My girlfriend's ex-boyfriend was standing on the curb across the street from our New York apartment, staring up towards our window.

I was on my way home from work, humming and hustling through the cold when I saw him and stopped short on the snowy sidewalk.

Sean, the ex, looked like he'd spent the past year on a freight train. He'd wrapped his slight bones in a long ratty brown overcoat; he'd buried his hands deep inside the pockets, clutching the coat further around himself. His black watch cap blended into his dark eyebrows. Thick brown boots anchored him against the wind. He was unshaven, pale, and the cold shocked his breath white. He was a cigarette at the edge of an ashtray.

It was Tuesday, and Tuesday was yoga night for Linda. She would be on her way home. Sean was looking at an empty apartment.

Focused as he was on our third floor window, he didn't notice me, standing just twenty feet from him. We'd never met, but I recognized him from various photos I'd seen and from one subway ride, months ago, when Linda had pointed him out to me. We'd moved to another car before we had an awkward encounter but not before I could prevent giving him a role in my imagination. My imagination is a problem for me.

As I watched Sean, I retraced the casual sleuthing he'd had to have done to find her new address. A phone call or two to information, or a few searches on the internet may have been all it took. It wasn't like we were hiding.

I was unnerved by his stillness. He seemed frozen mid-shiver. Here was this thin man, perhaps fifty pounds lighter than me, no physical threat at all, if it came to a confrontation. And yet my heart raced with adrenaline. The images flashed across my brainpan, Sean and Linda, Sean with Linda. Their bodies intertwined, Linda smiling.

Why had he come here? What was he planning to do? I wondered just how much his heart ached, that he would be standing out here in the urban tundra like this, looking at his ex-girlfriend's building. So many things had changed so quickly. Linda broke up with Sean the previous summer; Jake and his sister had inadvertently set us up in October; I had offered her a ring and we'd moved in together this fall before some of her friends even knew who I was. Things had happened too fast for everyone but us. Seeing Sean out there, I guessed that he had not yet turned the page.

I wondered what would happen if I should strike up a conversation with him, give him a 'Hey Sean,' pat him on the shoulder, offer him a cup of coffee, tell him who I was and that there were no hard feelings. What if there were hard feelings? If we fought, I would hurt him, badly. I knew this for certain.

People moved past on the sidewalk, hurrying wherever to get out of the cold. Our block of Ninth Avenue was a useful one, with low four-story dirty brick walk-ups perched over a row of small family-run stores. From our apartment, we had a view of rooftops that Edward Hopper would love. Sean didn't move a muscle; it was both creepy and impressive. I could see from his gaze that he knew our exact window.

Streetlights cut through the dusk to illuminate the neighborhood. The December day was already done, temperatures had been in the single digits all day, and I wondered how long he'd been out there and how much longer he could stand it. I wondered what he knew about her life, now. I wasn't sure he knew what I looked like. I decided to find out.

I walked toward him, slowly. I was aware of my feet crunching on the slippery packed snow. He remained motionless. I got closer, and then walked directly in front of him. I stole a glance at his face just as I passed.

Suddenly, Sean snapped out of his trance and began pacing, hunching his shoulders against the cold. Had he recognized me? He didn't look at me. He kept his focus primarily on our building. I noticed that his right hand was adjusting around inside its pocket, as if to assure himself that something was there. Cell phone? Hand gun?

I stepped around the corner and when I was out of sight I stopped, turned and pressed my back against the side of a vegetarian restaurant. From there I could look up 54th Street, toward Linda's gym. I peeked around the corner. Sean was still there, pacing back and forth. I felt like I was ten years old, playing spy. I waited and watched like that, first checking up the street, then back to Sean, for ten minutes.

I saw Linda approaching me down 54th, yellow scarf around her neck, work bag over one shoulder, gym bag over the other. She waved and smiled when she saw me. My Linda.

"Hey, somebody's glad to see me," she said as I rushed up to her, took her by the shoulders and turned her around. I kissed her on the cheek and kept moving with her.

"Sean's here."

"What? Where are we going? It's freezing."

I pulled her into a deli and we stood in front of a rack of chips and pretzels. Linda's cheeks were flushed with health and cold. Her blond hair was tied up in back, stuffed into her yellow hat. Her dark green winter coat stopped mid thigh to reveal tight black sweats and boots. She sniffled a little and her eyes were wide.

"What do you mean, Sean's here?"

"He's here. He's in front of our building, across the street, pacing around."

"Pacing around?"

"Yeah. I thought I'd walk you home in case…in case he tried to do something."

Linda put her hand to my cheek and said, "Are you all right? Have you—"

"Yeah, no, I'm fine so far."

Linda knows all about how my imagination works. She talks me through things. She helps me control it. Linda rested her hand on my chest and stared at it for a moment, thinking.

I said, "You don't think he'd do anything stupid? Shoot one of us, for example? Or attack you? Or kidnap you?"

"No. I...No. No, I really don't think so."

"Because people do crazy things when they're emotional."

"I know, but he was always so level headed about things. Did he look crazy?"

I pictured Sean on the sidewalk, remembering his stillness. "He looked cold and depressed. Well, cold, of course cold, and, yeah, sad, empty. It was creepy."

"Would he do something? I don't think he'd do anything."

"Was he ever violent?"

She looked back up at me. "He's a florist. He's at his most aggressive when clipping a bonsai plant." I nodded.

"But you're right, that doesn't mean he's incapable," she continued, "I mean, who knows why people do things. But why now? I'd think he'd already have done something if he was going to. Put yourself in his shoes. Would you get violent if I dumped you?"

"No, no, of course not, no," I said, concentrating on her green eyes. "I'd be crushed, of course. I don't think so. I don't know. I've never thought about it," I stammered. I took Linda's gym bag and put it over my shoulder. "I don't want to think about that. How was class?"

"It was fine."

We were right in front of the door to the deli, and every time a new customer came in, a wind tunnel of cold air shivered over us.

Linda nodded. "Let's just confront him. This is ridiculous. I want to go home. Maybe when he sees you he'll back off."

"Are you sure? Both of us? I could go talk to him myself, tell him who I am."

"I know you could," she said, squeezing my left biceps. "No, this is nuts. Come on." She pushed through the door before I could stop her. I followed. The cold stung my face. I hustled to get next to her and when I did, we turned the corner. Sean was gone.

Back home, we left the lights off. Linda walked about the apartment, removing her clothing.

"Are you sure it was him?"

I was in the kitchen, twisting a corkscrew into a bottle of Pindar merlot we'd picked up in SoHo.

"Positive. I was only a few feet from him. It was him."

"Dark hair, about five foot six, thin as a, what? Thin as a Charlie Brown Christmas tree?"

"Yep."

She came into the kitchen wearing one of my faded college sweatshirts. She let the sleeves hang down past her hands. She wore nothing else and I took a moment to admire her legs. Those, I thought, were legs that a guy would miss if he was no longer able to see them. I continued with the bottle, eased out the cork and poured us both a glass. She took hers and we clinked glasses.

"Long brown coat, Yankees hat, boots?"

"Pretty much. No Yankees hat today."

She sipped her wine and cracked her toes. "He doesn't shop much. What does this mean? What was he doing? How does he know I live here?" She sipped some more. "Why was he gone when we turned the corner? Coincidence? Or did he see us before we saw him? Had he gone somewhere to take a pee? It was cold, maybe he went somewhere to warm up." Linda liked detective novels.

"Maybe," she said, "this isn't the first time he's spied on us. Mmm, this wine is so good. It has that cherry oak finish, but it's not too pushy." She walked into the living room and over to the window and peeked out from the side of the drapes. "I don't see him." She let the curtain fall back and turned to look at me. We sipped our wine and looked at each other, thinking.

I said, "He hasn't contacted you in any way lately? He hasn't called, here or at the office? No letters, email, anything?"

"No. Nothing. I haven't seen him since I gave him back all his crap."

The room was very dark, the streetlights below the only light.

"He could call information; he could look on the internet. He could follow you. Lots of ways to find you." She sighed. "You're right."

I shook my head and sniffed my wine like it was a rose.

"So," I said.

"So," she said.

"So are we going to stand here in the dark all night?"

She smiled. "No, we're not. You want pasta?"

We turned the lights on in all the rooms and went about our evening activities. I emptied my pockets and changed clothes, she flipped through the mail, I washed some left over breakfast dishes, and she made pasta. The patterns of the evening were ours, but Sean hovered over them. Linda talked about how insulting he had been when she returned his clothes; how she thought that perhaps she deserved the insults, and described the bitter handing-off. I went over the details of the afternoon for her: the cold, his stillness. We moved back and forth in the kitchen, assembling dinner. I avoided his name altogether. She tried to sigh around it, to blend it into nearby verbs—Seanwas fragile, Seansang in a choir, Seanhad pet fish—but I heard the name and saw each Sean tableau in my mind, a shadow of Linda in each. The combination of stove heat, wine heat and the weight of these past things, these images, were making my jaw tighten. I could sense Linda's movements becoming shortened as well, more percussive. Finally, I said, "Stop." I kissed her hand and held my mouth to her knuckle for a few seconds. She rested her other hand on my head and we stood still.

As we ate dinner, we tried to talk about work and the upcoming weekend, but as we swirled our tomato-soaked spaghetti, I knew the topic would swing back to Sean. The energy in the apartment had changed, and I couldn't help feeling like we were on display somehow, under a light.

The phone rang.

Linda paused with her hand held in mid air, fork halfway from plate to open mouth. The phone rang again. I threw my napkin down, stood up and answered it. It was a telemarketer. Linda rested her hand back on the table and shook her head.

"We're being really ridiculous," she said.

Later, when I turned out the living room lights, we smiled at each other in the faint, inevitable remainder of city light.

"It's a relief, isn't it? To be in the dark," she said.

"Weird evening," I sighed, and added, "I love you."

She kissed me and pressed her hands against my chest. "I love you too. Let's be stupid for a while." She kissed me again and slipped her hand down to my pants, undid them and then pulled them down with both hands. She pulled the sweatshirt over her head and let it drop to the floor. Then she pushed me down into an armchair and lowered herself onto me slowly, precisely.

That night we drank the rest of the wine and lounged, sexed and calm, on the couch, in the changing light from the television.

The next evening, Sean was back.

This time, both Linda and I were home from work already and we had the lights on. The city had received a snow globe shake that morning and the flakes had fallen all day. Our boots stood soaking on newspapers near the door. We'd both changed into our jeans and sweaters, and I'd started heating up a casserole. I was going through some mail when I wandered by the window and saw that he was there, holding a cup of something, coffee maybe, in the same spot as the day before, visible between the cross glow of two street lamps, looking right at me.

"What the hell do you want?" I muttered against the windowpane.

Sean was squinting at me, trying to get a better look through the snowflakes darting by his face. He had on the same outfit. It was like he never left.

I rushed into my boots.

"What, honey?" said Linda, coming in from the hallway.

"Your florist choir boy is staring at our apartment again."

I grabbed my coat.

"What?" she said, walking over to the window. "Where?"

I was already out the door. I moved quickly down the stairs, down the hallway, out the front door and into the cold. People were going home for the evening and I struggled to get through them. I saw Sean across the street. He'd turned and started walking away, drifting in the tide of people. Traffic was heavy and I couldn't cross in time. When I finally did, I saw so many hats and long coats, so many darkly clad bodies moving; I felt I saw him everywhere. By the time I reached the corner I'd lost him completely.

Adrenaline ripped through me. I stood there in the snow, panting out bursts of white breath. People walked past me in each direction. I scanned the street. Was he in one of the stores or restaurants watching me? He'd have his pick: the Irish bar, the Thai place, the OTB parlor, the delis, the religious artifact store, the hardware store, the Nail Salon, a wine store, the Peruvian place, the Italian place or one of several others. He could hang around for hours. Did he have someone pick him up? I walked past the spot where Sean had dropped his coffee. The brown liquid had spilled out of the coffee cup's little mouth-hole and made a blotch in the snow; it would freeze and maybe be there all winter.

When I got back upstairs, Linda said, "I didn't see him, honey."

"He was right in front of the hardware store. I saw him," I said, hanging up my coat. "By the time I got down there he had already started walking away."

Linda was at the window, peering out. "Are you sure you saw him?"

"I'm sure," I said, taking off my boots. "Why would he take off?"

"I don't know. If I was his size and I saw someone your size bearing down on me I might take off too."

"But he doesn't even know what I look like, does he? I didn't bear down on him. I didn't even get close to him."

I sat on the floor, one boot on, one boot off. Linda closed the curtains and turned off the lights.

At eight o'clock, the calls started.

One or two were telemarketers, but most were hang-ups. We hunched, focusing, over the machine and set it to pick up after two rings. We tried the *69 trick, but the number was unlisted. We paced the apartment.

"I'm calling him," said Linda.

"We don't know it was him."

"It must be him."

"This is exactly what he wants. He wants to talk to you."

"If he wanted to talk to me, he wouldn't hang up."

"Okay, call him."

"I'm calling him." She stood with the phone in her hand, looking at me. "Right? I mean, we agree that this is incredibly annoying, right? This is insane."

"Yeah."

I stood across the room from her as she began dialing.

"You still know his number."

She looked at me halfway through dialing. She put the receiver back down. "I do."

I nodded. My heart beat even faster. My imagination started up.

"What? Doug, you know how it is with numbers. Once you know it, you know it." She watched my reaction. I felt her gaze penetrating my face, monitoring for the moment I was okay again.

"I'm good with numbers. You know that. Doug, you know that, come on."

My imagination was screening Linda and Sean having late night phone sex, Linda and Sean kissing goodnight on street corners. Linda and Sean, Linda with Sean. I shook my head and forced myself to think about something else. I thought about hockey. I thought about big Jaromir Jagr skidding down the ice, struggling with a player, a skinny player who looked like Sean, and then shoving him face-first into the plexiglass.

"I know. Call. Call him."

She dialed again and we stood still, waiting for him to pick up.

"His machine comes on, I'm leaving him a message."

"Yeah."

We waited.

"Sean, it's Linda. Are you there? Pick up if you're there. Sean, I know we haven't talked in a while, but…you've been hanging around in front of my apartment, Sean, and that is just…so unlike you. Please let's talk about this, okay? Give me a call, please." She left our number. "Okay? Okay. Thanks." She hung up and rested her hand on the phone.

"Will he call?"

She looked up at me. "I don't know. I don't know him anymore, Doug."

We stood in the dark. The three of us: Linda, me, and the phone, all silent.

Linda walked around the apartment for a while, picking up magazines and throwing them back down, adjusting photographs, straightening piles of mail, throwing junk towards the waste basket and missing. Finally she disappeared into the kitchen and stayed there for a long while, silent. While she did all this I listened to her and circled our living room, running my fingers along the spines of books, the back of the sofa, the wooden end table under the phone, the armchair and then back to the books. I heard Linda running water in the bathtub, then heard the octave change of the shower coming on. The phone rang again and I snatched it up.

I heard a gentle male voice say, "She used to call me 'Angel'."

"Excuse me?"

"Does she call you 'Angel' in bed?"

I was so astonished that my instincts momentarily froze.

"You do sleep with her, don't you?" he continued, since I'd paused. "I mean, you're her boyfriend."

I said, "You son of a bitch," but the line went dead. I slammed the phone down and kicked an armchair. I picked the phone back up and tried *69 again. Unlisted. I heard Linda drop something in the shower and swear. She couldn't have heard the phone. I decided to keep the call to myself.

I stayed in the living room for a long while, staring out the window, watching the spot where Sean had stood across the street. A sound from the kitchen roused me from my trance.

Linda was sitting on the kitchen counter, hugging herself and crying.

"Hi," she sniffled.

"Hi."

I sat next to her and wrapped my arm about her. Her hair was still wet.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Sorry for what? You didn't do anything."

"But I knew him. If I never knew him this wouldn't be happening." She fiddled with a wine cork. "I wish we could just...not think about him."

I said. "What I want to know is, how does he know there's an 'us?'"

"He could have talked to anybody, people he and I both knew. Someone must have just told him."

"Yeah, I suppose."

She shivered.

"I hate this," she said. "I feel like I need to apologize, and that makes me angry. I don't want to feel angry."

She let her feet drop to the floor, and then stood still.

"He was supposed to disappear," she said.
We couldn't sleep. We opened up a bottle of good whiskey and sipped it, sitting together on the floor of the living room, Linda wrapped in a blanket. We traded stories about us, saying whatever we remembered. We talked about the trips we'd already taken together to Napa Valley and Ithaca. We tried to guess how many bottles of wine we'd bought together. Eventually, we struggled with easy words. We drank from the bottle, passing it back and forth like alley mates.

At three thirty in the morning, the buzzer rang. It rang again and again.

"Doug."

I pushed into my boots as fast as I could. I ran down the stairs, stumbling a bit, but nobody was there. I stood outside on the stoop and looked up and down the street, but there was nobody around. All the same potential hiding places were available: the stores, the restaurants, the parked cars and corners. It was too cold to be wearing only a sweater and jeans. I was about to turn around and go inside when I saw it.

Tied to the railing was a Christmas decoration—an angel.

It was simple, wooden, painted white with a coarse brush. It had a little bell attached to it at the bottom, and it tinkled in the light breeze.

My mind played an image of Sean standing in the snow, and then the white of snow turning into the white of sheets, on a bed, with Sean under Linda's nude body. My mind showed them making the unique subtle rocking of pleasure, of giving in. I could see him over her shoulder, his face wearing an expression of passionate disbelief. I could see him admiring the rising and falling of her breasts, then her face, then looking over her shoulder directly at me. I shook out of it and swept my gaze up and down the street for any sign of him. I didn't see him, but of course I did see him. Every moving body out there was Sean. Every shadow was Sean.

Somewhere deep in my drunken panic, I managed to tell myself to calm down, but it was no use. I ripped the angel off the railing. I knew he was watching. I could feel him looking at me. I stepped across the street, to where he had taunted me, standing there like a frozen memory. I stood staring up and down the street, at every parked car, every doorway. I looked up at our window and saw Linda standing there, looking out at me, her hands covering her mouth as she watched me standing across the street, in the snow, holding the angel, staring up at her.