It started with a phone call in the morning. I answered my phone, just as I always do, "hello?"
It was a wrong number. The guy was mostly speaking English, but another language too. It took me longer to get my point across.
"You have the wrong number," I said twice, once quickly and once very slowly. I've never been one to say "I'm sorry but..." in that situation.
He hung up.
I resumed getting ready for work. The phone rang again.
I looked at the number. It was the same guy. I debated just letting it ring and ring. Eventually he'd get the idea and give up. But then I'd have to listen to my phone vibrating again and again. Sometimes the vibration is worse than a ring, especially if the phone is on a desk or a wood floor. Then it sounds like a drill. So I picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
He started talking. He was speaking Korean. "Hey," I said, cutting him off, "you still have the wrong number."
He swore. In English. Not necessarily at me, but at the situation, I suppose. Something about sex.
I suppose in this kind of situation I have a tendency to go a bit overboard. I have a hot temper at times. I swore back, but unlike his, my swear was not at the situation. Rather, I swore at him very directly. I won't repeat it here, but it had to do with feces, anger, sex, and his mother.
There was a pause. I'm not sure what either of us was waiting for, and I don't know why I even stayed on the phone. After I said what I did I had clearly given myself the opportunity to hang up. I was victorious in some sense. I should have hung up and in retrospect I wish I had. But somehow, because of what I'd said, I couldn't hang up. I knew I'd gone overboard. Perhaps I had been overly sensitive. Pitying him in some way.
He said something back to me. It wasn't so much what he said, but the way he said it. Still, it had very little effect on me. He and I both knew that. So he swore again. It was a bit biting, a bit graphic. Again, I won't repeat the comment here, but it was in the realm of my father, his penis, my penis, and the Earth.
It stung a bit. I had an inclination to rear back and really tell him something special. Something he'd never forget.
But given the context, what I had said, what he had said, the fact that he had dialed the wrong number in the first place; there was very little he could do to compensate. And he in fact hung up first.
I left my apartment and headed to the subway station. I replayed the conversation in my head a few times. I had no regrets, and for that, I felt good. I had, with swiftness, and just the perfect pitch of audacity, put him squarely in his place.
I mean, imagine, calling a wrong number, and being so frustrated, that you would erupt with something like what he'd said. My pity towards him disappeared as I held my subway card against the sensor.
I got on the train comfortably. I sat down and scanned the car firstly for attractive women, secondly for brightly colored objects and/or clothes, thirdly I perused over the people in my immediate proximity, and then finally to the advertisements and lights above me.
People got on and off the subway. I glanced at the new faces, and watched some of the more attractive ones through the window as they left the group for unseen destinations.
I focused on one person in particular, a young beautiful woman, whose eyes I instinctively and absolutely avoided, but whom I never passed a chance to cast a deep, unknown, gaze through. This was totally unbeknownst to her.
Eventually, she sensed someone was looking at her. Her eyes darted from person to person, but as she arrived at mine I steadfastly looked somewhere else until the coast was clear. Then, I returned to her, my stare even more piercing than before.
Dressed simply, she wore blue jeans and a red sweater. It looked to be cashmere. Very soft. She was still, not moving at all save her eyes, which from time to time, attempted to pick up my perpetrating eyes. This went on for some 10 minutes.
As I enjoyed this little game of cat and mouse I began to have the distinct feeling that I was being watched.
Someone's eyes were following me. I calmly scanned around the subway. Eyes avoided mine; others glanced into mine, and then hurriedly looked away. First I scanned the opposite row to mine. Then my own row. Intermittently I let my eyes dive back to the woman in the red sweater.
I didn't immediately fear the vaguely Asian looking man in the black coat and red baseball cap when I realized he was the one staring at me. But as it became clear that he had been staring at me for some time; that I had sensed the stare absolutely correctly; and that there was some purpose to this mysterious stare, struck fear in me.
I looked away and tried to focus on a woman on my left who'd just gotten onto the train. She had a light blue blouse that was a little fuzzy. I stared directly into her front for a long time. But no matter how hard I tried to ignore, I could still feel the man in the red cap looking at me.
It was then that I realized who he was.
I knew the man looking at me was the man who'd called me just 30 minutes before. I could sense this. Somehow he had found out who I was. Where I was. Perhaps where I was going.
The question was not who, but why.
Why did he take the time to find me? Was he so angry about what I had said?
My first instinct was to immediately get off the train. I sat up. Instinctively, I looked at the woman in the red sweater.
To my surprise she was looking at the man, who sat almost directly in front of her. Then she looked at me. Had she seen this situation unfolding? Had she sensed his anger? My innocence? Could she help me? Could she save me?
I tried calm myself. I took a deep breath. My eyes fluttered into the middle of the train car, but then back into his direction. Even if it was somehow him, and say I ran off the subway car at that moment, what could he do? Follow me? Shake his fist at me? Pull out a gun? Shoot me? In front of everyone?
My fear seemed ridiculous.
I took a deep breath and set out to count to 60. In 60 seconds he would get off the train, or would find someone else to stare at, or, at the very least realize that dialing the wrong number and the swears that followed; were merely said in the heat of the moment.
As my count approached 45 seconds my eyes had drifted to the man's shoes. As I sullenly climbed his body, to his knees, his chest, his chin, up his jaw line, I prayed his eyes wouldn't be fixed on me.
But they were.
His expression wasn't one of hatred, I noticed. He didn't seem to be angry. He was calm, but also very...amused. Despite his seriousness he seemed slightly pleased by the situation.
I thought about what I had said to him. Was it so bad? Maybe it was.
My stop had arrived and I had to think fast. It was a popular stop typically. Half the people would be getting off the train at once. It would be difficult and perhaps dangerous, but if I were just able to get lost in the shuffle I might survive. If he didn't see me initially, I might have a chance. I cast a quick farewell gaze in the direction of the woman with the red sweater. Her face was obstructed by a man reading a newspaper. It was tragic, but I had to leave. She would have to survive in my memory. I stared hard at her chest one last time.
There's wickedness in people, I thought to myself as the train accelerated toward my stop. A relentlessness, a viciousness that is revealed every time man is merely himself. It is his instinct. His will. I had revealed mine when I had said what I did, and now he was doing the same in his pursuit of me.
I contemplated this as I calmly stood up to get off the train. I was sandwiched between two people. If he was following me could I move quickly? I wasn't sure. But I could only drift out of the train and hope.
As the doors closed I began to turn my head to see if, indeed, the man in the red cap was following me.
He wasn't.
With the doors safely shut I stopped mid-step and turned around. I saw the red cap, just obstructed by the train's window pane.
As the train lurched forward, toward me, I saw the woman red sweater quickly stand up and move across the aisle. She said something to the man in the red cap and put her hand on his shoulder as she sat down. The man was shaking his head. His amused smirk had turned into a broad smile. A volatile, demonic, satiated smile.
As the pair became even with me I could see they were both laughing, and to my surprise, both had turned and looked at me. They were laughing at me.
I couldn't imagine what had prompted the laughter. My memory of the phone call, the insults, my theory of his following me, all disappeared. I was standing on the platform. Not far from where I stood two people were laughing at me.
I extended my arm and made a hand gesture indicating sex. Like sight on a gun I let the gesture follow them, their train car, and then the train itself, until even the lights, and even the sliver of sound had disappeared into the tunnel.