The Ignored

I had an idea, and I went into the kitchen and dug through the junk drawer until I found my AAA map of Los Angeles. I spread the map out, located the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

There was a car parked on the street in front of my apartment. A white Dodge Dart. I didn’t think much of it at first, but when the car pulled behind me as I drove out of the driveway… then followed me down College Avenue, down Imperial Highway and onto the freeway, I began to feel a little unnerved. I knew it was probably nothing. I’d simply seen too many movies. And my solitary existence had only contributed to my paranoia. But I couldn’t help noticing that the car remained behind me: changing lanes when I changed lanes, speeding up when I sped up, slowing down when I slowed down. There was no reason for anyone to be following me — such an idea was obviously ludicrous — but I still felt uneasy and a little bit frightened.

In my rearview mirror I saw that a black four-door pickup had zoomed into the space between me and the Dart, and I used this opportunity to get away, flooring the gas pedal, suddenly swerving in front of a VW and exiting the nearest off-ramp. I waited at the intersection of the street at the bottom of the off-ramp, not moving even when the light changed to green, but the Dart did not reappear behind me.

I’d lost him.

I got back on the freeway, heading toward L.A.

The art museum was crowded, and it was hard to find a parking spot. I finally had to shell out five bucks and park at a rip-off lot across the side street from the La Brea Tar Pits. I walked through the park, past the outrageously colored replicas of long-extinct mammals, and up to the museum, where I paid another five bucks for a pass.

Inside, the museum was cool and dark and silent. There were people here, but the building was so big that they seemed few and far between, and even the most flamboyant among them were cowed into quiet by the hushed and intimidating atmosphere.

I walked from room to room, wing to wing, floor to floor, past English furniture and French silverware and Indian statues, scanning the paintings on the walls, looking for one of the big names, one of the heavy hitters. Finally I found one. Renoir. A painting of people eating at an outdoor cafe.

There were no other guests in this gallery or even this wing, only a lone uniformed guard standing silently by the entry way. I stepped back, into the center of the room. This, I knew, was class. This was culture. This was Art with a capital A.

I stared at the painting and felt cold. I wanted to experience the magic, the sense of awe and wonder, the feeling of transcendence that people were supposed to have when confronted with great works of art, but I felt only a mild enjoyment. I looked at the other paintings on display. Before me were the treasures of the world, the very finest objects that man had produced in the history of the planet, and all I could muster was a halfhearted interest. My senses were muffled, subdued, stifled by the nature of my being, by the fact that I was completely and utterly ordinary.

The extraordinary had no power to touch me.

It was what I’d thought, what I’d feared, and although it only confirmed what I’d expected, that confirmation hit home with the force of a death announcement.

I looked again at the Renoir, moved closer, studied it, examined it, trying to force myself to feel something, anything, trying desperately to understand what others might see in the work, but it was beyond me. I turned to go —

— and saw someone standing in the entryway of the gallery, staring at me.

The tall, sharp-eyed man I’d seen at the mall.

A wave of cold passed over me, through me.

And then he was gone, disappearing behind the wall to the left of the door. I hurried over to the entryway, but by the time I reached it there was no sign of him. There was only a lone couple, dressed in matching black turtlenecks, walking toward me from the far end of the wing.

I was tempted to ask the guard whether he’d seen the man, but I realized instantly that he wouldn’t have. The guard was facing into the room, away from where the man had been, and he would not have seen a thing.

The museum suddenly seemed darker, colder, bigger than it had, and as J walked alone toward the front of the building, past silent wings and empty rooms, I realized that I was holding my breath.

I was scared.

I walked faster, wanting to run but not daring to, and it was only when I was safely outside, in the sunshine, surrounded by people, that I was again able to breathe normally.

Seventeen

On Monday, David was gone. I was not told why and I did not ask, but his desk was cleared off, the metal shelves behind him empty, and I knew without being told that he no longer worked for Automated Interface. I wondered if he’d quit or been fired. Fired, I assumed. Otherwise he would’ve told me.

Or maybe not.

What they say and what they mean are two different things.

I found myself thinking about what he’d said about women when I’d told him that I hadn’t made an effort to contact Jane after she’d left me. It had been bothering me ever since he’d said it, nagging at the back of my mind, making me feel, not exactly guilty, but… responsible somehow for the fact that she hadn’t come back. I thought for a moment, then stood, closed the door to the office, and sat down at David’s desk, picking up the phone. I still remembered the day care center’s phone number after all this time, my fingers punching the seven digits almost instinctively.

“May I speak to Jane?” I asked the old woman who answered the phone.

“Jane Reynolds?”

“Yes.”

“She quit four months ago. She no longer works here.”

I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach.

I hadn’t seen, talked to, or communicated with Jane since we’d broken up, but somehow the idea that she’d been near, that she’d continued carrying on her normal life, even though I was no longer part of that life, had been comforting to me, calming. I might not be with her, but just knowing that she was there reassured me. Now, I suddenly discovered, she’d dumped all of her old life at the same time she’d dumped me.

Where was she now? What was she doing?

I imagined her cruising across the country on the back of some Hell’s Angel’s Harley.

No. I pushed the thought out of my mind. That wasn’t Jane. And even if it was, it was none of my business. We weren’t together anymore. I had no right to be affected by the details of her new life.

“Hello?” the old woman said. “Are you still there? Who is this?”

I hung up the phone.

I saw him outside my apartment that evening. The sharp-eyed man. He was standing in the shadows under a tree, his left side lightly and partially illuminated by the streetlamp halfway up the block. I saw him through the front window as I was closing the drapes, and the sight of him scared the shit out of me. I had been trying not to think about him so I would not have to rationalize his existence to myself, but seeing him there, waiting in the dark, staring at my apartment, watching me, made me very afraid. It was clear now that he was spying on me —

stalking me

— though I had no idea why. I hurried to the door, opened it, and bravely stepped out on the porch, but when I looked toward the tree he was gone. There was no one there.

I closed the door, chilled. The thought occurred to me that he wasn’t human. Maybe he was like the hitchhiker who kept following the woman in that Twilight Zone episode. Maybe he was Death. Maybe he was a guardian angel. Maybe he was the ghost of a person my family had wronged who was now fated to follow me everywhere.

Now I was just being stupid.