Stalker Girl

by Rosemary Graham

  When one of the baby’s little red shoes fell to the ground, the father didn’t notice. As Carly sat there debating whether she should run over and point out the missing shoe to the negligent father, Taylor swept in, scooped up the shoe from under the swinging baby, and offered it to him. He shoved the newspaper under his arm, stopped the swing, and put the shoe back on the baby’s foot while Taylor took pictures. With the hot girl watching and recording his actions for posterity, the guy suddenly couldn’t get enough of his progeny. He squeezed her thighs, pretended to chomp at her foot. Everything but the goochy-goo.

  When Taylor waved good-bye, this Father of the Year candidate went right back to his old ways.

  Taylor resumed a brisk pace as she headed for the fountain, where three firemen sat on the low concrete wall soaking up the sun, drinking Starbucks and laughing. One of them took his FDNY jacket off just as Taylor approached, conveniently revealing his broad shoulders and seriously hard arms.

  When she aimed her camera at them, he elbowed the other guys and they started messing around, throwing their arms around each other’s shoulders, raising their coffee cups like they were toasting someone’s big news.

  “No, no, don’t pose.” Taylor laughed. “Pretend I’m not here.”

  That cracked them up. “Oh yeah, right. We’ll just pretend you’re not here,” said the buff one.

  They kept right on mugging for the girl and her camera. She laughed along with them, took a few more shots, and then showed them the pictures on her camera. As she walked away, the weightlifter said, “Wait. I want a copy of that one. Lemme have your number.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Two-one-two . . .”

  This took him by surprise. “Whoa. Wait.” He dug in his front pocket, pulled out his phone, and flipped it open. “Okay. Two-one-two . . .”

  With a big smile, she said, “Five-five-five—”

  The other two got it first. They smirked at each other and watched their friend enter, “Five-five—”

  When it dawned on him that she was giving him an obviously fake number, he shrugged, flipped his phone closed, and laughed along with his buddies.

  Taylor laughed, too. Then she waved, turned around, and resumed her brisk pace. Carly followed.

  When Carly passed the firemen, she heard Mr. Muscles say, “What? It was worth a shot.” Then his eyes lit on Carly. “Hey,” he said. “What’s the rush? There a fire somewhere? ”

  She felt herself blush and walked faster, wishing she had Taylor’s quick comeback skills or a sassy friend like Taylor by her side.

  Carly followed Taylor all the way to Chinatown, ducking into doorways, pretending to window-shop or faking cell-phone conversations whenever Taylor stopped to take pictures. There were some close calls. She had to jaywalk a few times or risk losing sight of Taylor, and one particularly aggressive cabbie almost ran her down. And once, she was so focused on Taylor’s red sweater that she didn’t see a woman and her two small children until she bumped smack into them, almost knocking the woman to the ground.

  She apologized. Profusely. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said. But how sorry could Carly be if she didn’t even come to a complete stop? She slowed down, and faced the woman, humbly accepting the woman’s irate “What is wrong with you?” and “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” as she walked backward. But she never stopped moving. After one more “I know” and “I’m so sorry,” she turned her back on the woman and ran to make up the extra distance the incident had created between her and Taylor. She resolutely ignored the dirty looks she got from people who had witnessed the mishap.

  Carly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in Chinatown. It was just past noon and the place was packed, the sidewalks brimming with people and stuff for sale.

  One place sold only slippers. Black canvas slippers, red imitation-silk slippers embroidered in gold, assorted flip-flops bearing unfamiliar cartoon characters.

  Then there was a row of fish shops. Everywhere she looked she saw whole, dead fish on ice. One store had a grimy box of half-dead frogs. At first Carly thought they were all-the-way dead, but then she saw their throats expanding like tiny balloons and their beady black eyes blinking in slow motion.

  Taylor seemed to know a lot of the vendors. They greeted her with big smiles and nods as she went from store to store, taking pictures of them and their wares. In one shop, she knelt in front of a barrel of oranges; in the next she squatted by a giant ceramic cat; in another she shot an enormous bin full of CDs, all with the face of a beautiful Chinese woman peeking out from behind a bouquet of red roses. Next to the bin was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of the smiling woman, which Taylor also photographed.

  As crowded as it was in Chinatown, Carly found it harder to hide. Most of the other non-Chinese people were tourists, busy buying imitation-silk slippers, mini Statues of Liberty, and various items declaring how much they ♥ed NY.

  The vendors who greeted Taylor with such friendly smiles had only suspicious looks for Carly. When Taylor stopped in front of a steamy restaurant window and started taking pictures of the headless ducks under orange lights, Carly browsed the offerings of a produce stand next door, where an old woman sitting on a high stool by the cash register watched her every move. When the old woman said something to the young girl stocking shelves with cellophane-wrapped nests of dried noodles, the girl left her task to follow Carly.

  Carly thought maybe if she bought something, they’d leave her alone. It would also give her something to do while she waited for Taylor to finish. She reached for a brown paper bag and filled it with a dark leafy thing she thought was bok choy. She wasn’t sure because she’d only seen it cooked—and the sign, in Chinese characters, was no help. Whatever it was cost $1.99 a pound.

  As she lifted each stalk into her bag, she’d sneak a peek over at Taylor, who was still with the ducks.

  If she and Taylor were friends and on this expedition together, this would be when she would say, Hey! How many shots of dead ducks can you possibly need? And Taylor would say something funny back, and together they would laugh at Mean Vegetable Lady.

  When the bag was half full, Carly brought it to the old woman, who grunted, looked inside, and practically threw it on the scale. They both watched as the needle registered a measly three quarters of a pound.

  Over the old woman’s shoulder, Carly saw Taylor step away from the ducks and point her lens toward a long piece of some other kind of meat glistening in the restaurant window. The old woman turned to see what Carly was looking at and then turned back and said, “You’re right. She has much better boobs. And she’s prettier.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “One dollar fifty-two cent,” the woman repeated, annoyed.

  “Oh,” Carly said, as she handed the woman a ten. The woman reached into her apron pocket, took out a wad of bills, and counted out eight crumpled singles. She reached into the other pocket, fished out two quarters and practically slapped them into Carly’s outstretched hand.

  “Thank you,” Carly whispered, and slunk away.

  But now the only people in front of the restaurant window were four white-haired women in pantsuits trying to decide whether to venture into Lucky Flower Food. Two were reading the menu posted by the door; another peered nervously through the glass. One brave soul marched up to the door and pulled it open, beckoning the others to join her.

  Carly tried not to panic as she looked around for the red sweater. A bus parked along the sidewalk was releasing more white-haired ladies into the wilds of Chinatown.

  Finally, just as she was about to give up, Carly spotted Taylor standing in front of a jewelry store next to the restaurant, talking to a Chinese man in a business suit. Something about the way he was standing—with his feet apart, hands behind his back—and sizing up everyone who walked by made Carly think he was the owner. Taylor was talking fast, moving her hands a lot, like she was telling a complicated story. The man was nodding and smiling. Was it possible that Tay
lor was speaking Chinese? Was that another of her many talents?

  Carly glanced back over her shoulder to see Mean Vegetable Lady glaring. She looked right into Carly’s eyes and shook her head.

  Carly’s father once had a wacky New Age girlfriend who believed the universe sent her very specific, personal messages on a regular basis. When she had two car accidents in one week, the universe was telling her to take a vacation. In Europe. (Not, apparently, to take a refresher driver’s ed class.) When her roof leaked into her clothes closet, it was the universe’s way of telling her she needed to change her look. Toss everything out and start over. It was while she was in the middle of that makeover that she decided to break up with Carly’s father, who seemed more relieved than anything. He’d dated some strange ones, but Cosmic Katie was the strangest.

  Now Carly was thinking maybe Katie was on to something. Because she had the distinct impression that Mean Vegetable Lady was her own personal messenger from the universe, telling her to stop, just stop whatever it was she thought she was doing.

  IT’S CRAZY!

  IT’S CREEPY!!

  IT’S JUST SAD!!!!!! ☹☹☹☹

  The universe was right. Or mostly right. Following your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend was creepy. And sad. She wasn’t ready to concede crazy, but she could see how others might see it that way. Val, for example. If Val knew where she was right then, and why she was there, she’d probably come downtown herself and drag Carly away.

  Carly knew she should stop. It was a beautiful, unusually warm Saturday morning in late November. And there were so many normal things a normal girl her age could be doing: sleeping, browsing college Web sites, homework. Even harmlessly cyber-stalking a new crush or an ex or an ex’s new crush in the safety of her own bedroom would be normal.

  But there she was, actually for-real stalking her exboyfriend’s new girlfriend. She’d started out wanting just one glimpse of the girl, and next thing she was following her around the streets of Manhattan, ducking into doorways to avoid detection, buying unidentified vegetables for cover, and almost knocking over small children in her determination to stay on Taylor’s trail.

  Carly knew all this, and yet she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. She could see how Brian would be totally whacked for this girl. She was herself a little bit totally whacked for this girl. She could imagine spending the day by Taylor’s side rather than behind her. She wanted to compare impressions of the pervy dad back on the playground and make fun of the muscle-bound fireman. She wanted to know how you got to be friends with Chinatown merchants. She wanted to go to yoga with Taylor and her mother and have coffee with them afterward. Carly was good at crosswords. They might have finished if she’d been helping them.

  Carly didn’t heed the universe’s warning.

  But she didn’t ignore the warning altogether. Mean Vegetable Lady’s scowling glare reminded her of the danger involved, the disaster it would be if she was discovered. So she decided to buy herself a new disguise. She looked at one merchant’s array of hats and picked the one she hated the most—a pink-and-white-checked I ♥ NY trucker cap. A few stalls over, someone was selling knockoff designer sunglasses. Carly chose a huge pair of fake Dolce & Gabbanas with a gold-covered plastic DG on each side. She stuffed the brown hat and turquoise glasses into her bag and checked her image in the small hand mirror that the merchant, eager to make a sale, held up for her.

  “Very nice. Very pretty,” he said, nodding and smiling. “You look like Paris Hilton.”

  She didn’t look anything like Paris Hilton.

  But she didn’t look anything like herself, either.

  “I’ll take them,” she said.

  3

  FROM CHINATOWN Carly followed Taylor through the neighborhoods of the Lower East Side. She stayed across the street and half a block behind as they passed through the old Jewish shopping district, where Taylor stopped once to take pictures of a lingerie store window filled with what looked like hundreds of bras displayed on hundreds of headless torsos.

  Taylor stopped again a few blocks later when she came upon a group of Dominican girls hanging out in front of a restaurant, El Castillo de Tito. Judging by the orthodontia and varying states of development, Carly figured they were twelve, maybe thirteen. At first, like the firemen in Washington Square Park, they hammed it up for the camera. They jutted their hips and shoulders, puckered their lips. But when Taylor spoke to them in fluent Spanish, they relaxed back into what they were doing before she arrived. Some danced to the reggaeton blaring from Tito’s open door. Two sat on steps with a magazine between them, flipping pages, pointing and laughing. One girl braided another’s hair while talking to a boy leaning out of a window a few floors above.

  All the while, Taylor clicked away, moving from girl to girl, from English to Spanish and back.

  When she finished, the girls gathered around while she showed them the pictures on her camera. They oohed and aahed, laughed and teased each other. Before leaving, Taylor got out her BlackBerry and took down the information they shouted at her, promising to let them know when she posted the pictures.

  On a gentrified block of designer boutiques and expensive upscale restaurants, Taylor entered a tiny, below-ground restaurant. Carly crossed the street and, pulling her I ♥ NY cap down on her forehead, walked by to see Taylor sitting at the counter, studying a menu. She’d taken off her sweater, and her camera sat on the empty stool next to her.

  By now it was almost two. Carly hadn’t eaten anything since the bagel she and Jess split on their way downtown early that morning. She decided to wait for Taylor in the old-style coffee shop next door, where she hoped to find something cheap to eat.

  Carly stood by the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign while a fifty-something bleached-blonde waitress sat on a stool near the cash register. A smiling Oprah beamed out from the cover of the magazine she held in her lap, promising “A Joy-Filled Celebration of the Season.”

  “Excuse me, is it okay if I sit at that table by the window?”

  Without looking up, the waitress said, “Suit yourself. Grill’s closed till four.”

  “That’s okay,” Carly said sheepishly.

  When the waitress finally sighed her way over to her table, Carly ordered the cream of broccoli soup.

  The waitress rolled her eyes as she scribbled on her pad. “That it?”

  “Some water?” Despite Carly’s best efforts to sound grateful, she’d obviously ruined the waitress’s day, if not her life.

  Carly dug in her messenger bag for her Harriet the Spy notebook, placing the crumpled bag of bok choy on the table. She would spend the time filling in the route Taylor had taken around the city.

  T.D. Departs Café Joe @ 11:08, walks east on 4th.

  Enters WSP approx. 11:15, exits 11:45 via Washing. Pl. to B’way.

  Walks south arrives Canal St. approx. 12:30.

  E. on Canal to Orchard, N. on Orchard to Rivington.

  But when she looked up, she saw Taylor sauntering up the steps of the place next door. She quickly closed the notebook, stuffed it and her new hat and sunglasses into her bag, and began to slide out of the booth just as the waitress arrived with the soup.

  “Last door on your right.”

  Carly looked at her blankly.

  “Bathroom’s last door on your right.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go. It’s, um, an emergency.”

  “Okay,” said the waitress as she reached into her apron pocket. “Here’s your check.” She slapped it down on the table.

  Carly shifted her eyes to the window. Taylor was no longer visible. If she didn’t leave that instant, she’d run the risk of losing her trail. She had no choice but to bolt.

  The first “Hey!” came as she reached the door. She didn’t stop.

  The second “Hey!”—louder and angrier—came as she stepped onto the sidewalk. She didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. She had to keep her eye on Taylor, who was almost at the end of the block. If she stopp
ed, if she so much as looked back, she might miss seeing which way Taylor went next.

  “HEY, YOU FORGOT SOMETHING!”

  Carly stopped and, without turning around, took a quick inventory. She had her messenger bag. Her notebook was in the messenger bag. Her phone was in her pocket. Her jacket? Did she leave her jacket? No. She was wearing her jacket.

  Carly turned around just as something hit the sidewalk. The brown bag. The waitress had thrown it hard enough that it skittered and bounced and tore open at Carly’s feet. The bok choy, limp and wilted, flopped onto the sidewalk.

  “Brat,” the waitress said.

  4

  WHEN THE bok choy landed at her feet, Carly took off. She ran right into the middle of the street, directly in front of a cab that was going faster than it had seemed from the sidewalk. The cabbie slammed on his brakes, blared his horn, and yelled out his window, “What are you trying to do, get yourself killed?”

  Even then Carly didn’t stop. She just kept running. Across the street, around the corner, and five blocks to the Canal Street subway station, where she hopped onto an uptown train that brought her within a few blocks of Val’s in Spanish Harlem.

  She and Val always got ready for their Saturday-night shift at SJNY, the restaurant owned by Val’s mother and uncle, together. Carly didn’t have much in the girly-girl style she was supposed to wear to work, so she always just let Val pick something out from her vast array of swishy skirts, clingy tops, and dangly earrings. After Val got through with Carly’s hair and makeup, Carly practically looked like one of the family. A pale and freckly, red-headed, blue-eyed member of the family.