A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

This was his technique for throwing her off-guard, for trying to keep her from noticing him, for seeming not to be doing the very thing he was doing. And it was a poor, pitifully poor technique indeed, she said to herself scornfully. What kind of a fool did he take her for, to expect her not to be aware of him, when he was always somewhere in the background, wherever she went, whichever way she turned. He must be a dope, among all the other things he was. But in this kind of situation, she reminded herself apprehensively, dopes can be a real danger, rather than not.

He had the inevitable cigarette fixed in his mouth, that he never seemed without, as though it were a part of it, like a malformed tooth projecting. Smoking wasn’t permitted, even on the open, back parts of the buses, and for a moment she wondered half hopefully if this mightn’t be a means of having him thrown off. Then she saw that it wasn’t burning, it was dry, and the conductor noticed it too at the same time. She could tell that by the way he craned his neck out a little, to get a look around to the front of the offender’s face, then went back to his own affairs again without saying anything. But what it indicated was an implicit breaking of the rules and disregard for restraints, an outlaw type of attitude. And that, too, wasn’t a good factor to involve in a situation like this.

Her face was white and stony-hard with a mixture of fear and hostility, the fear of the pursued, the hostility of the put-upon, that marred and muddied all its usual good looks. Her nerves were being drawn more taut all the time. Each evening she felt less confidence than the evening before, felt more of a desire for no reason at all to run and hide away. At times she could feel approaching panic lapping over her feet like a cold slowly rising tide that had to be held back, fought down. One of these times, if it kept up too much longer, control would burst and she would suddenly scream out in the middle of everyone and everything and go all to pieces.

And so the bus swept along, like a majestic ocean-liner, scattering the shoals of taxis and lesser cars before it as though they were tugs, while he looked out on his side at the buildings streaming endlessly by, and she looked down on her side at the platform-floor and brooded, eyes intent and furtive.

Her stop was coming up, there were only fixed stops on the buses, not improvised bell-signaled ones like in some other large cities, and the usual cat and mouse play was about to begin. Each one waiting to see the other move first. He didn’t turn his head around, she didn’t lift hers up from looking at the floor, and yet there was an electrical current of awareness going back and forth between them that almost prickled the skin and made stray hairs stand up singly.

She could feel the bus come to a stop under her feet with a soft slurring sensation and then a final shudder, and she heard the conductor call out the name of the stop.

She didn’t move a muscle, didn’t blink an eye. The shoes with the clef-signs were inert over there, too.

It was no use trying to pin him onto the bus by waiting to the last minute and then jumping for it. He could do that far easier than she could, with her stiletto-heels. She might fall and turn her ankle or something.

She suddenly came to life and gave herself a push away from the railing by main force, almost like a violent fling around the other way, like when you cannot tear yourself away from something, have to exert every ounce of will-power to do so. And sprang down to the ground just as the bus got started once more.

She didn’t have to turn around to see if he had followed her off; she knew he had. She knew what he was doing now, because he had done it each time before. He would stand there at first, kill time there, so that she could get far enough up the street, put enough distance between them, to make his coming after her less conspicuous. In other words, so that he wouldn’t be treading right at her heels. Her street was straight and sloped slightly upward, so that it was perfect for his purpose: He could keep her in sight without any difficulty from a distance of a whole block behind her.