Starr The Follower

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84344-706-1
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten

In New York City's work hard, play harder singles scene, a young woman looking for love can find herself the object of a deadly obsession. With each meaningless date and disappointing new boyfriend, Katie Porter is becoming more and more disillusioned. No matter how wide a net she casts she can't seem to find a guy who really understands her.But someone thinks she's special - very special. And he's following her... But it's not her boyfriend, Andy. The frat-boy who never grew up is too busy working out how far Katie will go and if her friends are hot, to stop and think whether Katie's 'the one'. But someone's already decided she is - and he's watching her. Peter sees Katie at the gym. He sees her at the coffee bar she stops at on the way to work. In fact, he sees her almost everywhere, as he quietly follows her. But most of all, he sees her in his plans for the future. He's got the proposal worked out, he's even got the ring and their happy home already bought. After all, he's had enough time to plan things to perfection - he grew up in the same small town. Surely, after all these years, he can't let anything stand in his way

Jason Starr is the author of Cold Caller, Nothing Personal, Fake I.D., Hard Feelings and Tough Luck followed by Lights Out, The Follower, Panic Attack, Savage Lane and his latest novel, Too Far. He was born in Brooklyn in 1966 and still lives in New York City.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Starr, Jason

Leseproben

2 Andy Barnett was looking at the monitor on his PC, at the little digital clock in the lower-right-hand corner. He had plenty of work to do – a new monthly sales survey for one of the companies he followed was due tomorrow – but it was 4:22, and after four in the afternoon Andy could never deal with work. He wished he could go online – check out his fantasy football team or IM his friends – but the bank’s system people monitored everything employees did on the net, and this dude, Justin, who’d worked two cubicles down, had been fired two weeks ago for surfing on company time. So whenever Andy didn’t feel like working, he couldn’t do anything but zone out, staring at the monitor with an intense, focused expression, as if he were trying to solve some complicated problem, in case his boss or somebody else in management happened to pass by. At 4:26, Andy’s phone rang. He recognized his friend Scott’s number on the caller ID. He picked up and said in a low voice, ‘Dude, what’s up?’ ‘Chilling,’ Scott said. ‘Waiting to get the hell outta here.’ ‘Me too, bro. Me too. What’s going on later?’ ‘Some guys at work are gonna check out the happy hour at McAleer’s.’ ‘McAleer’s blew last week, dude.’ ‘Yeah, but it should be pretty cool tonight. My buddy Dave knows a girl there and she’s bringing friends.’ ‘Cute?’ ‘One’s a babe, two’re borderline, the others I don’t know. But, hey, if the talent’s lame, we can just hit Firehouse. Dave says there was a ton of tuna there last week.’ ‘I don’t know, dude,’ Andy said. ‘Maybe we should stay east. I mean, I can only stay out till like seven, seven-thirty tonight anyway.’ ‘Don’t tell me you’re seeing that chick again?’ ‘Yeah, we’re gonna go out to dinner.’ ‘Dude,’ Scott said. ‘What’s this, like the third time in two weeks?’ It was actually their fourth date. ‘She’s really cool,’ Andy said. ‘Bro, how many times I gotta tell ya? You can’t stick around, begging for it like a dog. If it doesn’t happen on the second date, you gotta bail.’ ‘What makes you think I didn’t get any yet?’ ‘You? If you got some I would’ve heard about it the next morning. Hell, you would’ve jumped out of bed and called me in the middle of the night – Dude, I just fucked this girl. Really, I did.’ Scott was laughing. Andy said, ‘Look who’s talking. When was the last time you had a girlfriend, freakin’ sophomore year?’ ‘Yeah, but I got laid last weekend. I’m tellin’ ya, dude – you keep it up with this chick, pretty soon she’s gonna wanna take you ring shopping.’ Drew Frasier, one of the senior analysts, passed Andy’s cubicle. ‘I better go,’ Andy said to Scott, nearly whispering, ‘before I get busted.’ ‘So what’s the deal tonight? You coming out with us or not?’ ‘I told you, I can meet up if we stay east.’ ‘So let me get this straight,’ Scott said. ‘You want me to meet you for a drink at some lame East Side bar and blow off my friends and the hot, fuckable babes at McAleer’s so you can take off at seven o’clock for a date with your future fiancée?’ Andy, used to taking crap from Scott, was shaking his head, smiling. ‘Come on, man, blow her off,’ Scott went on. ‘You’ll probably hook up with one of the chicks at McAleer’s. Then, later, we’re gonna hit this party on Broadway in the sixties. Cornell dudes are throwing it. It’s supposed to be hot and you’re guaranteed to hook up or at least get some numbers.’ ‘Sorry, bro, can’t make it tonight,’ Andy said. ‘But I’ll definitely meet up with you guys tomorrow to watch the game.’ ‘Yeah, if you’re not engaged by then.’ ‘Later, dude.’ Andy clicked off and resumed staring intently at the clock on the monitor. At four fifty-nine, he started putting on his suit jacket. At five, he was leaving his cubicle, heading toward the elevators. Walking along Park Avenue toward the subway stop on Fifty-first and Lex, Andy checked out every good-looking girl he passed. He couldn’t help it. He was a twenty-three-year-old single guy in Manhattan, and as far as he was concerned there were only two types of people in the world – hot girls and everybody else. As Andy approached the crowded entrance to the subway, he zeroed in on a really cute chick with straight brown hair in black pants and a black suit jacket. The clothes were loose, but it looked like she had a nice body – thin anyway, which was all that really mattered. There were about five people between them as they headed down the stairs, but he kept watching her as the crowd moved toward the turnstiles. She swiped her MetroCard and went down the steps toward the jam-packed platform. He followed her as she wove through the crowd toward the end of the platform where it was slightly less crowded. When she stopped, Andy stopped, right next to her. Every time Andy rode the subway, he would automatically zero in on the cutest girl on the platform and stand as close to her as possible. Then he would try to get into a conversation, or at least make a lot of eye contact, and then when the train came he would make sure they got on the same car. If things went well, he’d keep the small talk going, hopefully say a couple of clever, witty things to make her laugh – getting a girl to laugh was key – and then ask for her number. He’d gotten a few numbers on the subway, and even went out with this one girl a few times and wound up getting laid. But most of the time, he struck out. The big problem was that a lot of girls were paranoid as hell on the subway and wouldn’t talk to guys, even though if they saw the same guys at a bar or a club they’d gladly talk to them then, because that was more socially acceptable. Andy was looking at the brown-haired girl, but she wasn’t noticing him, or at least wasn’t acting like she did. A train pulled into the station and Andy boarded directly behind her. He followed her to the middle of the car and gripped the same pole she was holding, their hands inches apart. She was staring up ahead, as if she were reading the start an exciting career as a dental assistant ad over and over again. Man, she was even better-looking than Andy had thought. She had big green eyes, nice lips, and no zits. Andy always told his friends that the best place to meet girls was the subway because the fluorescent light was so unforgiving. If a girl looked good on the 6 train, she’d look good anywhere. At the next stop, Fifty-ninth Street, the girl shifted her attention away from the ad toward Andy. ‘Hi,’ Andy said. ‘Hi’ was by far the best pickup line, much better than, ‘Have we met?’ The girl hesitated, then smiled and said, ‘Hi,’ and looked away again. Andy knew he had his opening; it was just a matter of delivering the perfect follow-up. People exited and entered the train, and Andy and the girl were squeezed even closer together. The train started moving and Andy waited for the girl to look at him again, and then he said, ‘Now I know what sardines feel like.’ ‘What?’ the girl asked. The line wasn’t that funny and he wished he’d said something else. He knew it would sound even less funny when he repeated it, but he did anyway. The girl smiled and laughed a little, but Andy wasn’t sure that she’d even heard him over the noise of the subway. Andy was trying to think of some other clever thing to say, but then the girl moved away toward the door and exited at the Sixty-eighth Street stop. Andy looked around the train for more talent and saw a good-looking Chinese girl with funky glasses sitting at the far end of the car, reading a thick paperback. There was space in front of her, so, at the next stop, Andy casually moved over there. He tried to make eye contact with the girl but she was too engrossed in her book to notice. At Ninety-sixth Street – Andy’s stop – Andy followed the girl out of the station. Andy was hoping that she lived in his building so he could get onto the elevator with her or follow her to the mailbox area and say, Hey, didn’t I just see you on the subway? a line that sometimes worked even when he hadn’t just seen the girl on the subway. But at the corner of Ninety-sixth and Lex, the girl headed uptown, and Andy went in the opposite direction, toward Ninety-fifth Street. Andy lived in Normandie Court, a complex of three massive apartment buildings that took up an entire square block between Second and Third Avenues and Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets. The majority of residents in the building were recent college grads, which was why many people referred to the buildings as Dormandie Court. Andy lived in a three-bedroom apartment with five other guys and shared a room with his buddy Greg, a frat brother from Delta Kappa Epsilon at Michigan. Last year, Andy had had his own room at the frat house and he felt like he was taking a step backward in life, having to share a bedroom again, but he had little choice. Manhattan rents were so out of control that unless he wanted to move into some dive walk-up, or to an outer borough or Jersey, sharing was the only way to go. The rent on the apartment was $3,600 a month so Andy’s share came to only $600, which left him with plenty of expendable income for beer and going out. Andy went through the revolving doors into the lobby, which had the same anonymous, corporate feeling as the lobby in the building where he worked, and rode the elevator to his apartment on the...