so easy. Every nerve ending in my body was aching to kiss him, to feel that smooth, muscular flesh against me. I wanted to see the rest of that tattoo, the one that snaked out of his collar and curled out of his shirtsleeve. But I felt something for Jake, something too powerful to sleep with him or even kiss him that night. I wanted more. And I wanted to take my time.
I was exhausted when I got into bed, the stress of everything, the wine, Jake. So I fell out quickly, almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. But I dreamed of Ace. I chased him in a darkened urban landscape where shadows moved quickly across my path. Doorways through which I tried to pass warped and disappeared. Then I wasn’t chasing Ace but being chased by a dark form. I came to a house that resembled my parents’ home, but once inside, I found myself in the lobby of my building. I turned to see the form rattling at the gated door, though I still couldn’t see his face. I woke, startled in the dark, my breathing heavy as I tried to get my bearings and shake the dream- terror that still lingered. I sensed a malevolent presence in the apartment and sat paralyzed for a moment, listening for the intruder who I was sure would slip from the shadows any minute. The fear faded as the images from my dream slipped away.
I was wide awake. I got up from bed and rummaged through my pants pockets and found the photograph and the note. I crumpled both in my hand and put them in the garbage. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and sneakers and left the apartment with the garbage bag. It was after three and the building was asleep, except for the faintest sound of a television I heard somewhere in the distance. I crept down the stairs and through the hallway to the back of the building. I pushed open the dead bolt on the heavy metal door and flipped on the light. Rats skittered away from the sound and the stench of refuse rose up to greet me as I tossed my garbage bag in the nearest can.
I knew that Zelda would come before the sun rose and roll the cans out to the sidewalk, that the garbage would be picked up early in the morning even before I got out of bed, and the note and the photograph would be gone as if they’d never existed. What about this flame of curiosity I was talking about? It wasn’t out. It was just that I could not imagine the consequences of knowing the answers. I’ll admit it wasn’t exactly a noble decision but I chose ignorance.
I headed back up the stairs feeling lighter with relief. I was halfway up when I saw a shadow on the landing above me, the figure just out of the line of my vision. I stopped in my tracks and my heart started to race.
“Is someone there?” I said. I knew everyone in my building and had never once had a moment of feeling unsafe there. Any one of my neighbors with a genuine purpose for being on the stairs would have answered me. I heard a shuffling, someone moving against the wall. I looked behind me and the light on the landing below had started to flicker, then went dark. The sound of my own breathing was loud in my ears, adrenaline started to pump through my veins, and every nerve ending in my body throbbed with fear. I didn’t know whether to go forward or backward.
“Who is it?” I said, louder.
I looked around for something to defend myself with but there was nothing. Then I heard footsteps hard and heavy in a run. I pushed myself against the wall, as if I could disappear by making myself very flat. I was about to scream when I realized the footsteps were moving away from me. I crouched down and looked up through the space between the staircases and saw the figure of a man. He had a large build and I saw his gloved hand on the banister. He ran up the last flight and exited the door that led to the roof. I braced myself for the sound of the fire- door alarm but it didn’t go off.
I sat weak with relief on the staircase and wondered how he would get off the roof. Then I heard the groaning of the fire escape ladder out front. I wondered if anyone else had heard it, too. But after a minute, the building was silent again, as if none of it had ever happened. I walked cautiously back to my apartment and closed the door. A second later I heard another door close and lock. I couldn’t be sure whose door it was, whether it was above or below me.
seven
Obviously, I didn’t sleep much the rest of the night. I checked the gates on my windows and double-locked my front door and basically sat in my bed wide-eyed, startling at every little sound until the black sky lightened from charcoal to gray. Another night I might have called Zack or even my father, but since everyone seemed convinced that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I didn’t want to give them an incident that might prove them right. After a little while I began to doze until my alarm went off an hour or so later.
I got up and made a pot of coffee. As I listened to the machine’s familiar hiss and gurgle and smelled the aromas from Veniero’s, I started to feel normal again. Everything about the night before began to seem surreal, as though I might have been dreaming from the moment I got on the train to go to New Jersey. I’d thrown out the photo and made a decision to consider the whole thing a hoax. In my sunny kitchen, I could halfway believe that I had imagined the whole encounter on the stairs. You know, because the
I went into my office—really, it’s just a little space I have sectioned off with an Oriental screen where I keep my files and laptop. I rummaged through some papers on my desk and found the business card Uma Thurman’s publicist had given me. We’d met at a yoga class and wound up going to Starbucks afterward for some chai. Her name was Tama Puma. She was crunchy, smelled of patchouli. Tall with broad shoulders, had that gray complexion and limp hair that people who eat a macrobiotic diet always seem to. She was impossibly thin and spoke softly but with a lofty self-importance. We’d chatted briefly about the article I wanted to write and I had told her I’d call if the features editor at
When I opened my door, I saw it there on the ground. The sight of it felt like a blow to the solar plexus. Another envelope with my name scratched across in black marker in the same harsh, scrawling hand. I picked it up and went back into my apartment. The whole world seemed to spin around me as I ripped the envelope open. There was a clipping from an October 27, 1972, newspaper. The headline read YOUNG MOTHER FOUND SLAIN; TODDLER MISSING. The rest of the article had been clipped away, but there was a headshot of the young woman from the first picture and another photo of the little girl. Looking at the woman’s face again, even in the grainy newsprint, I could have been looking in the mirror. And looking at the child, I noticed something on her face that I hadn’t seen in the first picture. She had a small brown birthmark under her left eye, identical to one I had on my own face. There was a note as well.
It said simply,
I was out of my apartment and down the stairs in a shot, racing for the garbage cans. I ran into my landlady, Zelda, in the hallway. “Did the garbage pick up?” I said, running to the front door.
“Ah,” she said in disgust, lifting her hands. “Sanitation strike. Lazy sons of bitches, like they don’t get enough money. It’s still in the back. Goddamn unions.”
The garbage bag was on top of the can and the picture and number easy to find. I unwrinkled the photograph and the note and went back upstairs. I stopped at my apartment and picked up the clipping. Then I took everything upstairs to Jake. Why would I do this? I barely knew him. But I think it was precisely because he was a stranger, utterly unconnected to the other people in my life, that I thought he might be the only one with any perspective.
“I’m sorry,” I said when he opened the door. “I need some help.”
I handed everything to him and pushed past him without being invited in. He looked at me, then down at the papers in his hand.
“This is what you were telling me about last night?”
“Yes. And something I found at my door this morning.”
He nodded, his face still and solemn. He never asked why I’d brought this to him, what I wanted him to do. He sat at the table, started flipping through the items, and I saw lines crease his brow as he frowned down at the papers in his hand.
“This woman could be you,” he said after a minute. “She looks just like you.”
“I know,” I answered.
