of each.

I thought about all of that as I felt Alison’s cries pulsating against my forehead, and we all sat there in the bar trying to absorb some of her sadness, to lighten her load just a little bit. After another moment Alison wiped her eyes and offered us a grin. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’ve had that coming for a while.”

“Well,” said Chuck, lifting his glass in a mock toast. “To Jack’s health.”

Lindsey picked up her glass. “To saving Jack’s ass from himself.”

“To Alison,” I said. “The lady with the plan.”

Alison wiped her eyes and lifted her glass. “Plan B,” she said. We downed our drinks.

“I’m reminded of a joke,” Chuck said. “What’s the difference between friends and good friends?”

“What?” I asked.

“A friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move bodies.”

I once kissed Alison. Or she kissed me, I’m not sure. Some kissing took place though, in the Village East Cinema in our junior year. We’d gone together to see the director’s cut of
Blade Runner
, which always seemed to be showing somewhere in the Village. It was something of an annual tradition for us since we had a longstanding argument over whether Harrison Ford’s character was actually a Replicant or not. Alison said yes, I said no. We sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning on each other in a friendly manner as we watched Rutger Hauer beat the crap out of Harrison Ford in the not too distant future, and all of a sudden we were kissing, not long deep kisses but short, gentle, experimental ones. Upper lip, lower lip, open mouth, closed mouth, chin, nose. It felt good, but a little too unreal to get me going. It was like kissing through plastic. After a while the kisses tapered off and we were left forehead to forehead, looking at each other sheepishly. Alison finally whispered, “It was worth a try.”

I smiled and kissed her cheekbone. “It would have been a nice way out, huh?”

She closed her eyes. “Yes.” It was the first time either of us had expressed any frustration about our respective situations with Lindsey and Jack. Jack was dating some model/graphic artist from FIT and Lindsey was dating Boris, the Magician, and Alison and I were trading worthless kisses in an empty movie theater.

We turned back to the screen. Rutger Hauer was now breaking Harrison Ford’s fingers. “Why do you think we take it?” she asked without looking away.

“You can’t pick who you fall for,” I said.

“That’s lame,” she said. “We’re intelligent people. We should be able to see that something’s not happening and move on. Why can’t we do that?”

“Because we’re artless romantics.”

“Or blind optimists.”

I thought about that for a few seconds and didn’t come to any new conclusions.

“If I could just believe that he really didn’t love me,” Alison said haltingly. “If I could just make myself believe that, I think I could move on.”

“But he does,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “And there’s the rub. It’s funny really. The great tragedy isn’t that Jack doesn’t love me. It’s that he does.” She was quiet for a moment. “What about you and Lindsey?”

“What about us?”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” I lied. “I like the way we are.”

“Oh,” she said with attitude. “You do.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Oh please! You just kissed me more than you’ve ever kissed her. You’re going to tell me that doesn’t bother you?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not a bad kisser.”

“Stop being evasive,” Alison said, giving my wrist a squeeze.

“What do you mean? You brought up the kissing.”

She looked at me for a minute and then smiled. “You’re even evasive about being evasive,” she said. “You’ve got it bad.”

“I don’t know,” I relented. “I guess we’re just being penalized for being such invaluable friends. There are worse things.”

“If you really believe that, you’re a better person than me.” She sighed and leaned her head on my shoulder. I patted her leg and we watched the movie. A battered Harrison Ford was running and limping through a dim alley in the rain. I said, “It’s always raining in the future.”

M
ESSAGE

For: Mr. George Bernard.

From: Dr. Samuel Richter, Mt. Sinai Hospital

Date: October 4, 1998

Please call at once regarding instructions for emergency care of Alison Scholling
.

Jack always used one of three aliases when he checked into hotels. We got it right on the second try and left the message. It was a jerky thing to do, but Alison insisted. He returned the call one hour later, to a number that actually rang at the desk of a receptionist at Mt. Sinai with whom Chuck was friendly despite his having dated her briefly. The call was routed to Dr. Samuel Richter, actually a candy striper who read from a script Chuck had meticulously prepared. Dr. Richter informed Jack that Ms. Scholling had been in a major car accident, sustaining head trauma as
well as various internal injuries that he listed in jargon calculated to simultaneously confuse the layman and scare the shit out of him. Jack’s name, he was told, was listed in her wallet along with her family, who had yet to be reached, since they were vacationing overseas. We were gambling that Jack would be too worried to wonder how the hospital knew to reach him at the Plaza.

As Alison had predicted, Chuck’s beeper went off less than a minute later. It was sitting on a desk between the two of us when it began vibrating in an electronic jitterbug across the desk’s scratched surface. Chuck caught it as it went over the edge, looked at the readout and said, “It’s him.” He put it back on the desk and we waited sixty seconds until the beeper went off again. We were sitting in an unused office that Chuck said the interns used as a smoking room.

“Sounds like an emergency,” I said, as Chuck pressed a button to stop the vibrating. We weren’t going to answer the page right away. We wanted Jack to be as agitated as possible, and Chuck knew from experience that ignoring the beeper would do the trick. A minute later the beeper went off again. This time Chuck picked up the phone and dialed the number. When he got the Plaza’s front desk he read off the room number on his beeper and Jack picked up on the first ring. I leaned in to better hear Jack’s end of the conversation.

“Hello,” Chuck said lazily. “Did somebody there page me?”

“It’s Jack, Chuck,” Jack screamed into the phone, prompting Chuck to jerk the receiver away from his ear. “Did you hear about Alison?”

“What about her?” Chuck asked.

“She’s been in an accident,” Jack said. “Shit, Chuck, she’s in your hospital.”

“What happened?” Chuck asked, finally putting a trace of concern in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “A car crash or something. I’m coming over there now.”

“Hold on a second, Jack,” Chuck said. “Just calm down and tell me everything. How do you know she was admitted?”

“I got a call,” Jack said impatiently. “Some Dr. Richter guy left me a message.”

“Sam Richter?” Chuck asked. “From emergency?”

“Yes!” Jack said. “Samuel Richter.”

“Shit. The guy’s practically retired already. I’d better get down there.”

“I’m coming now,” Jack said.

“Hold on, Jack,” Chuck said. “You can’t just run into an emergency room here. They won’t let you in. And besides, you’re too easily recognized. You’ll cause a commotion. Just stay there and let me check it out. I’ll call you.”

“No way,” Jack said. “I’m coming over there now.”

“Okay, okay,” Chuck said, pretending to think about it. “But let’s do it this way. Come in at the Ninety-eighth Street entrance, and take the elevator up to the eighth floor. My office is 812. Meet me there, and I’ll take you to see her. By the time you get here, I should have more information.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Fine. Two other things, Jack.”

“Yes,” Jack said impatiently.

“First, wear some sort of disguise, okay? We don’t want to cause a scene down there.”

“Got it. What else?”

Chuck took a deep breath. This was the part on which everything else depended. “Come alone. I don’t think I have enough clout to get your entourage past the triage nurse.”

“I’m on my way,” Jack said, and hung up.

“He’s on his way,” Chuck said, flashing me a nervous grin. We were like two kids making a prank phone call.

“Terrific,” I said without much enthusiasm.

Chuck reached into his desk and pulled out a small leather case that looked like a shaving kit. He pulled out a nasty looking syringe and a pear-shaped vial. Yanking the red plastic shield off the needle with his teeth, he jabbed it into the top of the vial and pulled back on the plunger, carefully watching as the liquid filled the syringe. When the syringe was three quarters of the way full, he pulled the needle out of the vial, pressed lightly on the plunger to squirt out a little liquid, and then replaced the red needle shield with his teeth in one smooth motion. Then, holding the syringe up in front of him, he flicked it twice with his finger, peering intently into the liquid.