Loving A Moretti - THE OBSESSION

The first time I noticed him, I was buying a book I already owned. Not the same edition, obviously. I had standards. The copy in my apartment was an ugly paperback I’d bought secondhand during my first year in New York, with a cracked spine and somebody else’s notes penciled into the margins. This one had a clothbound cover, gold lettering, and the kind of unnecessary sprayed edges that convinced people like me to spend twenty-eight dollars on words we technically already possessed. I was standing in line with it tucked beneath my arm when I noticed a man near the end of one of the shelves. He was tall, with dark hair and a black coat, and he was looking directly at me. At least, I thought he was. I held his gaze long enough to find out, and he immediately looked away. Caught. The woman ahead of me was arguing with the cashier over a coupon, so I had plenty of time to glance back. The stranger had picked up a book and was studying the back cover with impressive concentration. It might have been convincing if he hadn’t been holding it upside down. I bit the inside of my cheek. Okay. That was funny. The cashier opened another register. I paid for my completely necessary second copy, tucked the receipt between the pages, and looked toward the shelf again. He was gone. By 7:10 PM, I was sitting alone at a restaurant a few blocks away, waiting for Jennie, who had promised she’d be there at seven. My phone buzzed against the table. JENNIE: TWO STOPS AWAY ME: you said that twelve minutes ago JENNIE: train stopped!!! ME: conveniently I put my phone down and reached for my water. Through the window, pedestrians hurried beneath umbrellas while headlights crawled along the wet street, their reflections stretching across the pavement. A taxi hit a puddle near the curb and sent water over the sidewalk. Across the road, someone stood beneath the awning of a closed shop. Black coat. Dark hair. About the same height. I leaned slightly closer to the window. The man looked up, and before I could decide whether I was actually looking at the same person from the bookstore, a server crossed in front of me carrying two plates. She blocked the window for barely a second. When she passed, the man was gone. “Okay,” I murmured. Jennie arrived before I could give it much thought, damp haired and already complaining about the subway. Somewhere between the fries arriving and her attempt to convince me that twenty-three minutes did not technically count as being late, I forgot about the man across the street. Mostly. It was raining harder when we left. Jennie fought with her six-dollar umbrella at the intersection while I stood beside her laughing, watching the wind turn half of it inside out. “Don’t just stand there. Help me.” “With an umbrella?” “Yes, Isabelle.” We managed to bend it back into something usable before we separated. She tried to make me take it, but my apartment was only ten minutes away and I had enough faith in my immune system to survive a little rain. “Text me when you’re home,” she said. “Yes, Mom.” I grinned. “I’m serious.” “So am I, Mom.” She flipped me off and headed toward the subway. I pulled my hood up and started walking. Three blocks later, I heard footsteps behind me. They weren’t close, just steady enough to separate themselves from the sounds of passing cars and rain tapping against metal awnings. I moved closer to the buildings without changing my pace. The footsteps stayed behind me. At the next corner, I turned right. So did they. My hand slipped into my coat pocket and closed around my keys. A deli was still open ahead, its fluorescent lights washing the sidewalk in an ugly white glare. As I passed the windows, I glanced at the reflection and caught the shape of someone several yards behind me in dark clothes. I stopped and turned around. A man in a gray hoodie walked past with headphones over his ears and a grocery bag hanging from one hand. Behind him, the sidewalk was empty. I stayed there for a moment with my keys threaded between my fingers while rain gathered along my lashes. Nothing moved except traffic at the end of the block. By the time I reached my building, I’d mostly convinced myself I’d been an i***t. I locked my apartment door behind me, dropped my damp coat over a chair, and placed my new book on the kitchen counter. My phone buzzed before I had even taken off my shoes. JENNIE: alive? ME: tragically I filled a glass with water. Another buzz came from the counter, but this time the number on the screen wasn’t one I recognized. There was no message, only a photograph. I opened it and stared. Rain blurred the streetlights around the edges of the image. A woman walked near the center of the frame, a tote tucked beneath her arm and a black hood pulled over blonde hair. It was me. The photograph had been taken from behind. I recognized the deli sign glowing farther up the street, exactly where I had stopped and turned around. My glass touched the counter a little harder than I intended. I zoomed in, searching the storefront windows and parked cars for a reflection, a face, anything that might tell me who had been standing there. There was nothing. Whoever had taken it had been several yards behind me, and the photograph couldn’t have been more than ten minutes old. I blocked the number. Then I looked toward the living room and noticed the curtains were open. I crossed the apartment and switched off the lamp before approaching the window. Rain slid down the glass, bending the lights from the building across the street. A woman hurried along the sidewalk beneath a red umbrella while two cars waited at the intersection. The laundromat opposite my building was already dark. Nobody stood outside. My phone rang. No Caller ID. I declined it. A few seconds later, it rang again. This time I answered and held the phone to my ear. Neither of us spoke. A faint hiss came through the speaker, followed by distant traffic and the soft rush of tires cutting through rainwater. I moved away from the window. “Who is this?” Nothing. I tightened my grip on the phone. “If this is supposed to scare me, you’re doing a shitty job.” A car passed somewhere on the other end of the call. My eyes returned to the window just as the line disconnected. Across the street, beneath the dark awning of the laundromat, a man lowered his phone. Then he stepped out of sight.