Jude pushed his chair back and jumped up and ran to the door. He couldn't get it open immediately, and he saw the manager approaching out of the corner of his eye, but he gave a final tug and then pushed and it flung open into the rain. He ran outside and was instantly drenched and looked in all directions, but could see nothing. He ran up the street, then doubled back and ran the other way, then back again. But he found no one. The apparition had vanished. He stood there, in a doorway, for a long time, wondering what to do.
When he got back to the shop, the tourists were leaving, eyeing him suspiciously. He stood in the rain until they had all departed and then went inside. The manager was toying with a button on her blouse. Jude walked over to the desk, picked up his jacket, and stood before her in a puddle of water. He mumbled an apology, but he was too distraught to make it eloquent, and he saw that she was looking at him with genuine sympathy.
Jude made his way through the stygian gloom of the Times Square subway station, half in a daze. Above him was "the crossroads of the world" — the place to meet anyone. But he had never heard of an encounter such as the one he had just had, running into himself.
In SoHo, he had grabbed a bite and drunk three cups of coffee to sober up. Sitting alone in the diner, he couldn't get the image out of his mind. It was an image he had seen his whole life—his own face. At moments, he recalled it as clear as a bell — as if his own visage had lunged out of a mirror to grab him by the throat. In particular, it was the eyes. When he'd stared into them for that millisecond, he'd felt he was peering into the recesses of his own soul.
But at other moments he could convince himself that he was mistaken, that he was ranting on because of some tramp that had been attracted by the lights and warmth of the bookstore window. Nothing more than that. And then of course there was the wine, the excitement, the heady feeling that came with signing all those books in that strange Dickensian shop. Could that matron have spiked the wine? Possibly, he told himself. But unlikely, he admitted. He knew what hallucinogenic experiences were like, and they were not like that. He had been slightly drunk, but otherwise in possession of his faculties. And then, of course, there was that other sighting — who was it? Helen. She had undoubtedly seen the same man.
He'd left the diner and boarded a subway home. Now, in the Times Square station, he turned a corner. On the left were three young men in track pants and high tops lurking near a bank of wall telephones. To the right, across a pavement studded with black globules of old chewing gum, was a newsstand manned by a bored-looking Pakistani. Unsold stacks of the Mirror towered above its rivals.
He negotiated a path through the crisscrossing crowd toward the shuttle to go to the East Side. He waited with two dozen others under a crackling sign that eventually flashed the track number, and then they all moved on together, purposeful as a lynch mob. They crossed over a makeshift bridge of iron slabs laid across the tracks, past open darkness and screeching trains, and ran into a flood of exiting passengers. It took a full half minute to move ten paces.
The car was already full when he stepped across an eight-inch gap to board. The line of seats were taken by exhausted faces of all colors and hues, eyes deadened. He reached for a strap and held on as the train left with a lurch, pressing him into sweaty bodies on both sides.
"Excuse me," muttered a woman who spiked his left foot, sounding not at all sorry.
He looked across the ragged white-scalp part in her jet black hair to study the ads above for hemorrhoids and blurred vision and facial skin peels. The sound of punk rock, distant and tinny, came at him from a pair of earphones to his right. His eyes drifted across the sea of heads and hair and gear toward the rear of the car, and through the back window into the car behind.
It was then that he saw him. A large, muscular man, with a white slash through his hair. The man was looking at him, and Jude caught him in mid-expression; it was an ugly look — he seemed to be almost leering, brazenly — and Jude thought it was directed at him. But why? He had never seen him before in his life. For a moment, their eyes locked, then the man dropped his glare and made a half turn so that his back was to Jude. Jude looked around the car hurriedly, then again through the rear window into the car behind. The man's back was turned in a slouch. He was swaying with the rhythm of the train and rocking his shoulders slightly, like a boxer. People around him were giving him a wide berth.
Jude tightened his fist around the handgrip. He felt his pulse quicken and his stomach tighten. He scrutinized his fellow passengers. No one was noticing, no one was paying any attention. The eyes were deadened. He tried to think; the white streak, the very thing Bashir had mentioned. Could it be a coincidence? Surely, in a city this large… And anyway, what could happen to him in the middle of a crowded subway?
He held his breath, turned slightly, and looked again through the rear window. He's staring at me. Again, the man turned his head away. The white spot, a streak above the left eye, looked like a dab of paint.
Instinct took over. Jude fled. He let fly the strap, turned and plunged through the throng toward the car ahead. He spotted openings, little spaces between people, and he made his way to them, squeezing through like a wedge, not caring who he pushed.
"Hey, motherfucker, watchid."
People swore, frowned, stared daggers.
He reached the door to the forward car. An elderly woman was leaning against it, and he practically picked her up and trundled her to one side, grabbing the metal door handle and thrusting it to the right. It resisted, then abruptly gave way. He stepped out. There was a sudden rush of hot wind and the screaming sound of metal wheels rounding on steel track. The door behind him slammed shut. He was between the two bouncing cars, one foot on each, dancing madly. Groping in the semidarkness, he finally found the other door handle. He grasped it with both hands, swung it wildly back and forth until it clicked and the door retracted.
Jude turned to look behind him. He saw faces staring at him in puzzlement and annoyance, but he did not see the man. Ahead was a wall of people, but he did not hesitate. He bent his head and dove through the wall, twisting and turning through the sweaty bodies. People backed away from him in alarm, and just as he reached the exit doors, he felt the train grinding to a stop. The doors opened and he bounded out and sprinted without a backward glance.
He ran, dodging the oncoming passengers. He raced down the platform, under the stairway to Grand Central and into the tunnel that would take him to the Lexington Avenue line. It was surprisingly deserted, and the newsstand at the entrance was locked behind a metal gate. His own footsteps echoed back at him, and he could hear his heavy breathing. He slowed and looked back. No one was following him — in fact, there were only a few scattered souls, walking slowly. Ahead, there was no one at all, and the tunnel darkened and narrowed. It looked frightening, and so he resumed the pace, feeling a stinging on his soles as his feet slapped down on the concrete. In the foul air, his lungs began to ache.
At the end, the tunnel opened into a subterranean labyrinth of columns, passageways and descending stairways. Jude knew the route, and without skipping a beat, he cut straight across the oppressive concrete concourse, half as wide as a football field. Ahead was a staircase with a black and white enamel sign reading UPTOWN, and as he reached it, he paused for a moment, held onto the handrail and peered back the way he had come. No one. He felt relief, and still catching his breath, he made every effort to collect himself and amble down the steps as if nothing had happened.
The platform was deserted — almost. Ahead of him, pacing slowly in the opposite direction, was a figure, a man in a leather coat. Jude stopped dead in his tracks. He squinted in the half-light and looked hard. Something about the figure was already familiar, an arrogance to the rolling stride. Instantly, a wave of fear passed through Jude. He did a double-take. It couldn't be. But it was. It was the same man!
He was unmistakable — there it was, the patch of white, gleaming like a wound. Jude slipped behind a column and hid there, his heart pounding, holding his breath and standing stiff so that not a stitch of clothing would show. He could hear the man walking up and down the platform; once he cleared his throat, an unpleasant bark of a sound. It was dumbfounding, beyond belief, there was simply no physical way for the man to have arrived ahead of him. How did he do it? For the moment, Jude banished the question and concentrated upon escape.
He chose his time carefully, waiting for a convergence of distractions. Soon enough, a subway pulled in two tracks over, emitting an ear-splitting racket that drowned out everything else. He watched until the man resumed his pacing and turned his back, and then he bolted and took the stairs two at a time, stopping at the top to look back. He could see the legs, still pacing. He raced across the concourse and through the turnstiles to the exit, then up more stairs and into the twilight air cleansed by rain.
Once outside on the sidewalk, Jude did not stop running. He ran to Third Avenue, then north for four blocks until he spotted a cab with a rear door swung open, one leg and high-heeled shoe dangling outside. Inside, a woman in an evening dress was laboriously counting her change. Jude held onto the door handle. She smiled at him as she stepped out, and he weakly smiled back, then jumped inside and gave his address. He fell against the backseat, spent and frightened.
The traffic was heavy and the cab moved slowly. It was not air-conditioned, and Jude lowered both windows as far as they would go. He could smell the perfume of the previous occupant, a powerful, exotic scent. A matchbook and a half-smoked cigarette lay on the floor. The driver switched on the radio, and a talk-show host was attacking a caller in an aggressive, nasal voice; something about welfare. Jude scanned the pavements on both sides. People were walking home from work, carrying briefcases and groceries. A young couple strolled down the sidewalk, arms around each other, easy as royalty.
The cab took a sharp turn, cutting off a pedestrian whose face, two feet away from Jude's, registered anger. It pulled up to Jude's building, a five-floor rent-controlled walk-up on East Seventy-fifth. Jude paid, tipping heavily, and looked both ways as he stepped out. Nothing untoward. The sun was hanging westward over the city, bleeding red upon the street.
Opening the front door, he entered the vestibule and passed his mailbox, filled with letters. He unlocked the second door and stepped into the dingy central stairwell with tiny, cracked black-and-white-tile floors and a rough staircase whose heavy banister was encrusted with layers of mud brown paint. It was a depressing space, and he usually hurried through it.
But this time he paused. He was breathing normally, but his senses were still alert from his flight from the subway; his vision was strong and hearing sharp, and he felt ready to spring at a moment's notice. And he thought he heard something — not much, nothing loud, a whisper of a sound from the shadows under the staircase. It was an indistinct rustling, the vague sound of someone drawing breath.
Jude took his foot off the first step and walked halfway down the hall, close enough to see a shivering, pathetic-looking figure in the shadows. Too small to be the man with the white hair.
"Come out of there," he commanded in a voice whose authority surprised even himself. "I can hear you. I know you're there. Come out."
Jude stepped closer.
There was a hint of movement in the darkness, more rustling, and then suddenly and all at once, a person materialized and stepped forward into the glare of the light from a dangling cord.
Jude was transfixed, struck dumb.
Before him stood a quivering tramp in rags, his long hair matted and falling to his shoulders. But there was no question — take away all that and it looked like Jude himself, almost exactly like him. It was his double, though oddly youthful despite the grime upon the face.
Then it spoke.
"Don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me."
The voice was shaking, scared. It carried an odd accent, slow and Southern-sounding, but unlike any Jude had heard before. And what really struck Jude was the timbre of the voice — it sounded just like the tapes he had heard of his own interviews. It sounded just like himself.