I'll Be Watching You. M. William Phelps

She had just started a new job at MediPhysics Corporation that April. Elmwood Park was not a bastion of crime. For the most part, Mary Ellen had little to worry about—save for living alone as a single woman. She lived on the second floor, and her landlady lived below. She didn’t know the woman well. But Mary Ellen said the lady was a curmudgeon, an old hag who was paranoid about everything and everyone. “She was really eccentric,” recalled Mary Ellen. “She’d do strange things. When it was cold out, she’d remind me to leave the upstairs bathtub water running as a trickle,” which wasn’t so odd, “but she would leave me a note to do it every single night.”

      There was no reasoning with the woman. She had her rules and that was it. Keys were a fascination. The entryway (the main door) to the house, because it was a two-family, was to the left of the landlady’s first-floor apartment. When you entered the building, whether you were heading up to Mary Ellen’s second-floor apartment or the landlady’s first-floor apartment, you had to first go through a main door and either head up the stairs in front of you to Mary Ellen’s, or take a quick left and walk into the landlady’s. This front door, leading into the building, was not supposed to be left unlocked.

      Unlike most dead-bolted doors, however, the door didn’t have a latch on the inside; it had a key lock, same as it did on the outside. The landlady was firm about this door being locked at all times, whether you were inside or out. “Always lock it, Mary Ellen,” she’d bark. “Never leave or return home without locking the dead bolt.”

      Not only was the lock illegal, but it posed a great danger if you were inside and couldn’t find your keys. There were no windows in the hallway leading up to Mary Ellen’s apartment, or downstairs near the entrance to the landlady’s apartment. “While my daughter came to visit with her baby once,” Mary Ellen said, “I ran out to the store. I came back, and she explained that she had wanted to get something from her car while I was gone, but couldn’t get out of the house.”

      It was a strange way to live. However, Mary Ellen overlooked the woman’s odd behavior because, compared to where she had come from, it was like living in a castle. What were a few rules? Even if she didn’t agree with them.

      13

      I

      On Saturday night, August 1, 1987, Mary Ellen decided to get back into the swing of being single and head out on the town. She left her apartment around 7:00 P.M. and went to a singles dance. Dances were held in hotels and restaurants. A singles dance was a way, Mary Ellen always believed, to meet and schmooze with other people in the same position. It was safe. She wouldn’t have to go from bar to bar to meet new people. She could show up and feel a sense of empowerment that everyone at the dance was there for the same reason: to hook up.

      It had been a year since she last went out or even thought about attending a singles function. Two marriages down the drain. Her parents and, especially, her pious brother, the priest, were not happy about the way her life had turned out. But Mary Ellen trudged on in the face of such discouragement. It felt right going out to a dance. She was her own woman. This particular event was being held at a bar she liked: Kracker’s in Clifton, not too far from her apartment.

      To her amazement, when she walked in, she noticed there were about eighty people standing around, dancing, chatting, getting to know one another. Quite a large crowd to work her way through. As the night wore on, Mary Ellen talked with and danced—“I love to dance,” she said—with about four different men, none of whom seemed all that interesting. All was well, regardless. It wasn’t a total loss. She had a drink. It was a good time.

      And then she walked into the cocktail lounge to contemplate leaving. It was well after midnight. Standing in the doorway between the bar entrance and the ballroom, where the dance had been held, Mary Ellen thought it had been a fun night. Maybe she’d get back into the singles-dance scene again. Maybe not wait a year this time to start dating.

      Just as she was preparing to leave, a “very clean-cut, blond…very well-dressed, suit and tie, very neat” man made a gesture toward her. He was sitting at the bar and had just happened to turn around as she was about to walk out.

      “He was a wholesome-appearing person,” she said later.

      The music was loud. People were talking all around them. He had turned around on his bar stool and whispered, “Hello,” making a funny face.

      Mary Ellen noticed him right away.

      She laughed. He seemed charming, even from so far away. He was working for her attention—and she liked it.

      So she walked over to where he was sitting and sat down. “I’m a computer salesman,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Hewlett-Packard.”

      “I’m learning the computer now,” she said. (“We had quite a long conversation about computers,” Mary Ellen recalled. “How everything was computerized back then, and if you’re not learning computers, you’re not going to get too far.”)

      He asked her if she wanted a drink.

      She thought about it. “Sure.” She had nursed the drinks she’d had, not even finishing one. Another wouldn’t hurt.

      “I’d like to see you again,” the man said after about a half hour of the two of them sitting and talking.

      Mary Ellen smiled coyly. “I think you’re much too young,” she said over the loud music. She didn’t know how old he was, but she could tell he was maybe thirty at the most. He had a boyish way about him. A fragility. He reminded her of her son-in-law, who had just turned thirty. Mary Ellen wasn’t looking for a boy toy. If she was going to date someone—and she wasn’t necessarily looking for a long-term relationship—she wanted a man.

      Not that she would insult the guy, but dating somebody as young as her son-in-law was not something she was at all interested in. (He never told her, but he was actually twenty-six, about to turn twenty-seven in eight days.)

      “And how old are you?” he asked smugly, not insulting, as if he really wanted to know.

      “Forty-four,” Mary Ellen said without hesitating.

      “You should get some points for being honest about your age.”

      She found this statement quite appealing. He wasn’t taken aback by her age, but complimented her for being honest. It wasn’t every day you met someone, she thought, who was frank, open, and even likeable. He seemed sincere.

      “Watch my drink,” Mary Ellen said after they went back and forth for a time, joking about her age.

      When she returned from the restroom a moment later, the man stood up from his stool, stuck out his hand like a prince, reaching for hers, and asked, “How ’bout a dance?”

      “Sure,” she said—and they hit the dance floor and then returned to the bar.

      Taking one last sip of her drink, Mary Ellen said, “It was nice to meet you. But it’s getting late. I have to go.”

      He accepted that and said his good-byes.

      She turned and left the bar.

      14

      I

      Walking out of the bar and into the parking lot, Mary Ellen was trying to recall exactly where it was she had parked her car. It was approaching 2:00 A.M. The night sky was dark. With all the cars from the dance, it was hard to maneuver around the lot and see each vehicle. Finding her 1981 Olds Cutlass was posing to be quite the adventure.

      “What kind of car do you have?” a voice said from in back. It startled her. She didn’t think that the man had followed her out of the bar. She hadn’t seen him. It was as if he had just appeared there behind her. Still, when she saw who it was, Mary Ellen felt relieved. She sort of knew him. At least he wasn’t a stranger who had come up on her.

      As Mary Ellen explained what kind of car she was looking for, they walked around the parking lot searching for it.

      “There it is,”