The Stalker

THE STALKER BY JEFF SHEAR

When I stepped into the subway car, I exchanged glances with a woman wearing a Crayola green faux fur jacket tossed like a cape over her shoulders. As the train bumped from station to station, she adjusted her jacket to keep from slipping off her broad shoulders.

The fake fur might have looked like a large green rug sample on another woman but not on her. It might have been pricey, not quite pricey enough for Bergdorf ’s window but Bloomingdales for sure. She wore it with panache. It was she that gave it style, not the other way around.

How does that happen, style? Some people just have it, that “look.” Did it come from the way she carried herself, which was a kind of limp almost swooning grace, even as we jounced to a stop at 34th Street? Or was it that languor in her gaze, as her eyes roamed around the noisy train and then stopped on mine? Or maybe it was her gall that did it, the way she turned her back when she saw me staring at her as we pulled into the 42nd Street station, and I lost my balance. Or maybe it wasn’t style I was looking at. Maybe it was that glance we first shared. Maybe I was intrigued by the feeling that brought over me? For a moment, the wet wool smell of the train car distracted me.

She was in her late twenties. Her hair was short and well-cut rising to a graceful pompadour that swooned and then dissolved behind her right ear. Big jewelry is in; I read that in Vogue. She wore a lanyard necklace of pewter chips that fell nearly to her waist where it was anchored by a buckle-sized emerald pendant. She touched it, and that’s when I saw her blood-red nails. I took notice of her left hand. Slim fingers. No wedding ring. She glanced at me. And when she turned away, she leaned against the car’s handrail, a wraith wrapped in a green fur carpet.

Really, I don’t follow people around, I wouldn’t stalk anyone, but I followed her off the Number One train at 79thStreet. She had glanced back at me as she stepped off the car. Was it an invitation, I saw or was she ensuring herself I wasn’t a stalker? I was careful to be the last passenger off the train car because I didn’t want to frighten her. I kept my distance as I followed. In the early spring twilight, she walked briskly toward Amsterdam Avenue and

passed under the maroon awning of the Lucerne Hotel, a tall pink stone edifice dominating the corner where she turned left.

At that hour, about 7 p.m, the streets were still excited by window shoppers and residents returning from midtown and their jobs. Each day now, the sun hung on later and later, and at this hour the chugging gray fetor of car exhausts wafted away, and the air freshened on the aromas of ethnic eateries. I fitted in with this crowd. I dressed well, wore my clothes well. I could have been part of this soaringly upward mobile neighborhood, instead of being lashed to the two-room where I lived in Alphabet City.

I shadowed her as she walked past Insomnia Cookies and the Great Burrito, past a dry cleaner, and an Indian restaurant. I debated whether to jog up to her and introduce myself, asking her if she had a moment for a drink. There was no shortage of watering holes and white wine bars around here.

A cab honked, and I dodged. It was she that distracted me as she turned right onto 80th, a calm, tree-lined block with an Italian restaurant on one corner and the Cava Bar opposite. She took the odd-numbered side of the street where fire escapes took scissor steps across the apartment fronts. The even side where I walked was New York-New York: Brownstones with marble steps leading up to a rez de chaussée.

She had to be a woman with money to have a place on this street. Maybe that’s the style I saw in her, her cash. But her style came naturally; it was a way of being not posing. It took money to live in Manhattan’s mid-eighties. A studio apartment here went for about half a million. I knew that because I checked the real estate ads every day. This was the place to live. Central Park was there straight ahead, a block or so away.

I brushed a bead of perspiration from my upper lip. Keeping pace with her was not easy. Like an athlete, her grace translated into speed, yet she did not hurry. On her side of the block, orange and white plastic traffic drums lined the street where sidewalk repairs were underway. But the obstacles didn’t slow her, and she stopped at a mail pick-up to fumbled with her green faux fur jacket and search inside her pocketbook. I stopped as suddenly as she did and tied my shoelaces. It was an awkward moment, but I was just far enough away from her to be noticed.

When I looked back around, I saw the fob of keys dangling from her hand. She started up the next set of tan stairs to her building. At that, my sense of urgency took over my sense of decency, and I crossed the

street to her side as she stopped at the polished wood and glass entry doors to her building. She must have caught a glimpse of me reflected in the windows, and she grabbed a quick look over her shoulder. I think our eyes met. Had she smiled? Yes. I saw a hint, but I don’t know. I froze. It might have been a look of concern or fear as if she had she recognized me as the man staring at her on the subway. I don’t know.

By my right, a taxi pulled over to the curb to drop off a fare. The woman who got out was tall and hidden inside a swath of gray sable. My paramour had stopped to glance over her mail. The woman in fur smiled my way and our eyes met, mine wide, hers fluttering her and long-lashed. As she passed, she left a trail of Guerlain in her wake.

The cab had lingered. I caught my breath. “Hey,” I called, and three faces turned toward me. I felt something primitive in my loins. On impulse, I yanked open the taxi door and looked back to see the faux green carpet swing through the entry. Then, I saw the sable coat smile at the man who must have gone out from the other side of the taxi as I got in. The cabbie asked me, “Where you wanna go?” “Drop me at Bloomingdales,” I said. It was a good place to have a look around.

Jeff Shear’s the author of the book an investigation into a weapon’s deal between the US and Japan, entitled The Keys to the Kingdom.