MAY 2018
IT HAD NOT BEEN ONE OF HIS MORE SUCCESSFUL BREAKUPS, THOUGH it had been a successful payday. Elizabeth, sweet mole-covered Elizabeth (this had been Jasper’s secret name for her, Moley Elizabeth), had recently written him a check for $38,000, the entirety of her current 401k, allegedly to be put toward Jasper’s first year of medical school. It was a safe bet, he’d convinced her: when he graduated and became a doctor, he’d be able to pay her back with interest, though it wouldn’t be of any real consequence at that point, his money versus her money, because of course they’d be married by then—I don’t want to propose until I can properly provide for you; otherwise I’d ask this very second! It had cleared; the money was officially his; the breakup text was sent; the cell phone destroyed; a new cell phone purchased. Moley E. was rather resourceful though, he had to admit—she had somehow (no use in thinking about how, though she had probably called in a favor to her very boring friend Dana, who worked for one of Gogol’s data-research divisions) found not just the motel he was staying in but also his actual room.
Now she was repeatedly thumping against his window with energetic commitment; the thumps were not simple fists against glass, which he could have ignored, but wall-shaking slams. In fact she was hurling her full body against the window again and again, and had been doing so for such an extended period of time (two entire episodes of Law & Order!) as to seem indefatigable. From previous close calls with other women, in earlier years before he’d fully mastered what he was doing, Jasper knew how the fuel of heartbreak and rage could turn an average body into a superhuman engine. Finally, he moved the curtain back to watch her run from the balcony to the glass of his window, which she did some three or four times before she noticed him watching her through the protective layer of glass. His gaze had the air of a disinterested psychiatrist looking in at a mental patient locked in an isolation room.
She did look pretty insane at the moment because she was sweaty and disheveled and blood was drizzling across her face from a small gash near her scalp. Plus she was so angry. Her eyes seemed enormous and helium-filled. She had jettisoned the weighty cargo of logic and reason. Moley E. was flying high.
“You sociopath,” she began. “Give me back my money or I’m calling the cops.”
It was best to stay calm, unaggressive, at this point. This was easy because he knew things were going to play out just fine for him no matter how big a scene Liz chose to make. Although he never appreciated police involvement, it didn’t concern him the way all the women, the way Moley E., thought it might. “It’s not illegal for me to break up with you, Liz,” he said through the window.
This was when their mental gears began to shift; he could literally watch the realization occur. First they looked away and down, thinking. Then all the taut muscles in their faces began to slacken and drop, and not all at once—it was like watching a large tent be disassembled, the structure regressing into formlessness as pole after pole was removed. The money had been given in a single wire transfer. Gifted. There’d been no false guarantee of investment, no paperwork trail of a scam. Elizabeth began to weep. Jasper closed the curtain.
“You’d better look over your shoulder for me your whole fucking life,” she screamed. Now she was crying, and that was for the best—she would probably prefer to cry in her car than outside his motel room, and her sadness was an indicator that she’d soon begin processing the grief. Thinking of how he’d never again be running his tongue along her mole-speed-bumped torso. How the only reason he’d done it in the first place was to get her money.
Not that it had been a horrible experience for him. Jasper didn’t know how to feel about the fact that he liked having sex with these women, with nearly any woman—he always enjoyed it. He kind of didn’t want to enjoy it so much. He wanted it to feel more like work, like what he did was closer to prostitution than to fraud. But the sex with them was effortless; he never had to fake arousal. He liked to consider himself a feminist in this way. Though he understood he didn’t fully align with what he considered to be their set of ideals, he knew they were all about body acceptance, and he had always accepted every body. He had a talent for getting turned on. This was the gift he’d been given in life. And it was silly for people not to make a living off what came easiest to them.
He also, due to his wavy, Greek, shoulder-length hair and goatee, strongly resembled a European Jesus, which was an asset. When people stopped him in pharmacies or at the gas station and said, “Who do you remind me of?” he’d answer, “God’s only son, perhaps?” and at first they’d laugh but then they’d nod and grow excited. This sense of him feeling familiar was key in his line of work. The trustworthiness factor was everything.
A romantic relationship in which he didn’t have a secret agenda held little appeal. In fact, the thought of vulnerability disgusted him. The grief of his father’s multiple divorces had warped the man, like water damage to wood—he was still the same person, essentially, just blurrier. Not quite level. In any given situation, there was always a danger now that emotion could get the best of him. He could bend and give way without notice.
On television, a TV program was re-creating the graphic skiing death of a famous actress; they’d rigged a crash-test dummy upright onto a motorized sled, and were showing a montage of the mannequin crashing into a tree with such force that the cap and wig they’d outfitted it with flew off. The camera zoomed in when it landed in the snow, perfectly somehow, spread out as though a living woman had just melted in that very spot.