After You
by Alex Treuber
I was nineteen years old when I started following people. The first was a young man holding a bouquet of flowers with tears running down his cheeks. I followed him down to the docks and watched from afar as he ripped the heads from their stems and tossed them into the current where they floated away like paper sailboats. As he wailed into the gray wind I felt something inside me settle into place, an overwhelming sense of warmth and solace, and that night I dreamed I was walking down the aisle in a great white wedding gown made of roses.
My favorite place to find them was on the tram during the evening rush. The mornings were just as busy, but I found their expressiveness to be muted by sleep. The workday stripped away their polish, leaving them raw and honest, far easier to assess. I also preferred those who were standing rather than sitting, although I couldn’t tell you why. I suppose sitting provided some comfort for them to escape into, while those gripping a handle-strap with two fingers, swaying into others as the car accelerated and slowed, were nearer to their true selves. Gracious people apologized and smiled; disagreeable folks grunted and frowned. I was interested in neither. What I sought was dimensionality, complexity, cracks in the porcelain suggesting something sharper underneath.
I perfected my routine over the years, but in truth it was never hard. After all, it’s easy enough to avoid detection when your target doesn’t know to look for you. When they pulled the cord to signal a stop, I shuffled my way towards the door, but always a different one than they used. Outside I would readjust my scarf or zip up my coat, allowing them to start off in whatever direction we were headed. In the beginning, I carried a book in my purse in case I needed to appear casually disinterested, but the advent of phones made it so much easier. There is something very disarming about someone scrolling their phone, and I used that to my advantage. Together we would wind our way through the cobblestone streets, a shadow of one another, each of us seeking to soothe something fractured within ourselves.
My subjects took me everywhere: seedy harbor bars, tony hotel lobbies, neglected apartment blocks and underground gambling dens. I ended up across the street from one brothel so much that the cafe workers started to recognize me. Some met paramours at back tables of dimly lit restaurants; others crossed the park at night to meet the hooded men who sold oblivion in a vial. Many simply wandered, consuming the city from afar, and it was these I found most intriguing, their miseries a puzzle for me to solve. I would follow them for hours, desperately waiting for a subtle clue. Eventually they would reveal themselves by stopping to admire a glittering watch in a shop window, or leering at a well-dressed passerby, and I would feel that calm warmth flow over me in recognition of our shared suffering.
At the peak of my voyeurism I fully expected to continue for the rest of my life. I was sleeping better than ever before, my appetite was strong, and I was getting regular exercise for once. While riding the elevator in my building, one of my neighbors even complimented my color. My pastime wasn’t harming anyone and, as best I could tell, was largely legal. Rarely in this life do we find a vocation which so completely meets our needs, and I saw no reason to give it up so long as it continued to do so.
So perhaps it’s fitting that my final excursion ended as it did, on an early winter’s evening when the clouds compressed the dying light into a thin orange band against the horizon. She was blonde and wearing a red coat and blue checkered scarf with black slacks, her gaze concentrated out the window at the passing city. I used the middle door to exit the tram, pretending one of my earrings was caught in my hair as I watched her stride across the central square towards the gothic quarter. I followed, pausing at intersections, allowing the line plenty of slack so it didn’t break. Soon the streets became narrower, increasingly crooked and empty, the buildings obscuring the remaining light. I had to reduce my distance in some of the more labyrinthine areas or risk losing her. I wondered what could possibly be buried in the heart of this crumbling neighborhood. Her red coattail flashed around corners and my pace quickened. I took three rights, then a left, certain I had seen her, but found myself in an empty street. I tried looking in the windows, but all were boarded up and dark. I retraced my path twice, three times, attempting different permutations of the same intersections, but she was gone.
Defeated, I dragged myself home. All the seats were taken on the tram, so I was forced to squeeze myself between two thick men in skullcaps. Outside, gas lamps fluttered in the wind. The key was cold in my hand as I inserted it into the door of my building. Somewhere behind me a dog barked. I turned, quickly, just in time to see a smudge of red disappear into the shadows of the street. I ran after it, tripping on the uneven stones, winding my way down a trash-strewn alley which I knew to be a dead-end. When I rounded the last bend there was a dark figure waiting for me, its silhouette framed in gold. It wasn’t until I moved closer that I realized it was a full-length mirror, discarded by some neighbor. I stood there looking at myself for a long time, watching my breath mist into the night, but somehow I never felt the cold.
Originally from Portland, Oregon, Alex Treuber now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured in literary journals such as The Los Angeles Review, The Raven Review, and Bright Flash Literary Review. He is a winner of the PEN America/Robert J. Dau Literary Award for Emerging Writers. He spends his free time writing, traveling, and fending off surprise attacks from his cat, Napoleon. He can be found at www.alextreuber.com.