The Man Stalking Me Said Stop Working Alone, and the Kind Vet Was the One Who Let My Tire Down novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Three Terms
Maija walks out and sets three terms for the man in the lot; he accepts every one, and Andy says her tire has a loose valve.
"The sheriff's deputy knows your plate," I said.
"He turned the color of paper and told me to move."
Matt Ravnik stood where he had stood the night before, at the edge of the light, with the same snow on the same shoulders.
He showed no surprise at all.
"He's a careful young man," he said.
"I'm glad he told you."
"I'm not moving," I said.
"I didn't ask you to."
"What do you want from me?" I said.
"I told you last night."
His voice stayed level.
"I want you to stop working this shift alone."
"There are four plow drivers on my radio and a supervisor who calls at midnight."
"You are in that building alone from two until five," he said.
"There's a camera on the door that nobody watches but you."
I looked at him, and at the sedan, and at the snow falling thinly between us.
Then I said what I had planned all day.
"You are not going to scare me off this job, and you are not going to scare me out of this city.
"So here is how this works."
He waited.
"One.
"You stand in this lot and only in this lot.
"You never come to my door.
"Not here, not at my apartment, not at the cemetery in Hermantown.
"Never."
"Yes," he said.
"Two.
"Any night I ask, you tell me one true thing.
"I don't care how small.
"No lies."
He didn't blink.
"Yes."
"Three.
"If I say stop, you go.
"The first time, and every time."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth and was gone so fast I might have imagined it.
"Those are fair terms," he said.
"They aren't a negotiation."
"No."
I held the pepper spray where he could see it.
"Give me your first true thing."
He took his time.
I realized he was choosing which words he could stand behind.
"I've been in this lot four nights out of eleven," he said, "because somebody else has been watching your door.
"I'm here so that he stays away from it."
My stomach turned over.
"Who?"
"That isn't the true thing you asked for," he said.
"That's the next one.
"I don't have enough to tell you yet, and I won't give you half of a thing."
"That's convenient."
"It isn't," he said.
"It's the least convenient thing I've ever done."
He held out his right hand, palm up and flat, between us.
He did not reach for me.
He held it in the snow and let me look at it.
It was a big hand, scarred across the knuckles, the fingers slightly curled.
It shook, very slightly, from the cold or from something else.
"I've never touched anything you haven't given me," he said.
"I won't start tonight."
Something went through me that had nothing to do with the temperature.
I thought about the inch between his fingers and mine on the car roof.
I did not take his hand.
I stood there with the pepper spray cold in my fist and looked at it.
"Go home, Mr. Ravnik," I said.
"Not yet.
"When you've gone in and locked the door, I'll go.
"Tomorrow night you can ask me for another."
"I'm not going to ask you for anything."
"You will," he said, without any smugness at all.
I went in and locked the door.
On the monitor he stood a while longer and then got into the car.
He didn't drive away.
I told myself I was angry.
I told myself I should call the sheriff again, and the sheriff would tell me to move again.
I sat at the desk with my pulse going hard and my palm warm where nothing had touched it.
At four the break-room door opened and Andy came in, bringing the cold with him.
"You're still up," he said.
"It's a job," I said.
"I saw the sedan," he said quietly.
"I was in the lot at half past two.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I said.
"I thought about calling someone," Andy said.
He filled his thermos and stood looking at me across the urn, gentle and worried.
"Your tire's still down, by the way.
"I can see it from the truck.
"Slow leak, and the valve's loose.
"I'll look at it Saturday, if you'll let me."
I thought about a man in the dark who knew my tire, and a man in the light who offered to fix it.
I thought, with a relief I'm ashamed of now, that one of them was easy.
"Saturday," I said.
"Thank you, Andy."
"Anything for you, Two Sugars."
He touched two fingers to his forehead and went out into the snow.
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