random serial killer would not carry anything on his nefarious errands. I mean, think about it, he needs both his hands free. Even a backpack would slow him down.
But that feeling of relief passed as I noticed him inching closer to me. The train flooded suddenly with lamplight as we moved aboveground. I cleared my throat and sat up, opened my eyes. He immediately dropped his head to his shoulder and pretended to be sleeping again.
I stared at him, not sure what to do. My legs felt as if they were filled with sand and my heart was doing step aerobics in my chest. But I forced myself to get up and walk to the front of the car, where I heaved the door open and moved between the cars to the next one. Then I turned around and through the windows looked back the way I’d come. The man sat there looking at me, with that same half-smile, but his eyes seemed dark with menace. I stood staring at him, convinced that as long as my eyes were open, he wouldn’t come any closer. I thought about Zelda, about what she had said—God, was it only yesterday?—about someone looking for me, someone who was
The train stopped at the next station and we were still in a staring contest. But when the doors opened, he got up suddenly, grabbed his case, and left the train. If he came into my car, I was ready to flee through the door to the platform, and move toward the front car, where I knew I would find the conductor. I stood for what seemed like an hour, waiting for him to come in after me. I was all alone, no one in any of the cars I could see from where I was standing and no one on the platform. But then the tone sounded and the conductor said over the intercom, “Stand clear the closing doors.” The doors closed. Then jerked open again.
“Hands and bags away from the door,” the conductor said over the PA system, sounding annoyed.
I moved to look out onto the platform, but I didn’t see the man standing there or walking away. I went back to the window and looked through the train into the other cars but didn’t see him there, either. Where is he? I wondered, thinking I should be able to see him on the platform if he’d exited. By now I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that my hands were shaking. Again the tone sounded and the doors closed, then pulled apart again at the last second. I started to move through the train toward the conductor’s car in the front. It was so quiet, I could hear only the sound of the heavy doors pushing open and then slamming hard behind me. I kept looking behind me, each time expecting to see the man in pursuit.
“Stand clear the closing doors, asshole,” the conductor said loudly. I stopped and looked out the window of the car I was in. Then I saw him, standing on the platform as if he’d moved from behind one of the pillars. The doors finally closed and the train moved slowly away from the station. My body flooded with relief and I sank onto one of the benches, leaned my head back.
“I’m getting paranoid,” I said aloud to no one.
Then I opened my eyes to see that he stood staring at me as the train moved past him, one hand raised in farewell, that same smile plastered on his face. I didn’t wave back.
I got off at the last stop, still a bit shaken, and walked out onto the landing. Though it was dark, I could see in the glow of the street lamps that Van Cortlandt Park was in high color, its acres of trees painted gold and orange, deep red against the still-green grass of the parade ground to my right. Some kids played handball in the courts next to the staircase as I made my descent to the sidewalk, and their cheers and cries lifted into the air. Riverdale is one of the last nice areas in the Bronx, and that evening it felt safe and idyllic.
At the bottom of the stairs, a black ’69 Firebird idled in the street. The engine hummed and rumbled, communicating power like a dog baring its teeth. Jake sat at the wheel. I tried not to smile in relief, kept my eyes ahead and walked past him.
“Hey,” he called as I passed by. “I thought you were bluffing.”
He trailed me with his car, moving slowly up Broadway, causing the drivers behind him to lean on their horns before passing him by, hurling obscenities.
“Come on, Ridley,” he said finally after a few blocks of this. “You win.”
That was all I needed to hear. I got into the passenger side and he sped off. The car was cherry inside, leather polished and unblemished, smelling of Armor All. An Alpine compact disc changer was mounted beneath the dash; the knobs on the dash and the gearshift were all new, brushed chrome. It was exactly the kind of car I would have envisioned for him. It was tough, but there was something careful about it, too.
I noticed that we passed the address he found for Amelia Mira by a block before he did a U-turn and got closer so that we could see the row house from the car. After pulling under the large, old branches of some trees beside the park, he handed me a worn blue baseball cap and some Oakley sunglasses, both too big for me, and made me put them on.
“You don’t want anyone to recognize you,” he said. “That would sort of blow the whole point of our being up here.”
I still hadn’t said anything and I could tell it was starting to get to him. We sat like that for a few minutes. Finally he said, “Christ. Are you always this stubborn?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I really am.”
I looked at him then and smiled. He reached for my hand and I took it in mine.
“Ridley, I really didn’t think you’d come up here by yourself. I never would have let you walk out if I had thought that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it because now that I was looking at him, I could see that I had scared him. The relief on his face was clear, and in his eyes I could read his concern. I felt bad for acting like a brat. Again.
“You know what, Jake? I’m just feeling
He nodded his understanding. “I get it.” I saw something pass across his face, but it was gone before I could put a name to it.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“We sit and watch,” he said, looking at the scene around us. It was a cold but gorgeous autumn evening, kids still playing soccer in the park, people jogging, walking dogs. It seemed like a strange night for a stakeout, in the middle of all these people living their quiet, happy lives. It should have been raining, with an occasional rumble of thunder and flash of lightning. The park should have been full of thugs, gangs ready to rumble.
“Watch for what?”
“Hopefully,” he said with a shrug, “we’ll know it when we see it.”
I thought about this and what it could mean—hours of just sitting in the car. Sometimes getting your own way is not as gratifying as it should be. He was smiling at me as if he could read my thoughts. My stomach growled and I had to pee.
After making Jake take me to the Burger King we’d passed earlier so that I could get a Whopper and relieve my aching bladder, we parked across the street from 6061? and watched as people came and went. Dark houses came to life, interior lights began to glow. Some of the houses went dark again as we waited. But 6061? remained black and still among them.
We didn’t talk much, but the silence between us was comfortable. Every half hour or so, Jake would turn on the car for a while to let the heat run and take some of the chill out of the air. I was a little scared and a little uncomfortable, not sure what we were looking for and not sure what we would do if and when we found it. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of complaining aloud. After a couple of hours, I climbed into the backseat and lay on my belly, peering out the side window, just for a change of position. I could just see the top of Jake’s head.
“What did you mean, Jake? When you said there were things I needed to know about you.”
He didn’t answer right away and I wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
“I don’t know where to start,” he said finally.
I realized that all the talking we’d done in the last few days, ninety percent of it had been about me. I knew a little bit about his art. About where he’d lived before he moved to the East Village. And that was pretty much it. I had the need to look into his face, but something in the air, something about the way he didn’t turn around to look at me when he responded, told me that he’d prefer that I didn’t. I thought about the scars on his body, and I felt something stutter inside me. This man, for as intimate as we’d become, was still a stranger to me. Somehow I kept forgetting that. I felt as though I knew him in a different way than I’d ever known anyone, that my knowledge of him went beyond his history and straight to the heart of him.
