colleagues interested in her book on gravestone iconography.
The air had warmed up a little by the time she got back outside, and in the dusky late afternoon light, Sweeney could smell the familiar odors of the city, cooking oil and fried onions emanating from a Chinese restaurant, cigarette smoke as a teenage girl walked by, scowling into the winter night.
The traffic was getting heavier as it got to be the rush hour and it took her nearly twenty minutes to get back to Somerville and circle her block twice, looking for parking. She finally found a space a couple of streets away and squeezed into it narrowly, then got all of her bags and the precious box out of the car.
It was as she crossed Davis Square that she saw the red car.
Sweeney jumped back and looked behind her for a place to hide and watch. It was Ian’s car. She was sure of it. It had the same Vermont plates—her good memory called up the sequence, BUI 178, and the shiny red finish and American make gave it away as a rental.
Luckily, there was a large oak tree along the street and on the other side, a small bench offered a comfortable post. She put her bags on the bench and sat down, pulling a hat and scarf out of the bag and wrapping her face so she wouldn’t be recognized. She hugged the box to her chest and waited.
It was ten minutes before she saw his tall, lanky figure coming out of a small convenience store on the corner. He looked to the right and then to the left and rooted in his pocket for a few seconds, presumably looking for his keys. Sweeney watched as he opened the car and dropped something that looked like a small paper bag on the front seat. Then he re-locked the car and started walking across the square, looking down frequently at what appeared to be a map.
After a couple of seconds, Sweeney got up, gathered her things, and followed at a safe distance. In movies, following someone looked so simple but, in fact, it was bloody difficult. He didn’t walk quickly, looking straight ahead, the way bad guys were supposed to. Instead, he turned around frequently, looking up at street signs and checking them against his map. Each time he stopped, Sweeney jumped back against a building, turning away to pretend to fumble in her bag.
They went on like that for a couple of blocks before she realized where they were going. Ian looked up at the street sign and turned right onto Russell Street, walking slowly along until he came to the big pumpkin-colored Victorian triple-decker where she lived.
All of a sudden, she wasn’t sure what to do. A cold web of fear had spread itself across her chest and she stood, rooted there on the sidewalk. She could confront him, of course, but the street was empty. No, she decided, it was better to wait and see what he was going to do. She ducked into an alleyway on the corner and kneeled down behind a pair of trash cans, still hugging the box.
From her post, she watched him stand on the sidewalk looking up at the house. His expression was inscrutable; he merely stood. And after a minute or two, he turned and passed by the alley, going back the way he had come.
She counted to one hundred and then stood up, her legs cramped from kneeling on the cold concrete. After looking up and down the street, she let herself in and climbed up the stairs to her third floor apartment, her heart beating and the back of her sweater damp with perspiration.
She stood in the hall for a moment, listening to the silence, then pressed the button that played the new messages on the answering machine. There wasn’t much, a reminder from the video store about Divorce Italian Style and a message from a student explaining why he wouldn’t be handing in his final paper for Introduction to Art History.
Then she poured herself a scotch and put on her favorite flannel pajamas. Comfortable and warm, she stood in front of the bay window in her little living room looking out over the square. She’d been living on Russell Street so long that she’d come to know the scene by heart, the neon-signed diner and the VFW hall across the way.
Down below, pedestrians crisscrossed the square. A couple looked for cars, then dashed across the street