Zen Antonym

The problem with following a stranger you see regularly is that she's seen you just as often as you've seen her. If you break a habit she's bound to notice. If you stay on the train when usually you get off it could draw her suspicion. But I didn't know this at the time.

She was always all in black, textures, glossy and matte. Bits of gold adorned her; a buckle here, some bangles there. Her golden hair revealed a biological black line down her center part. She had—and I hated to admit this, but it was true—a mouth that reminded me of an ex. It was an ex from more than ten years ago, and not one on which I looked back with particular fondness. I rarely referred to her by her own name, but instead a childish moniker of my own invention that I thought adequately described her during those finals weeks. So when my eyes locked onto this stranger's mouth—small, full, a hint of pout—and I made the connection, and found it attractive, I had to force my gaze back down to my book, I could not stop staring.

Four stations north of mine she exited, and I followed. I placed myself at the end of the car and let several people get off before me. I thanked her silently for her wardrobe, it's as if she wanted to be seen. I followed her down the dirty steps, past crinkled snack bags and discarded beer bottles, through the turnstile, and out the door. I knew the area. It was nice; brownstones, small white dogs, cars that matched the girl.

And then she did what I had been dreading: She walked only a block before stopping underneath a bus sign. This wasn't a station, a well-populated train car. This was an open street corner with nowhere to hide, not even a glass enclosure with a bench for her to sit on while I waited on the other side. There were a couple people already there which provided some relief. Still, it was something I wanted to avoid. I looked down the street from where the bus would be coming, looked at my watch, tried to show that I had someplace to be without being too obvious. The line between conspicuous and inconspicuous, on that line I needed to reside. I had my book at the ready, opened back up to whatever page I was on. It was the perfect disguise.

The bus arrived without too much half-reading, and I made sure I was at the front of the line, real independent. I chose a window-facing seat in the back. She chose a seat toward the middle, giving me a perfect vantage point, like she almost wanted me to have it. This idea gave me a strange anxiety, like I'd consumed too much caffeine, too much of some unknown herbal supplement. My heart raced, and I turned my pages with indifference.

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed, until I started to wonder whether or not she lived on that very bus. But then, as we approached the half hour mark, I saw her pull the cord and stand. The stop was requested. Three others on the increasingly empty bus left the back with me, and as luck would have it the girl walked in the opposite direction. I tightened and slowed my gait so as not to catch up. I would be lying if I said that when I got dressed I hadn't thought about how much noise my shoes produced. I couldn't keep a decent breath, couldn't fill to the top of the lung and feel that release. My blinks weren't coordinated, my sweat glands opened, my tongue dried up.

A moment of panic when I realized I had no final steps to cap off my plan. Was I going to say hello? Ask her a question? Ask her for help? Merely watch her go into her building and leave it at that? I'd come this far and it seemed a shame to end it so ambiguously. I couldn't very well weasel my way into her home, not if it was a large apartment building. I could maybe try the old Can I use your telephone routine, but I thought that too hackneyed and see-through. I couldn't touch her in any way. Could I? Maybe all I had to do was yell her name. But I didn't know her name! What was I supposed to yell? There are too many harrowing stories that begin with a woman being yelled at as she walks home. She would never stop.

My mind was in a million places and I didn't realize how much I'd sped up after she turned the corner, until I turned it myself and walked right into her.

The two of us shared a silence. Our first moment.

"What?" She wasn't mad. Was she mad? I couldn't tell.

"What? Hi. I'm just walking..."

She waited for me to finish but that was all I had. "Walking where? A friend's? Home?" I waited too long to say anything. A real answer, the truth, it should come more naturally.  "I saw you on the train," she said. "I've seen you before. You're not as sly as you think you are."

"Wow," I chuckled, "then I'm really not sly in the slightest." My lips squeezed and eyes widened at this thing which might be considered a joke, and whether or not she would recognize it as such. It was an accident! Would I tell her this? But her eyes were not on me. They were on my right hand, on my book.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

"It's..." I took a quick glance to remind myself. A book of zen stories my father had given me.

"Is it good?"

"I guess. They're short."

That familiar mouth of hers, it looked as though it was smiling, and it occurred to me that I had not seen her blink once. These are the things that can undo a man. "Are they working?" she asked me.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you feel more... zen?" I was too embarrassed to admit I hadn't read a single story. I'd had the book for years, and not a single one. I found a way to answer her that didn't make me feel like a liar.

"I'm feeling a lot right now."

Her smile vanished. It was the wrong thing to say! It was too loving, too creepy, too something! I don't know what it was but it rubbed her the wrong way and I was sure that that was that. I replayed the instant over and over in my head as I stood there, as an apparent eternity drifted by, cursing and loathing myself as I thought of so many other things that were better. What was I doing? What kind of plan was this? And then, shocking as ice water, her hand was on mine. She lifted the book from my clammy grasp and fingered its pages.

"Read it. Find me. Tell me your favorite story." She handed it back. "And why. I want to know why." She turned and walked away, and I watched her black figure, wondering what her name was, and what she truly meant by why. But I would not yell at her. I would read.