Being a stalker is not easy. It's not just the waiting around and trying to be inconspicuous. It draws an emotional toll. You become paranoid. You are watching your person of interest, but others, possibly malevolent others, are watching you. I am always nervous when I go out stalking. What makes it worse is the awareness that my own motives are questionable, at best. On Thursday, I arrived outside the house, waiting in the shady street for them to come home. The familiar red car arrived silently, just as an autumnal dusk was falling, like a dark snowfall. I barely saw the figure emerge from the car, pass to the door and then inside the brightly lit house, where I could not follow. The curtains were drawn, so I went away. The next day, at 8 am, I was ready, watching through binoculars as they went to work, in black pants and a jumper of blue and white. Later, I sat in a room that faced the building where they worked at a computer on the third floor, so that I could see them at their desk, though only intermittently, during the day. Was I obsessed? Assuredly so. On Saturday, I waited for them to get up in order to catch glimpses through one of the windows. Later, I watched them, splendid all in white, as they played doubles tennis in Cooper Park. They did not play well, hitting the ball out and cursing, but that hardly mattered. I could see them move and I watched their face minutely for changes of expression. I tried to absorb what I was seeing, to imprint it inside of me. I did not want to forget any detail or mannerism. I stored the scene like a movie in my mind for later replay. Afterwards, they went out to lunch at il Crostino with their partner, holding hands. It hurt me to see how affectionate and loving they were to her. That and how oblivious. Why did I put myself through this torture? I savoured the sound of his voice, so familiar, yet also so distant, passing as it did, through an unbridgeable gap. I tried to imagine the touch of his hand, the warmth of his body, his smell. I followed the happy couple out of the cafe. He went home with his partner, to make love, of course. I did not want to see that. Too much pain.
Sunday, that last aching Sunday, passed as if in fast-forward. I stalked him unobtrusively all day. Time felt like water passing through my grasping hands, too quickly, too soon. I prized every minute, including when he just sat reading a historical novel, listening to Abba. Even the way he turned its pages held my attention.
They say that hatred of oneself is the most sincere form of hatred. I felt it acutely, as I watched her, clad in a long red dress, as she kissed him lovingly on the lips. This was on the doorstep to say goodbye. It didn't make sense to envy her, but I did anyway, I envied her, envied her burningly. Unknowingly, she blithely took for granted what I had already lost. I felt like shaking her, shaking my past self, but that would not have made sense either. Nothing made sense in the face of what was to come.
By now, I had been watching him closely for a month, and my time was almost up. I tried, in vain, to savour the last minutes of his presence, knowing the tragic end was just about to happen. Of course, I thought about preventing the accident, thought about it obsessively every day, as I had done ever since it happened. If only I had told him to take the car instead. If only I had delayed him for two minutes on that fateful morning. If only I had told him to drop by the post office on the way... There were a million "if only's" in my mind. They circled darkly in my consciousness, like a flock of black vultures. Yet I knew full well that the past is unchangeable. We can observe it, but not alter it. I was not really there physically, but more like a ghost, and not even one who could spook people.
On that last morning, when he fatally decided to go to work on his motorcycle, I was unable to hold back the tears as I watched him mount his powerful Honda and start it up with a familiar roar. The booming rasp of the motor ripped me inside. Tears poured down so much that I could barely see him. My throat was like a raw wound. I did not want to witness the accident itself. That would be more than I could bear. It was a death that killed my heart.
It was time to return to the present, to be alone with my grief.