Night Prey

English walnuts, grapes both green and red, and garlic. She made a brilliant salad.
    Koop was in the cereals. He kept poking his head around the corner, looking at her. She never saw him, but he was so intent that he didn’t see the stock kid until the kid was right on top of him.
    “Can I help you?” The kid used a tone he might have used on a ten-year-old shoplifter.
    Koop jumped. “What?” He was flustered. He had a cart with a package of beef jerky and a jar of dill pickles.
    “What’re you looking for?” The kid had a junior-cop attitude; and he was burly, too-white, with pimples, crew cut, and small pig-eyes.
    “I’m not looking. I’m thinking,” Koop said.
    “Okay. Just asking,” the kid said. But when he moved away, he went only ten feet and began rearranging boxes of cornflakes, ostentatiously watching Koop.
    Sara, at the very moment that the kid asked his first question, decided she’d gotten enough produce. A moment later, as the kid went to work in the cornflakes, she came around the corner. Koop turned away from her, but she glanced up at his face. Did he see the smallest of wrinkles? He turned his back and pushed his cart out of the aisle. The fact is, she might have seen him twenty times, if she’d ever scanned the third layer of people around her, if she’d noticed the guy on the bench on the next sidewalk over as she jogged. Had she remembered him? Was that why her forehead had wrinkled? The kid had seen him watching her. Would he say anything?
    Koop thought about abandoning his cart, but decided that would be worse than hanging on. He pushed it to the express lane, bought a newspaper, paid, and went on to the parking lot. While he was waiting to pay, he saw the kid step out of an aisle, his fists on his hips, watching. A wave of hate washed over him. He’d get the little fucker, get him in the parking lot, rip his fucking face off . . . Koop closed his eyes, controlling it, controlling himself. When he fantasized, the adrenaline started rolling through his blood, and he almost had to break something.
    But the kid just wasn’t worth it. Asshole. . . .
    He left the supermarket parking lot, looking for the kid in his rearview mirror, but the kid had apparently gone back to work. Good enough—but he wouldn’t be going back there. Out of the lot, he pulled into a street-side parking space and waited. Twenty minutes later, Jensen came by.
    His true love. . . .
    Koop loved to watch her when she was moving. He loved her on the streets, where he could see her legs and ass, liked to see her body contorting as she leaned or bent or stooped; liked to watch her tits bobbling when she went for a run around the lake. Really liked that.
    He was aflame.
     
     
     
    MONDAY WAS A warm night, moths batting against the park lights. Jensen finished her run and disappeared inside. Koop was stricken with what might have been grief, to see her go like that. He stood outside, watching the door. Would she be back out? His eyes rolled up the building. He knew her window, had known from the first night. . . . The light came on.
    He sighed and turned away. Across the street, a man fumbled for keys, opened the lobby door to his apartment building, walked through, then used his key to unlock the inner door. Koop’s eyes drifted upward. The top floor was just about even with Jensen’s.
    With a growing tingle of excitement, he counted floors. And crashed. The roof would be below her window, he thought. He wouldn’t be able to see inside. But it was worth checking. He crossed the street, moving quickly, stepped into the apartment lobby. Two hundred apartments, each with a call button. He slapped a hundred of them: somebody would be expecting a visitor. The intercom scratched at him, but at the same moment the door lock buzzed, and he pushed through, leaving behind the voice on the intercom: “Who’s there? Who’s there?”
    This would work twice, but he couldn’t count on it more often than that. He turned the corner to the elevators, rode to the top. Nobody in the hall. The Exit sign was far down to the left. He walked down to the Exit sign, opened the door, stepped through it. A flight of steps went down to the left, and two more went up to the right, to a gray metal door. A small black-and-white sign on the door said, “Roof Access—Room Key Necessary to Unlock and to Re-enter.”
    “Shit.” He pulled at the door. Nothing. Good lock.
    He turned to the steps, thinking to start back down. Then