She supposes it is nice to know that someone has her back in this huge, unfamiliar, dangerous city. Especially now that Saturday night has faded to an unpleasant memory, a mere blip in their relationship.
He’d been so sweet at the pizzeria, treating her as though she was a precious princess and not an awkward teenage girl who hadn’t bothered to comb her hair or change out of sweats before leaving the house. He made her laugh and forget the drama—most of it self-inflicted, she’d concluded by the time they were heading home. She couldn’t believe she’d even considered for one second that he might have been the watcher.
She’s still unnerved by the figure she’d seen, and by the man who’d approached her on the street. But after five uneventful, ordinary days, she’s almost managed to put it out of her head.
School is going well, thanks to interesting coursework, engaging instructors, and a nice girl from her social studies class who’d invited Stacey to join her lunch table. She’s getting used to living in the city. The commute, though long, allows her to spend extra time with Lennon.
“Make sure your parents don’t rope you into any family stuff this weekend,” he tells her, as the train barrels between stops. “This amazing guitarist I know is doing an open mic night and I was thinking we could go.”
The car lurches as they round a curve, and he holds her steady. The brakes screech and the lights flicker. Off, on, off, on . . .
She spies a familiar face on the far end of the car.
. . . off.
Plunged into darkness, she leans into Lennon and hisses, “He’s here.”
“What? Who?”
“The guy from the street. The one who called me Anna.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
The lights flick on again, and the train jerks forward, pulling into the station.
“Where is he?”
Stacey turns her head to look, but he’s no longer visible. Passengers press toward the exit, blocking her view as the doors open. When they close again, he’s nowhere in sight.
“I swear he was here, Lennon. He must have gotten off.”
“You think he’s following you?”
“I mean . . . why else would I keep seeing him?”
“You’re right. I have an idea. We’re getting off at the next stop.”
“The next stop? Why? What about school?”
“You can be late.”
“How late?”
“Like . . . six hours?” He laughs.
She doesn’t.
“Okay, so you can miss a day. Haven’t you ever called yourself in sick? Don’t even bother answering that question.” He rolls his eyes. “Look, we have to go now. If he’s following you, we need to figure out who or what he is.”
“What he is?”
“Is he a human being, or is he a supernatural being?”
Or is he a figment in my mind, which I’m losing?
Lennon touches her hand. “Hey, it’s going to be okay, Stacey. I promise. I’ve got you.”
Jacob
All this week, the rain shrouded Jacob from recognition as he kept Anna under surveillance. She wore a baggy black parka. He saw her dart the occasional wary glance from beneath her hood, but he was invisible in a sea of urbanites similarly concealed beneath hoods and umbrellas.
Not today, though. Today on the train he was exposed, vulnerable as the hermit crab his idiot kid had pried from its shell, played with, and misplaced.
I told you no pets, Jacob shouted at Emina over their son’s screams when they found the exposed crustacean shriveled on the floor.
She wept. Stupid, stupid woman.
Jacob is far more fortunate than the doomed hermit crab.
The lights went out just as he saw Anna recognize him on the train. Impulse took over. He ducked and made his way toward the exit as disgruntled passengers shifted and shoved all around him. When the doors opened, he escaped onto the platform and the train sped Anna away from him.
Now he’s trapped in a slow-moving pedestrian procession along a mine shaft of a sidewalk. The entire block outside the subway station is tunneled in plywood, with heavy construction equipment rumbling and clanking behind it.
It brings him back to childhood visits to job sites with his old man, who had a hand in it. He had a hand in a lot of things.
Don’t tell your mother, Baba would tell Jacob. She doesn’t need to know about every errand we go on.
There were a lot of errands, a lot of things Jacob didn’t tell her, though it was no secret around the house that his father was part of a dark and violent transnational crime syndicate. His mother, whose own father, brothers, and nephews were also involved, did her best to keep Jacob out of it while he was living at home.
At eighteen, he moved to New Jersey, working in an electronics store by day and attending trade school at night.
Two years later, in the summer of 1993, the store closed. He had to ask his father for a loan to pay the rent.
“You need money, I’ll hire you.”
“To do what?”
“There’s a girl . . . I want you to keep an eye on her.”
“And then what?” Jacob had asked uneasily.
“Don’t worry. All we need you to do for now is watch her.”
We . . .
For now . . .
He was given no choice. Anyway, it wasn’t illegal to just . . . watch someone.
He drove to Glover Street early on a July weekday morning and parked across from the address his father gave him. He soon saw an older man trudging away from the house in workman’s coveralls and carrying a lunch pail.
A couple of hours later, the girl appeared. She was headed on foot toward Edgemont. He got out of the car and followed her to a small supermarket. She emerged fifteen minutes later with a few small bags of groceries, and carried them home.
That was it for the day.
That was it most days—household errands on the boulevard, as if she were a middle-aged housewife. She dressed like one, in long shorts and frumpy flowered T-shirts or blouses buttoned to her chin.
Occasionally she visited the library with stacked books clasped against her chest. Once in a while, she went to the park to meet her only friend.
Ellie’s grunge-inspired wardrobe was as trendy as Anna’s was plain. Her dark hair fell long and straggly beneath the beanies she wore with combat boots and flannel shirts on even the warmest summer days. She smoked cigarettes and drank beer, and Jacob eventually found out those were far from her worst vices.
“How did you even meet?” he asked Anna, months later.
“In the park.”
“I didn’t ask where you met. I asked how.”
“Same way I met you. I was reading a book on a bench and she struck up a conversation.”
From a distance, Anna’s conversations with Ellie didn’t appear to be lighthearted, but he didn’t attempt to eavesdrop. He was certain there wouldn’t be anything more interesting to hear than there was to see.
He’d been told to watch her and watch her he did, though his attention often drifted to other, prettier girls.