Genetic lottery. He taps only four letters into the Google maw—deme—and is instantly rewarded with a slew of dementia subjects, including “Dementia versus Alzheimer’s,” which sounds like the worst action movie franchise ever. He changes the search to dementia delusions and ends up on the website of the Canadian Alzheimer’s Society, where he quickly learns a distinction he should have already known, fussy as he is about words. Whatever happened last night was not a delusion, but a hallucination. Oh boy, sweet victory.
Feeling very much like the Scotland Yard inspector in Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, he rolls onto his back and reviews last night’s events as logically as possible. He heard the phone ring. （Or did he?） He answered it. Assuming it had, in fact, rung. A woman spoke to him and insisted she was Aubrey. What sort of person would do such a thing?
What does he know?
One: It is someone who has his number, which is unlisted, although Gerry knows the Internet is lousy with services that can fetch such information, for a fee. So, basically, anyone with a little money to throw at their mischief.
Two: The voice was female, he is sure of that. So now the pool of suspects has been halved.
Three: It’s someone who is familiar with his book. Hmmm. It has sold three million copies in English alone and who knows how many used or library copies have been perused. But, okay, let’s say it’s a woman, a woman who knows the book but, more importantly, knows him. The very use of Gerry indicates intimacy—those who have not met him always lead with Gerald, a name he despises because he shares it with his father. If he had it to do over again, he would publish under Gerry, but when he was young, his nickname felt callow. Gerry always wanted to be old, serious, imbued with gravitas.
Mission accomplished. Alas.
The woman did not sound like Margot and, frankly, this kind of mind-fuckery is not Margot’s style. And although the voice is tantalizingly familiar, he can’t imagine any of his ex-wives pulling such a stunt, either. He has had no contact with any of them, not really, for years, although Lucy and Sarah wrote notes after his mother died. His mother had liked both of them quite a bit; she had no use for Gretchen whatsoever. On the eve of his wedding to Sarah, a suitably low-key affair for a third-timer but a wedding nonetheless, his mother had two glasses of wine at the so-called rehearsal dinner and blurted out: “I like all of Gerry’s odd-numbered wives.” Everyone had laughed uproariously at his mother’s wit, but Gerry recognized the confession as a moment of alcohol-fueled candor.
Then there was his colleague at Hopkins, Shannon Little, who at one point tried to claim she had inspired Aubrey—he wonders if she is newly emboldened by #MeToo to assert this nonsense again. It’s true that it was very, very bad form for Gerry to have sex with a colleague, but Lucy had practically thrown him into Shannon’s arms. Being accused of faithlessness when one is faithful quickly becomes tiresome; it’s only natural to feel that one might as well commit the crime of which one is constantly being accused. And Lucy’s paranoia about Gerry and other women was particularly wounding to him, which she knew. He had set out to be as different from his father as possible. When the day came that he succumbed to another woman—a woman who was actively pursuing him—he practically wept as he bent her over his desk and sodomized her.
Shannon Little. He tries Googling her, but the name is too common. More than one hundred profiles on LinkedIn alone and so many personae—a doctor, a salon owner, a vet.
A common name and an apt one, too—not because she was small in physical stature, but because the thing between them had been inconsequential, or should have been. She seemed determined to seduce him, if only to have something to write about. He gave in and had sex with her because he was tired of being berated by Lucy for the affairs he wasn’t having. Funny, how Lucy’s jealousy metastasized, mutated. She was so determined not to be envious of Gerry’s professional success—publishing his first novel to respectful reviews, winning an obscure but cash-laden prize—that she became crazed with jealousy of other women. Talk about delusions, or would they be hallucinations? At any rate, Lucy saw evidence of Gerry’s philandering everywhere. Except in the place where it was happening.
Shannon Little would be in her late fifties now. They had screwed—really, that was the best word for it; the sex was mechanical and emotionless—only once. Shannon, ironically, was the one woman Lucy never suspected, probably because she didn’t hold her in high esteem. Lucy’s paranoia centered on better writers. She was terrified that Gerry would outpace her professionally, but she was too proud to allow that conscious thought into her mind. So she created these phantom affairs, disrupted his writing time to hurl accusations at him. And that, more than anything, was the reason they broke up. That and the prize money that made it possible.