A woman comes into the café and takes her place at one of the tables behind us. I'm sitting at a angle, facing towards my friend to avoid the midday sun's glare, so I notice her, just sitting there, staring into nothingness. To begin with, she looks ordinary, mundane. Her clothes are plain - white shirt under a black, slightly old-fashioned, wool coat. A handback strap crosses her chest. Her expression is deadened, flat, but I think nothing of it and return to our conversation. We're talking summer plans, diaries and lists of things to do. There's less than twenty minutes left before we'll scuttle back to our desks, hands flying across keyboards, heads full of deadlines, so our conversation steps up a gear.
In a city, any concept of ordinary is far-reaching, so diverse is the climate. But something about this woman's behaviour disturbs me. I find myself looking over my friend's shoulder to check her out every few seconds. Her behaviour is incongrous. We're in a café, a busy, high-energy, eat-and-run kinda place, not a location for lingering, nor daydreaming. I wonder if anyone else has noticed her, so busy are they with their thai noodle soup, ham and swiss baguettes, shiny black containers of sushi with a miniature fish-shaped bottle of soy sauce, single slices of dry cake shrinkwrapped many miles from here, lattés with an extra shot, waxed paper cups of green tea, miso soup, polished green apples, cans of fizzy drink, plastic pots of fruit purée, Greek yogurt and crunchy granola, thick smoothies (all tasting too much like banana, regardless of their colour)... I'm sure no one else has seen her. She hasn't bought anything, and I can feel the annoyance of customers walking up and down searching for a table. Her hair is orange, frizzy, parted down the centre, and her eyes remind me of steelys - those steel ball-bearings we used to win at marbles when I was younger. After another five minutes or so we've finished our lunch, and I see that the steel eyes are staring in our direction. She stares mercilessly, without embarassment it seems, just glaring at us. When we get up to leave these metallic eyes will follow us out of the door.
Once in the relative freedom of the street, a gust of cool air flicks my hair back from my face, and I feel the freshness of the air. "Did you see that woman?" I ask my friend, "She was staring at us the entire time!" She hasn't noticed. I know I sometimes read too much into things, so I let the thoughts go, and rush back to my desk.
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Ten days or so later, I'm with the same friend in an entirely different part of town. We've been shopping, trying on dresses, and are excitable and expectant of a fun afternoon. We've had coffee and biscotti and flown down back streets to escape the Saturday afternoon crowds. We're almost at our last destination for the day, a shop selling smart dresses, and our feet are beginning to ache. We walk through a confetti-like crowd, and are chatting as we go. I turn my head to the right, towards the shops we're neglecting for others, when I see her. The same black woolen coat, cotton-wool ginger hair, the metal eyes. She sees me, and for a moment our eyes meet. She stares, expression blank, eyes boring through the afternoon sun, and her head follows us as we walk arm in arm past her. I realise I'm cold, and when I look down at my hand, it's screwed up into a tight fist. I fight the desire to look back that is at the front of my consciousness, and increase my pace to lose myself in the Saturday crowd.
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