by Lisa Unger
Then, unthinking, I push through the doors, stepping out onto the shaking metal platforms between the cars. This is a major subway no-no, I think as I balance and grope my way through the squeal of metal racing past concrete, metal on metal singing, sparking, then through the other door into the relative quiet of the next car.
He moves away, shoving his way through the throng. I follow.
“What the fuck?”
“Watch it.”
“Come on.”
Annoyed passengers shoot dirty looks, shift reluctantly out of my way as I push after him, the black of his hood cutting like a fin through the sea of others.
As we pull into the next station, he disappears through the door at the far end of the car. Trying to follow him, I find myself caught in the flow of people exiting, and get pushed out of the train onto the platform. I finally break free from the crowd, jog up the platform searching for the hooded figure among tall and short, young and old, backpacks, briefcases, suits, light jackets, baseball caps. Where is he?
I want to see his face, need to see it, even though I can’t say why. Distantly, I’m aware that this is not wise behavior. Not street-smart.
Don’t chase trouble, my mother always says. It will find you soon enough.
Then the doors close and I’m too late to get back on. Shit. My phone chimes, finding a rare spot of service underground.
A text from Ben: ETA? They’re going to wait a bit, then reschedule. Assume you’re stuck on the train.
It isn’t until the train pulls away that I see the stranger again, on board, standing in the door window. He’s still watching, or so it seems, his face obscured in the darkness of the hood. I walk, keeping pace with the slow-moving train for a minute, lift my phone and quickly take a couple of pictures. I can almost see his face. Then he’s gone.
2
I arrive at the office frazzled, sweaty, full of nerves, late for the meeting. In the bathroom, running my wrists under cold water, pulling shaking fingers through my dark hair, I stare at my reflection in the mirror.
Pull. Yourself. Together.
My face is sickly gray under the ugly fluorescents, as I dab some makeup on the eternal dark circles under my eyes, refresh lipstick and blush. A little better, but the girl in the mirror is still a tired, wrung-out version of the person she used to be.
Rustling through my bag, I find the bottle of pills Layla gave me. It’s blank, the little amber vial, no label. For nerves, she said. I hesitate only a second before popping one in my mouth and swallowing it with water from the faucet, then try to take some centering breaths. Dr. Nash is not aware of my unauthorized pill-taking, one of multiple things I keep from her. I know. What’s the point of keeping things from the person who is supposed to be helping you?
As I walk past Ben’s desk, he rises and hands me a stack of messages.
“They’re waiting,” he says, dropping into step beside me. “You’re fine.”
“Great.” My smile feels as stiff and fake as it is. “The subway is a mess.”
“Everything okay?”
He inspects me through thick, dark-rimmed glasses, tugs at his hipster beard. He’s a stellar assistant; I keep trying to promote him but he doesn’t want to go. My clients love him—he’s on top of all their contracts, tracks down their payments, helps with grant and residency applications. Over the past year, he’s been more agent to them than I have. He could probably just take over and I could slip away. It’s tempting, that idea of slipping away, disappearing—another life, another self.
“Yeah,” I say unconvincingly. Ben watches after me with a frown as I push into the conference room.
“His work,” Maura is saying. “It’s stunning.”
“Whose work?” I ask, taking my seat at the head of the conference table. “Sorry I’m late.”
All eyes turn to me. When Jack was alive, I could come and go unnoticed. He ran the meetings and I was the number two—critical to the running of the office, but not the magnetic, energetic head of the meeting table. He brought a light and enthusiasm for the craft, for the business into every gathering. I am not the captain he was, I know, but I’m doing my best. They watch me now—respectful, kind, hopeful.
Jack picked out everything in this room, from the long sleek conference table to the white leather swivel chairs, the enormous flat screen on the wall. His photo from an Inca Trail trek, featured in Travel + Leisure, is blown up onto an enormous canvas. He took it from his campsite above the cloud line—orange tents blossom in white mist, as clouds fall away into a landscape of jade and royal blue, the dip of the valley dark and the sky bright.
“Alvaro’s,” Maura says. “He took that Nat Geo job to photograph the okapi living in the Ituri Rainforest, just got back yesterday.”
The photos come up on the screen—lush, jewel greens and deep black, a red mud road twists and disappears into a thick of forest; a girl, her eyes dark and staring, stands on a riverbank in a grass skirt, her expression innocently teasing. A blue-and-white truck travels precariously over a swaying wooden slat bridge.
Maura runs a manicured hand over her black hair, pulled tight into a ponytail at the base of her neck. She’s young, but her almond-shaped eyes reveal an old soul. Olive-skinned, almost birdlike in her delicacy, she’s a firebrand agent, fiercely protective of her clients. She worries over them like a mother hen.
“The colors, the movement, the energy,” I say. “They’re wonderful.”
The trunk of a tree, hollowed out and haunted, twisting, branches reaching up into deep green black. The shots of the okapi, an animal that is partially striped like a zebra, but related more closely to a giraffe, are stunning—a mother nursing her young, a young male hiding in tall grass, a small herd underneath a wide full moon.
“They are,” Maura agrees. Her smile is wide and proud. “He’s—amazing.”
I wonder, not for the first time, if something is going on between Maura and Alvaro. It’s not a good idea for an agent to fall in love with a photographer she represents. In fact, it’s not a good idea for anyone to fall in love with a photographer. The unfiltered world never quite measures up to whatever he sees through that lens. Alvaro Solare, Jack’s best friend and the firm’s first client, is the typical roving photographer, always in pursuit of the next perfect shot. Which means the rest of the world can go to hell. There are a string of heartbroken women in his wake. I’d prefer Maura not become one of them. But it’s not really my business.
The rest of my agents run down the status of their clients’ assignments. Our firm, Lang and Lang, mine and Jack’s, represents photographers. We are a boutique agency, small but successful, with some of the top names in fashion, feature and news photography on our roster.
What started as a small enterprise in our apartment, has grown into an agency with a suite of offices in the Flatiron Building. Jack, affable and mellow, was a natural mediator. When Alvaro was in a dispute with the New York Times travel section, Jack stepped in and resolved it over drinks with the photo editor, an old friend of his. Alvaro paid Jack 15 percent out of appreciation. One thing led to another, and after a year Jack was turning down photo assignments, and representing more of his friends, including me.
So, after years of hustling as travel photographers, scraping together a living, we traded in our life of adventure for a firm dedicated to protecting the rights of people who make a living with a camera in their hands. Alvaro thought it was a mistake, that we were wasting our talent and our lives. And he never lost an opportunity to tell us so. But we thought it was time to settle down, start a family. Except it didn’t work out that way.
I half listen as the other agents run down problems and successes. I comment, make suggestions, offer to make a call to a contact of mine at Departures. But mostly, I am still on that train, chasing after the man in the hood.
I wonder if anyone notices that I am a ghost in my li
fe.
* * *
It’s another half hour before I am back in my office, scrolling through the blurry, useless photos I took on my smartphone. The light was poor, too much motion. That dark form is just a smudge, a black space between the grainy commuters all around him. I use my thumb and forefinger to enlarge the image on the screen, but it looks ever more amorphous as a low-quality image will.
I start to doubt myself, my grip on reality. What did I see really, after all? Just a man with a hood, who might or might not have been looking in my direction.
I don’t even notice Ben until he’s sitting across the desk from me. There’s a look I don’t like on his face, worry, something else.
“What?”
He leans back and crosses his legs. “When were you going to tell me?”
“Tell you?”
“That you’re dating again.”
I shake my head, not wanting to get into it. “I’m not.”
“So, who’s Rick, then?” He slides a message across my desk. There’s another one from him in the stack I’ve just barely started to sort through. I’m old-school; I still like paper messages to toss when calls are returned, write notes on, keep as reminders.
“He’s no one,” I say.
I wouldn’t say I’m exactly dating. There’s a snow globe on my desk, a little farmhouse surrounded by trees. Jack gave it to me one Christmas. This is what our house will look like, out in the country. Quiet. Away from all the chatter. I tip it and watch the snow swirl around the black branches.
“I saw your profile online,” says Ben. He peers over his glasses, a gesture he thinks makes him look wise, worldly. It really doesn’t. He’s far too young to be either of those things.
Putting the snow globe down, I lean back in my chair and frown at him.
“What are you doing on an online dating site, a young hottie like you? They must drop like flies.”
He shoots me a faux-smarmy eyebrow raise. “That’s what we do. The millennials? It’s how we roll. Tinder, OKCupid, Match.com. Love is just a swipe away.” He makes a wave motion with his hand.
“So, it’s not just for old people, then?” I sift through the tiny white sheets of paper. “The divorced, the forever single—the widowed.”
Widowed. I hate that word; it evokes black veils and wails of grief. It defines me by the loss of my husband, as though I’m less now that he’s gone. Of course—I am. I regret saying it as soon as it’s out of my mouth. The word hangs in the air between us. When I look up from my messages, Ben has me pinned in a thoughtful gaze. Another youngster with an old soul; it seems we have a type in our small firm.
“If you must know, it wasn’t my idea.”
“Let me guess.” He shifts forward, puts his elbows on his knees.
“Layla came over. Wine was consumed. The next thing I know, I’m back in the dating scene.”
I don’t think you can clinically call what I’m doing dating. In the olden days, we used to refer to it as sleeping around. A relationship? A boyfriend? No. I don’t want those things. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But, wow, does it ever feel good to be touched again. I don’t share this with Ben, who is studiously massaging that hipster beard he’s so proud of. I wish he’d cut it off. It’s borderline offensive, though I can’t say why precisely.
“It’s a good thing,” he says finally, rising. “And Rick sounds like kind of a nice guy. He’s hot, too. Looks like he could have money.”
“You checked him out?” I say, mock mortified.
“Uh,” he says, widening his eyes. “Yeah.”
I smile at my young friend, my assistant who has outgrown his position but still likes it. If he has a girlfriend, or a boyfriend—or whatever—he never says so. I open my email; an impossible number of messages await.
“Two calls in a day,” says Ben, moving toward the door. “I like his confidence. A man who knows what he wants.”
“Confidence or arrogance?” I ask. “Desperation?”
“Let’s call it—” Beard rubbing, word searching. “Assertiveness.”
“Send him an email, will you? Tell him drinks on Thursday?” I ask.
“From you or from me?”
“Would it be weird if it was from you?”
“Seriously weird,” he says, then rethinks. “Well—more like pretentious. Have your people call my people? Do you want to be that person?”
“Fine—from me.”
Ben frequently sends emails at my direction from my account. Never anything big, just setting meeting times, quick one-line answers to various questions.
“Where?”
I shrug. “I don’t care. He can choose.”
Ben hesitates in the door a minute, his lanky form in my peripheral vision. Then he leaves me and I am alone with that image staring back at me from my smartphone. I close the photo app and put the device down, shut my eyes and draw in a few deep breaths. That’s the other thing you’re supposed to do when you’re trying to move on, to smooth out the edges of the panic, sadness, anger or whatever overtakes you—focus on the breath. Breathe, they tell you.
Whatever that pill was, it has smoothed out the edges some, for sure. I’m lighter, less shaky.
But—honestly—I’m scared; fear tickles at the back of my throat. There’s a white noise of anxiety in the back of my head. It’s not just the man in the shadows, on the train. He is scary, sure. If there really is someone following me, then yes, it’s weird and frightening. What’s scarier, though, given my history, is if there isn’t.
* * *
I finish out the day, and work late, pushing everything else away. There are contracts to review, emails to answer, a dispute between a fashion photographer and a model she supposedly came on to, then ejected from a shoot when he refused her, another dispute between a feature photographer who’d submitted photos to a travel magazine, filed for payment via their Kafkaesque system, and ninety days later still hadn’t been paid. Work is easy, a cocoon that keeps the chaos of life away.
When I look up from my desk again it’s after seven and all the other offices are dark. The refrigerator in our break room hums, a familiar and weirdly comforting sound. Half of the hallway lights are off, leaving the space dim and shadowy. I know Ben was the last to leave and he locked me in on the way out, reminding me to set the alarm when I finally took off for the night.
As I’m packing my bag, a phone starts ringing in one of the offices. It bounces to the main line, and I reach over to pick it up. There’s no number on the caller ID, but I see that it came from Maura’s extension. Maybe it’s Alvaro; he used to call late for Jack. We’ve drifted since Jack’s death, not that he and I were ever really friends. In fact, despite his extraordinary talent, and his close friendship to Jack, I’ve always considered him a giant asshole. I really hope, for Maura’s sake, that she hasn’t fallen for him.
“Lang and Lang.”
There’s just a crackling on the line.
“Hello?” A strange sense of urgency pulls me forward in my seat.
There’s a voice but so much interference that I can barely make it out. I hang on awhile longer, listening. A strain of music. The blast of a horn. That voice, it’s throaty and deep, talking quickly, unintelligible through the static. Is it familiar?
Poppy. I think he says my name. Something about it sets my nerve endings tingling.
“Yes, this is Poppy. Sorry—I can’t hear you.”
I press my ear to the phone, cover the other to hear better. But the connection finally just goes dead, and a hard dip of disappointment settles into my stomach. I wait, thinking the phone will ring again. But it doesn’t.
With a niggling sense of unease, I move away from the phone. That voice. My name on the line. Or was it?
I pack up my bag and loop the office, making sure lights are down and doors are locked. It’s a small space; there are only
five of us. Walls are made from glass, so there are few places in the office that can’t be seen from wherever you stand. Still, I feel uncomfortable, like I’m being watched. I lock the door behind me, head down in the elevator.
“Working late,” says Sam, the night security guard at the desk. He has a worn paperback novel in his hands. He and Jack used to talk about books, sharing a love of science and history. I glance at the title: The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku.
“Light reading?”
“The brain,” he says, tapping his capped skull. He has dark circles under his eyes, a strange depth to his gaze. An insomniac who works nights, a veteran who did two tours in Iraq. “It’s the ultimate mystery. We know less about it than we do about space.”
Jack would know what to say; he’d probably have read whatever Sam was reading. They’d chat for ten minutes while I kept busy answering emails on my smartphone. But I just nod, aware of the sad way he looks at me. Most people look at me like this now, at least sometimes. The widow.
“Take care of yourself,” he says as I head toward the door. There is a gravity to his words, but when I turn back, he’s already gone back to his reading.
* * *
On the street, shadows fill doorways and pool around parked cars. But no hooded man, just a young couple walking, hands linked, leaning into each other, an old woman with a shopping cart, a lanky kid walking and texting. A yellow cab swiftly pulls to the curb. Safe inside, I turn to look behind me once more.
Maybe, maybe something moves in the shadows across the street. But it’s hard to be sure.
3
Instead of going home, I head to Layla’s, dropping her a text so that she knows to expect me. Not even five seconds pass before her reply. She’s always half expecting me for dinner these days—which makes me feel some combination of grateful and guilty.