She was walking down Hochstrasse when a man walking the other way turned abruptly and began walking by her side. She looked at him, startled; he was staring at her with wild eyes.
“Keep going,” he commanded her in a low choked voice. “I’m taking you into custody here.”
“What?” she exclaimed, and stopped in her tracks.
He reached out and snapped some kind of clasp around her wrist. In his other hand he showed her a small snub-nosed pistol. The clasp now locked around her wrist was one half of some kind of clear plastic handcuffs, it appeared, with the other clasp locked around his wrist. “Come on,” he said, starting to walk and pulling her along with him. “I want to talk with you. Come with me and I won’t hurt you. If you don’t come with me now, I’ll shoot you.”
“You won’t,” she said faintly, but she found herself walking by his side, tugged along by the wrist.
“I will,” he said with a blazing glare at her. “I don’t care about anything.”
She gulped and kept her mouth shut. Her heart was racing. The drink she thought hadn’t affected her was rushing through her body like fire, such that she almost staggered.
He walked her right to her building’s door, surprising her.
“In we go,” he said. “Come on, do it.”
She punched in her code and opened the outer door. Up the flights of stairs to her apartment. Unlocked and opened the door. Inside. Her place looked strange now that she was a prisoner in it.
“Phone,” he said. “Turn it off and put it down here.” He indicated the table by the door where she indeed often left her stuff. She took it from her purse, turned it off, dropped it on the table.
“Do you have any other GPS on you?” he asked.
“What?”
“Are you chipped? Do you have any other GPS stuck to you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so,” she added.
He gave her a wondering look, incredulous and disapproving. From the same pocket that held the gun, he took out a small black box, flicked a tab on it, moved it around her body. He checked its screen, nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”
“But I don’t—”
“Let’s go! I have a place right around the corner.”
“I thought you said you just wanted to talk to me!”
“That’s right.”
“Then do it here! Unhook me and I’ll talk to you. If you drag me out of here, I’ll fall down as soon as someone is looking at us and scream for help. If you only want to talk, it will go better here. I’ll feel safer. I’ll listen more.”
He glared at her for a while. “All right,” he said at last. “Why not.”
He shook his head, looking baffled and confused. She saw that and thought to herself, This man is sick in the head. That was even more frightening. He reached down with his free hand, unlocked the clasp around her wrist. She kneaded that wrist with her other hand, stared at him, thinking furiously. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
He glared. “I want to check it first.”
They went in the bathroom, and he looked in the cabinet, and then behind the shower screen. She supposed she might have had some kind of lifeline system in there, or another phone or an alarm system. No such luck. When he was satisfied he walked out the door, leaving it open. She went in and stood there for a second. Then the door swung almost shut— he had given it a push. Propriety. A polite madman. Well, it was something. She sat on the toilet and peed, trying to think the situation through. Nothing came to her. She stood, flushed, went back out to him.
“Do you want some tea?” she asked.
“No.”
“Well I do.”
“Fine. We’ll start there.”
She boiled water in the teapot and brewed a cup of tea. Something to make her feel calmer. He refused a cup again, watching her work. Then they were sitting across from each other, her little kitchen table between them.
He was young. Late twenties or early thirties; hard to tell at that age. Thin drawn face, dark circles under his eyes. A lean and hungry look, oh yes. Spooked by his own action here, she thought; that would make sense; but that wildness she had seen from the moment he had accosted her was there in him too, some kind of carelessness or desperation. To do this thing, whatever it was, he had to be deranged. Something had driven him to this.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Why do it this way?”
His lip curled. “I want you to listen to me.”
“I listen to people all the time.”
He shook his head decisively, back and forth. “Not people like me.”
“What do you mean, why not?”
“I’m nobody,” he said. “I’m dead. I’ve been killed.”
She felt a chill. Finally, not knowing if it was smart, she said, “How so?”
He didn’t appear to hear her. “Now I’m supposed to have come back, but I didn’t. Really I’m dead. You’re here, you’re the head of a big UN agency, you have important meetings all over the world, every hour of every day. You don’t have time for a dead man.”
“How do you mean?” she asked again, trying not to become more alarmed than she already was. “How did you die?”
“I was in the heat wave.”
Ah.
He stared at her tea cup. She picked it up and sipped from it; his eyes stayed locked on the table. His face was flushing— right before her eyes the skin of his cheeks and forehead blushed, from a blanched white to a vivid red. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead and the backs of his hands, tense
