Watch You Die by Katia Lief

a turnaround, I pretended he didn’t exist? I would stop trying to convince him to keep a distance. I would stop talking to him, period. While there was no real comparison between my father’s plight and mine, I would pretend, just as he had over sixty years ago, that there was nothing to escape from.
    Lying on my bed with my laptop open on my stomach, I pulled up the instant message screen to see if Sara was online. She was; in fact, she had been looking for me.
    “How’s by you?” she asked.
    “You first.”
    “Melanie had an abscess in her mouth today so she skipped school so I could take her to the dentist. Which meant I had to miss my appointment with the washing machine repair guy which I’ve been waiting for for two weeks. Which means he can’t come back for another two weeks. Which means the Laundromat in Sin City’s gonna be seeing a lot more of me in the near future. Fun.”
    “Hasn’t been brushing her teeth again?”
    “Evidently.”
    “Don’t you check for wet toothbrushes?”
    “What am I, a spy?”
    “If necessary.”
    “So that was the high point of my day. Now you.”
    “Joe Coffin is stalking me.”
    It was the first time I had thought of it in those terms and it shocked me as much as it probably shocked her. The screen dialogue froze for a minute before her response streamed onto the screen.
    “Shit. Are you sure?”
    “Positive.”
    “How bad is it? You mean stalking for real?”
    “Probably not. I shouldn’t have used that word. He followed me once definitely and maybe another time but I’m not so sure about that one because as you know I’m insane and I
see
things. And he keeps leaving breakfast on my desk. Stuff like that.”
    “You don’t see things. If you think you saw him you probably did.”
    “Anyway I saw him after leaving my mom’s tonight. So I’ve got a problem.”
    “Avoid him.”
    “How? We work together.”
    “Kind of, sweetie. He’s in the mailroom, you’re not. Ignore him if you pass him in the hall and stuff like that.”
    “That’s what I was thinking. That he would get the message.”
    “Sure he’ll get it. And he’s got to be mortified that you saw him tonight.”
    “True. He was embarrassed after he called me all those times. This is worse.”
    “It really is. He’ll feel like such a jerk. Maybe he’ll even quit his job!”
    “I can only wish. But you’re right. I’ll just ignore him and let his conscience do the rest for me.”
    “Meanwhile want me to check him out here on the Vineyard? I could stop at Copy Cats and ask what they know about him.”
    “Why not?”
    “Will do then. I’ll keep you posted. Meantime keep a low profile and get to sleep now because it’s already past our bedtimes.”
    I drifted off to sleep that night calmed to have touched base with my dear friend and content with the solution we both agreed was best.
    I decided not to tell Nat about having seen Joe last night; my son did not need this worry. So in the morning, after a quick breakfast together, we went about our usual business. He headed off to school, taking the city bus to Park Slope, and I made my way to the office.
    Where I couldn’t resist telling Courtney all about having seen Joe. I cornered her in the bathroom when she emerged from a stall as I was stationed at a mirror over the sink applying lipstick, a pale shade intended to appear invisible. Our mirrored faces suspended side by side in rectangular frames, we spoke to each other’s reflections.
    “He’s not cute anymore,” she declared after hearing the latest.
    “For me he hasn’t been cute since Monday, over lunch. And then he was only marginally cute, as in earnest-young-man cute.”
    “Four days later and he’s gone from cute to creepy.”
    I echoed her final word: “
Creepy
.”
    “I think your idea to ignore him is good. Pretend you don’t see him. Don’t return his calls if he calls. Don’t say anything if he brings more of those bagels. Nada. Zippo.” She drew a