Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standiford

Author:Natalie Standiford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

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The club was closing and I couldn’t find Carmen. Zu had left on the back of someone’s motorcycle. The geisha girls had removed the bowling balls from their feet. One girl stood on her head, her kimono falling open. The other geisha smashed raw eggs on the first girl’s crotch and laughed while the yolk drooled down her belly. The first girl scissored her legs. She had a really solid headstand. Nothing knocked her over.

No Carmen, no Jem. Somehow I knew for sure they had left together. Maybe I really was psychic.

It was three thirty in the morning. I walked home on salt-dusted streets too frigid and desolate for muggers, hurrying from corner to corner, my bones rattling in the cold. In a vacant lot on the Bowery, three men warmed their hands over a trash barrel fire. “Go home, girl!” they shouted at me. “Get your little ass home!”

I hustled over to Second Avenue, the bars closed and dark, the street deserted. I cut down Fifth to First Avenue. At the light on the corner of Sixth Street I felt a presence behind me, about half a block away. A tall figure moving slowly in my direction. I couldn’t make out much more than that. I speed-walked across First Avenue, against the light, and headed north. The man—I could tell it was a man now—cut across the intersection diagonally, closing in on me. A cab zoomed past him, honking.

I glanced back quickly. All I saw, in the bright light of First Avenue, was a black knit cap, a dark coat, and a white face.

I walked faster.

I turned right on Ninth Street. A third of the way down the block, I checked for him. The man turned the corner, steady and relentless as a shark.

This was beginning to feel eerily familiar. You did too much coke, I told myself. You’re paranoid. But those thoughts did nothing to comfort me. I might have done too much coke. I might have been paranoid. Nevertheless, the man behind me quickened his pace.

I started to run, down Ninth Street to A. I ran the half block to my building and burst through the outer door. I patted my pockets for my keys, watching for the man. Found the keys. Fumbled open the door. Ran upstairs. Unlocked my door. Scurried inside the apartment. Locked the door behind me.

“Carmen?”

No Carmen. The apartment was dark. The cats stretched and meowed. I went to the window. The man stood across the street, watching our building. I stepped back from the window, glad I hadn’t turned on the light. We stood frozen like that for a few minutes, in a standoff. Then he disappeared into the park, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow, and leaving me to wonder if my past had come looking for me.

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