My parents had kept my birth certificate.
He did tell me where my parents were buried, and I thanked him and wrote it down and hung up.
My past was gone, I realized. I had no roots, no history. I now existed entirely in the present.
David was hard at work on something when I walked into the office, and he did not even look up as I entered the room. I walked past him, took off my coat, and sat down at my desk. On top of the desk was a huge stack of papers. Adjacent to the papers was a hastily scrawled note on FROM THE DESK OF RON STEWART stationery that read: “Please document these procedures by 12/10.” It was initialed “RS.”
December 10. That was today.
The note was dated November 2.
I stared, read the note again. The bastard had deliberately done this to get me in trouble. I quickly shuffled through the pile of papers. There were memos from Banks and from Banks’ superiors dated several months back asking that this or that procedure be documented. I had never seen any of them before. I had never heard anything about these procedures.
Stewart had set me up.
I was furious, but I was so preconditioned that I actually got out a pen and began looking over the top page. There was no way I could complete even a third of these today, and after a few frustrating minutes I realized that I could not do this. I had to get out of here. I threw down my pen, grabbed my coat, and headed out the door.
At that point, I really didn’t care whether or not I got fired. I just had to get away from that office.
Outside, the early morning gloom was starting to lift, sunshine showing through the clouds, blue usurping the place of gray. I was parked out in the boonies of the Automated Interface parking lot, and by the time I reached my car I was already starting to sweat. I threw my coat on the passenger seat, rolled down the front windows, and backed out, leaving the lone open space amidst the endless rows of shiny cars. I pulled onto Emery, heading south. I turned right on the first cross street with a stoplight, then left on the next street. I did not know where I was going, had no definite destination in mind, was simply planning to lose myself in the comforting sameness of Irvine’s mazelike streets, but I found myself heading more or less in an westerly direction.
I ended up at South Coast Plaza.
I parked out by Sears and trekked across the asphalt to the main entrance. I walked into the mall, grateful for the relaxed coolness of air-conditioning after the humid heat outside.
Even though the Christmas season was here, there did not seem to be as many people in the mall as there should have been. The parking lot had been crowded, but inside South Coast Plaza the crowds were curiously sparse.
Muzak carols were playing over the mall’s speakers; elf figures and toy sleighs and fake snow adorned the window fronts. In front of Nordstrom, a huge flocked Christmas tree was festooned with garlands and tinsel and every type of ornament imaginable. Christmas had always been my favorite time of year. I’d always loved the feel of the season, the mood, everything from the nativity scenes to the festive fantasy trappings of Santa that had put a secular face on this sacred occasion. But this year it just didn’t feel like Christmas. I had no presents to buy; I was expecting no presents myself. Last year, Jane and I had spent almost every spare November and December moment shopping for gifts, planning our celebration, enjoying each other and the promise of the season. This year I was alone and lonely, with no plans, no purpose.
I stood next to the Christmas tree and scanned the faces of the passersby, but even the frank and open stares with which I greeted people did not phase them. Theoretically, the women and children in the mall should have noticed me. Shopkeepers should have eyed me with suspicion. Even during the height of the punk movement it had not been normal to see mohawked, Day-Glo-dressed men loitering around South Coast Plaza, and those days were long gone. Someone who looked like me definitely should have attracted attention.
But, of course, I didn’t.
Not everyone was ignoring me, though.
Standing next to one of the small benches between Rizzoli’s bookstore and the Garden Bistro restaurant was a sharp-eyed man a few years older than myself who was staring intently, watching my every move. I did not notice him at first, but I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye, unmoving, and I began to have the uncomfortable feeling that I was being observed, spied upon. I put the two together and casually looked to my left, toward the man. I caught his eye, and he looked away, pretending to be interested in the Garden Bistro’s menu. Now it was my turn to watch him. He was tall and thin, with short black hair that accentuated the hard, cold severity of his face. He stood stiffly, in a manner that was almost regal, but there was an indefinable air of the plebeian about him.
I wondered why he had been staring at me, how he had noticed me, and I started walking toward him, intending to ask, but he quickly moved away, making a beeline toward the center of the mall, hurriedly moving past two women and cutting in front of them to get away from me.
I considered following him, and I started to do so, but then he pushed through a small group of people and started up the stairs to the mall’s second level, and I knew that I would not be able to catch up. I watched him hurry up the steps. Strange. I had never seen the man before in my life. Why had he been looking at me? And why had he acted so guilty and suspicious when I caught him staring? It might have been my clothes and hair that caught his attention. That was a logical assumption. But then why had no one else noticed me?
I stared at the top step, where I had last seen the man before he’d hurried toward the Sears wing of the mall. It was probably nothing, probably just my imagination, an overreaction to the fact that someone had actually seen me.
But I felt uneasy as I walked into Nordstrom.
I stayed in the mall all day. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do; I didn’t feel like driving around and I certainly didn’t feel like going home. So I wandered in and out of the various stores, bought a lunch at Carl’s Jr., read some magazines at B. Dalton, looked through the CDs at Music Plus.
Business picked up in the late afternoon, after the schools let out. I was in Miller’s Outpost, had pretty much seen everything I wanted to see, and was about to leave, when I happened to glance behind me.
And saw the sharp-eyed man staring at me from between the racks.
This wasn’t just coincidence.
Our eyes locked for a second, and I felt a cold chill pass through me. Then he turned away, moving quickly up the aisle toward the front of the store. I headed after him, but by the time I reached the store’s open entrance he had already blended into the crowd, disappearing into the stream of package-carrying customers passing through the mall.
I wanted to stop him, but what could I do? Run after him? Yell?
I stood there for a moment, unmoving, watching as the man tried desperately to get away from me, thinking how frightened I’d been when I’d looked into his hard, cold eyes.
But why should I be frightened of him when he was obviously just as frightened of me?
But if he was so frightened of me, why was he stalking me?
Stalking.
Why had I thought of that word?
I started walking. Something about the man seemed familiar to me on a subconscious level. There was something almost, but not quite, recognizable in his features that I had not noticed until I’d seen him up close, and that something bothered me, nagged at me, all the way out to the parking lot and all the way home.