The Watcher

33

Going downtown, waiting outside Philip Storm’s office and then asking for him in the lobby, walking into the restaurant where he was sitting with the redhead, and walking past their table. Why did I do all that? I wonder. Hardly for the reason I convinced myself of on the way there. I didn’t have to do that, didn’t do it for Philip Storm’s sake. I did it for my own sake.

My pulse has finally settled, but it took quite a while. I’m back home in the kitchen, sitting on my usual chair with my computer open on the table in front of me. My eyes stray between the screen and the yard outside. I still feel shaky and off-kilter. It didn’t pan out. I didn’t step forward and communicate my misgivings to Philip Storm. I didn’t warn him not to go off alone with his wife. And maybe that wasn’t my intention, either. Maybe deep down inside I wanted something else. Maybe I just wanted to see him and the redhead together one more time, confirm that my intuition was correct. The fragments of their conversation that I overheard are still ringing in my ears.

…each drive separately… you wait for me… and meet there so she won’t…

…so close now… really looking forward to it. The cabin… so wonderful.

I look at the text I’ve been working on, on and off for the last week. It’s a story about a seemingly happy couple, the kind of couple that from the outside seems to have it all. I write about their love, which she has taken for granted and which he betrays by having sex with another woman. I write about the darkness, which dwells somewhere within her and slowly, increasingly takes over. But is this only my text, letters and sentences, that exist here in my computer, or is there something more? Does it affect other people in any way, determine their actions and fates? No, that’s impossible. That’s a bizarre thought. But then what’s the explanation for the increasingly clear connection between what I’m writing and the family living across from me?

I look up at the Storms’ kitchen. The lights are off. That incident with the roses was the starting shot. Veronica’s scissors rampage, the way she’d hacked and slashed that beautiful bouquet apart over there, got me to start writing again. Suddenly she was just holding the scissors in her hand. A moment later, the flowers had been abused and shredded and strewn across the floor.

Since that night, I’ve kept working on my text—which was fragmentary to begin with but in the last few days has become more focused—with the ambition of connecting the pieces into one integral, contiguous story, darker than any of my previous manuscripts. After the woman in the story finds out about her husband’s infidelity at an intimate dinner for two, at first she becomes paralyzed, but then she decides to take revenge.

Suddenly she knew, with a conviction that cut through everything else, that whatever happened from now on, under no circumstances could she allow him to keep on living as if nothing had happened. She couldn’t allow him to live at all.

Despite the intense emotional storms inside her, the woman decides not to behave irrationally or impulsively. She starts working out to strengthen her body and researches how to get away with murder. She’s planning something—planning not to leave anything to chance, planning not to get caught.

Make it look like an accident.

Veronica’s tears during her dinner with Philip, the drawn curtains upstairs, Leo’s words about his mother moving into the darkness again, her secret high-impact workouts at the gym, and the book Getting Away with Murder. Everything has its equivalent in my text. The frightening parallels that at first I brushed aside as coincidences have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Something isn’t right, or more like: Something is too right.

Most unsettling is the slippage in the relationship between cause and effect. It was simple with the roses. I saw something, then I wrote. But after that, something happened. It’s like what I write has repercussions in what takes place in the Storm house. As if I know what’s going to happen before it actually happens. As if I… as if I am influencing the sequence of events. Influencing or controlling?

I visualize Philip and the redhead, see their faces close together. I blink and see her kick off her shoes, caress the inside of his thigh with her leg under the table. The images glide together and glide apart, reality blending with imagination. What did I see, again? Actually? I shove the computer away, turn the screen in a new direction, and rub my face. I can’t take it anymore, but what can’t I take? The thought of what my writing is about to do to the Storm family or my own increasing confusion?

I leave the kitchen and walk into the bathroom. The fluorescent light over the sink hums and a mildew smell rises from the drain in the shower. Or maybe I smell? I stare at my reflection under the sharp light for a long time. Knock it off. You have to stop twisting what you see, stop looking for explanations and connections that don’t exist. I raise my hand toward the closed bathroom cabinet, and there’s a flash before my eyes. I imagine opening it and finding a little note still on the inside of the door. A note that says he’s thinking about me, how much I mean to him, that I’m loved.

Like a puzzle with only two pieces.

The thought of Peter cuts right into all the other stuff, cuts through me like a sharp blade. I open the cabinet and reach for the deodorant. There is no note inside. Just like there’s no note on the kitchen table when I get home, just like I won’t find any note under my pillow when I eventually go to bed.

I spread deodorant under my arms and shut the cabinet again, remaining in front of the mirror. I think about what Peter wrote about the little girl in the park, the one he was so moved by, the one who looked so much like me, the one who could have been ours. Then I think of what he wrote at the beginning of the email, that something had happened. Isn’t that how he put it? Weren’t those his exact words?

I stare at myself in the mirror. My cheeks and my forehead are pale, and my skin looks like creased paper. My bloodshot eyes could probably benefit from drops to erase all traces of sleeplessness and confusion. But the look in them… not so easily addressed. There’s not a product in the world that will help that.

There’s something strange about my pupils. They seem blacker and bigger than usual. I look like a shark, I think, one of those shady monsters without eyelids that moves way down deep, hunting unsuspecting prey. I take a step back but can’t stop looking into my own eyes.

There’s no connection between the Storm family and what I’m writing. My story is my story, nothing else. Philip and Veronica—not my fingers on the keyboard—control what happens between them.

So if something happens to Philip during their hike tomorrow, if he turns his back for a second and gets shoved off a cliff, then you’ll be free? Free of responsibility, free of guilt?

There’s nothing I can do, nothing at all.

That’s not true. There is something you can do. Or rather, allow to be done.

I take another step backward, then stop and think that thought one more time, testing it in all seriousness. Then I nod to myself. OK, then, it’s decided. I won’t write a line until the Storms, both of them, return safe and sound from tomorrow’s excursion.

I won’t write a single word. All I’ll do is wait, wait until they come home.

Or not.