The Man Who Followed Women

by Bert Hitchens

  The Man Who Followed Women

  Bert and Dolores Hitchens

  Chapter 1

  By the time the misty, foggy nights of that particular April had rolled around, Mr. Howery had been following women for almost a year.

  In the way of most innocent amusements which become compulsions, his had begun idly, almost whimsically. Months ago he had stepped out of a movie into the dark of a night not quite summer, warm with the smell of the city and with some faraway memory-teasers blown on the wind, a hint of clipped hayfields and stubby dusty hills, God knew how far from L.A. and its traffic, and out at the edge of the glow splattered by the theater signs he had seen the young woman in the red coat, dropping the candy wrapper in the gutter, and it had occurred to him to wonder where she was going.

  Like that.

  He had stood by the darkened ticket booth, fishing in his jacket pocket for the cigarettes and the pack of matches, and just as he had lifted the lit match to the end of the cigarette she had glanced back at him. Not seeing him, really. The sort of look she would take if she was sizing up how late it was and how much of a pounding her feet would take getting home and whether there was anything at all interesting to see before she started out. Her glance skipped over Mr. Howery as if he wasn’t there.

  From his recollection of her, she was a perfectly ordinary looking girl. Brown hair, neither long nor short, not very curly. She had crammed the last of the candy bar into her mouth, and her cheeks bulged as she chewed it. Her complexion was good. Vivid lipstick. Slim legs. Patent-leather pumps. Red coat belted in tightly at the waist.

  He had thought that she was probably just going to stroll home from the show, a matter of a few blocks. But perhaps not. A curiosity had flickered in him, an interest in her and her destination and what she did and with whom she lived … mental flotsam.

  Behind him, beyond the closed panes of the lobby doors, the young ticket taker in his imitation-navy uniform was brushing up the lobby carpet with a small broom and a pan on a long wire handle, and the girl who sold candy and popcorn was twitching a cotton cover into place over her counter.

  He remembered these things clearly, even now. The moment held a vividness in memory, not easily explained; a hairline sharpness of detail. Something more: an import. As if it marked a division or a rechanneling of something in his life; the end of an impasse, the beginning of some kind of compromise.

  On that night when he looked at, and thought about, the girl in the red coat, Mr. Howery had been forty-seven years old, five foot six in his shoes, gray-haired and getting bald on the top, dressed in a three-year-old fifteen-dollar sport jacket and a six-dollar pair of slacks ($5.95), and he was just getting used to living alone in the two-bedroom flat after his mother’s death and burial. He held a degree in accountancy, which he had never found use for. He worked as a salesman for a wholesale ceramic tile company, selling mostly to contractors of subdivision single-family dwellings. He wore arch-support shoes. He drank a little beer occasionally, at home evenings in front of the television set.

  The only thing he had ever done which might have been considered aberrant behavior was stealing a pair of women’s underpants off a heaped table bearing a towering label, 88c, in a department store. They were pink knit nylon pants with white, coarse-looking lace around the edges of the legs and inside on the waistband a label: Mi-panties, and the size number, 28.

  Somehow it had been the word, panties, which had rolled around in his mind long after he had wadded the silly garment and discarded it in a trash barrel in an alley, less than a block from the actual theft. This had been a couple of years past; his mother had still been alive, though sickly. He still remembered how, in the evening after he had arrived home, and they had sat at dinner, it disgusted and revolted him to see the sleeve of his mother’s robe dragging on the bread. And this sudden surge of hate had been, obscurely, a part of the pants-stealing.

  But at the time he had stepped out of the movie house, had paused to light the cigarette, and had noticed the girl in the red coat at the curb, no trace of that previous eccentricity remained. His interest in the girl had none of the hotheaded prankishness of the theft; and afterward there had been no disruptive emotions such as the hatred for his mother which had plagued him after that other incident.

  He had simply and rather whimsically decided to trail her wherever she went and to see what she did with the rest of the evening.

  She had crossed the street and headed for the corner, where there was an open drugstore. She had gone in and bought a confession magazine and something else … gum or cigarettes … at the cash register and had come out again almost immediately. Mr. Howery had watched and waited from the corner, where he was pretending to inspect some papers in a rack.

  She had passed close to him, the magazine under her arm, her purse open while she tucked into it the wallet and the other purchase; and he had caught the smell of her, perfume and a sort of dry-cleaning odor he thought must have been given off by the coat.

  She went on, heels tapping, up the half-darkened block and he trailed after. She looked back once, and he had a sharp jolt of alarm, not unpleasant. She turned the next corner quickly, and by the time he had turned it too, she was up some stairs at a door. An apartment house. She was using a key to let herself into the lobby. The light had shone out on her through the glass in the door, and again he had thought what an ordinary-looking sort of girl she was. And had felt no slightest interest in trying to follow her into the building.

  He had gone on, the five blocks to his own old-fashioned two-bedroom flat, where the liniment odors left by his sick mother were not entirely dissipated and where her bag of knitting still lay tucked into the corner of the couch. And there the thought of the girl had seemed to drop from his mind, taking with it some encrustation of worry or what not, like a barnacle pried from the bottom of a befouled boat.

  He felt peaceful and at ease, ready for bed. What he didn’t realize at the time was, now he had a hobby.

  He followed women.

  The very next night he had gone for a stroll. He had walked all the way up into the heights of the park. As dark came down he was fascinated by the panorama of traffic in the pass below, the enormous layout of the railroad freight yards, the switch engines, the grunt of diesels, the thin blue mist dying against the hills far beyond; and then he had seen this woman. She had a dog with her, a big brute. But of course since Mr. Howery had no intention of accosting her, of inviting the brute’s attention, she made just as good a subject for following as had the other girl. He strolled behind her, the two of them quite alone in the woodsy height, and she got visibly nervous and stared at him frequently over her shoulder. Probably if she hadn’t had the enormous brute practically tugging her arms from their sockets by the leash, she’d have done something silly, like screaming.

  After hurrying faster and faster, and getting wound up in the strap and almost tripping, and looking back at Mr. Howery as if he were some slavering fiend, she had at last come out on a road where she had parked her car, a little open foreign job, and she and the dog had jumped in and taken off.

  End of trail.

  Again he’d had the sensation of relaxing, of the release of some old befuddlement or annoyance; and he had turned gratefully for home.

  He didn’t recall as much of the second woman’s appearance, now, as he did of the first. He thought she’d been a long-legged, fortyish, and sort of tweedy woman, the kind who wore brogans to hike around in. Short hair, wind-blown, and practically no make-up. The kind of woman who, if she married young, was all set; and if she waited, God help her.

  On the third evening he had trailed a little colored girl, perhaps eighteen, probably a maid who worked by the day in t
he neighborhood and now was headed home. What attracted his attention was that she was singing, very quietly, and that as she walked she kept looking up at the twilight sky as if it looked beautiful to her after being cooped up all day in somebody’s kitchen. She had a knit handbag, a big one, probably had knitted it herself, and it swung against her knee as she walked, in time to the tune she sang. She waited on the corner for a downtown bus, Mr. Howery keeping carefully in the background; and after the bus came and she got in, paid her fare, and sat down by the window, she looked out directly at Mr. Howery and he had seen her teeth gleam in the smile she gave him. It was a smile full of mischief and understanding; the only one like it he’d ever received from any of the women he had followed; and it had taken a while for him to get the meaning of it.

  She had understood, somehow. She had known without being told, about the empty flat, and the tucked-away knitting, and the liniment smell that always brought with it the lump of guilt and self-hatred, along with the memory of his mother’s dragging sleeve.

  Well, perhaps not precisely about these things. But she had, while walking and singing and watching the twilight sky, been aware of Mr. Howery’s flitting and humble figure. And she had found in him something comic and friendly, a person working oddly at a very odd hobby. And so the smile.

  Of those he had followed on the numberless nights since, most were a blurry memory. Some had misunderstood his interest and had responded with bold invitation; and others had misunderstood and had looked around for cops. The majority had been unaware of him, since he was an inconspicuous man and had managed, as time passed, to learn to go about his hobby very inconspicuously indeed.

  Now it was April. The nights were misty and chill for spring, with a sea-smell clinging in them, a miasma swimming ashore with the tides at Santa Monica, and Mr. Howery walked the shadowy pavements with a nostalgic lassitude.

  He would have given up his hobby at this point, but it had become a habit.

  He didn’t actually need it any more. He no longer got the sense of relief, of guilt dropping away like a barnacle, of almost-but-not-quite scaring and worrying someone of the same sex as his mother and of not-quite being punished for it. He had long ago lost the nervous twinges, and hence most of his sense of caution. His curiosity about what women did with their evenings had long since been satisfied. Most of their activities were dull to the point of stupefaction, in his opinion.

  He had even begun to look around for a new television set, a big one, to replace the quivery twelve-inch-screen model which now stood, neglected and dusty, under a stack of newspapers in the dining room.

  Thus he came, unwary and a little bored, to the night of the sixteenth of April, when he first followed the woman who haunted freight trains.

  She was quite pretty, though this was not what first attracted his attention.

  At about eight o’clock that evening he decided to stroll over to the neighborhood shopping center. He intended to pick up cigarettes and a pound of coffee for breakfast and maybe a slice of ham. Perhaps also, underneath, was the half-formed thought of following some woman who looked interesting. If one did. The idea was pretty vague, and almost as routine as that of brushing his teeth before going to bed.

  He never entered the great neon-lit cathedral-sized vault of the supermarket without a sense of welcoming, of vast plenty, of having come to a place where every possible want could be satisfied, of being catered to. The bustle, the prodigious display always quickened his senses. In passing he glanced at the idiot board—as he called it—just inside the entry, noting the litter of paper scraps and cards pinned to it, offering in the main the resale of mistakes. Outboard motors offered by those with no taste for the water, artists’ kits by those who had learned they could not paint, golf clubs by those too tired to golf, fur coats and dance frocks by those without a social life, and houses by those who presumably wished to be homeless—these all carried for Mr. Howery a note of bittersweet imprudence, plus a sense of self-congratulation over all the mistakes he had avoided. The juvenile scribblings offering to mow lawns or to baby-sit reminded him, too, of the fact that his mother had never permitted him to earn money as a child. Money had been withheld, to be doled out as a reward for good behavior.

  Above the crowding scrappy impressions he noted now that at the desk beside the board, scratching with a pencil on a white card, stood a woman with a thumb tack between her lips.

  He caught at once that she was writing a notice to be pinned up.

  She was slender and fair-haired, the hair having that thick silky quality, almost like liquid, sliding and slipping with its weight as she moved her head. She was fine-featured, the shape of the face delicate and precise. He couldn’t see her eyes; they were bent upon whatever she was writing.

  She wore a skimpy light blue dress, a rayon print, and a black imitation-fur jacket. No hose on her bare legs in spite of the misty weather. She had on open-toed sandals and her toenails were tinted red.

  A rather ordinary-looking girl, in spite of the prettiness.

  He had walked past, beyond sight of her, before curiosity suddenly tugged at him. What sort of notice was she writing for the idiot board?

  Some sketchy possibilities occurred to him. She had broken her engagement and now was selling the ring. A small, cheap diamond. Or she was looking for a room to rent. She was the kind of young woman, he thought, who could pack what she owned in one suitcase. Or perhaps she had taken in some homeless female cat—she looked that kind, too—and now was offering to give away the kittens.

  He had better find out. He swung around and found himself looking at a wine display. He studied the array of wine bottles until she finished the note, took it over to the board, and pinned it into place with the tack, a spot low and in the right-hand corner.

  Then she went quickly past, entered a turnstile, and disappeared into one of the long, busy aisles of the market.

  He walked quickly to the board and at once located the newly written notice. At first he was so surprised at what was written on it that he felt positive it could not be the one she had tacked up; but on examining that corner of the board he saw that it was the one plain square card in the middle of scraps of notebook pages and other riffraff. So that what she had wanted was not to sell a small cheap diamond nor to rent a small cheap room. She had some new expensive automobile tires to sell.

  NEW TIRES. WHITE SIDEWALL. WILL FIT CADDIE OR OLDS, NEW MODELS. $125 FOR SET OF FOUR, PLUS SPARE. THESE ARE A REAL BARGAIN FOR RIGHT PARTY.

  PHONE BA-XTER 7-7754

  She looked so unlike the kind of woman who would have five brand-new tires, Caddie or Olds or even a Ford’s, that his interest at once perked up. He went into the market quickly, got the coffee and cigarettes, passing up the ham since none was displayed in the meat counter ready-sliced, and went outside to wait in the parking lot.

  He wanted to see this Caddie or Olds which had come so well supplied with rubber.

  Some more of the foggy vapor had gathered in the air, so that the lights of the big market had a misty softness, and the blue globes that hung above the ranks of parked cars were like faraway moons. The light was so poor out there, in fact, that he almost missed her.

  She came out swiftly, silhouetted for only a moment against the glow within; and it took an instant for him to realize that she had turned away from the parking area and was headed for the street. Even then, hurrying to catch up by cutting across the parking lanes, he nearly lost her. She turned a corner and walked north, away from the shopping center, at a fast clip. He kept within sound of her hurrying steps, getting an occasional glimpse of her dim figure; but actually the pace was too fast to be fun. He preferred a leisurely and provocative wandering; and besides, at this rate, she must be heading directly for a nearby destination. Probably home.

  Presently he sensed a change in her direction; and sure enough she had left the sidewalk and was hurrying up the driveway of a large, old house. Lights were on inside. She went around to the rear. Probably she re
nted a room in the place.

  Where in the hell the Caddie with its extra rubber could be hidden, Mr. Howery had no idea.

  Besides, he was practically breathless and his legs twitched with the exertion of hurrying. He gave her a mental good night.

  Strolling away, his mind returned to thoughts of breakfast, and he wondered if it was worth while going back to the market and asking for a cut of ham. He thought, too, of the possible new television set, the current state of his clothes—growing subtly gaudier this last year—and whether he shouldn’t take the occasional beer at a bar and perhaps meet someone … not follow, but actually face and talk to … a woman.

  So it was that when her steps approached him out of the dark, not rushing now but with a firm quick step, he was not aware that this was the woman from the market.

  She passed him, not looking at him. There was enough light from the street lamp at the corner so that he recognized her.

  Inexplicably, an emanation reached him—a feeling that was happy and excited and alive. It crossed his mind, out of nowhere, the thought that she was going to meet a man she loved.

  Chapter 2

  She was brisk. She had energy and youth. More, she was headed for a place where she would enjoy herself, where there was a blissful reward awaiting her. A place to be with the one she longed for. This, Mr. Howery would have sworn to.

  So that when they came at last to the steel-link fence that shut in the vast dusty expanse of the railroad yards, a place that even at night gave off the smell of sun-baked oil and dirt, the indefinable smell of worn machinery and steam, he expected her to turn off on some intersecting street at any moment.

  She kept on.

  At a spot where there was an opening in the fence, where a great wedge of crisscrossing track entered the yards like a funnel of steel, she paused. There was a light on a standard not too far beyond. Mr. Howery saw her glance around with a touch of caution. He was well behind her, there was no place that she could get lost here on the dim-lit but open street next to the fence. Whatever she did, he was with her.