Near Ground Zero
I sit on the doormat and imitate someone waiting for a friend.
This is a chapter from I Hear You Watching, my novel based on my experience with hearing voices and paranoia.
But you can jump in here! The “previously on” will get you up to speed.
Previously on I Hear You Watching…
Alex was chased through the streets by unseen pursuers. In his apartment he overheard those same strangers ridiculing him, and he believed they were watching through his webcam. A consultation with a computer specialist and multiple virus scans gave no leads, so he tracked down a working payphone (untapped line) and called his friend Matt for cybersecurity help. The strangers followed him every step of the way.
I bet they thought I’d go straight home. As I pass my street I imagine them saying, Where the fuck is he going? This guy’s crazy! And I rise and meander in the hills for the length of a couple cigarettes, along humps and ridges, appreciating how these ribbony roads allow me to swoop in and out of sight, with steep slopes of brush and rock on either side. Eventually I point myself back down with a hasty right turn, and I hope I’ve lost them there.
Gavin’s street is a small loop where parking is rare even on a weekday. I find the closest possible spot and walk fast to his building, through the unlocked front door, and up the stairs to his apartment.
I knock. No answer. I haven’t seen the time, but I guess it’s still too early. So I sit on the doormat and imitate someone waiting for a friend.
People enter the building through the whining front door, and if I hear them enter the courtyard below, I lean forward, listen to their footsteps, peek over the railing where sometimes I see a shoulder, and I make sure each passerby finishes by unlocking and entering an apartment.
All strangers are accounted for.
Regardless, my pursuers might’ve anticipated this trip to Gavin’s—though I can’t imagine how—and found a silent way in, and now they could be standing right below me, heads upturned to sniff the air and listen.
A window in the building next door has its curtains open just wide enough to peer through. All they had to do was act confident, flash some fake identification, a 3D-printed badge, and they could say some bullshit like, Ma’am, we’re sorry to bother you, but we’re tracking a potentially dangerous suspect and he’s in the building next door. May we look through your window?
Who would refuse?
The door whines again. Shoes mount the stairs. The top of a head bobs into view, then a face. Not Gavin’s. A Black man’s. He sees me and I look at a spot on the floor, conjuring a facial expression that says: I am just waiting for my friend. We have been friends for a long time, and neither of us is a threat to anyone.
I squeeze myself against Gavin’s door to make room for the man to pass, smiling upward but not quite at his face. “Hi,” I say.
It works—the man goes by, then unlocks and enters an apartment a few doors down.
“That nigger was onto him.”
“Totally. He saw right through it.”
I watch the man’s door. He might’ve heard what they said, and he might think I was the one who said it.
A thought forms too quickly to swat away—the man might know Lili. They might see each other soon, and she’ll happen to describe the strange white guy she met online, and the man will recognize her description and tell her about this encounter. I’d been so careful to dodge my personal landmines, and in the end she’ll think I’m a racist because of something someone else said.
But this scenario in itself is racist—where does the knee-jerk assumption come from that this man and Lili know each other, just because they’re both Black? Does the fact that I have eyes make it more likely that I know any random person on the street who also happens to have eyes?
My pursuers have eyes, but they’re still little more than strangers to me.
And where the fuck are they? The window looking at me is closed. It could be another window next door, or further down—
“I thought that was your van.” Directly to my right. I turn expecting a gun, or suits, or disguises like the parents in the park, or bunches of rustling fake leaves with green-painted faces and white eyes staring.
It’s Gavin.
I stand. “Hey, I locked myself out of my apartment.”
“Oh, shit.” He thinks a moment. “How did you drive here without your keys?”
Good question. “I keep ‘em on separate rings, like an idiot.”
“Well, that was a dumb move. At least you’ve still got your car keys.” He thinks again. “Do… I have a copy of your apartment key?”
“No, but my phone’s at home too. Can I use yours to call a locksmith?”
“Yeah, dude.” He thumbs the code and hands me his phone.
We’re still standing at his door, so clearly my urgency hasn’t translated through my voice or body language. Or Gavin isn’t paying close enough attention. “Also, could I get a glass of water?”
“Yeah, sure, sorry.” We enter his apartment. “Help yourself.” The day-old air inside is hot and thick. He leaves the door open and lowers onto the couch groaning, “Uh, boy…”
Standing by the far end of the couch I can still see the bright world outside. The window with the slit in the curtains stares like a giant reptile eye sunken into rough plaster skin. And there’s Gavin on the couch, head back, eyes closed, with the door open right next to him, oblivious that he’s exposed, visible, vulnerable.
He gets up and moves to open the window. “It’s fucking hot as balls.”
“Wait, can you keep the window closed?” I point at the door. “And close that? Just for a sec.”
He pauses by the door, then pushes it shut. “What’s up?”
“Can you lock it?”
His face is confused, but he turns the deadbolt. “Did something happen?”
“Do you—” I motion around the corner from the living room. “Come here.”
He follows me into his kitchen, which is long and narrow. I go all the way to the back wall and stop short of a small huddle of empty beer bottles. I hand his phone back. “I didn’t lock myself out.”
“Oh. Okay… You still want that water, or was that a lie too?”
“No, yeah, I’ll get it. Thanks. Do you still have that PCM recorder?”
“Yeah.”
“How sensitive is it?”
“Pretty sensitive. I kept picking up the neighbor’s AC unit in the background, which was a nightmare to mix out.”
I lean. “Can I borrow it?”
“Yeah.” He raises his eyebrows. “Uh, why are we whispering about this in my kitchen?”
Calling Matt was a risk. I have to assume that no amount of mouth covering or whispering kept them from hearing what I told him. But Matt is far away in Milwaukee. Gavin is only a few blocks from my apartment—ground zero. I’ve already fucked up by coming here in the first place; the last thing I want is to drag him further into this. “I can’t say now, but I’ll tell you when I know more.”
“Is something going on?”
“Nothing big. I just need to borrow the recorder.”
“I don’t know if the battery’s charged. You’ve got a… project?”
“Sort of, but I can’t say much for now.”
“You gonna record a murder or something?”
“Nothing like that.” I sort of chuckle.
“I’ll go get it.”
I grab his arm. “Can you—do you have a bag or something to put it in? Preferably not see-through.”
Gavin stares at me, blinking, and says, “Yeah, I think I got a bag,” and goes into his bedroom.
I follow.
The apartment is well-sorted except the dishes in the sink. But Gavin’s bedroom has only a bed, a desk, an armchair, and then things strewn and stacked as if he emptied his moving boxes onto the floor and left it that way. I’m grateful for the disorder, because while he digs through it I have time to scan what I can see from across the room, out the window over his bed to the roof of the next building and the leafy branches of trees.
Shadows move, but there’s nothing substantial, and I regret the few minutes it took for me to get into the apartment and talk to Gavin—enough time for them to climb a tree? or relocate to another neighbor’s apartment? maybe somewhere with a view through this window? Gavin is close enough to the window, it’s possible they have line of sight.
I wish he wasn’t a separate person. Or I wish I could disguise myself as him and get the recorder myself, because as Gavin I could look through the window to confirm whether they were there, and they wouldn’t duck from view because they’d think I was him.
Or if it were possible for me to be both Gavin and myself, I could coordinate an elaborate shell game between our two bodies so they’d never notice the handoff of the recorder. I could even use Gavin to tail them while they tailed me.
But he and I are two separate people, which means anything I want to communicate to him has to be either written and made visible to the world, or spoken and made audible. Communication is exposure.
Gavin holds a medium-sized gift bag out for me to take. It has party hats and colorful metallic spots printed on it. “This’ll do?”
It’s conspicuous. But it’s also thick and opaque, specifically made to obscure its contents. “Yeah, it’s—it’ll work.”
“I can’t wait to know what this is about.”
“Soon, I hope. Thank you. I’m sorry.”
“Smoke a bowl?”
I sit on the couch drinking water from a big plastic cup that’s comfortably unfamiliar. A friend’s cup. The tap water is the same as at my place, but it tastes different in this cup.
The gift bag stares me down like a bomb on the coffee table. I let Gavin open the door and window, because opening to the world and adopting a “casual hangout” atmosphere might take some attention off of him. It may even relax their focus on me, too.
He packs salty-smelling weed into the small water pipe he calls Kobayashi. The pipe is clear glass that’s turned purple and grainy with use. A long, sky-blue dragon wraps around it, aiming its crooked hand-blown sneer at the weed in the bowl. I remember the day Gavin bought it. I was the second person ever to smoke from it in our shared bedroom sophomore year.
He hands me the pipe and a lighter. I draw bubbles, remove the bowl and feel the smoke rush into my mouth and throat. I hold.
Gavin rubs his folded hands on his head, stares at the wall.
I exhale and taste blue cheese smoke on my tongue.
“So,” he says, “where should we go next?”
I hand him the pipe and lighter. “I’d like to hang here a little bit, if that’s cool. Then I should head home.”
Gavin draws on the pipe, staring at me, and then his laugh draws out in stoned-motion like the quiet call of a large bird. “No, I mean where should the next trip be? Did I show you the map of Los Padres?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hang on.” He goes back to his room, and I watch the apartment door.
Someone walks past it. No, that was the sound of Gavin moving something in his room; I hadn’t actually seen anyone walk past.
“He’s fucked up. What a fuckin’ lightweight!” That wasn’t Gavin, it came from outside. Nearby, but still far away.
Laughter. “Are you stoned, Alex? Are you ffuuucking sssstoned?”
“He’s scared.”
“Yeah, look, he’s terrified. He hasn’t even blinked yet.”
Test movements of my eyelids prove they’re dried stuck on my eyeballs. I blink. Blink again. Did something move out there when I blinked? Where are they watching from?
A map lowers onto the coffee table like a manta ray settling on the sea floor. Concentric amoebas drawn over shades of green and brown. Red dotted lines twist through illusory crevices and across blue line creeks. Gavin sits on the couch. “This is Los Padres.” He circles a large portion of the map with his finger. “Up by Santa Barbara.”
“Did you just hear someone talking?”
“Who?”
“Someone outside. About me being stoned?”
He laughs, “Well, you’re clearly stoned.” He waves his fingers, “Focus.” Then he moves them in a magician’s flourish, “This…” points back down at the map, “…is Los Padres.”
I want to stay in this moment where there is only me, Gavin, and the map. It’s a small, safe constellation—a triangle—with simple vertices: he points at the map, and I concentrate on his pointing. There’s no way to fuck it up. Why can’t everything be like this?
I watch his finger but channel all my attention through my ears. I give quick sideways glances out the door. Gavin’s on that side of me, so each time I look I can pretend I’m looking at him. This is the kind of trick I’d pull if I could control both of us. I’d orchestrate entire outings wherein he and I would talk to each other about whatever bullshit, always staring just past each other to keep a 360 watch for my—our—pursuers.
“There’s a campsite here, with picnic tables and stuff. I found some pictures online. Nice shady spot. No shitter, but we don’t need it.” He traces with his finger. “There’s a creek here that might be dry when we go, so we should pack in extra water.”
“Sounds fine.”
He removes the bowl from Kobayashi and goes to the door. I half expect a shape to pass the doorway and swallow him. Then the walls and furniture of the apartment would crumple like paper, exposing bright light behind everything. Some of that light is already piercing through in extruded beams of smoke over the coffee table, centering on the gift bag and glaring off its metallic spots. I move the bag to the floor by my feet, in shadow.
Gavin doesn’t disappear out the door. He fingers the crusty remains, blows out the bowl, returns and pushes more weed into it.
“And this is a canyon, kind of like when we went to the springs. The fires a couple years ago cleared out a lot of this area. Want the green?” He offers the pipe and I shake my head. He draws flame into the pipe. The smoke held in his lungs changes his voice like a mouthful of whipped cream. “But now it should be growing back. Lots of wildflowers and stuff. Probably beautiful.” Long exhale.
“I’ll bet.”
When I leave, I step out the door looking both ways. Splotchy yellow sunlight through the trees spreads like alien lichen across the wall. Brightening, darkening, breathing.
I turn back to Gavin. “Thanks for the help.” I hold up the gift bag. “He’s gonna love this.”
“Right on.” Gavin nods, chuckles. “Tell him I said… happy birthday?”
Gavin is a good friend, and this breaks my heart.
Next on I Hear You Watching…
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