The Hunter

Content Warning: This story contains themes of stalking, paranoia, and brief violence.

I don’t see him at first. For a few seconds, all I can make out through the living room window is the gray face of the office building across the street, row after row of glass reflecting the late-afternoon sky. The sun has already slipped behind the buildings to the west, leaving everything washed in that strange colorless light that comes just before evening. People move behind some of the windows, little silhouettes passing from desk to desk, but none of them are him. I lean closer to the glass. Nothing. Still, I could have sworn I saw him a minute ago. It was only a glimpse, the dark line of a coat disappearing past the edge of a window, but something about the way he moved had made my stomach tighten immediately. I know that walk. I know the way he carries his shoulders, slightly forward, as if he is always leaning into whatever comes next. I know the shape of him even if I couldn’t describe his face.

I move to the bedroom. The bedroom window looks at the same building from a slightly different angle, enough that I can see part of the roof. I push aside the curtain with two fingers and scan the edge of the building, feeling faintly ridiculous even as I do it. Then I see him. He is standing near the far corner of the rooftop, one hand in the pocket of his coat and the other raised to his mouth. A small thread of smoke lifts from between his fingers and disappears into the wind. There. I knew it. I stay very still, watching him through the narrow gap between the curtain and the wall.

He is too far away for me to make out his features. That has always bothered me. I have seen him close enough before that I should know his face, but somehow I don’t. Whenever I try to picture it, I get fragments instead of a whole person: dark hair, maybe brown; a straight nose, I think; the impression of a serious mouth. Nothing I could describe to somebody else with any certainty. If I knew his name, I could look him up. The thought has occurred to me more than once. I could search the office building, find the companies inside it, look through employee pages and LinkedIn profiles until I found him. Maybe knowing who he is would make all of this less strange. Maybe there is an explanation so simple that I would be embarrassed for ever having worried. But I don’t know his name. I only know that it is him.

Last Sunday, he was at the grocery store. I almost didn’t recognize him without the coat, but then he turned sideways and I caught that same posture, the slight forward bend of his shoulders, and I knew. He never looked directly at me. At least I don’t think he did. On Tuesday, he was in the park three blocks from here, sitting alone on one of the benches with a book open in his lap. I was walking along the other side of the path. He looked up as I passed, and for one horrible second I thought our eyes met, but a cyclist crossed between us and when I looked again he was reading.

Across the street, the man flicks ash over the edge of the roof. My phone says 5:17. People will start leaving the office soon. I move back into the living room and sit on the arm of the couch, but I don’t turn on the television. There would be no point. I know I wouldn’t hear it. My heart is beating far too loud and my attention keeps pulling toward the window. I wait perhaps thirty seconds before checking again. Still there. He has shifted closer to the railing now. His cigarette is gone. Both hands rest against the concrete ledge while he looks down at the street. I tell myself I should make something to eat, partly because I am hungry and partly because standing beside the window is beginning to make me feel like the strange one. The kitchen is only a few steps away, separated from the living room by a narrow counter, and even while I open the refrigerator I can still see part of the office building reflected in the microwave. I take out some leftover takeout, but within seconds my eyes drift toward the reflection, searching for the rooftop again. When I can only see a pale blur of sky, I turn toward the window.

When I look again, he has turned. Not toward the door behind him. Toward me. My hand stops halfway to the microwave. He is standing completely still, facing my building. Facing my floor. Facing my window. A pulse begins beating hard in my throat. No. He can’t be looking at me. He is too far away. There are hundreds of windows in this building, hundreds of apartments stacked above and below mine. From that rooftop, my window must look exactly like every other rectangle of glass. But he hasn’t moved. Neither have I. The container slips slightly in my hand and I catch it against the counter before it falls. His head tilts. Just a little.

My entire body reacts before my mind does. I drop into a crouch behind the kitchen counter, hitting my knee against the cabinet hard enough to send a flash of pain up my leg. For several seconds I don’t breathe. He saw me. He saw me. He saw me. I press one hand over my mouth, as if there is any chance he could hear me from across the street. That is stupid. All of this is stupid. There is no way. I close my eyes. He doesn’t know I saw him. He doesn’t know I’ve been watching him. He doesn’t even know who I am. He cannot know who I am. I stay behind the counter until the cold from the tile begins creeping through my jeans. My knee aches where I hit it, and the pasta container is still in my other hand. I almost laugh when I notice that. The absurdity of it presses against the panic in my chest. I will look again and he will be gone, or turned away, or talking to someone, and I will feel stupid. I watch the clock on the microwave change from 5:21 to 5:22. Then 5:23. At 5:24, I stand. Slowly.

I leave the pasta on the counter and approach the window from the side so that I am not directly in front of it. The curtain is already mostly closed. I hook one finger into the edge and pull it back less than an inch. The rooftop is empty. I stare at the place where he had been standing. Nothing. The door to the roof is closed. My stomach drops. I scan every visible part of the building, moving from window to window, floor to floor, searching for his shape. There are too many people now. Office lights glow behind glass, and elevators carry dark figures down through the center of the building. On the sidewalk below, the first wave of employees has begun pouring through the lobby doors. I look for the coat. Dark coat. Medium height. Broad shoulders. There. No. Too tall. Another man steps through the revolving doors. Not him. A third. Maybe. I move closer to the glass without realizing it. The sidewalk fills quickly, first with a few isolated people and then with enough bodies that the entrance seems to spill them continuously onto the pavement. Men in charcoal jackets, navy jackets and black jackets merge with one another as they turn toward the train station. Women carrying tote bags and laptop cases weave between them. Someone opens an umbrella even though it is not raining, and a delivery cyclist cuts through the crosswalk just as the light changes. From this height, everyone seems reduced to the same handful of shapes and colors. I try to follow every dark coat at once. For one terrible second I become convinced that the man crossing toward me is him. The shoulders look right and something about the shape of this blob as opposed to all the other blobs. A bus rolls between my building and the office and blocks the street completely. When it passes, I have lost him.

My heart is beating too fast again. What if he saw me? What if that was why he turned around? I step backward. People say you can feel when someone is watching you. I have always thought that was nonsense. Right now, I am not so sure. I cross the apartment and check the dead bolt. Locked. I turn the second lock anyway, then slide the chain into place. The hallway outside is quiet. I lean toward the peephole. Empty.

For a moment I can see nothing except the patterned carpet and the door across from mine. Then the elevator at the end of the hall gives a soft metallic chime. My whole body goes rigid. The doors open, and a man steps out wearing a dark jacket. From this angle the peephole distorts him, bending the hallway around his body as he looks down at something in his hand and begins walking toward me. One door. Two. Three. My fingers close around the edge of the door. He keeps coming. When he reaches my apartment, his footsteps slow, and I back away so quickly my heel catches on the rug. The footsteps stop. There is silence on the other side of the door, so complete that I can hear my own pulse. Then comes a knock. Not on my door. The apartment next to mine opens, and a woman’s voice says, “You’re early.” A man laughs, the door closes, and I stand in the middle of my entryway feeling ridiculous and terrified at the same time. This is getting out of control.

I go back to the living room and force myself to sit down, pressing both feet flat against the floor as though I can anchor myself there by sheer force. The apartment suddenly feels too quiet, and I become aware of every ordinary sound I usually ignore: water moving somewhere inside the pipes, the hum of the refrigerator, a car horn below, the muted thud of somebody closing a door several floors away. Each noise catches my attention for half a second before I identify it and dismiss it. Nothing has actually happened. A man looked across the street, and I lost sight of him afterward; that is the entire sequence of events. Nothing more. Maybe he wasn’t even looking at me. Maybe he was looking at the building behind mine, or at the clouds, or at some reflection in the glass. Maybe he went downstairs because his break was over. Maybe he works late. Maybe he doesn’t work there at all. I rub my palms against my jeans. My phone is still on the dining counter. 5:31. Fourteen minutes since I first saw him on the roof. It feels like an hour. I tell myself I am not going to look again. I last almost a minute. When I finally turn toward the window, I do it casually, as if I have somehow become capable of fooling myself.

At first I see nothing. Then the rooftop door opens, and he steps outside. Relief hits me so suddenly that I laugh. “Oh my God.” I put one hand over my face. He is back. Of course he is. He hadn’t come here. He hadn’t been in the hallway. He probably hadn’t even noticed me. I have spent the last ten minutes locking myself inside my apartment because a stranger happened to look in the general direction of my building. Across the street, he raises a phone to his ear, and I watch him pace slowly along the edge of the roof. For the first time since he disappeared, my breathing settles. He turns away from me. Even better. I sink deeper into the couch and let my head rest against the cushion. This is fine. Everything is fine. I should heat up the pasta. I should turn on a movie. I should stop acting like every coincidence is part of some enormous pattern built around me.

Still, I keep him in the corner of my vision. He walks ten steps, stops, listens to whoever is speaking on the phone, then turns and walks back. His face is still impossible to see, but he feels angry. For several minutes I simply watch. The city darkens almost imperceptibly, office windows brightening as the sky behind them loses color. He remains on the roof, sometimes pacing, sometimes standing at the railing with one hand in his pocket. Once he turns toward my building again, and although my muscles tighten automatically, I do not duck this time. I stay just outside the direct line of the window and tell myself that if I cannot make out his face from here, he cannot possibly make out mine.

My phone vibrates against the dining counter. The sound is so sudden in the quiet apartment that I jump, and for one second I look toward the front door before realizing what it was. I stand. The phone has lit up beside the untouched container of pasta, and there is one new message from a number I do not recognize, although I have been waiting for it all afternoon. I unlock the screen. Two words.

It’s time.

I read them once, then again, and something inside me loosens. Finally. I let out a slow breath. Across the room, beyond the glass, the man is still on the rooftop. Still talking on the phone. Still there.

I set my phone facedown on the counter and walk to the bedroom. The long black case is beneath the bed where I left it. I pull it out, carry it into the living room, and place it on the floor beneath the window. My hands are steady now. Strangely steady. The locks on the front door no longer matter. Neither does the hallway. Neither does the idea that he might have seen me. I open the case. For the first time all evening, I smile. I lift it and settle near the window, staying just far enough behind the curtain that the room remains dark around me. The nervous energy that has been moving through me for the last half hour has vanished so completely that I almost feel foolish for letting myself unravel when he disappeared.

He turns slightly toward my building again, toward me, but this time I do not move away. I raise it and look, and the distance disappears. The rooftop jumps closer in an instant: the rough concrete, the metal railing, the pale curl of smoke from the cigarette he has lit again. Then I see his face. At last, his face. I had wondered all week what it really looked like, and now, with the crosshairs resting steadily over him, I finally know.

I take one slow breath and pull the trigger.