Chapter 5

The Waspachick strip in the summertime throbbed with students and visitors from surrounding townships who came mostly to dine in the restaurants, which were established only a few years ago. Noble recalled a simpler time, when the strip was sparsely dotted with a gas station and hardware store. In two decades, the strip had become a popular spot for both yuppies working in nearby Manhattan and also the kids in sagging denim who peopled the town park. Automobiles clad with mirrored chrome hubcaps, radios blaring, cruised the strip with the more conservative SUV’s. These cars cruised for women, while the SUV’s crawled close to the shops and hunted for the latest lawn ornament. Noble’s car was stationed in the same spot for months without so much as a ticket or a break-in or a theft. When he heard from Shylock the town council voted to put up parking meters along the park, Noble displayed not the slightest disdain. He was so content with the way things were going, with Alexandra and his guitar, that Waspachick during the height of summer seemed magical. Alexandra soothed his escapist tendencies.

He would have rather remained in Waspachick than bolt to the shores of California. They hung out together constantly, and stayed sober together. They met at every meeting, and when her boyfriend left for overnights in the big city, he stayed with her in the Dutch manor home. His lies, however, were wearing thin, as Alexandra wondered daily where he worked and why his BMW was still in the shop, and why she couldn’t at least see his property on Victoria Terrace.

To the first curiosity, he said he took a break from investment banking to pursue what he truly loved: his guitar. She accepted this. The BMW in the shop warranted a bigger fib. It turned out that Noble had asked the mechanic to sell it for him, and the proceeds of the sale would go towards a Range Rover, or a Lexus, or a car which definitely kept pace with the Waspachick standard. Selling the car would take time, which brought him a step closer to settling Alexandra’s curiosity.

The biggest and most daring fabrication involved his Victoria Terrace property. In conversations with her, he stalled and stalled again, changed subjects countless times, and hinted that he no longer wanted to stay there. He would sell the property, put the proceeds of the sale into a bloated trust fund which would dole out thousands of dollars a year towards the non-profits helping the sick and the poor. He shifted focus from his fictitious wealth, education, and status onto the wild dream of playing his guitar without the burden of wealth, almost like voluntary poverty but with a guitar. Alexandra should have investigated these claims, but due to her youth and emotional dependency upon the older Noble, she bit her lip and thought nothing wrong with his master plan. She understood artists, and Noble fed into this understanding. She believed her initial assessment: that Noble was an eccentric and wealthy Waspachick villager, the costumes courtesy of Shylock, the money to dine her once in a while also courtesy of Shylock. Shylock’s friendship, by the way, wore thin during this week or two of extravagant spending, but he had never seen Noble so happy and content. Noble even introduced him to Alexandra, of whom Shylock remarked: “She’s a knockout.”

Keeping a woman of this caliber was not easy, but Alexandra did fall in love with him. She was a bit miffed how Noble never played his instrumentals for her, but again Noble stalled and beseeched her to wait until the coffee house performance. Noble’s happiness ought to contrast sharply with his original view of the working world as insectaries, or of all Waspachick villagers as condescending, pretentious snobs. He was now a part of them. He was influenced by Alexandra’s values. The Dutch manor home also shifted his general outlook of the town he desperately wanted to leave a few months ago.

He got carried away with the act on many occasions. Alexandra mentioned in passing that she attended Saint Paul’s school for secondary education. Noble said he went to Saint Bartholomew’s, a well-known church in East Waspachick. When asked about his childhood, Noble said he grew up in bucolic Vermont, but when Alexandra insisted on a weekend trip there to visit his family “of good stock,” Noble said they had since moved to New Hampshire. Why couldn’t they visit New Hampshire? “My family moves around a lot,” replied Noble.

After a week or so, Alexandra told him frankly that she felt “shut out” of his life, that he was not up-front and too elusive in all his affairs, and there were some trust issues involved. Noble calmed her with the scheduled coffee house performance, as though after the event, everything would be made known, as though beyond it glowed a mutual nirvana of letting her into his life.

There were only two people in Waspachick who knew of Noble’s deception: Harry, his sponsor, and Shylock, his best friend. Ivan and Milo grew suspicious, but they were kept in the dark. Noble avoided them as the rumor mill within the program spun and spun on its own indefatigable energy.

But the tougher issue concerned the joy and ecstasy Noble felt when he saw, visited, and made love to Alexandra. He had never felt so complete before, as though a large chunk of himself fell into place. Up in the Heights, they took long walks on her boyfriend’s property, and they made love in the grass, the summer sun hovering over them. They had long discussions about their future together. Alexandra assured him she’d leave her boyfriend after the coffee house performance, at which time Noble would get honest. His plan, thus far, was working. She had confessed her love, and she sunk her hooks deeper into him, to the point where they couldn’t fathom being apart. This may seem farfetched for such a short time period, but their innocence and naiveté in the matters of love hurled them into a righteous codependency. Alexandra loved easily, and Noble was inexperienced with relationships. A good pair. He yearned to be truthful, but he had grown so accustomed to lying, that he sacrificed his conscience to be with her. He could feed her his half-baked lies and still live with himself. He had captured the quintessential Waspachick woman, after all, and he wasn’t about to let her go. This added to his scheming, which he always coordinated with Shylock, who reluctantly spent money on them. Noble preached to her the ideal of the simple life unencumbered by wealth. She had her doubts, but when she realized at a meeting one night that sobriety was the divine gift they shared in common, sobriety then became a cementing bond and the impetus for deeper confessions of their mutual love, despite his preaching on the simple life.