Scott explained that Rich dropped out of college his second year when his mother, recently re-married, offered Rich the opportunity to move with her and her new husband to Tahiti. Flunking all his classes, Rich thought it would be a welcome change so he moved to the tropical island and became a bodybuilder. His small-boned, muscular frame grew rapidly and within a year he became Mr. Tahiti, an honor that had made him a beloved legend. To add to his status, he exploited his resemblance to Paul McCartney and formed a Beatles cover band, which enjoyed sold-out shows every night at five-star hotels. Less than a year in Tahiti and Rich was so adored that there were velvet paintings of him in restaurants and even a bronze statue in front of one of the tourist shops.
Upon hearing of the statue, Scott’s wife rolled her eyes and accused her husband of exaggerating. This made him angry. He dismissed her with an annoyed gesture, then turned to me and said, “I know it sounds crazy but it’s true. I’ve go the photographs to prove it.” He continued to explain how Rich had become a sort of god on the island. Everyone glommed onto him. Beautiful women, many of them European and American millionaires, obsessed over him and paid his way to stay in their condos and mansions. They coddled him. They bought him fancy cars, tailored clothes, first-class plane tickets to anywhere on the globe. One woman bought him his own Tahitian bungalow with maid service. He didn’t need to work. He could walk into any restaurant and get a free meal. Owning more than ten cars, his biggest challenge of the day was deciding on what car to drive. As far as carousing went, he didn’t care whom he went to bed with. He had reached the point where all the women were, more or less, the same.
I could tell by Scott’s wife’s impatient expression that she had heard this story many times before. Again, she said she wanted to go home, but Scott grew testy and explained this was important.
“You always say that,” she said.
“Well it is.”
She sighed, sunk her white, bony fingers into a glass bowl of peanuts, and receded into the background while Scott resumed with his story.
He explained that with no warning Rich became overcome by “island fever.” He had to get away from Tahiti. He could no longer be treated like a demi-god and lavished with praise and adoration everywhere he went. He was sick of people fawning and slobbering before him. He wanted to live a normal life, so he moved back to California and got married. The thing of it was, the woman he married was unbelievably ugly. Built like a tank with broad shoulders, a thick, strapping neck, pasty skin and a pinch-faced expression, she worked some boring job in a bank. That’s where he met her. He was opening a checking account when he and this woman hit it off and he asked her out on a date. Six months later he married her. No one knew what became of him after that. There were rumors that his wife kept him chained in the basement, forced him to give her deep-body massages, and threw him scraps of food twice a day. Some had gossiped that Rich, suffering from a car accident during one of his reckless, drunken forays in Tahiti, had suffered brain damage, which, impairing his judgment, compelled him to marry this nightmarish ogre. The brain damage could not be verified but rumors of it continued to spread. Nevertheless, he was married to a woman who kept him under lock and key. That much was a fact. Scott said he tried repeatedly to call his old friend but Rich’s wife always hung up on him. Scott finally gave up trying to reach Rich and thought he’d never see or hear from him again until he received a letter, postmarked from Italy. Not giving any reasons, Rich explained in the letter that he had left his wife and tried to pursue a career as a professional soccer player in Italy. He was cut from the team, but managed to live off his savings.
Scott received about a dozen more letters, but they became more and more disturbed and difficult to understand. “I was convinced that he was going crazy,” Scott said. “I was concerned about him. My instincts told me he was in trouble, so I bought a ticket to Italy. I searched for him at the return address of his letters, the Rigobello Hotel near Capo Vaticano, but he was nowhere in sight. I asked the local police and one of them told me a story about this American guy who walked up and down a beach with nothing on but a gold medallion around his neck. He was known as a crazy man who earned his living as a gigolo or a prostitute. He was said to be mute, due to a psychological trauma or because his tongue had been severed from an angry lover. A legend surrounded him. He was known as this insane man who simply walked up and down the beach all day, his naked body blackened from the sun. He had a nickname, the Stallion. At night there was this bar he hung out at. He sat at the bar and watched as people tried to hit on him. He’d egg them on, toy with them like little children, and just when they thought they were going to a hotel room with him, he’d suddenly disappear. He wanted people to desire him, to drool all over him, and then to suffer the agony of being denied him. That’s all he lived for. He just wanted to have this power over others. He thrived on it. And it had driven him insane.”
“I’m sure your friend doesn’t want to hear about all this,” Scott’s wife said. “Can’t we go now?”
“I’m not done yet,” Scott said with great vehemence. He then turned to me and continued his story.
When he exhausted his savings, Scott explained, Rich became a homeless vagabond, living off the generosity of the locals, many who pitied him. The police officer Scott contacted said this strange American had been last seen at the Reggio Calabria, a popular beach resort. A week later Scott found him. Rich didn’t even recognize his old friend. He had long, stringy hair down to his shoulders, his sun-saturated flesh was nearly black and wrinkled like old elephant hide. He was naked save a gold necklace that glimmered around his neck. Years of alcoholism in the scorching sun had aged him. He was hunched over and shrunken like a prune. Scott shouted his friend’s name over and over but Rich’s crazed eyes, showing no signs of recognition, pierced a hole right through his old classmate.
“There was nothing I could do,” Scott said, “but take him home with me. If I didn’t, he would have died out there.”
Scott’s wife jutted her unpleasant face between ours. “That was over five years ago,” she said. “He’s lived with us ever since.”
“Not in our house,” Scott argued back. “He lives in the cottage in our back yard.”
“Same thing,” his wife said.
“It is not.”
“You’re right. It’s worse because he’s so helpless it’s like taking care of a baby.”
“We have no choice. He’d die without us.”
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