“It’s something to think about. If I had to make a bet, my hunch is that an MRI won’t find anything. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with your head, Gerry. Your brain is fine. Again—Occam’s razor. What’s the likely explanation? You’re having bad dreams.”
“What about the phone calls?”
The doctor’s beautiful face clouds. “Maybe someone is punking you by phone. But the woman at the window—there’s no other explanation. For now, take notes. Don’t worry. Establish a good sleep system—less TV time, and don’t fall asleep while watching it. No screens for at least an hour before bed. But I am confident that you don’t have dementia.”
Gerry knows he should be cheered by this assessment. He is not crazy. He is not declining. He’s depressed, and who wouldn’t be? The delusions are bad dreams. The phone calls are—
Phylloh, he thinks. Phylloh knows he’s here, knows when he’s alone. Phylloh has the power to let people upstairs. Phylloh is the one who checked the security video. Or so she said. He will make a discreet inquiry about Phylloh. He has no idea why she would do such a thing, but clearly his tormentor is crazy and crazy requires no logic, no rhyme or reason.
1978
“LET’S GO TO ATLANTIC CITY.”
“Why?”
“To enter the Miss America pageant. To gamble, Gerry. Let’s gamble.”
Gerry had no interest in gambling and he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go on a road trip with Luke. “We don’t have a car.”
“We can borrow Tara’s.”
“Won’t we have to ask her to come with us, then?”
“Would that be a problem?”
“We don’t have to do everything as a threesome,” he said.
“You dumb fucker. You did it with her, didn’t you?”
“She’s my best friend. It was—inevitable.”
“I’m your best friend. Hey, does that mean you’re going to sleep with me now?”
Luke had come out to Gerry at the end of their freshman year. Matched up by the housing lottery, they had been happy to discover that they genuinely liked each other, and they pledged to continue living together. But it was important to Luke, once they made their compulsory arrangement a voluntary one, that Gerry know he was gay. At the time, the relatively few gay students on campus tended to be flamboyant. Luke was promiscuous but discreet. He and Gerry had never worked out a code for what to do when one of them wanted the room alone because Gerry’s girlfriend during sophomore year had a single and Luke preferred to go to New York. He would take the train up on Friday night and return late Sunday. Gerry had no idea where Luke went or what he did, if he had a steady man or if he preferred having sex with lots and lots of strangers. And he had no vocabulary with which to inquire.
Luke’s schtick about being attracted to Gerry was a running gag, which made him uncomfortable. The fact that it made him uncomfortable made him even more uncomfortable. And then Luke would go for a while without making the joke and Gerry would wonder why he stopped.
“Based on what happened with Tara—no. It was a stupid thing to do and it loused up our friendship.”
“Women can’t do just-sex.”
“I can’t do just-sex. That’s why I screwed up the friendship. We have so much in common; we make each other laugh. I just had to know what the sex would be like.”
“And?”
“Not that great. For either of us.” Gerry was still puzzling over that fact. He was even more puzzled by Tara’s assessment: “Our damage doesn’t mesh.” What damage? He didn’t consider himself damaged and, frankly, Tara’s alcoholic father seemed small potatoes to him.
“Maybe your luck will change in Atlantic City.”
Luke managed to get Tara’s car without Tara attached and they headed to the beach. It was amazing to Gerry that one state could contain both Princeton and Atlantic City. It was delightful, at first, to smell the ocean air and see the street names he remembered from his Monopoly set. He called out the names and Luke responded with the colors, then the costs and even the rents.
“Kentucky Avenue. Three houses, seven hundred dollars. Four houses, eight-seventy-five.”
Gerry wanted to play blackjack, because it was the closest thing to a game of skill, but he was not prepared for the speed at which it was played and he quickly lost the forty dollars he had staked himself. Luke left the table up fifty dollars. He wanted to shoot craps, a game Gerry could not follow at all. Luke started a run and people gathered, enjoying the vicarious thrill, or perhaps rooting for his lucky streak to end. A woman in a bareback leotard and filmy skirt tried to flirt with him, but Luke ignored her, ignored the drinks that started coming his way. Gerry realized that Luke was in his own private world, just him and the dice and the chips. He won another hundred dollars, tipped the croupier, and moved on to roulette. Gerry decided to go in search of a beer. When he left the roulette table, Luke was up two hundred dollars.