I didn’t know what to say, so I put my hands up in the air, like I’ve seen criminals do in the movies whenever they want to surrender, when some tough Bogart-type guy points a gun and says, “Reach for the sky.”
It surprised her, and she took a step back, but she didn’t spray me.
“How old are you?” she said.
I said, “I’m seventeen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Leonard Peacock.”
“That’s a fake name if I ever heard one.”
I said, “I can show you my school ID.”
She said, “Let’s see it, but real slow. If you try anything funny, I’ll shoot you in the cornea.”
I lowered my hands super slo-mo and said, “It’s in my pocket. May I reach into my jacket?”
She nodded, so I produced my school ID.
She took it, glanced at my name, and said, “Well, I’ll be damned. You really are Leonard Peacock. What a stupid name.”
I said, “Why are you crying?”
I saw her trigger finger twitch and I thought I was about to get maced, but instead she put my school ID into her purse and said, “Why are you following me, really? Did someone pay you? What do they want?”
“No. It’s nothing like that at all.”
She moved the Mace a few inches closer to my face, pointed at my left eye, and said, “Don’t fuck with me, Leonard Peacock. Did Brian put you up to this? Huh? Tell me!”
I put my hands up again and said, “I don’t know any Brian. I’m just a dumb kid. I dress up like an adult and skip school every once in a while to see what being an adult is like. Okay? I just want to know if growing up’s worth it. That’s all. And so I follow the most miserable-looking adult to work, because I just know that’s going to be me someday—the most miserable adult on the train. I need to know if I can take it.”
She said, “Take what?”
I said, “Being a miserable adult.”
She lowered her Mace. “Really?”
I nodded.
She said, “You’re absolutely crazy, aren’t you?”
I nodded again.
“But not dangerous, right? You’re a lamb.”
I shook my head no, because I wasn’t a threat back then. And then I nodded, because I wasn’t a wolf or a lion or anything predatory at the time.
She said, “Okay. Do you drink coffee?”
ELEVEN
She took me to this coffee place close to the alley where she stole my school ID. It was mostly old people eating bagels and slurping joe.
She started talking about how stressed out she was and how there was this guy at her work named Brian whom she had screwed once and he was now using that against her because they were up for the same promotion. Her mother was dying in some hospice center in New Jersey, which was where she had spent the previous night. She had really wanted to stay with her mother because her mom was close to the end of her life, but this woman knew that—while no one would tell her she couldn’t be there for her mother’s passing—Brian would use her absence from work as a way to beat her out for the position.
Or at least that’s what I understood.
She was rambling and slurring words like she was drunk and she kept waving her hands and she wouldn’t take off her sunglasses even inside the coffee shop. She talked for an hour or so, and I was beginning to think she was a great big liar because if she left her dying mom to get ahead at work, why the hell would she waste her time with me at the coffee shop? Wouldn’t Brian use missing work—for any reason at all—against her?
I was thinking about all of this when she said, “So what have you learned following around adults? Spying on us?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me. You owe me an explanation, Leonard Peacock.”
And so I swallowed and said, “I’m not finished researching, which is why I followed you today.”
“What have you learned today from me?”
“Truthfully?”
She nodded.
So I said, “You seem really unhappy. And most of the people I follow are the same. It seems like they don’t like their jobs and yet they also don’t like going home either. It’s like they hate every aspect of their lives.”
She laughed and said, “You need to follow people on the train to figure that out?”
And I said, “I was hoping that I had it wrong.”
And she said, “Don’t all the kids in your high school seem miserable too? I hated high school. HATED it!”
And I said, “Yeah, most of them do seem miserable. Although they try to fake it the best they can. Kids fake it better than adults, right? My theory is that we lose the ability to be happy as we age.”
She smiled. “So if you’ve got it all figured out, why follow adults like me?”
“Like I said before, I was hoping that I’m wrong, that life gets better for some people when they get older, and even the most miserable people—such as you and me—might be able to enjoy at least some aspect of adulthood. Like those ads where gay guys talk about being picked on in high school but then they grew up and discovered that adult life is like heaven. They say it gets better. I want to believe that happiness might at least be possible later on in life for people prone to sadness.”
She swatted my words out of the air with her hand and said, “All ads are lies. Life doesn’t get better at all. Adulthood is hell. And everything I told you about myself was a lie too. I made everything up just to see who you were because I thought they paid you to be a spy. But the joke’s on me because you really are just a crazy, sad, underfed high school student who follows random people. That’s sick. Perverted. I’m keeping your ID and if I ever see you again I’m pressing charges and getting a restraining order.”
She stood up and glared down at me through her huge sunglasses.
“This little prick follows women into dark alleys and asks them intimate questions. He’s a true pervert. Do with him as you will,” she said loudly to everyone eating breakfast, and then her heels clicked out of the shop—POW! POW! POW! POW!
I could tell everyone was still looking at me and so I shrugged and said, “Women!” too loudly. It was supposed to be a joke to break the tension, but it didn’t work. Everyone[23] in the coffee shop was frowning.
I figured the woman was really deranged—I had simply picked a femme fatale to follow, there were surely better case studies to find, happier adults prone to sadness, and she was just an unlucky fluke—but the problem was that she sort of reminded me of Linda, who also thinks I’m a pervert.
And what the 1970s sunglasses woman had said was so mean, public, and maybe true, that I started to cry right there, which made me really SEEM like a pervert.
Not big boo-hoo tears.
I pretty much hid the fact that I was crying, but my lips trembled and my eyes got all moist before I could wipe them away with my sleeve.
“I’M NOT A FUCKING PERVERT!” I yelled at the people staring at me, although I’m not sure why.
The words just sort of shot out of my mouth.
I’M!
NOT!
A!
FUCKING!
PERVERT!
They all winced.
A few people stuck money under their utensils and left, even though they weren’t finished eating.
This huge muscle-inflated tattooed cook came out from the kitchen and said, “Why don’t you just pay your bill and leave, kid? Okay?”
Just like always I could tell I was the problem—that the coffee shop would be better off once I was no longer around—so I pulled out my wallet and handed him all my money even though we only had a coffee each, and in a normal speaking voice, I said, “I’m not a pervert.”