When he attempted to tear off another piece of tape, the metal and cardboard spool came apart. That and the roll of tape flew from his grasp and clattered to the tile floor.
The door opened. His mother. She looked at him, then at the clutter on the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
Jordan was too surprised and frightened to reply.
She grabbed him by the right ear, squeezing hard, and walked him out of the bathroom. He could feel tears streaming down his cheeks.
His father was standing in the hall, holding a sheet of newspaper—the sports page. “What the hell you catch him doing?” he asked Jordan’s mother. “Jerking off again?”
“Who knows or cares?” his mother said. She released his ear and slapped him hard on the left side of his face. His cheek burned.
“What’d he break now?” his father asked. “Was he taking that tape dispenser apart?” He clucked his tongue at Jordan. “You ever see anything you didn’t wanna take apart and screw up?”
Jordan knew when not to answer.
His mother shoved him toward the bedroom, scraping his bare elbow against the wall. “I’ll take care of him.”
Jordan’s father studied Jordan’s face, which Jordan studied to control, and then shook his head. “You really do need to learn to behave.”
“I’ll teach him.” Another push toward the bedroom. His mother and father’s room.
There was motion off to the side, and Kent peeked around the corner. His face paled. “What’s goin’ on?”
His mother glared at him, and he pulled back and disappeared.
The noise had awakened Nora, who screamed in her crib.
“I’ll take care of her,” Jordan’s mother said, “soon as I’m done with you.”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Jordan’s father said.
She laughed at her husband and looked at him a certain way, until he turned away from her.
13
New York, the present
“Have a nice night, Margaret.”
The woman, Margaret, returned the good wishes of the man in the suit and tie who had come out of the office building she had just left. A fellow worker drone, no doubt.
Jordan watched her as she crossed the street at the signal. How could she move that way? The precision of her stride, the rhythmic sway of her hips, the swing of her free arm with its opposite resting lightly on the purse that was supported by a leather strap slung over her shoulder. Why wasn’t she like the other women he saw every day? How was she different?
Whatever the answers to those questions, he knew it was fate and not chance that had brought them together. And that would bring them ever closer to each other.
She descended the steps to a subway platform without losing her distinctive rhythmic gait that was almost a dance. He followed her down the narrow concrete steps.
Jordan observed her from farther down the platform. She was looking away from him, idly watching and waiting for the push of cool air and the gleam of lights that meant a subway train was coming. While she was momentarily distracted, he wandered along the platform toward where she was standing. Her hand tightened on her purse strap, as if she wanted to be sure she wouldn’t lose her bag in the rush of riders leaving the train, and those traveling in her direction to board.
The train, a dragon of gray metal and reflective glass, roared before them and appeared for a moment that it was going to speed past and keep going. Then, with a screaming of steel on steel, it slowed rapidly and smoothly almost to a halt. It stopped and sat quietly. It was the 1 train, headed downtown, and like everyone on board, it had rules to obey.
Those waiting to board pressed forward. The woman, Margaret, had to assert herself and back up a step so she remained behind the yellow line. One of the pneumatic doors had stopped exactly in front of her and then hissed open. She was one of the first to board as the flow of passengers both ways met and then broke into two distinct lines, moving in opposite directions.
Jordan was near a door in the same car, only farther down the platform. He stepped inside just as the door was about to close.
There were no seats, so he stood with several others in the crowded car, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He could see Margaret seated near the door she had entered.
By the time the train stopped at West 42nd Street, in the theater district, it had taken on more passengers, and Jordan had to crane his neck now and then to catch sight of her.
There she was, standing up and edging toward the door.
He pushed toward her, using his elbows. Someone in the crowded car elbowed him back, but he ignored it. A little pain was a tonic to the system, as his mother had often told him.
He left the subway behind and followed Margaret toward the concrete steps leading to the sidewalk. As she pushed through a black iron revolving gate that looked designed to eat people, she didn’t glance back, but he doubted if she’d recognize him anyway. He’d let his hair grow, and it was combed back like dark wings over his ears.
Soon they surfaced into the loud, warm night. The sidewalk was almost as crowded as the subway, and he stayed close behind her.
After a block, she cut down a side street that was a mix of businesses, most of them restaurants, and residences. Some of the old brick and brownstone buildings had been subdivided into apartments. A few of them looked vacant.
Margaret paused in the glare of a streetlight, in front of a dentist’s office. She rummaged about in her purse until she found what looked like a key ring, then continued to the stoop of the next building. As she went up the steps, he watched her, mesmerized, listening to the clack of her high heels on the concrete steps. The rhythm and precision of her movements captivated him. The click and clack and sway and roll and rhythm and click and clack had a hypnotic effect on him that he couldn’t understand but must.
As she entered the building through an oversized oak door, he resisted a glance to the side.
He walked past her building and continued down the street, but he used his ballpoint pen to write her address on the palm of his left hand.
He pressed hard enough to make the hand bleed.
Margaret Evans stood leaning with her back pressed against the inside of her apartment door to the hall. She knew the man had been following her, picked up on the fact when she’d gotten on the subway and noticed him waiting, then timing his movements as he entered the same subway car before the doors closed and the train moved away.
It wasn’t all that unusual in Margaret’s life that a man might follow her to see where she was going. Usually they were harmless. Lonely guys killing time and looking for something to do. Dreamers who moved in her wake, waiting for their dreams to come true. With those guys, they were mostly too timid to approach her. Her late aunt Clara had told her more than once that women had little idea of the power they held over men. Men didn’t know it either, but were moved by it, sometimes even believing that they were the agents of change.
“You’re beautiful and will grow up to be even more beautiful,” her aunt had said. “You’re special and will have to understand more about men, how one day you are their friend and the next day their goddess.”
Clara had been dead for three years now. Margaret wished she’d listened more to what her aunt had said. There was a lot that the pancreatic cancer had cut short, or Margaret would have understood more about what made her special, and more about men. Such as why they sometimes need to destroy their goddesses.
Margaret was sure she’d never before seen the man who’d followed her to her apartment building. And probably he’d never seen her.
But sometimes, as Clara said, it was all in a look, or a certain movement in a certain light. Or . . . who knew what else? A person could glimpse another through a bus window and be in love for life.