Someone Is Watching

by Joy Fielding

  I see him as soon as I exit the building.

  He is standing on the sidewalk, struggling to fix his umbrella, which the wind has blown inside out. Even though he has exchanged his jogger’s uniform for a pair of black pants and a sports jacket, I recognize Colin Lesser immediately. I know he works in the area and that it’s lunchtime, so it’s not out of the question that we would run into each other. Still, it seems more than mere coincidence that he would be in this spot at precisely the same time I am. Has he been following me?

  “What are you doing here?” I demand.

  He looks up, startled. “What?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, realizing only then that the man I have just accosted is not Colin Lesser at all. “I thought you were someone else.”

  The man mumbles something unintelligible before hurrying away.

  What’s the matter with me? Probably I have Colin Lesser on the brain because of his phone call this morning. I close my eyes, picturing the address printed at the bottom of his business card; his office is approximately three blocks from here, not even a two-minute sprint away. What am I thinking?

  Clearly I’m not thinking at all, I decide, as I begin hurrying toward it.

  —

  Colin Lesser’s office is on the second floor of an eighteen-story, baby pink building less than three blocks from Holden, Cunningham, and Kravitz. I take the stairs, relieved at not having to get into another elevator, and locate his office, which is halfway down the long hall. I’m here to apologize for my puzzling and probably rude behavior this morning on the phone and to explain that, while he is an attractive and no doubt fascinating man, it would not be a good idea for us to have dinner anytime soon. This is what I tell myself. Perhaps I even believe it.

  The office appears to be empty, which isn’t surprising, given that it’s lunchtime. There is no one sitting at the receptionist’s tidy desk, no patients waiting in the cozy waiting area, with its long, green leather sectional across from a large TV, which is currently tuned to CNN. An espresso machine is built into the pale green wall alongside several impressive abstract oils, and on the limestone top of a wide coffee table are several of the latest in celebrity gossip magazines.

  “Can I help you?” The voice is familiar and I turn toward it, expecting to see Colin. Instead I come face to face with a balding man with kind eyes and a gentle smile, some three decades Colin’s senior.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Lesser.”

  “You found him.”

  “You’re Dr. Lesser?” What does this mean? That Colin isn’t who he claimed to be? That everything he told me was a lie? That our meeting was far from chance and even farther from “cute,” that he has, in fact, been stalking me, that he is the man who raped me.…

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “What? No. I … I’ve made a mistake.…” I head to the door.

  “Wait. Perhaps you’re here to see my …”

  “Bailey?” I hear.

  I turn around, watching the Colin Lesser I know emerge from one of the inner rooms to walk toward me. He is wearing a white lab coat over a checkered shirt and a pair of khaki pants. Even from this distance, his dimples are clearly visible.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I … I …”

  “I see you’ve met my father.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” the older man says, retreating down the inner corridor.

  “What are you doing here?” Colin asks again.

  “I’m hungry,” I tell him, surprised to realize that this is true. “I was hoping you might be free for lunch.”

  —

  “So you quit?” he is asking, putting his elbows on the Formica-topped table and leaning toward me.

  “I didn’t really feel I had any other choice. I mean, it was stupid, right?” I say. “Having an affair with a married man who also happens to be my boss.…” I glance at Colin Lesser’s plate, his enormous corned beef sandwich sitting, half-eaten, in front of him. He is staring at me, his dark blue eyes fastened on my lips, which haven’t stopped moving since we sat down.

  After asking a few perfunctory questions—How long have you been in practice? What’s it like working with your father? Have you ever been married?—and receiving some mercifully ordinary answers—Four years; it’s great; my girlfriend and I broke up about a year ago—I completely steamrolled the conversation. I was talking even as I wolfed down the diner’s hot turkey special, and now I can’t seem to stop. I’m pouring my heart out to a man I barely know, a man I suspected less than an hour ago could be the man who raped me. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

  “Sounds like you have a pretty good case for sexual harassment,” he offers.

  “I was hardly harassed. He didn’t force himself on me.”

  “But somebody did,” Colin says after a pause.

  “Yes,” I hear myself admit. Why am I confiding in this man? Because he has the same kind eyes as his father? Because he’s here? The truth is, he wasn’t here. The truth is that I went out of my way to bring him here. Why? Because I’m angry at Sean? Because I want to prove to myself that a man—a seemingly sane, reasonable man whom I might normally find attractive—might find me attractive as well? Because I desperately want to believe that despite what has happened, some men are good? Or do I harbor deeper, darker, suspicions? “Was it you?” I hear myself ask.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you the man who raped me?”

  “What!?”

  The waitress approaches our table. She is about sixty years old and speaks with a thick Hungarian accent. Her pendulous breasts strain against the front of her mustard-colored uniform, its round black buttons threatening to pop right off. “What’s the matter?” she asks Colin, whose face has gone ghostly white. “You don’t like your sandwich?”

  “What did you say?” he asks me, ignoring her question. “What on earth would make you think that?”

  “Dessert? Coffee?” the waitress asks.

  “Coffee,” Colin snaps.

  “Make that two,” I add as the waitress gathers up our plates.

  “Are you serious? You actually think I could be the man who raped you?” Colin looks around the crowded deli, as if half-expecting a cop to jump up from behind the next booth, wrestle him to the tabletop, and cuff his hands behind his back.

  “Are you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” he repeats. “That’s it? Okay?”

  The waitress brings our coffee, depositing a bowlful of cream and sugar packets on the table.

  “I don’t understand. What are we even doing here, if you think I could have …?” Colin asks as soon as she is gone.

  “I don’t think that. I really don’t.”

  “Then why …?”

  “Can we just forget I mentioned it?”

  “Forget you mentioned it? No, I don’t think I can do that. What’s going on here, Bailey? Were you trying to trick me into saying something incriminating?”

  “No. I honestly wasn’t.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know. Clearly, I have issues.…”

  “Clearly.”

  Neither of us speaks for a good minute or two. Instead we sip at our coffee and stare at the rain.

  “I take it the police haven’t caught the guy,” Colin ventures just as the silence is becoming unbearable.

  “No, they haven’t.”

  “I also assume you never saw the guy’s face?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Is he fishing?

  “It wasn’t me,” he says. “I swear to you, Bailey. It wasn’t me.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Okay,” I repeat.

  He raises his cup of coffee to his lips, doesn’t put it down until he has finished every last drop. “I really should be getting back,” he says finally. “I have a patient in fifteen minutes.” He stands up and reaches
into his pocket, lays a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “I really have to run.…”

  “I know. I understand. I really do.”

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I hope they catch the guy.”

  “Me too.”

  He pauses for another second, as if debating with himself whether to say anything else. When he finally speaks, the message is simple and crystal clear: “Goodbye, Bailey.”

  — TWENTY-SEVEN —

  An hour later I’m sitting in a taxi in front of the building where Paul Giller lives.

  “This the right address?” the driver is asking, regarding me suspiciously through his rearview mirror.

  I know what he is really saying is that if this is the right address, why don’t I get out of his cab? I’ve paid what I owe, and we are experiencing another temporary break in the rain. This would be the perfect time to make a run for it.

  I hadn’t intended to come here. My original plan was to go straight home. Yet when the seventy-something, gray-haired cabbie pulled to a stop in front of me, the address I gave him wasn’t mine, but Paul Giller’s.

  I’m operating on pure adrenaline, and I know it.

  Except …

  I feel more in control than I have in weeks.

  I am not crazy.

  Yeah, right.

  Tell that to Colin Lesser.

  And David Trotter.

  And Jason Harkness.

  Tell it to Detective Castillo and Officer Dube.

  Tell it to the judge, I think, and almost laugh.

  A flash of light is followed, seconds later, by an ominous roll of thunder. Another major downpour is imminent. The prudent thing would be to abandon whatever hare-brained scheme my mind is cooking up and head for home. But, of course, since I’m not crazy, I do just the opposite, exiting the cab and running toward the entrance of the tall glass building. I push open the lobby door and head straight for the residents’ directory.

  The manager of the building is listed at the bottom, and I press the buzzer and wait.

  “Yes?” comes the booming male voice seconds later. “Can I help you?”

  I take an involuntary step back. “I want to inquire about an apartment.”

  “Be right with you.”

  I look around the sparsely furnished lobby, wondering if its minimalist content is one of design or necessity. There are hints the economy might be starting to improve, at least according to several pundits I’ve heard posturing on TV. Then maybe the real estate market will pick up, and people will start buying again. Condos won’t have to resort to renting out their units by the month in order to stay afloat. Lobbies will once again overflow with furniture.

  I watch a man in neatly pressed jeans and a bright blue golf shirt approaching from the other side of the glass door. He is short and middle-aged, good-looking. A full head of salt-and-pepper hair, excellent posture, a trim physique. He opens the door and motions me inside, extends his hand in greeting. His handshake is strong, almost crippling, my knuckles squeezing against one another before he releases me from his iron grip. “Adam Roth,” he says. “You are …?”

  “Elizabeth Gordon.” I’m seized with the fear that Adam Roth might actually know Elizabeth Gordon, that he could be one of her clients.

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Gordon,” he says. “Pretty nasty day to be out apartment hunting.” He leads me around the corner to his office.

  In contrast to the large, empty lobby, the manager’s tiny office seems more like a storeroom. In the middle sits a large desk piled high with papers, folders, and floor plans; behind it, a comfortable-looking brown leather armchair; in front of it, two brown leather tub chairs. Several folding chairs are stacked in a corner. A large bookshelf full of colorful binders lines the wall to the right of the desk, while to the left stands an easel with an artist’s rendering of a tall glass building, probably this one, although it’s hard to tell since they all look pretty much the same.

  “This is shaping up to be quite the storm,” Adam Roth remarks, sitting down behind his desk, and motioning toward the chairs in front of it for me to do likewise. “How can I help you, Miss Gordon?”

  “I’m looking for an apartment.”

  “To buy or rent?”

  “Rent.”

  He looks disappointed. “Are you sure? This is an ideal time to buy. Prices are down, interest rates are low.…”

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying in Miami.”

  “I see. So we’re talking more short-term.”

  “Yes.”

  “A year’s lease or month to month?”

  “Probably month to month.”

  Adam Roth smiles, although he looks even further dejected. “How big an apartment are you interested in, Miss Gordon?”

  “A one-bedroom, preferably on one of the upper floors, looking west.”

  “Really? Most clients prefer an eastern view. Well,” he says, sifting through the papers on his desk until he finds the folder he’s looking for, “let’s see what we have available.”

  I inch forward in my seat.

  “As it turns out, we have quite a few one-bedroom suites available that face west. How does the eighteenth floor suit you?”

  “How many floors does the building have?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Then I’d prefer something higher. Maybe around twenty-seven?” According to the directory, Paul Giller lives in apartment 2706.

  “Well, I should warn you that the prices go up with each floor and the view is pretty much the same.” He waves in the general direction of my building. “Let me see. I have a one-bedroom available on the twentieth floor, two on the twenty-first, one on the twenty-fourth, and one on the twenty-eighth.”

  “What number is the suite on the twenty-eighth floor?”

  “What number? Uh … it’s number 2802. Any particular reason you’d ask that?”

  “Just curious. I once lived on the twenty-eighth floor of a building, and I thought it would be interesting if it were the same number.” I give him a shrug and my most winsome smile, a smile that says “charmingly kooky,” not “crazy.” “I’d like to have a look at that one, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course. That’s why I’m here.” He reaches inside his desk drawer for a set of keys. “The unit rents for sixteen hundred dollars a month. But for a down payment of only twenty thousand dollars, you could pay much less monthly and start building some home equity as well.”

  “Would that I had twenty thousand dollars to put down,” I improvise, pushing myself to my feet and following after him as he exits the office.

  “We do insist on a security deposit and first and last months’ rent in advance,” he tells me as we wait by the bank of elevators. “What is it you do, Miss Gordon, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m a therapist.”

  “Really? Physical, occupational …?”

  “Psycho,” I say, thinking this might be the best term to describe me.

  “A psychotherapist? Really? You look so young.”

  We take the elevator up to the twenty-eighth floor.

  “This way.” He points to his right and we walk down the gray-carpeted hallway. I’m looking toward suite 2806 as Adam Roth inserts the key inside the lock of suite 2802 and gives it a twist. “Miss Gordon? Or should that be Dr. Gordon?” he asks when I fail to respond to the name.

  “Miss Gordon is fine.” The door falls open and we step inside a tiny gray-and-white marble foyer.

  He shows me around the small apartment. “Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout. Marble flooring in the main area. Granite countertops in the kitchen. Modern appliances, including a dishwasher, microwave, and stacked washer-dryer,” he rattles off. “And now the bedroom.” We step inside the small square whose entire westerly wall is window. “Wall-to-wall plush carpeting as well as a walk-in closet and marble en suite bathroom. Quite a nice size, by today’s standards. So, what do you think?”<
br />
  “It’s lovely. Do all the one-bedrooms facing west have the same layout?”

  “Yes. There may be minor variations, if people purchased before construction began, but essentially what you’re seeing is the identical unit throughout.”

  I walk to the window, stare out toward my building, trying to determine which apartment is mine. But the rain makes it almost impossible to see anything. I lay my head against the glass, straining to pinpoint my unit.

  “Miss Gordon?” Adam Roth asks. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Just trying to get a feel for things.…”

  I try counting the floors of my building from the ground up, but this proves too difficult, and I’m forced to settle for a general sense of where everything is located. But it’s obvious, even with the rain, even one floor removed and two units down, that Paul Giller has as good a view of my apartment as I have of his.

  “Any questions?” Adam Roth asks as we return to the main living area.

  “How much of the building is currently occupied?”

  “Slightly less than half. We had a lot of speculators, and unfortunately, when the markets collapsed …”

  “And the ratio of owners to renters?” I interrupt, wondering into which category Paul Giller falls.

  “Probably about equal.”

  “Is there a high turnover with the renters?”

  “Not really, no. I assure you, Miss Gordon, that this is a very safe building, if that’s what’s concerning you.”

  “No, I’m not concerned. I actually think I might know someone who lives here.”

  Adam Roth looks at me expectantly.

  “I met him at a party the other week. I think he said he was an actor. God, what was his name? Paul Something. Gilmore? Gifford?”

  “Giller?” the building manager offers.

  “Yes. That’s it. Paul Giller. Good-looking guy. I thought he said he lived in this building.”