“Mafia?” First Mexican gangs, now Italian ones.
I’m aware that people are starting to crowd around me waiting for the lights, so I decide to cross with them and back across the street again, remembering to lower my voice.
“Yeah. The woman he kidnapped, I mean, who he was blamed for kidnapping. Her name was Sophia.”
“Sophia?” I repeat, walking back up Haight.
I make the mistake of looking over my shoulder and see the pale man in the blue coat running across the street as the traffic starts up, a cab honking for him to get out of the way.
“Does it ring a bell?” Ben asks, but I barely hear him.
The man starts walking a few yards behind me.
My mouth goes dry.
Am I being followed?
“Are you there, Vi?” Ben asks.
“Yeah,” I whisper into the phone, turning back around and quickening my pace. “I think someone might be after me.”
“After you?”
“Following me.”
“Where are you?”
“On Haight. Just about to cross to Club Deluxe.”
“Who’s following you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t recognize him.”
“Cross the street again. Just make sure before you get all paranoid.”
I grumble under my breath and quickly dart across while there’s a gap in the traffic, ignoring the lights. Cars are honking at me now but I don’t care. “Okay.”
“Is he following you still?” he asks.
I look across the street and our eyes meet. His are dark, shadowed, hidden beneath a fedora. It makes his bone-white face look like a skeleton from the Day of the Dead.
I watch as he walks up to the lights at Clayton and waits, wanting to come over to my side. His dark gaze never drops from mine.
The walk signal lights up. He begins to cross.
“Shit,” I swear. “He’s coming across.”
“Go inside somewhere busy,” Ben says.
I start jogging up the street, but it’s late and so many shops are closed. I glance back to see him right behind me, coming up fast.
I could run across the road. I could make a run for it all the way home. But the streets around my house are dark. I’d be safer in public. The man can do nothing to me here, right?
Or can he?
“Vi?” Ben sounds panicked.
“Yeah, going into the Rock Shop,” I tell him, ducking into the massive tourist shop that sells anything to do with San Francisco, drugs, and psychedelic rock. The lights inside are bright fluorescent, the kind that normally hurt my eyes and make me feel sick, but now I welcome them.
It’s not empty either, which is a relief. People are scattered among the racks of t-shirts and posters and glass cases full of patches and bongs.
“What are you doing?” Ben asks.
“Hiding. To see if he’s coming in here,” I whisper.
I head toward the back of the store where the rows of posters are and hide behind them, watching the front door through the cracks.
It opens.
The man in the dark blue wool coat walks in.
I suck in my breath.
In the garish lights I can see him more clearly. The brim of the fedora still casts long shadows over his face, but it’s a face I can’t forget. Pale, like milk, with no eyebrows. He must be albino or wearing white stage makeup. Large swaths of raised scar tissue cover his cheeks and lips.
Even the clerk behind the counter notices him, and that clerk is always stoned out of his mind. His glazed eyes follow the white man as he slowly walks inside, scanning the store.
Looking for me.
“Ben,” I say in a hush. “He’s in here. He’s looking for me.”
“Can he see you?”
“No. I’m behind the posters. I can see him through a crack.”
And the minute I say that, he moves out of my sight.
Fuck.
Part of me realizes how ridiculous this is. There are at least five other people in the store, people who would help me if I needed it.
But would they?
Too many times I’ve heard stories of people being attacked in front of others, people who yell for help, and no one comes to their aid. People these days are too afraid to stick their neck out and help each other. There are too many guns, too many crazies, too many criminals. Even in the most liberal city in America, I wonder how many San Franciscans would take the chance.
But I can’t think like that. I have to believe in the good in people, even as the world spins to an even worse future.
Run for the door, I tell myself. The people in here will protect you. The scrawny clerk probably has a gun beneath the counter.
Do it.
“I can’t see him anymore,” I tell Ben. “I’m going to run.”
“Violet,” Ben warns.
“Hold on.” I move the phone away from my ear, clutching it in my hand like a weapon. I can hear his muffled voice telling me not to do it.
I don’t care.
I need to know.
And I need to go home.
I take in a deep breath and jump out from behind the posters.
The man is ten feet away, his back to me.
He’ll see me run out, but I don’t care.
I start running down the aisle, bumping into t-shirts that swing on their hangers, until I’m almost out the door. I give the clerk a look, one that I hope says “stop that man if he comes after me” and not “I just stole a bunch of your merchandise.”
Then I’m outside on the street and running across traffic again, almost getting nailed by an SUV, before I round the corner about to head home.