A Grander Mechanism

I had read somewhere that when private detectives follow someone, they watch the feet rather than the back of the head, so the subject won't sense they are being watched. This is similarly taught in the SAS and in martial arts for when approaching an enemy from behind. So, I supposed I could at least rest assured it wasn’t a PI, special forces, or a kung-fu expert whose eyes had been burning a hole in my back since I left the restaurant.

It was an early evening in late November, and the back streets of coastal Portsmouth were as grey and empty as its skies. A few pigeons pecked around the puddles like overtired housewives picking up dirty laundry. I was the only other animate thing here, walking home in the colorless twilight.

At 6'3" and built like a rugby player, I imagined I wasn't your typical target for the many creeps that prowled the city at night, but then again, there's no accounting for taste, as my ex-wife used to say. I wasn’t afraid. I was puzzled. The sensation was strong, but why would anyone want to follow me? I was average-looking, and I didn’t particularly dress in a way that suggested I had money (although I was fairly well off) and, by all accounts, I was rather an uninteresting man. I only ever stood out because of my size, and even that was by no means exceptional.

I tried to brush off the feeling and thought about the date I’d just had. I’d offered to walk Emma home, but she’d insisted on getting a taxi. Which was fine by me. It had been a year since my divorce, but the thought of having sex with someone else still terrified me. "You have to get back out there!" my mum had told me before she died. "If I buy the farm before I get to be a grandma, I’ll come back and haunt you!" Perhaps that was her angry ghost following me now.

She was right, though. And I liked Emma. She smelled like my ex-wife and had the same color hair, cut shorter, but only by a few inches. The same tanned olive skin, too. I couldn’t remember what her eyes were like. Her bio on the dating app said she’d lived in Spain for five years, but we hadn’t talked about that, which, in hindsight, was strange, given that we’d eaten at a tapas place. What had we talked about? The evening was a little foggy. Nerves, I supposed.

I’d only walked this way home maybe fifteen times, but for a third time, I saw the couple in the window. They were on the second floor of a posh block of flats whose windows were tall and room-length, and from halfway up the steps in the alley opposite, I could see them having sex. I stopped and sat on the damp concrete. I lit a cigarette and winced as I sucked in the smoke: the aftertaste of vodka doesn’t pair pleasantly with Marlboro Lights. Tonight, the lady half of the couple was wearing purple lingerie, and they were using a position I couldn’t even begin to articulate. I supposed they got off on the thought of people watching them. I wondered if they could feel my eyes on them now and if it was elevating their intimacy in some way. Did it mean I was being intimate with them, too? If so, I’d lit a cigarette far too soon.

I thought I should text Emma to see if she got home okay. I tugged my phone out from my raincoat.

Hi Emma. Just textg to check yo u got

home all right. Thanks you for a qonderful

evening. I intended to as but your tax

arrived before I I did... Would you like. Me

to come for a walk in the park with me

Sunday norning?( I know a great cafe, Cafe

Bridge. It’s is the b est-kept secret on

Portsmouth May be you could tell me all about

tyour adeentures in Spain? xx

I hit send, and a notice popped up on the app telling me my message was undeliverable. I tried again, then again, even though I understood what that meant.

The couple had finished. They lay embraced on the mattress, and they looked happy. I don’t think you should begrudge people for doing whatever it takes to achieve that, even if you find their methods unsavory.

I flicked my cigarette into a puddle, it sizzled out and slowly rotated on the surface like a little free-floating astronaut. I wasn't angry at Emma. In fact, I was a little relieved. The world had reverted to yesterday’s settings: small, predictable, bearable. "Sorry, Mum," I said, almost expecting she'd reply. I carried on up the steps on my way home.

As I walked, the feeling of being watched crept up on me again. Who was it? Was it a spirit or a human being? Maybe it was just the weeds that grew between the cracks in the pavement, wondering when I’d be joining them. Maybe everything was conscious on some level. It was a comforting prospect. If people can tell when they are being watched, that would mean there is an invisible link between us all, and possibly between all things. Some panpsychic connection that plugs you into a bigger whole—a grander mechanism—and perhaps you, as a part of it, have a crucial function or purpose that will someday be revealed ... when the time is right. It would at least mean you were never alone. Never completely alone.

I arrived at my house just as it started to rain. As I fumbled for my keys, I heard a 'Yap! Yap!' behind me, and, turning round, there on the garden path was a scruffy little puppy with straggly black hair, shivering in the downpour.

"Oh! Are you the one that’s been following me?"

He ran up the porch and danced around my ankles, wagging his tail. I knelt down and rubbed his neck.

"Where’s your collar, boy? Oh, you better come inside, hadn’t you."

I took him in and dried him with an old towel.

"What’s your name? Mine’s John. It’s just me here, I’m afraid. The wife divorced me... She just couldn’t let me do what makes me happy, you know?"

On Sunday morning, I took him for a walk around the park, and then to Cafe Bridge, where I snuck wafers of ham from my ploughman’s for him under the table. I snuck a tot of whiskey into my coffee, too.

He turned out to be a very hungry boy. "You’ll eat me out of house and home!" I teased whenever he pestered me for food. But I always fed him whatever he wanted, and over the years, he became a big and fearsome dog.

Now, every night, he sleeps on the mat by the front door, guarding me from my dreams—from the world, whose eyes I evade in my little dark rooms, as time does its most merciful thing.