John Lutz - Darker Than Night

Marcy removed the coat, relieved to be out of it, and handed it to the clerk.

He gave her a little bow as he accepted the garment and extended a card to her with his free hand, smiling. “If you think about it and change your mind, I’m Ira.”

“She knows you’re Ira, and she won’t change her mind,” Ron said. “And you won’t change it for her.” He clutched Marcy’s elbow. “C’mon, Marcy. We’re outta here.”

Marcy let him lead her toward the door. She knew he felt he’d topped the clerk and was ready to leave while he was ahead. She was thankful for that. The situation was already embarrassing enough.

“Marcy’s a nice name,” she heard Ira remark softly behind them.

Ron seemed not to have heard, but she wondered if he had.

He stood in the doorway of a luggage shop across the street and watched Marcy Graham leave Fifth Federal Savings Bank, where she worked as a loan officer. She paused in front of the bank’s glass doors, set between phony stone pillars, and glanced up at the sky as if contemplating rain, then seemed to reject decisively the idea of going back inside for an umbrella and began walking.

He followed.

He knew her routes and her timetable by now, her haunts and habits. After work, she boarded the subway at a stop two blocks from Fifth Federal. He enjoyed watching her walk. She would stride down the block in her high heels, the warm breeze pressing her skirt against her thighs, her breasts and brown hair bouncing with each step, and she would unhesitatingly enter the long, shadowed stairwell to the turnstiles.

It was a wonder to watch her descend the concrete steps, moving rapidly if there was no one in her way. Almost like a graceful, controlled near-tumble. His eyes took all of her in, the strength and looseness of her legs, the way her arms swung, her hair swayed, her hips switched, motion, countermotion, the rhythm of time and the cosmos. In some women there was everything.

She would take the train to within two blocks of her apartment building, then walk the rest of the way home, playing out her daily routine, locked in the worn pathways of her life. He knew routine made her feel secure. There was safety in repetition simply because there were no surprises; life was habit and redundancy all the way to the edges of her perception. What a comfort! How wise she was, yet didn’t know herself.

Sometimes he followed closely all the way from the bank, taking the same uptown train, even riding in the same car, watching her, imagining. In the gray world of the subway, they were both sometimes lucky enough to find seats. And more often than not, there were the usual subway creeps staring at a woman like Marcy. That meant she didn’t pay much attention to him, worrying about the silent watchers who so obviously wanted every part and morsel of her.

The pink and red of her, the hues of her flesh and hidden white purity of bone.

Not that Marcy had to worry about the creeps. She belonged to someone already, even if she didn’t yet know it.

He would follow her up to the multicolored surface from the drab subway stop, then down the street to her apartment in the building with the dirty stone facade. Then he’d cross the street and find a spot where he could stand out of the flow of pedestrian traffic and watch the Grahams’ apartment windows.

He would see one or the other of them pass from time to time, fleeting movement behind glass panes. Glimpses into another world in which he was only a ghost and she its brightest inhabitant.

Only a few minutes, perhaps ten, would he stay there. Best not to attract undue attention. But it intrigued him that Marcy and her husband were unknowingly walking where he’d walked, touching what he’d touched, maybe sitting in a chair not long cooled from his own warmth. Living, breathing, touching themselves and each other. Being their private selves in the place he’d just left in order to follow her back to it. He didn’t shadow Marcy home from work so he could find out where she was going, but to observe her closely when she thought she was alone.

This evening was cooling down and comfortable. It wouldn’t be dark for several hours, so the apartment lights wouldn’t come on anytime soon. That was a shame, because he particularly wanted to see what would happen this evening between Marcy and Ron. After night fell was when watching was best, when Marcy and her husband moved behind the glass. When, if they happened to glance out, they could see only in-their own reflections and the reflection of their world.

When, even if by chance had they looked precisely in his direction, they couldn’t see him.

Color me invisible.

A uniform wanted to see him and only him. Captain Vince Egan was puzzled. It took a lot for a uniformed cop to skip the chain of command and confide in a captain. It meant trouble for the cop if he guessed wrong, and if what he had to say wasn’t deemed worthwhile.

Glancing with satisfaction around his paneled office, Egan understood why it took guts for a mere patrolman to approach him. There were framed photos of Egan with various NYPD elites, posed at banquets and various ceremonies with top New York pols. Among the career photos and commendations were a few shots of Egan with show business types, like the old black-and-white photograph of Egan with his arm slung around Tony Bennett, taken years ago in L.A., though Egan always said it was in San Francisco. And there was one in color with Egan chatting with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda after a New York movie premiere a while back. Egan with Wayne Newton. All of these photographs were signed.

An impressive office. An impressive and important person must occupy it. Somebody you didn’t approach lightly with a shit piece of information or some whine about how the department was run.

Egan was getting tired of waiting. Who the fuck was this guy, and what did he want? And what would be his future after he said his piece and walked out of here?

This better not be about charity. Some kind of pet cause Egan couldn’t refuse to contribute money or time to without looking like an ass.

Like the time the guy swallowed his nervousness and asked Egan to make a public announcement about the abominable way chinchillas were treated on chinchilla ranches before they became coats.

What did Egan care about chinchillas? What the fuck actually was a chinchilla?

Egan glanced at his watch and wished again the guy would get here. He was already five minutes late, which was inconveniencing people. Like Doris, Egan’s uniformed secretary who called herself his assistant, who ordinarily would have left by now but was waiting in the outer office.

Doris, sitting straight as a soldier behind her desk as she always did, like she had a pole up her ass, maybe catching up on some word processing. Egan leaned back in his leather desk chair and thought about Doris. She wasn’t a beauty, and Egan didn’t usually mix business with fornication, but since her divorce six months ago, Doris was beginning to look more attractive to him. Sure, she was in her fifties, but she still had a shape, and if she wasn’t a blue-ribbon beauty, she wasn’t butt ugly. And there was another thing Egan liked about her: now more than ever, she needed to hold on to her job.

Egan smiled. Doris was highly ethical and acted around the office like she didn’t even have erogenous zones. But with hubby having left her for some younger cunt, she still might come around, like her predecessor. What some women will do to stay employed…

There was a familiar three-knock tattoo on the office door; then it opened halfway and Doris stepped into sight.

Was she wearing tighter uniform slacks since she’d become single? She was definitely getting grayer, Egan noticed, and thicker through the middle. Still…