We Are Here (3 page)

As David hurried after her, someone appeared out of the crowd and banged into him—hard, knocking David back on his feet and getting right in his face.

Untucked white shirt and hard blue eyes.

The same man again.

“Hello, David,” he said. Then something else, before stepping around the corner and out of sight.

Winded and a little scared, David tried to see where the man had gone, but Dawn was calling him urgently now, and someone blew a whistle. He hurried along to where his wife stood flushed and grinning.

“We made it,” she said, as they clambered onto the train. “See? The gods are on our side now.”

Dawn started to crash within fifteen minutes, head on David’s shoulder, hair tickling his neck. David sat bolt upright, trying to be distracted by the view as the carriages trundled over the river and out through urban sprawl. It wasn’t working.

So he’d banged into some guy.

And so that man had evidently then followed them to the train station, watched David from across the concourse, and tracked them through the crowds to bang into him again.

Why would someone do that?

Because he was crazy, that’s why. New Yorkers were famous for taking a hard-line approach. Even the well adjusted and affluent appeared to conduct human interaction as a contact sport. Insane people all the more so, presumably.

That’s all it was. Big deal.

And yet …

As Dawn slipped into a doze and the train began to pick up speed into the hour-long journey to Rockbridge and home, there was one thing that David couldn’t get out of his mind. It was what the stranger had said before he melted back into the crowd. Not the fact that he’d known David’s name—he’d realized the man could have overheard Dawn using it, maybe.

It was the other thing. Just two words. Words that are usually framed as a question but this time sounded like a command. Or a threat.

“Remember me,” he’d said.

When I stopped by the apartment to drop off the groceries, Kristina was still in bed. It had been a late night—they generally are, five nights out of seven at least—but I like to begin my days early, with a long walk. Kristina prefers to deal with them sprawled under the sheets like a pale, lanky spider that has been dropped from a very great height.

I finished wedging things into the tiny fridge (all we had room for, in a kitchen that’s basically a specialized corner of the living room) and strode into the bedroom, an epic journey of three yards. The top of the window was open, proving Kristina must have groped her way out of bed at some point. It’s shut at night or we’d never get to sleep on account of the racket from drunken good times in the streets below. The heater was ominously silent. The unit had been ailing for weeks, wheezing like an old smoker. Though the fall had so far been mild, finding someone to take it up a level from my own feeble attempts at repair (glaring at the machine, once in a while giving it an impotent kick) was high on my list of things to do today.

I put the massive Americano by the side of the bed. “Beverage delivery. You have to sign for it.”

Her voice was muffled. “Fuck off.”

“Right back atcha. It’s a beautiful morning in the neighborhood, case you’re interested.”

“Christ.”

“By the way. This woman later, Catherine. She gets that I’m just some guy, right?”

Kristina laboriously turned her head and blew long strands of black hair off her crumpled face. “Don’t worry,” she mumbled. “I made a point of saying you were nothing special. Matter of fact, I went so far as to imply you were something of an asshole.”

“Seriously.”

She smiled, eyes still closed. “Seriously. No biggie. And thank you for doing it. And for the coffee.”

“So I’ll see you there. Three o’clock?”

“If I don’t see you first.”

I looked down at her and thought it was disquieting how much you could come to like someone in only six months. Shouldn’t our hearts be more cautious? A child or puppy learns after straying too close to a candle to hold back next time. It seems that emotional calluses are not as thick or permanent as they appear, however.

I bent down and kissed Kristina on the forehead.

She opened her eyes. “What was that for?”

“Because I like you.”

“You’re weird.”

“It’s been said.”

“That’s okay. Weird is good.” She stretched like a cat, all limbs pointed in the same direction. “And you’ll think about the other thing?”

“I will.”

“Good. Now scram. I need more sleep.”

“It’s ten thirty.”

Her eyes closed. “It’s always ten thirty somewhere.”

“Very deep.”

“Really, John, I mean it. Don’t make me get up out of here and kick your ass.”

I left her to it, jogged back down the five flights of stairs to street level, and stepped out into the big, strange city that lived—in all its train-wreck glory—right outside our door.

The rest of the morning was spent covering Paulo’s shift at the restaurant’s sidewalk window, hawking pizza and bottles of Poland Spring to passersby. This task is usually reserved for someone barely able to stand unassisted on their hind legs (currently Paulo, fresh-off-the-boat nephew of someone or other and an earthling so basic it’s a miracle he can work out which way to face the street), but I didn’t mind. Paulo’s a sweet kid, eager to please, and was off trying to find somewhere to improve his English. Also, I kind of enjoy the job. There are only two styles of slice available—plain or pepperoni—and one drink. Each costs a dollar. It’s hard to screw that up, and it’s pleasant to lean on the counter exchanging banter with locals and making strangers’ days better in straightforward ways. When your life has been overly complicated, simplicity can taste like a mouthful of clear, cool water. Available, this lunch hour, from me, near the corner of Second Avenue and 4th. Price—one dollar.

When my stint was over, I chatted with the owner, Mario, and his sister Maria—evidently the children of parents with either a sense of humor or a dearth of imagination—over a coffee at one of the sidewalk tables. The Adriatico has been holding down its patch—snug between a venerable Jewish bakery and a thrift store with pretensions of funkiness, a few minutes’ walk from the dives of St. Mark’s Place and side street legends like McSorley’s—for forty years, largely due to the family’s willingness to embrace change, however bad-temperedly. In the time Kristina and I had been on staff (me waiting tables, Kristina running the popular late-night basement bar), the owners had replaced the awning, repainted the picket fence around the sidewalk tables a (much) brighter color, and tried adding the word “organic” to everything on the menu: briefly offering an organic ragu with organic pasta and organic béchamel, oven-baked in the traditional organic manner—aka lasagna. I’d eventually convinced Mario not to pursue this (it made announcing the specials tiresome, and was moreover absolutely untrue), but I had to admire the ambition. It was certainly easier to understand why this restaurant was still in business than the last place I’d worked, on the other side of the country, on the Oregon coast.

I left with the customary mild buzz. The Adriatico’s coffee is celebrated for its strength, to the point where there’s a water-damaged poster in the restrooms (badly) hand-drawn by some long-ago college wit, suggesting it should be cited in strategic-arms-limitation treaties. Nobody can remember why the standard cup has three shots in it, but I’d come to learn that’s how New York works. Someone does something one day for reasons outside their control and beyond anyone’s recollection—and then winds up doing it for the next fifty years. The tangle of these traditions floats through the streets like mist and hangs like cobwebs among the trees and fire escapes. Tourist or resident—and it wasn’t yet clear which I was—you’re forever in the presence of these local heroes and ghosts.

I did my errands, including visiting the heater place. They promised they’d get to ours real soon. As both engineers were regulars at the bar I had reason to believe it.

With an hour still to kill, I took a long stroll down through the Village. There’s always something to see in our part of town, and I liked watching it and walking it, and for the first time in some years I liked my life, too. It was simple, contained, and easy.

But I got the sense that was about to change.

What Kristina wanted me to consider was the idea of a new apartment. There was much about the East Village that we enjoyed. The remnants of the old immigrant population, their pockets of otherness. The leafy side streets and crumbling prewar walkups, the area’s determination to resist gentrification and order, forever tending toward chaos like some huge silverware drawer. The fact that if you came shambling out of a bar late at night waving your iPhone around then you were likely to only get robbed, with brisk efficiency, rather than killed.

At times, though—with roving hordes from NYU and Cooper Union, plus all the young tourists who wanted to show how cool and not just about Banana Republic and the Apple Store they were—it could feel like being shacked up in the low-rent end of a college town. There had been a spate of odd muggings recently, too—people having their bank cards stolen and their accounts immediately emptied at ATMs with mysterious ease.

I never got a chance to do the student thing—having spent those years and more in the army—and I was open to a second adolescence. Kristina was wearying of the locale, however, perhaps because she spent her evenings at the sharper end of the Asshole Service Industry. I’m thirty-seven, old enough for sketchy to have a retro charm. She’s twenty-nine, sufficiently young for the idea of being a grown-up to remain appealing. She’d started talking about moving to SoHo or the West Village, for the love of God. I kept reminding her that she ran bar and I served circular food in a fiercely down-market restaurant. She’d counter with the observation that I had money from the sale of my house in Washington State after the split from my ex-wife. Feeling old and dull, I’d observe that we weren’t bringing in much
new
money, and nobody tied themselves to loft rentals under those circumstances, though I’d be willing to consider subletting somewhere tiny, as an experiment, if we committed to not eating for the foreseeable future—and anyway, it took less than half an hour to walk from our front door to the streets she was talking about, so what was the big deal?

And so on and so forth. The subject would eventually fade into abeyance, like a car drifting out of range of a local evangelical radio station, and I’d be left feeling like the patriarch who’d decreed that instead of eating in the lovely seafood restaurant with an ocean view, the family was going to make do with sandwiches in the parking lot. Again.

An hour later it would be like it never happened, however. Kristina did not study on things. She hit you between the eyes with the full payload, all at once. When that was spent, the storm was over—at least for now.

Two days ago she’d asked if I’d do her a favor, though, and I’d agreed because I felt I was letting her down in other ways. That meant a change was coming. If you’re with a strong woman (and they’re
all
strong, whatever they may have been told to the contrary; women have backbone men can only dream of), then once you’ve given ground you’ll never be off the back foot again.

I was on the way to do that favor now.

The café was on Greenwich Avenue. I deliberately walked the last forty yards on the opposite side of the street, and when I spotted them at one of the rickety tables outside I slowed down to take a look.

Kristina was wearing a skirt and jacket I hadn’t seen before. It was probably only the second or third time in our entire acquaintance, in fact, that I’d seen her in anything except head-to-toe black. Opposite her sat a trim woman in her midthirties, attractive in the way that owes less to bone structure than to upkeep and confidence. Her hair was sleek and blond and impregnable, cut in a style that announces that the wearer will have valuable intelligence on the relative merits of local schools. I couldn’t tell much else from a distance save that, judging from her clothes and bearing, the woman could probably afford an apartment more or less wherever she wanted.

I crossed the street. I was introduced to Catherine Warren and shook hands. We chatted about the weather and reprised background I already knew, like how the two women had met at a weekly reading group held at Swift’s, an independent bookstore in what we’re supposed to call Nolita these days but is just a boutique wedge between SoHo and Little Italy. We agreed that Swift’s was a swell little store and deserved our fervent support, and I elected not to mention my impression that the staff there always watched me as if they suspected I was about steal one of their hand-made gift cards, holocaust memoirs, or chunky anthologies of short stories about growing up poor but wise in Brooklyn.

When these subjects ran out of steam—and the wizened old gay couple from the next table had shuffled away up the street, bickering all the while—I put my cigarettes on the table. Now that you can barely smoke anywhere in the city, this is an effective shorthand for “I’m not going to be here forever, so let’s get to it.”

“Kristina said there was something you might want advice about.”

The woman nodded, looking diffident.

“And she explained to you I’m not a cop, right? Or private detective?”

Kristina rolled her eyes. “She did,” Catherine said. “She said you’re a waiter.”

“That’s true,” I agreed affably. “So, what’s up?”

She looked at the table for a while, then raised her eyes like someone being forced to make a confession.

“I think,” she said, “that I’m being stalked.”

I’m not sure what I’d been expecting. Problems with a neighbor. Vague suspicions about her husband. A younger sister with an unsuitable boyfriend.

“That’s not good. How long has it being going on?”

“On and off, nearly ten years.”

“Whoa,” Kristina said. “Have you
reported
this? Haven’t the police—”

“I’ve never told anyone,” Catherine said quickly. “Apart from Mark. My husband,” she added. “It hasn’t been happening
all
that time or I would have. That’s what’s strange about it. Part of what’s strange.”