The Follower (2 page)

At 4:26, Andy’s phone rang. He recognized his friend Scott’s number on the caller ID. He picked up and said in a low voice, “Dude, what’s up?”

“Chilling,” Scott said. “Waiting to get the hell outta here.”

“Me, too, bro. Me, too. What’s going on later?”

“Some guys at work are gonna check out the happy hour at McAleer’s.”

“McAleer’s blew last week, dude.”

“Yeah, but it should be pretty cool tonight. My buddy Dave knows a girl there and she’s bringing friends.”

“Cute?”

“One’s a babe, two’re borderline, the others I don’t know.
But, hey, if the talent’s lame, we can just hit Firehouse. Dave says there was a ton of tuna there last week.”

“I don’t know, dude,” Andy said. “Maybe we should stay east. I mean, I can only stay out till like seven, seven-thirty tonight anyway.”

“Don’t tell me you’re seeing that chick again?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna go out to dinner.”

“Dude,” Scott said. “What’s this, like the third time in two weeks?”

It was actually their fourth date.

“She’s really cool,” Andy said.

“Bro, how many times I gotta tell ya? You can’t stick around, begging for it like a dog. If it doesn’t happen on the second date, you gotta bail.”

“What makes you think I didn’t get any yet?”

“You? If you got some I would’ve heard about it the next morning. Hell, you would’ve jumped out of bed and called me in the middle of the night—
Dude, I just fucked this girl. Really, I did.”

Scott was laughing.

Andy said, “Look who’s talking. When was the last time you had a girlfriend, freakin’ sophomore year?”

“Yeah, but I got laid last weekend. I’m tellin’ ya, dude—you keep it up with this chick, pretty soon she’s gonna wanna take you ring shopping.”

Drew Frasier, one of the senior analysts, passed Andy’s cubicle.

“I better go,” Andy said to Scott, nearly whispering, “before I get busted.”

“So what’s the deal tonight? You coming out with us or not?”

“I told you, I can meet up if we stay east.”

“So let me get this straight,” Scott said. “You want me to meet you for a drink at some lame East Side bar and blow off my friends and the hot, fuckable babes at McAleer’s so you can take off at seven o’clock for a date with your future fiancée?”

Andy, used to taking crap from Scott, was shaking his head, smiling.

“Come on, man, blow her off,” Scott went on. “You’ll probably hook up with one of the chicks at McAleer’s. Then, later, we’re gonna hit this party on Broadway in the sixties. Cornell dudes are throwing it. It’s supposed to be hot and you’re guaranteed to hook up or at least get some numbers.”

“Sorry, bro, can’t make it tonight,” Andy said. “But I’ll definitely meet up with you guys tomorrow to watch the game.”

“Yeah, if you’re not engaged by then.”

“Later, dude.”

Andy clicked off and resumed staring intently at the clock on the monitor. At four fifty-nine, he starting putting on his suit jacket. At five, he was leaving his cubicle, heading toward the elevators.

Walking along Park Avenue toward the subway stop on Fifty-first and Lex, Andy checked out every good-looking girl he passed. He couldn’t help it. He was a twenty-three-year-old single guy in Manhattan, and as far as he was concerned there were only two types of people in the world—hot girls and everybody else.

As Andy approached the crowded entrance to the subway, he zeroed in on a really cute chick with straight brown hair in black pants and a black suit jacket. The clothes were loose, but it looked like she had a nice body—thin anyway, which was all that really mattered. There were about five people between them as they headed down the stairs, but he kept watching her as the crowd moved toward the turnstiles. She swiped her MetroCard and went down the steps toward the jam-packed platform. He followed her as she wove through the crowd toward the end of the platform where it was slightly less crowded. When she stopped, Andy stopped, right next to her.

Every time Andy rode the subway, he would automatically zero in on the cutest girl on the platform and stand as close to her as possible. Then he would try to get into a conversation, or at least make a lot of eye contact, and then when the train came he would make sure they got on the same car. If things went well, he’d keep the small talk going, hopefully say a couple of clever, witty things to make her laugh—getting a girl to laugh
was key—and then ask for her number. He’d gotten a few numbers on the subway, and even went out with this one girl a few times and wound up getting laid. But most of the time, he struck out. The big problem was that a lot of girls were paranoid as hell on the subway and wouldn’t talk to guys, even though if they saw the same guys at a bar or a club they’d gladly talk to them then, because
that
was more socially acceptable.

Andy was looking at the brown-haired girl, but she wasn’t noticing him, or at least wasn’t acting like she did. A train pulled into the station and Andy boarded directly behind her. He followed her to the middle of the car and gripped the same pole she was holding, their hands inches apart. She was staring up ahead, as if she were reading the
START AN EXCITING CAREER AS A DENTAL ASSISTANT
ad over and over again. Man, she was even better-looking than Andy had thought. She had big green eyes, nice lips, and no zits. Andy always told his friends that the best place to meet girls was the subway because the fluorescent light was so unforgiving. If a girl looked good on the 6 train, she’d look good anywhere.

At the next stop, Fifty-ninth Street, the girl shifted her attention away from the ad toward Andy.

“Hi,” Andy said.

“Hi” was by far the best pickup line, much better than, “Have we met?”

The girl hesitated, then smiled and said, “Hi,” and looked away again. Andy knew he had his opening; it was just a matter of delivering the perfect follow-up.

People exited and entered the train, and Andy and the girl were squeezed even closer together. The train started moving and Andy waited for the girl to look at him again, and then he said, “Now I know what sardines feel like.”

“What?” the girl asked.

The line wasn’t that funny and he wished he’d said something else. He knew it would sound even less funny when he repeated it, but he did anyway.

The girl smiled and laughed a little, but Andy wasn’t sure that she’d even heard him over the noise of the subway. Andy was trying to think of some other clever thing to say, but then
the girl moved away toward the door and exited at the Sixty-eighth Street stop.

Andy looked around the train for more talent and saw a good-looking Chinese girl with funky glasses sitting at the far end of the car, reading a thick paperback. There was space in front of her, so, at the next stop, Andy casually moved over there. He tried to make eye contact with the girl but she was too engrossed in her book to notice.

At Ninety-sixth Street—Andy’s stop—Andy followed the girl out of the station. Andy was hoping that she lived in his building so he could get onto the elevator with her or follow her to the mailbox area and say,
Hey, didn’t I just see you on the subway?
a line that sometimes worked even when he
hadn’t
just seen the girl on the subway. But at the corner of Ninety-sixth and Lex, the girl headed uptown, and Andy went in the opposite direction, toward Ninety-fifth Street.

Andy lived in Normandie Court, a complex of three massive apartment buildings that took up an entire square block between Second and Third Avenues and Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets. The majority of residents in the building were recent college grads, which was why many people referred to the buildings as Dormandie Court. Andy lived in a three-bedroom apartment with five other guys and shared a room with his buddy Greg, a frat brother from Delta Kappa Epsilon at Michigan. Last year, Andy had had his own room at the frat house and he felt like he was taking a step backward in life, having to share a bedroom again, but he had little choice. Manhattan rents were so out of control that unless he wanted to move into some dive walk-up, or to an outer borough or Jersey, sharing was the only way to go. The rent on the apartment was $3,600 a month so Andy’s share came to only $600, which left him with plenty of expendable income for beer and going out.

Andy went through the revolving doors into the lobby, which had the same anonymous, corporate feeling as the lobby in the building where he worked, and rode the elevator to his apartment on the twenty-seventh floor. As usual, the
door was unlocked, and when he opened it he saw Chris sprawled on the couch in his boxers, watching porn. Chris worked nights, bartending at Bar East on First, which was very cool because he could sometimes give his roommates free drinks, but it was also very annoying because he worked until four or five in the morning, slept until two or three in the afternoon, and spent most of the rest of his time parked on the couch in his underwear.

“Hey,” Andy and Chris said at the same time, and then Andy went down the hallway into his room. He took off his suit, added it to his half of the closet with his nine other suits from Banana Republic, and then went into the kitchen. Every dish and piece of silverware the guys had was dirty and piled in the sink. The counter was covered with pizza boxes, Pringles cans, beer and soda bottles, and Chinese take-out containers, and the garbage can was overflowing. Andy opened the fridge, which contained nothing but beer, soda, and leftover pizza and Chinese—most of which had been there for weeks—and took out a bottle of Lowenbrau. He went into the living room and sat in the red IKEA chair, next to Chris on the couch. On TV, an Asian woman was making out with a blonde. When the camera panned down to the Asian woman’s backside, Chris said, “You like that?”

“Nice,” Andy said.

“I don’t know, she’s too bony for me. I like some meat to grab on to, know what I mean?”

Drinking their beers, not talking at all, they watched the girls go at it for several minutes. Then the front door opened and Will entered with a knapsack slung over one shoulder.

“Hey,” Andy and Chris said, and Will said, “Hey.” Then Will looked at the TV and said, “All right, carpet munching!”

Will was a med student at Mount Sinai and planned to become a pediatrician. He shared a bedroom with Steve, who was working as a paralegal while studying for his LSATs.

Will grabbed a beer, then sat on a chair and started watching the movie. A couple of minutes later, John, who shared a room with Chris, came home. Although Andy had only had a few sips of Lowenbrau, he put the bottle down on the coffee
table and announced, “I’m showering,” because he knew that John, who was a total metrosexual and took as long as a girl in the bathroom, always hogged the shower when he came home from work.

The bathroom hadn’t been cleaned since they’d moved into the apartment five months ago, and there was mildew all over the tiles and the shower curtain, and the drain was clogged—thanks to John and Steve, who were both going prematurely bald—and the tub always filled with about six inches of water during showers. Whoever had used the toilet hadn’t bothered to flush and a few turds were floating on top.

“Jesus, you guys are fuckin’ disgusting!” Andy shouted.

“Thanks!” Chris, who was always proud of his big dumps, yelled back, and then Andy flushed, drowning out whatever else Chris was saying.

Andy peed—not bothering to flush—and then took a quick shower. After he shaved, he returned to his bedroom with a towel around his waist and discovered that Greg had come home from work. Greg was sitting on his bed with Jessica, a-little-heavy-but-still-kinda-cute curly-haired Italian-looking girl who lived in one of the other buildings at Normandie.

“Sorry,” Andy said.

Jessica was looking away, embarrassed.

“It’s cool,” Greg said. “Want us to go in another room or something?”

Andy knew Greg would’ve killed him later if he said yes. Greg hadn’t hooked up since college, and Andy didn’t want to be a dick and take away a chance for his buddy to finally get some.

“No, it’s cool,” Andy said. “Lemme just grab some clothes. Sorry to interrupt.”

“You’re not really interrupting anything,” Jessica said, obviously trying to protect her dignity.

Greg glared at Andy, as if Andy had blown it for him.

“It’s okay,” Andy said. “I can get dressed anywhere.”

Andy took a pair of socks, boxer briefs, Banana Republic jeans, a navy Banana Republic button-down shirt, and his Banana Republic loafers, then said, “See you guys later,” and
left the room. Andy went into John and Chris’s room, got dressed, and then went into the steamy bathroom—John was showering—and gelled his hair, applied deodorant, and dabbed Lucky You cologne all over, including his pubic hair.

He had some time to kill before he had to leave for his date, so he rejoined Will and Chris in the living room. Chris still had control of the remote and was switching between sports and porn. Watching a red-haired woman having sex with two big black guys, Chris said to Will, “So what happened with you and that girl the other night?”

“Which one?” Will asked.

Chris looked at Andy. “Listen to this guy, ‘Which one?’” He turned to Will again. “Short, poodle hair.”

“Oh, Lara. She’s really cool. She’s a speech therapist.”

“Did you fuck her?”

“Nah, I like her friend.”

Chris said to Andy, “You shoulda seen this guy. He comes into the bar last night at one o’clock. He’s in his scrubs, of course, and he’s got two girls with him. Not one—
two
. Jen, the red-hot new bartender, goes to me, ‘Is your friend single?’ “

“The guy’s a magnet,” Andy said.

“It’s because he’s a fuckin’ doctor,” Chris said.

“I’m not a doctor yet,” Will said.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Chris said. “You wear those scrubs everywhere—supermarket, Blockbuster, running in the park—and babes come up to you like you’re fucking fly tape.”

“Jealous?” Will asked.

“Of the scrubs, not you,” Chris said. “Even Andy could get laid wearing that doctor shit, right, And?”

Andy was staring at the TV. The redhead was in a contorted position on a staircase, between the two guys. Chris used the pause feature on the DVR and then slo-mo’d the scene.