A Walkable City

The first time Ben Malloy saw the man, he didn't pay him any attention. Later, he would wish he'd taken a better look.

It was a little before eight on a Thursday in October, and Hoboken was doing what Hoboken did best: trying to fit thirty thousand people through a space designed for twelve. Commuters streamed toward the PATH station. Delivery trucks blocked the corners. A woman with a stroller told a cyclist exactly what she thought of him, using language Ben hadn't heard since his father was alive.

The man stood near Hoboken Terminal in a gray overcoat and a burgundy scarf, holding a small brown paper bag. He wasn't checking his phone or looking for a bus. He was simply standing there, watching the crowds pass.

Ben noticed him only because everyone else was moving.

He repaired intercoms and electronic locks for a property management company, which was less glamorous than it sounded, and it didn't sound particularly glamorous. His first call was on First Street, where a tenant had managed to lock herself out of an apartment equipped with three separate ways to get in. He had forty minutes to kill beforehand, so he bought coffee and carried it down to Pier A Park.

The wind off the Hudson smelled of wet stone and diesel. Across the water, Manhattan wore a band of low cloud around its middle. Leaves skittered along the waterfront path, making a dry, insectlike noise. A few joggers passed, looking offended by the existence of weather.

Ben stopped at the railing, took a drink of coffee, and saw the man again.

Gray coat. Burgundy scarf. Brown paper bag.

He stood near the far end of the pier, gazing toward the city.

Small world, Ben thought. Then he corrected himself. Small town. Manhattan was the world. Hoboken was where the world came to complain about parking.

By ten, he'd replaced a defective door strike, explained to the tenant that her key fob wasn't waterproof, and walked uptown for a service call off Garden Street. A copper-colored sun had finally pushed through the clouds, warming the rows of brick townhouses. Someone was roasting coffee nearby. Someone else was burning toast.

His second appointment was beside Church Square Park. He took a shortcut through the park, passing the dog run and the benches where the older men gathered to settle matters of local government without troubling to attend a meeting.

The man was sitting beneath a tree.

There was nothing remarkable about that. People sat in parks. It was one of the few things you could still do in Hoboken without paying seventeen dollars for it.

But the man was wearing the same coat and scarf, and the little paper bag sat upright beside him. He was looking straight ahead, not at the dogs or the children or the woman struggling to fold a stroller. Ben couldn't make out his expression.

As Ben passed, the man turned his head.

Ben looked away first.

At noon he met his sister, Claire, outside a pizza place on Washington Street. She worked at a dentist's office and believed most of life's problems could be solved by flossing, budgeting, or leaving the wrong person.

"You look tired," she said.

"Nice to see you too."

"You're supposed to say I look younger."

"You look expensive."

They ate standing at a counter. Claire told him about a patient who'd tried to bargain over a root canal as though buying a used Subaru. Ben laughed in the appropriate places. Through the window, pedestrians hurried along Washington Street under the yellowing trees.

Across the road stood the man.

Ben stopped chewing.

"What?" Claire said.

"See that guy? Gray coat?"

She leaned past him. A bus moved through the intersection, cutting off their view.

"What guy?"

When it cleared, the man was gone.

"Nobody," Ben said.

Claire frowned. "You know, you can take a day off without getting fired."

"Apparently that's a rumor."

He didn't tell her about the other sightings. Three coincidences made an anecdote. Four made you the sort of person who cornered strangers to discuss license plates.

His next job was near Elysian Park, in a building whose front door opened whenever it pleased. The superintendent, a man named Arnie, said it had been doing that since Labor Day.

"You could've called sooner," Ben said.

"I did. They told me you'd come."

"And here I am. The system works."

While Ben worked on the control panel, he kept glancing out the glass front door. A few pedestrians went by. A dog in a raincoat refused to move until its owner picked it up. No gray coat.

He relaxed enough to feel foolish.

At four fifteen, finished for the day, he headed toward the waterfront. He could have walked directly home, but the air had that sharp October smell he liked, the smell of leaves and chimney smoke and rain that hadn't arrived yet. He took the longer route along Hudson Street.

At the corner of Eleventh, he caught sight of the gray coat fifty yards ahead.

The man was walking away from him for the first time, at an ordinary pace. Ben quickened his steps.

A delivery cyclist swerved between them. A woman emerged from a building carrying a stack of dry cleaning. Ben went around her and reached the corner.

The man had vanished.

Ben looked both ways. There was a short stretch of sidewalk ahead, a parked van, and an empty intersection. He checked the entrance to the nearest building. Locked.

"All right," he said aloud.

A passing jogger gave him a sympathetic look.

By six, Ben was at the Madison Bar & Grill on Washington near Fourteenth Street, drinking a beer he hadn't intended to order. The place was warm and noisy. Forks struck plates, somebody laughed too loudly near the bar, and a television above the bottles reported on a disaster happening somewhere Ben was grateful not to be.

He called Claire.

"Do you remember that guy outside the pizza place?"

"What guy?"

"The one in the gray coat."

"Ben, what is going on?"

"Nothing. I've just seen him a few times today."

"It's Hoboken. You see the same people all the time."

"Five times?"

"Maybe he thinks you're following him."

He almost smiled. "Thanks. That helps."

"Go home, Ben. And eat something besides bar food."

He put his phone down and looked toward the street.

The man was standing across Washington, beneath the awning of a closed storefront. The burgundy scarf lay against his coat like a narrow wound. He held the paper bag with both hands.

Ben stared at him through the window. The man stared back.

For several seconds neither moved.

Then Ben left money under his glass and went outside.

A bus groaned past, its windows bright with tired faces. When it cleared, the awning was empty. Ben crossed the street anyway. He looked north, then south, and stood listening to the traffic hiss over damp pavement.

"You looking for somebody?" asked a man locking up the storefront.

"Guy in a gray coat. He was standing here."

The man glanced toward the bus stop. "A lot of people stand here."

"Right."

"You want I should call somebody?"

Ben shook his head. It seemed the wisest answer he'd given all day.

He walked home by way of Bloomfield Street, changing sides twice and stopping once to tie a shoe that wasn't untied. The moon was a blurred coin above the rooftops. Halloween skeletons swung from iron railings, their plastic bones clacking in the breeze. He kept glancing back, ashamed of himself and unable to stop.

Nobody followed him.

He lived on the third floor of a narrow walk-up near Eighth Street. Inside, he turned every light on, then felt ridiculous and turned half of them off. He made a sandwich and left it untouched on the counter. At nine, he checked the deadbolt. At nine fifteen, he checked it again.

He told himself he'd seen an ordinary man in an ordinary town. The man could have had errands. He could have been visiting friends. There were eight million people across the river and some of them undoubtedly owned gray coats.

At nine twenty, Ben went to the window.

The man stood under the streetlamp across from his building.

His scarf stirred in the wind. The paper bag hung from one hand. He was looking up, directly at Ben.

Ben stepped back, heart thudding. He reached for his phone, then stopped. What could he tell the police? A man had walked around Hoboken all day, committing the suspicious act of being somewhere?

The buzzer sounded from the lobby below.

Ben looked out again. The man hadn't moved. He was still beneath the streetlamp, still looking up.

The buzzer sounded a second time.

And the man on the sidewalk kept perfectly still.