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  A little later, I was not in the least surprised to see the cab I was following drop first one, then the other, and finally the redhead off at East Village apartments.

  I am a professional stalker, in a manner of speaking. Stalking is a vital part of my job, and it was easy in this case. The redhead's apartment faced the street, and her curtains were sheer. I decided to continue the exercise the next day. I do not know why. She was not my type. In fact, she seemed quite innocent and normal, if maybe a trifle more interesting than the average. I told myself it would be a nice test run to keep in practice. I would study her habits as if she were a target. I had never taken something like this so far before—I never mix business with pleasure—but I could stop anytime I liked. She certainly was not my type. I was sure that if I engineered a meeting, we would have nothing to say to each other.

  3

  Grace

  After closing the door on the policeman, I walked directly to my bed and lay down. There was no ghost there, just the vaguest memory of how the night before had begun. Clay's calling me up "to chat" and see when we could get together, my putting one obstacle after another in the way, until he said he'd be doing an errand in the area and would like to stop by "just for a minute" to say hello. I didn't know what to say to stop him. I hung up the phone, quietly enraged. He didn't care how I felt. I hated, hated, hated him. I had to change my clothes; I had to wait for him; the evening wasn't mine anymore. Why couldn't I have said, "No, I don't feel like it tonight"? Because it would have hurt his feelings, I just knew. I could imagine too well how it would make me feel.

  I dragged off my dirty sweats and put on a red sweater and jeans. I tried to watch TV while I waited.

  "Hey, how are you? It's so great to see you." I greeted him after buzzing him up. My tone had all the warmth I didn't feel.

  His face lit up as the cold air on his jacket and his arms enveloped me. What am I going to do with him? I wondered. He gave me a couple of gentle kisses and then started smooching my neck. I guess he'd noticed how I'd responded to that before. He walked me over to the bed, this bed, and sat me down on it, running his hands over me. I felt so bad, I hugged him back and let him make love to me. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic, but he didn't seem to notice.

  It was late by the time he finished, and he fell into a deep sleep.

  He barely struggled, and you know why? He couldn't believe it until it was too late. My knees were on his arms and the rest of my weight on his chest, but he didn't fight very hard. It was amazing. It was so easy. It could have been a terrible mess. I know I was lucky.

  Or maybe not.

  What is the difference between thinking and doing? What is the line? I didn't think. I swear I don't remember thinking. And I didn't feel bad at all on this bed. I felt nothing. I forgot about going to work. I closed my eyes and slept for twenty-two hours. When I woke up, refreshed and free, it was 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

  4

  Sam

  One of those vicious plastic grocery bags had been dogging my steps, threateningly, for the last two blocks as I strolled, with the wind, down the street to her place. I had been called out of town for nearly two weeks, so I had not seen her since the night in the bar. In a way, I had been glad for the summons, although it only allowed a short time to plan and carry out; it was not really a good idea to shadow her for no official reason. I felt I had been saved from something. Or maybe just delayed.

  Fourteenth Street at five in the morning had an almost European feel: the broad sidewalks, the rare solitary person. I meant only to pass by her apartment, to get a sense of her sleeping presence. The Madrid assignment had gone well, despite the haste with which I had had to formulate an approach. It had looked like a typical car accident, a blown-out tire on a curve. The target had had a tendency to drive fast. It was a simple mechanical arrangement. No body to dispose of, even. Yet it should have been enough to take my mind off of her. It had not.

  I was the first to see the body lying in front of the building, nearly naked on the street. So undignified. For a moment, I was worried about her, but her building was quiet. The corpse seemed to have just appeared there. But I knew it would not remain unnoticed for long. I brought out my microbinoculars and studied it from across the street as I leaned against a tree. The makeup was confusing, but it did not disguise his identity. It was the boy from the bar.

  Odd, I thought. I had not been surprised when the leaders of my former directorate, the one that officially did not exist, had attempted to terminate my employment without resorting to a retirement plan. No newly democratic Russian official wanted my memoirs published in the post-Soviet world. Nor had I been surprised when three of my closest colleagues had turned up dead, the apparently random victims of burgeoning Moscow street crime. That was the sort of approach to be expected from the thuggish mind-set of our former bosses. It would have taken brains of our caliber to contrive more accidental-looking fates. And I had certainly not been surprised to read in the newly freed press of the demise, by stroke, heart attack, drowning, and apparent suicide, of those same bosses, eulogized under their official titles. I had arranged their permanent departures before leaving my hometown forever. There is little that shocks me about death anymore.

  But I was surprised to see this boy lying lifeless in the street. I do not believe in coincidence. Do I believe in love at first sight?

  Now I felt I had to watch this girl. Either she was in danger or… What? She was certainly no professional. Not like any I had known in twenty-five years of creative assassination. Perhaps this was sheer natural talent. Perhaps I was jumping to conclusions because I was a jaded killer with little imagination for anything else. But I had to know-

  I left the area immediately. The police would find their way there soon enough. Hailing a cab from several blocks away, I made my way back to the loft I maintain in TriBeCa for my sojourns in New York. I own two floors in the building: I inhabit the top floor, keeping the one beneath as a privacy and security buffer. Before the sun made an appearance through the 18-foot windows on its east side, I was deep in research on the computer, coffee by my hand. All I had had to begin with was the name and address from her mailbox, which I had checked that first night.

  I obtained nothing, interesting from her Department of Motor Vehicles record or her telephone record's (except the relatives she called long-distance). Her credit history was slightly more interesting: too much credit, a few late-paid bills, nothing outstanding for her generation. She was thirty. She was an Ivy Leaguer who had spent the first five years out of school doing nothing much, and she had made very little money at it.

  She was now a managing editor of a specialized political/economic journal. She was listed in the Nexis database. I was impressed; she had written several articles on international espionage for her magazine. Now, that was fascinating. She had written about corporate drug lords in Colombia and spies who refused to come in out of the cold in Eastern Europe. Her magazine's coverage of the end of the Cold War had been excellent; a little on the paranoid and suspicious side, which was, I knew, not inappropriate. But the bulk of her work had to do with emerging economies around the globe—not the typical purview of an East Village denizen.

  She seemed to be a more serious person than she looked; or else she simply did what she had to do to earn money.

  There was little in Nexis or anywhere else that documented her romantic life. Her extensive traveling seemed to be work-related. She was unmarried. She paid her taxes on time. She had no police record.

  Nothing I found explained that body, but if she had had something to do with it, the reason was unlikely to be in any database anywhere. While I was on-line, I moved some money around, spreading my latest earnings among several offshore accounts and checking on my stock holdings.

  I decided I would have to get my car out of storage again. The rest of the research would have to be carried out in person.

  5

  Grace

  I try to be fair, but my bos
s just plain hates me. I don't know why. I never answer her back. I do good work, though it's never good enough for her. I'm conscientious to a fault. I'm always the last one to leave during pro—although that's usually her doing. She lets everybody else go but keeps me, sometimes until two in the morning. I can't think of anything I have that she could be jealous of (except, as one colleague says, a personality). I'm taller than she is; she's pretty short, but she doesn't seem bothered by it. I really don't know.

  But no matter what I produce, she can always think of something I didn't do: some question I didn't ask when it's a story of mine; some hole I missed when I'm editing someone else's. She's mean, and sometimes she even makes me cry (not in front of her, though).

  She was not happy about the day I missed without calling. I had told her I had such a wretched and constant vomiting illness that I couldn't even think of picking up a phone, but she kept making little digs at me throughout the Monday I came back. I had a lot on my mind. Two stories were late coming in. Another story was a mess that would have to be totally rewritten. And a story I was supposed to write hadn't happened because I had been unable to reach anyone. It was time to switch from the assigning editor persona to the harassing role, but I was the one who was being constantly harassed.

  And to top it off, my voice mail wasn't working properly. I wasn't getting all my messages. Fortunately, I had caller ID. Unfortunately, it only gave me numbers, not names. And I can't help it—I need to know. Usually, I recognize the numbers I see or I look them up on my database and find out who it was, but not always. So I called a mystery number up to see who it was. I don't know what was going on, but I felt unequal to actual conversation. Since I didn't know who it would be, I couldn't prepare. As soon as a voice came on identifying the firm I had reached, I hung up. Damn. Now I felt really bad. I hate it when people hang up on me, and that's just what I'd done. I worried about it for at least five minutes, but I couldn't go on to the next task with this niggling at my mind. So I called the number again and got what sounded like the same receptionist. I told her I had just called a few minutes ago but had gotten cut off, although, as it turned out, it was the wrong number. She just responded with a simple "okay" and got off the phone as quickly as she could. She must have thought I was pretty weird, but at least I felt a little better about the whole thing. Because I really had to get back to work.

  I suppose, if I had had the time, I might have been feeling some residual guilt and remorse about Clay, but frankly, I wasn't. I had too many things to think about. And that problem was resolved. Obviously, I would not let that happen again. If I ever do go out on a date again, I will not hide my feelings, I vowed. I will not lead anybody on.

  Speaking of leads, this first paragraph was definitely not working. I was bent intently over the computer keyboard, trying to salvage some morsel of convoluted text, when one of our foreign correspondents peered over the little cubicle wall of the bull pen and tapped me on the shoulder.

  Saved. Pete was in town and he had a story that could replace the one I never did. Another on-the-spot deal from Lima. Pete worked for us and other publications fairly regularly. He had practically taken up residence in Peru over the last year, emerging from it occasionally to pick up bagels and see his mother in New York. He was fluent in Spanish, and his stories had a forceful, decisive quality that he completely lacked in person. Still, he was okay. We were friendly. Actually, he would often look at me with puppy-dog eyes and indicate in some mushy, indirect way that we should go out. He was not bad-looking, just kind of negligible, not completely there. Not thrilling, not impressive, kind of wishy-washy-seeming. The opposite of his work and his calling.

  Nonetheless, I wouldn't have minded chatting, but the wench—that is, the executive editor—had been on my back all day, and I couldn't appear to be having a good time. So I agreed to have dinner with him the next night to catch up. It was not a date.

  I couldn't believe I was in bed with him. What was I fucking doing? Or rather, what was I doing fucking? My God, had I become some kind of magnet? Now I am irresistible. Now they smell something that drives them to me. This was a bad idea. This was a bad idea simply because we worked together. This was a bad idea because I was not in the least bit interested in him. This was a bad idea because I got stupidly drunk. And there were other reasons, too.

  He kissed my neck. He kissed my breasts. If only he had kissed me on the mouth, I might have stopped in time. I do draw the line somewhere. The alcohol or some kind of intoxication made me temporarily insane. I was turned on. This, I know, was because there was no possibility of a relationship. He was at least safe in that respect. He didn't even live in this country. I had only to worry about the moment, at least.

  As we moved from the couch to the bed, I could see that he was visibly aroused. I have to admit, I'm a little strange about this. I'm always worried about guys. I think it must be terrible to show what you're feeling despite yourself. I hold back a lot when I'm with men I'm just friends with because I don't want to excite them accidentally and make everybody embarrassed. Yet when I'm close to a guy in circumstances where he might very naturally have a hard-on, I can never tell. Well, they wear jeans a lot and I can't tell anything when they're in jeans. The denim is stiffer than they are.

  But Pete was in his underwear at this point; so far, all systems go. And I tried not to be embarrassed.

  He continued to remove items of clothing from my body and his own. Yes, I was buzzed. Yes, I was still turned on. But I was beginning to wonder about birth control. This is almost always a problem with strangers. On a sublevel underneath the excitement, as the act grows closer, I'm always wondering when or if the guy is going to bring it up. Do I mention it? Is he even thinking about it? Should he have planned? Should I have?

  At this point, Pete seemed pretty imminent, and a little undercurrent of irritation was beginning to flow through me. Whatever else I could say about Clay, at least he had been prepared.

  "Um," I began. "Do you have anything?"

  "Nun," he said, slowing down a bit. The impression that I got from him was not so much inconsiderateness as the fact that he was just a lay-it-as-it-plays kind of guy. "Do you?"

  I gestured to the little porcelain clown on a shelf next to the bed. He reached over and lifted off the head. That's where the little condoms spend months in uncertain anticipation. He took one out and put it on.

  "It's not a problem, is it?" I asked timidly. Later, I would slap my head over this one.

  Not a problem? He should have volunteered. Or said something. But I just couldn't help it. I didn't want him to be unhappy with me.

  "Uh-uh. No," he barely mouthed, going about his business. Whoops, foreplay was apparently over. Time to get down to brass tacks.

  Eyes closed, caught up in his own trance, he drove himself inside me. Too fast and rough for ideal entry. Ideal from my perspective, that is. Then he commenced to pound away. I clasped his arms, trying with the pressure of mine on his to slow him down. I didn't want to speak, because that might have thrown him completely off, and I didn't feel comfortable enough with him to know how he'd react. He just kept on at his own pace, missing my pathetic signals. I bore the assault with fortitude, but I was gradually losing my metaphorical erection. I've just never been one of those women who can calmly and coolly tell a man what to do. I just hope for the best.

  By the time he had finished—from the sound effects, I'm pretty sure he had finished—I had lost interest in the whole event. He moved away from me and Lay down on his back nearby. Still, I said nothing. It was too late now.

  Eventually, he left to go back home to mom. With a smile of complicity that he didn't realize was completely misplaced, he turned to pass back out through my door. He didn't know I was upset because I had smiled warmly at him and acted as satisfied with the evening as he apparently was. Not for the first time. When he was gone, I finished the job myself, although I kept finding myself distractedly thinking about what had gone wrong and what I might have sai
d.

  The more crushing regret and dismay would come later. He was not a bad guy, but it had not been a good idea. But we were both grown-ups. It simply was what it was. Or what it almost had been. The key to good sex, as I once heard on a morning television show, is communication. I just wish I could do that without actually talking.

  He did not call me the next day. Some girls might have been a little miffed. I was relieved.

  6

  Sam

  They were not holding hands.

  This man was a colleague of hers. I had witnessed them both entering and exiting the building that- housed her office. I had also witnessed him entering her apartment several nights before. I had not witnessed him entering her, but I assumed that he had. It was two in the morning when he left, and he had that look, not quite a swagger, but a walk of confidence. It could only have resulted from sexual success. He was most unprepossessing in appearance; I could imagine no other reason.

  One would think I could find better things to do with my time, but that dead body nagged at me. I wanted an answer. I believed that my persistence would pay off. As indeed it did.

  "Guess what?" Pete had asked with an insinuating little undertone.

  "What?" She had come through quite clearly on her cordless phone, easy enough to tap if you can work out the frequency— and there are only a few from which to choose.