Telling himself he was probably wrong, he adjusted the scope to point down at the entrance. By the time he had it set and refocused, the man had hailed a cab and was gone.
Still Anthony sat, watching the entrance and waiting. He didn’t look away for what might have been more than an hour. Then he glanced at his watch. It was ten minutes to noon.
When he looked back, Edith was stepping out onto the street.
He knew it was her because she was clearly focused in the eyepiece of his telescope. He recognized her wavy auburn hair, which had already become something of a familiar flag in his life. It spilled onto her shoulders from under her big hat. She was wearing a red coat that made her stand out like some sort of beacon in the winter grayness. She seemed to be the only part of the landscape that existed in living color.
She made a right turn and began to walk down the boulevard.
Anthony ran down thirteen flights of stairs, two at a time, because he was afraid he would miss her if he waited for the elevator. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and ran in the direction he had seen her go. But she was nowhere. He seemed already to have lost her.
He kept running, then stopped at the corner and whipped his head in both directions. He saw a flash of her red coat.
She was just disappearing into the little coffee shop and soda fountain around the corner from where they lived. If he had run even the tiniest bit slower, if he had taken one second longer to reach the corner, he would have missed her.
He leaned on a shelf of the corner newsstand, feeling the chill on his coatless upper body, and waiting to catch his breath again. He was not about to step into the restaurant panting, betraying the fact that he had run after her. He was already uncomfortable enough about seeming to be stalking her. But he wasn’t stalking her, and in his gut he knew it. He wanted to accomplish one thing, and one thing only: to tell her that he was across the street in apartment 14A, and that she could show up at his door if she needed help or protection. And that he would do his best to help and protect her if she did.
She wouldn’t like hearing it. She would probably react with the equivalent of closing the door on him again. It might be painful for her to hear that someone was witness to her abuse. Of course it would be. For anyone. But maybe she would need to take him up on it, and then, in retrospect, it would be worth it.
Or maybe she would be too ashamed to take him up on it, and something terrible would happen to her. In that case, Anthony would need to know that he had done what he could. There would be no living with himself otherwise.
A voice startled him out of his thoughts.
“Hey! Boy!” It was the bark of an impatient man. Anthony turned to see the owner of the newsstand—or its clerk—staring at him through narrowed eyes. “You gonna buy? Or you just gonna lean?”
“I’m going to buy.”
He counted out the money in his pocket. Not to see if he could afford a newspaper—he knew he had that much. To see if he could afford lunch. He had plenty of bills stuffed into his jeans. More than he had realized.
He bought the paper not because the man said he should, but because it would give him something to stare at while he was not approaching her.
His plan was to see if she would notice and recognize him. To see if she would approach him. And if she didn’t, well . . . he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know how much boldness he might be prepared to muster.
He walked to the door of the coffee shop, the newspaper tucked under his right armpit. Just as he reached for the door—just as he pushed it open—he was hit with an uneasy thought. What if she wasn’t alone in there? What if she came here to meet somebody? Another man, maybe. It would be hard to blame her, given the man she had.
But Anthony had come that far, so he stepped inside. It was warm. Nearly oppressively warm after the cold of the outdoors. It felt good, though, following that deep chill. She was sitting in one of the red vinyl-upholstered booths, at the far wall, her back to him. Reading her menu. Alone.
Anthony chose a booth in the center—which consisted of two rows of booths side by side—and more or less level with hers. There was only one other couple in the place, in the far corner, out of the scene as far as Anthony was concerned. The world seemed to consist of only Edith and him, alone together on some potentially hostile planet.
It felt strange to call her Edith in his head. It felt strange to know her name when they knew so little of each other. Then again, what he knew about her felt crucial. Maybe it was all he needed to know.
He sat down and began to read his paper, spreading it out on the table in front of him to make the turning of its pages more manageable.
A waiter not much older than Anthony came by and brought him a menu.
He stared at it for a time, realizing he really was hungry. Also that he was already tired of sandwiches and canned soups, now that he was on his own to prepare food. Hot food, well prepared and made from scratch—the type of fare his mother would provide—sounded like a treat. Like enough of a reason to be here, even if Edith had been removed from the picture.
But she wasn’t.
Her voice made him jump. At least, he felt as though he had jumped. He hoped it had not been obvious.
“Hey.” He would have known her voice anywhere. He could have picked it out of a noisy crowd. “Art survey guy. That’s you, right?”
He turned his eyes in her direction. He was prepared to meet her gaze head-on. But she was wearing oversized sunglasses, and her hat brim swooped down over her eyes. Which he knew was likely why she had worn it.
“Guilty,” he said.
“So you live around here.”
“Right across the street from you. Apartment 14A.”
He figured it was better to get that in right away, in case she cut the conversation short.
A silence. He couldn’t tell if she was still watching him. Her eyes were too completely hidden. He didn’t know if the conversation was over.
“I apologize for yesterday morning,” she said.
“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I slammed the door in your face. That was rude.”
“You didn’t slam it at all. You closed it really gently.”
“In the middle of our conversation.”
“I get it, though—why you did. I embarrassed you, and I’m sorry about that.” And I’m sorry I’m about to embarrass you again, he thought. But of course he didn’t say it out loud.
She opened her mouth to answer. Before she could, a middle-aged couple came in, and walked right between Anthony and Edith. Anthony waited impatiently for them to pass, but they never did. They paused there, then settled in the booth right beside Anthony, completely blocking his view of Edith. Cutting off the connection.
It irritated him, and he almost said something to them. It reminded him of the days when he would go to the movies alone and some creepy older man would come sit right next to him, even though every other seat in the theater was free. Not that he thought this couple was being purposely creepy. Purposeful or not, they were violating the unspoken social contract that states you must offer a stranger as much personal space as you reasonably can.
Then again, he thought, he was a fine one to talk.
He did not say anything. They had a right to sit where they chose, even if it was rude.
He picked up his menu and his newspaper and moved into a booth in the front corner of the restaurant, looking out onto the street. He stared at the cars and cabs flashing by, and the people bustling along the sidewalk, still unable to shake the aggravation of having his conversation with Edith interrupted.