Page 46 of Stay Awake
I notice the secretary is distracted by a call. I slip out of my seat and head toward the exit, bursting out of the glass lobby door into a buffeting draft. It feels as if the wind is blowing me along against my will. Eventually, I stop and lean against a rail overlooking the East River, gasping for air and wondering why I can’t stop crying.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Two Years Earlier
I was an idiot not to ask Marco to give me a ride home when he left the restaurant last night. I should never have walked home by myself. It was false bravado from drinking too much wine at Amy’s party.
Now I’m hemmed in between the iron railings of a park on my left and a deserted trade school shut for the night on the other side.
The labored breathing and footsteps behind me make me acutely aware that I’m on a dark and isolated stretch of street. Nobody is around other than me and the stranger following me.
I deliberate whether it’s tactically best to run and risk my pursuer catching up and overpowering me, or whether it’s smarter to pretend I’m unaware I’m being followed while walking through this lonely stretch as quickly as possible. I decide it’s safest to maintain the pretense since I’m unlikely to outrun him.
The headlights of an approaching car cut through the darkness enough for me to see a residential side street coming up after the trade school. I dash across the street as the car passes and then run full speedtoward the side street, almost bumping into a couple getting out of a car near the corner.
“Sorry,” I say, as I slalom past them.
The end of the street hits a well-lit intersection that connects to the street where I live. My lungs burn as I approach my street. Breathlessly, I slow to a fast walk as I tell myself I’m being paranoid and that I was just imagining being followed.
It was the product of alcohol and fear stoked by that awful avant-garde performance art show. That art show has probably spooked me for life.
Flashing through my head like a warning is the image of the bound and gagged woman writhing on the chair behind the red velvet exhibit ropes, and the black-and-white footage beamed on the gallery walls around her of a woman being watched by an unseen predator. I tell myself that it was only art. Bad art.
The thick foliage of the trees diffuses the streetlights, casting the street into a dark gloom. When I’m halfway down my street I hear footsteps again. They echo my own. I don’t turn around to check who’s behind me. Instead I assume it’s my pursuer.
My building is very close. As I approach the stoop, I pretend to walk straight ahead. At the last second I bolt up the stairs and open the door with a well-practiced single turn of my key. I clamber inside and shut the door behind me. Once it’s closed, I lean against it and gasp for breath until my racing heart slows.
Shawna meows insistently when I let myself into the apartment. I lock the front door behind me and hover near the kitchen window to look down at the street. I make sure to stand far enough away from the window so that nobody will see me watching. There’s nobody there. Just rows of parked cars on either side. I feel like an idiot.
Thunder rumbles and Shawna rubs herself nervously against my legs at the sound of an impending summer storm. My terror from the other night returns even though there’s no more banging windows andmy bedroom looks exactly as it did when I left home this morning. I wish Amy had come back with me instead of going to Brett’s apartment.
I’m still rattled by what happened the other night in the apartment, even though there’s no logical reason for it to bother me. Amy admitted to borrowing a sarong from my closet and looking for a couple of other clothes she wanted to take with her on her vacation. That’s why my drawers and closet doors were partly open.
She agrees with the police that Shawna might have accidentally knocked over my photo frame. I still don’t have an explanation for how a heart was drawn in the dust on my bedroom window. Amy thinks it might have been there for a while and I just noticed it. She said one of her hometown friends who was camping out in our living room a few weeks ago used to do things like that when they were teenagers. There’s probably a logical explanation for everything, but the fear I felt that night hasn’t quite left me, especially now that I’m once again alone in the nighttime stillness of the apartment.
I open the fridge to take out milk for Shawna as a treat. The milk carton is empty, which means there’s also no milk for my morning coffee. I close my bedroom door when I go to sleep, and push a chair up against the door handle, more to calm my nerves than because I think it will stop an intruder from bursting in while I sleep. I hear the storm overnight in my dreams. Pouring rain angrily hits the concrete outside.
When I wake in the morning, the alarm clock next to my bed is turned off. I’ve woken an hour later than usual. Exhausted, I go to the kitchen and robotically make myself coffee.
It’s only when I’m taking an unopened carton of milk from the fridge door to pour into my coffee mug that I remember there was no milk in the fridge last night. I assume Amy came back early this morning and brought milk.
But when I go to the bathroom to clean my teeth, I notice that Amy’s bedroom door is wide open, as it was when I came home lastnight, and her room is filled with daylight. I tentatively stick my head through her doorway. Amy’s bed hasn’t been slept in. Her window shades are up. I’m certain that she didn’t come back last night.
How on earth did the carton of milk get into the fridge if Amy didn’t bring it? There’s obviously a rational explanation. I must have been so distracted from being followed home last night that I didn’t notice there was already milk in the fridge door.
I turn on my phone and check my updates as I stir my coffee. I drink it standing against the kitchen counter, basking in sunlight shining through the window above the sink. A message notification from an anonymous number comes up on my phone screen.
Enjoy your coffee. I know how much you like it milky.
The message terrifies me so much that I instinctively toss the contents of the mug into the sink and peer surreptitiously out the window. Is someone watching me? How else would the sender know that I was drinking coffee? Or my preference for extra milk.
Even more terrifying is the realization that I was right the first time; there was no milk in the fridge last night. The implications of that make my blood run cold. Someone must have come into the apartment while I slept and put a carton of milk in the fridge, which means someone is watching me and has a key to my apartment. It’s the final straw.
I grab my purse and head to the local police precinct, where I show the text message to the duty officer. Since this is the second incident, the officer calls a detective downstairs to talk to me.
The detective comes down five minutes later. He’s a heavyset man in a creased suit, balding, with squinty eyes and an expression that exudes boredom. He tells me his name is Detective Krause.
