He was careful not to look under the table, however.
It was colder than the last time. Overcast and windy, too, far more like he remembered it from his period living in the city, a time that included the tail end of winter and during which he’d been colder than ever before or since. The weather—and being by himself—made the streets feel more familiar, like a stranger in the street turning to resolve into an old acquaintance. New York was a place he associated with being alone.
He went into the first Starbucks he came across. While in line he texted Dawn, deciding to let her know he’d come to the city right away rather than waiting for her to find the note. The text was upbeat.
There was no immediate reply, which didn’t surprise him—she’d be in class, knowing she now carried inside her the genesis of one of the little beings that sat around her. Remembering this gave David the same pang of bewildered hope and fear, and more than anything else he believed this was why he was here. There was something that needed to be put right, even if he was not sure what it was. There was unfinished business.
When he got to the counter, the barista did not know what he wanted before he asked for it and betrayed no obvious sign of caring about his day. David missed Talia for a moment, and realized he was actually looking forward to getting back to reading her book.
For want of any other plan, he walked the coffee up to Bryant Park, where he sat on a bench and stared across toward the library and the terrace where he and Dawn had taken celebratory glasses of wine. He recalled that for the second half of the nineteenth century, this site held the Croton Distributing Reservoir, a block-sized behemoth with fifty-foot walls for storing water transported down from Westchester County by aqueduct in an attempt to stop the citizens dying of cholera and yellow fever quite so enthusiastically. It was now impossible to imagine. But it was hard to remember being twenty, too, to imagine himself in the head and life of that former person, to recall who he’d been when he’d sat in this park then. Do we grow older by dint of additions and remodeling, or through knocking ourselves down to the foundations and rebuilding from the ground up? David supposed it was meant to be the former, but the latter had more of a ring of truth.
He left the park and headed east along 42nd. Two minutes later a text came in, Dawn bubbling with enthusiasm and telling him to take his time and she’d look forward to hearing about his adventures when he got home.
He kept walking east for a further few blocks and then turned to head downtown. The sky grew gray as he trudged, the wind more persistent. He tried—for whose benefit he wasn’t sure—to maintain the pretence that he was here for research, peering meaningfully at the buildings and people he passed.
He walked for hours, crisscrossing back and forth as if searching for something he couldn’t recall. Until eventually he arrived at the top of Union Square—and found himself slowing down.
Union Square runs from 17th down to 14th between Park and Broadway—the only major street that ignores the grid and carves on the diagonal, turning the park into a wedge. It’s a block wide, the top four-fifths arranged in areas of grass and trees with a kids’ playground way at the top right, half hidden behind high bushes. Tree-shaded paths paved with hexagonal bricks wander through all this, the grassy areas easily accessible on the other side of low metal fences. The bottom of the square is a major downtown pedestrian thoroughfare.
David wandered down the central path. It was almost three o’clock by then. People perched on benches, talking on the phone, meditatively working through late sandwiches. He remembered the park well. He must have crossed it a hundred times on the way to the Strand Book Store, where he’d picked up most of his secondhand reading when he’d lived there, selling the books frugally back again afterward. This afternoon something about the place felt off. Had they changed it? Altered the layout? He wasn’t sure. It looked the same, but his memory had started to feel like a jigsaw where he had all the pieces around the outside and nothing in the middle at all.
Traffic coursed noisily back and forth across 14th. A pair of Japanese women wandered by, cheerfully consulting a city guide. A handful of business types strode past, deep in conversation, pant legs flapping in the wind.
David slowly got the feeling he was being watched, or at least observed. He turned to see a man standing in the center of the area. He looked about forty, with ginger hair, wearing the upper and lower halves of two quite different gray suits. The shades did not match and neither did the styles. The pants were too loose, the jacket too tight. He was watching David with an odd expression. Part cautious. Part curious.
David looked away, and then back. The man was still watching him. Everybody else was in transit, a mutating, rotating backdrop of water-color hues. They were the only two people who were motionless.
Finally the man strolled over to David.
“What’s your name, then?”
He spoke in a low tone. His accent was distinctive, with a strong hint of London Cockney. Too surprised to come up with an evasive response, David told him.
“Nice.” The man nodded. “David. Good name. A proper name.” He winked. “But then it would be, wouldn’t it?”
“What … what do you mean?”
“I know what you are, David.”
The back of David’s neck felt hot. “You do?”
“I do. And … welcome, welcome. You want to be back up there in the trees though, really.”
“Why?”
“Well, who are you here for?”
“Here … for?”
“His name, David. I’m assuming it’s a ‘he,’ anyway. Usually is with guys. Not always, though. Could be a ‘she.’ Could be a kangaroo, for all I know, right?”
David stared at him.
“So. Is it a he?” The man had an unusual odor, like the memory of cotton candy on a fall afternoon. He was leaning forward expectantly, conspiratorially, eager to help. David felt as if he’d wandered into some dark club and been greeted as a regular by a doorman he’d never seen before.
“I … don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The man winked. “Fair enough, mate. Understood. I’ll bugger off and leave you to it. Good luck, eh?”
He held up both hands, fingers crossed, and walked away, glancing around as if already on some other mission entirely. He curved around a group of Europeans wearing bright anoraks and seemed to fail to come back out the other side—presumably having crossed the road.
David felt scared now. Plain, downright scared, deep in his guts, seized with the certainty that whatever impulse had brought him to this place was faulty, and this wasn’t somewhere that he should be. It was as if he’d come to a park and found himself standing up to his neck in a reservoir of dark water instead.
It was only then that he realized that the park, if seen from above, probably looked rather like a shape he had seen etched out in the gravel of the parking lot of Kendricks. That realization made being there feel wronger still. As if he had followed instructions that he hadn’t even realized he’d been given.
It was half past three. If he was intending to walk back to the station, he ought to be setting off. Or maybe he should get a cab. But … he thought he should be leaving, either way. Leaving felt like a good plan. Getting on a train. He could be home in time for dinner.
Just … be home.
He was halfway back up the central path when he heard an intake of breath and glanced to the right to see a homeless man sitting on a bench. His skin was nicotine brown, thin black hair plastered across a mottled scalp, tatters of an old suit swaddled around a skeletal frame. He was glaring past David into one of the grassy areas. He screwed up his face and flapped his hands spastically, as if to ward something away from his face.
“No, not again. Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.”
David turned to see what he was looking at and realized the park was full of people now.
Many seemed to be on their way somewhere, striding along the paths. They flowed on either side of Dav
id, eyes ahead, as though he were a rock in a fast-moving stream.
Others were gathered in knots on the grassy areas, apparently in conference, but even these were not static. Each person within these groups was constantly on the move, walking in small circles, or in slow, weaving patterns among one another that left the basic shape of the groups intact. They were dressed in just about any outfit you could imagine, from a teenage girl in a gray hoodie to a plump woman of about fifty wearing a strapless ball gown in dark blue. There must have been two, maybe three hundred of them. There were animals, too. A few large dogs, a bright orange cat, and … for a bizarre moment, David even thought he saw a bear. Then they weren’t there anymore.
None of them. The park was empty again.
David turned to the man on the bench. He smiled, revealing a mouth with hardly any teeth in it.
“You saw them?”
“I saw something,” David whispered, looking around, skin crawling. Everything was as it had been two minutes before. The paths and grassy spaces were empty but for fallen leaves. He spotted the two Japanese women he’d noticed earlier, sitting together on one of the benches now, consulting their guidebook and laughing.
“Where … where did they all go?”
“Nowhere,” the man on the bench said. “I don’t ever see them anywhere but here.” He stood, gathering his plastic bags. “But I’m leaving. You should too. They don’t like it if you can see them. I got bitten once.”
He walked away up the path.
David stood his ground, knowing now what he’d been feeling ever since he’d first come into the park. There was a disparity between the way it looked and the way it really was. It was … too full.
On impulse, he stretched both arms out to the side. The women on the bench looked at him strangely, but that wasn’t the only effect. Something backed off a little, as if he’d become a bigger rock in a hidden stream.
He put his arms back down and hurried up toward the children’s playground. At the heart of this was a castle-like construction with wooden walkways and turquoise turrets, planks and rope bridges connecting the different sections. Only the under-tens were allowed on this, a sign clearly stated, but there were adults on it now. Perhaps thirty of them. In pairs and threes and fours. Most of them dressed in black or rich colors, drapey, goth-style clothing that looked cobbled together from remnants. They were all moving, constantly. Back and forth, around and about. David got glimpses of pale faces in conversation, but most of the time it was as if you could see them only from behind.
If they were here, then …
He turned and trotted back to the center of the park. Yes—they were back here, too.
David ran toward the largest grassy area, off center in the park, sixty feet around with a fountain off to one side. He could barely see it now for the mass of people. There were no children—and only a handful under eighteen—but otherwise every age group was represented. Old, middle-aged, with a big peak in early to mid-twenties. Black, white, Asian. Most in casual clothes, a few in suits. Again, the thing that looked like a bear but surely had to be a man in a costume.
And then—they were gone again.
Except … they weren’t. David couldn’t see them, but he could feel them. There were people here in the park, people he couldn’t see. There was no doubting that.
Unless I’m losing my mind.
The two Japanese women had gone back to giggling over what had to be the funniest NYC guidebook ever. A muscular guy walked past with a pair of very tiny dogs. Two men sat on a bench, both on the phone, presumably not to each other. All of these people seemed too far apart, like a scattered handful of books on a shelf.
“Hello, David,” said a voice.
He turned to see a man in battered jeans and untucked shirt, the one he’d last seen in Kendricks. The man was grinning, and this time it seemed more sincere and less threatening. Behind him stood a slim woman in a long black coat. She was smiling too.
The man took a step forward and put out his hand. “Welcome back,” he said.
Chapter 20
“This what you had in mind?”
I looked up from a sidewalk table outside the Adriatico. Kristina stood outside the fence dressed more or less as I’d suggested: raggedy black jeans and sweater under a cheap coat, hair pulled back in a ponytail, the whole outfit topped with a pair of sunglasses nondescript enough not to look like obfuscation.
“Perfect,” I said.
“For what?”
“Thinking of entering you in this ‘Hottest New York Bag Lady’ pageant everyone’s talking about.”
“Careful,” she said. “We may not be back at the openly-mocking-each-other stage just yet.”
“Yeah, we are,” I said, coming around to kiss her on the cheek. “It was a dumb argument and I’ve said I’m sorry. That’s the end of it.”
“I see, master. So—what’s the plan?”
Something had been nagging at me since I’d gotten up that morning. It nagged as I walked to work. It nagged when I took a break to go thank the heater guys for fixing our unit, watching their faces while I did so and seeing nothing untoward. It nagged as I stood chain-drinking strong coffees and pushing pizza to passersby, and even while being patient with Mario’s sister, who’d picked up on the coldness between Kristina and me the night before and was taking an excessively maternal interest.
The nagging didn’t amount to much more than the idea that there was something I was missing, dots I was not joining up. Which was no help. But finally, halfway through selling someone two slices of pepperoni, I’d realized what the connecting line might be.
“We’re going for a walk,” I said.
The message on our window could have been put there at any time in the last however many years, some previous tenant’s thigh-slapping attempt to freak out a roommate that we’d never noticed simply because the lighting conditions hadn’t been right and it hadn’t ever occurred to us to clean the windows. I didn’t believe that, though. Neither did Kristina. Together with the overturned chair and the broken ashtray out on the apartment roof, it didn’t ring true—never mind the sensation I’d experienced when I opened the window, of someone (or perhaps more than one person) in sudden movement.
The message had been put there recently. It had to have been sometime after the last time I’d been out in my rooftop aerie to smoke, which was only the night before and so kept the timeframe tight.
“Face it,” Kristina said. Her pupils looked big and pale, green edging out the gray for once. “You know this just happened. Tonight.”
Against Kristina’s wishes I reopened the window (after taking a picture of the message on my phone) and climbed out. It was dark and the wind was strong and it felt like being on the battlements of a tottering castle tower. I confirmed what I’d suspected. If you were light and nimble—not to mention insanely reckless—you could probably access the scrap of flat roof from over the rooftops. By leaning against the nearest of these and standing on tiptoe, I got a glimpse over to the next building. Presumably if you kept going then somewhere there’d be a means of dropping into a gap and ultimately down to ground level. The tiles were wet and mossy and I wasn’t going to get any more intrepid about the investigation than that, certainly not in the dark.
I climbed back in. “There’s another possibility,” Kris said.
“Yeah, I know. Our window wasn’t locked. They could have got out there from our apartment. But that raises too many questions. Like how they’d have gotten in here.”
“Heater guys were here day before yesterday. They took forever and I had to leave for work, so I gave them a key to lock up. They shoved it back under the door, but I guess they could have made a copy and—”
“Nope. If Dack or Jez had tried to scrabble away over that roof, we’d be listening to the sound of ambulances right now and there’d be blood-drenched dents in the sidewalk the size of two small cows.”
“They could have done it while they were here. We wouldn’t hav
e noticed until now.”
“But why? We pay them money and they drink in your bar and neither of them has a sense of humor that I’ve ever noticed.”
“So who did it?”
“You know who it’s got to be. What I don’t understand is why it says ‘us.’ ”
Kristina and I live a small, contained life. We hadn’t made any enemies in the city—one tries not to—or many acquaintances outside the restaurant and staff from others nearby. We’d barely seen the other people in our building. They had normal jobs and lived different hours. “Maybe it was a guy you saw the other night after all,” Kristina mused. “In the market, and afterward. Maybe there’s more than one person following Catherine.”
“That would help, sure. But in that case, who are we dealing with?”
“You got me. The question is whether Catherine knows.”
I thought about it. “I don’t think so. If you’re a woman being followed, you’ll assume it’s a man. She looked genuinely surprised when we told her we’d seen a girl. And I’m sure that was the same person as the one I saw the other night. The height and clothing were exactly the same. I just didn’t see a face then and so I made the same wrong assumption that Catherine had.”
Kristina nodded. “Okay. But here’s the thing. A person or persons unknown evidently not only realizes we’ve been tracking them, but also knows where we live. Either someone followed you back the other night …”
“ … or he/she/they were outside Catherine’s tonight and followed us back to the restaurant.”
“Which would not have been hard. Raised voices were involved.”
“I recall. But what—then they kicked their heels for a few hours before following one of us back here?”
“This is a stalker, John. That shit’s what they do.”
She had a point. I thought back over my solo walk home. I hadn’t been aware of anyone following me, but I’d been an irritable frame of mind and the incident with Lydia had deflected my attention too. Nonetheless, I believed I would have noticed someone trailing me. That meant if they’d done it tonight they must have waited and followed Kristina as she walked home later. It wasn’t far, and I knew Kris was capable of looking after herself—otherwise I’d never have considered letting her walk it alone, regardless of how bad a fight we’d had.
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