Paul sits at Mark’s kitchen table. “I think I’m going crazy,” he says again.
Mark is glad to hear this. At least, it isn’t his imagination. He thinks Paul might be going crazy as well.

“Why don’t you tell me where you’ve been?” Mark asks.

Paul’s eyes come up: red, bagged, bright: “I’ve been trying to catch up with him, to catch a glimpse of him.”

“Of who?”

“The one who keeps following me. Always right behind me. Close.”

“Someone is following you?”

“Yes,” Paul replies. “I get into my car, I turn on my headlights, and headlights come on behind me. They follow me, close, but there’s never a car there when I stop.” He is talking quickly, but then he slows down. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.” He speaks these words gently, with care.

“No,” Mark lies. “No, I won’t.”

Paul looks uncertain, but then he takes the step: “I think it’s me.”

“I don’t understand,” says Mark.

“It’s my car,” Paul replies. “My car is following me, somehow, with me in it. It’s the same model, same year, same everything. The person driving it, I can’t make him out too well, but…” Another pause. “He looks like me,” Paul continues, voice falling to a ragged half-whisper. “I can’t see him very well, but the hair’s the same. His silhouette looks like mine.”

Paul’s breathing oscillates. Mark is no doctor, but he would guess his friend is close to a breakdown or maybe something worse. Mark feels a slight tickle of fear.

“He gets out of the car, too. When I was at the dry cleaners yesterday, I forgot to get a ticket, I went back in, and the clerk looked at me like I was crazy. He said I just came in for the ticket, that he had just given it to me a moment ago. I searched my pockets, Mark, but no ticket." Paul’s hands turn out his pockets. They are empty – no ticket. "They won’t give me my clothes back without a ticket, Mark.”

Mark doesn’t know what to say.

“Can you do me a favor?” Paul asks.

“Sure,” Mark replies. He hopes that his voice sounds natural.

“Look out at the driveway. See if there’s a car behind mine.”

A swift moment, not more than the space of a heartbeat, passes before Mark answers. He doesn’t want to turn his back on Paul. They are in the kitchen, surrounded by knives, pans, steel chairs, wine rack filled with heavy bottles.

Faith wins out. He looks out the window. Paul’s Nissan sits alone beneath the streetlight. He turns back. Paul hasn’t moved. “I don’t see one.”

“Now watch,” Paul begins. “I’m going to go and start it up. I’m going to drive around the block. Watch for another car, just like mine. Here,” Paul reaches up, takes a wine bottle from the rack on the countertop. He reads the label. “Now, if I come back in, and I don’t have a bottle of merlot, you’ll know it’s not me.”

“Paul,” Mark begins weakly, “who else would it be?”

Paul’s expression goes blank. “I don’t know.” The words are lifeless.

Paul steps through the door. Mark is at once flooded with relief.

As he promised, Mark watches through the small window. Paul stops beside the driver’s side door of his car. He looks up, sees Mark framed in the small yellow glow of the kitchen window, and waves the bottle in his hand.

Mark watches as Paul gets into the car, listens as he starts the engine. The headlights come on, lighting the driveway and yard. All is well.

There is a sudden flash of motion by the corner of the house; a small, dark flutter, as if someone had been turning near the stairs that lead up to Mark’s apartment, but it is gone too quickly for Mark to be certain that he had seen anything at all.

Paul is still in the driveway, looking up: Mark can see him clearly. The interior of the car seems very bright – almost as if there is another car just behind him, headlights on. Paul backs out of the driveway, the strange illumination staying with him.

The kitchen door opens. Mark spins around: Paul is in the doorway. He wears the same manic intensity, but there is a difference: where there had been wretchedness, there is now panic. Where there had been fear, there is now rage. Paul shakes with emotion. Mark sees he’s not carrying a wine bottle.

“Where is he?” Paul shouts.

“How?” is all Mark can manage. He looks out the window. The Nissan sits in the driveway, dark and quiet. The strange light is gone.

“I asked you WHERE IS HE!” Paul shouts. He sweeps the full drying rack off of the counter. Dishes shatter on the floor. “It’s making me crazy…” His voice hitches; a sob escapes along with the words. “He’s always one step ahead of me…”

“You just left…” Mark replies. He stands up and moves behind the chair, fingers searching for a hold.

“I know he’s been here,” Paul shouts as he kicks the chair away. “I saw his car in the driveway!” His eyes twitch: his hand flashes out to the wine rack and comes back gripping a bottle by the neck. “Last chance, Mark. Where is he?”

Mark has no answer, but Paul isn’t waiting for one. The bottle comes down. Mark is blinded by glass, wine, and pain. Paul begins stabbing with the ragged neck of the bottle. He is screaming “One step ahead!” but doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

Mark is screaming as well, but Paul notices this even less. He ignores Mark’s fingers as they tear at his clothes, ripping buttons and spilling his pockets. A dry cleaning ticket sticks to Mark’s bloody palm.