Chapter 5: Echoes Unwanted

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Helen was used to quiet. Not the type that originated from absence but the type that followed her around like a cloak—silent strolls to the library, relaxing hours in coffee with a book, calm evenings when she could listen to her own ideas without disturbance. Lately, though, that quiet had been broken—fractured—by Paul's relentless echo.

Everywhere he went was in him.

Initially it was hardly noticeable; too insignificant to define. A brief check in the corridor, a too long pause at her locker, a superfluous group-drawing remark. She dismissed it, reminding herself she was hallucinating. But the conversations became visits, which were uninvited, uncalled for, unwelcome.

Paul had begun turning up in venues he had no need to be.

The bookstore on Oak Street, where Helen browsed secondhand volumes on weekends—he was there sifting through poetry he obviously did not grasp. The café close to her apartment, where she preferred to sit by the window and sip chamomile tea—he started ordering coffee and sitting next to her to inquire what she was reading, remarking on the weather. She gave brief responses, courteous grins, then frigid ones at first in hopes he might grasp. He didn't ever, however.

Her presence caused the air surrounding her to shift. Her quiet life was replaced with a barely perceptible anxiety—a violin string tugged taut. He was not so loud or showy; he was more than that. It was sluggish, encroaching, and insidious.

"Helen," he would say, "you're always by the window. You like light, right?"

She failed to respond.

Once he questioned, pointing toward the flowerbox outside of the café, "Is it the flowers? You look like someone who appreciates flowers."

Tired eyes met his as Helen looked up from her book. "What brings you here once more?"

He grinned guilt-free. "Because you're gorgeous."

And there it was, that statement. Said with the same smug, automatic voice every time she challenged him, that easy, stupid sentence.

She had heard it so many times now; it resonated in her head even if he was not present.

Because you are beautiful.

As though beauty was a curse she had selected, as though it allowed him pass to intrude on her life without boundaries or respect. No more was it flattering. It was a justification he employed to protect himself from her impatience, her annoyance, her mounting unease. Each time she told him to stop, he answered with that same line as if it clarified everything.

Helen started to shy away from former favorite venues. The bookstore. The coffee shop. Even the park she would visit to have peaceful walks at eventide. It made no difference—he found her anyway. He made it sound like happenstance. But chance loses its significance if it repeats in the same patterns with the same outcome over and over again.

One evening, she informed Marianne over dinner.

"He keeps showing up," Helen said, moving her food around her plate. "It is as though he is still following me."

Marianne squinted fiercely. Paul?

Helen agreed. "He returned to the bookstore once more today. I didn't even tell him one word. He simply sat close to me and would not stop speaking.

"What should you say?"

I inquired of him what he was persistently bothering me.

"And?"

Helen uttered a hollow chuckle. "He said, 'Because you're beautiful.'"

Marianne moaned and set her fork down. "Divine. That is really terrible. He barely tries to cover it."

"He thinks it's a compliment."

"Wrong, it is not. It is a cover."

For a few minutes they quietly consumed their meal. Marianne then said, "You expect me to talk to him?"

None. That could make things worse.

"Still, you have already made it clear."

"I thought I had."

Nothing at all, though.

If anything, Paul grew more determined; her opposition, as if to say, fueled his will, spurred him. He approached it as a puzzle to be solved, a game. Helen felt like prey; in his distorted view, her boundaries were unsaid and her silence a welcome invitation.

On one particular day, gray, cold, and wet, everything came to a boiling point.

Hurrying to the library unnoticed, Helen strolled through the university courtyard, pulling her coat closer against the cold. She had purposefully chosen the more direct path and bypassed the main entrance. Halfway across the lawn, she heard, though, a footstep behind her. Turning wasn't necessary for the woman. She already knew.

"Hey, Helen!"

She halted, jaw clenching, breath rising in puffs.

"Paul," she said sharply, not facing him.

Grinning, he caught up to her.

As if he had run to catch up, he said, "I didn't know you took this route."

"I do not," she said. "I really hoped not to run into you."

His grin wobbled, then leapt back, pretending to be funny. "That is severe."

Turning to him, Helen said, "I've told you before: 'Stop following me.'"

"I'm not following—"

"Indeed, you are."

He shrugged his shoulders and replied dully, "You're literally always around. I'm not responsible."

"Don't belittle my intelligence."

There was a stop here, a flicker of something colder in his gaze. Afterward, he said gently, "I just like being close to you."

Helen spoke strongly. "I do not enjoy being close to you. You unsettle me."

And yet, there it was once more, the same pitiful defense. "But you are gorgeous."

Her gaze at him was utterly silent.

Suddenly, too, the bottled irritability exploded into rage.

"That does not offer an excuse. There is no justification in that," she said, her voice raising, "That is not an invitation. Your opinions on how I look don't matter to me at all. You do not get access to invade my surroundings. You have decided I'm some object you are entitled to seek; you don't get to wreck my days."

Startled, Paul stepped back.

"I have politely inquired of you. I have had patience. I have tried ignoring it, minimizing it, and hoped you would pick up on it. But you're not just ignorant; you are intentionally disregarding my discomfort."

His countenance turned half indignation, half puzzlement.

He said, "I didn't mean to upset you."

"But you did," Helen said coolly. "Several times over."

For a while he gazed at her in silence. Quieter still, he said, "I just thought… perhaps you would warm up to me."

Helen shook her head. "I never will."

She informed Marianne everything later that day.

Helen slouched on the couch and said, "He didn't even apologize right."

"Fighting never would," Marianne said. "Those like him suspect assignments of attachment. It's like if they bug you long enough, it becomes love."

"It's not love. This is obsession."

"It's ego," Marianne countered. "He's not in love with you. He loves the concept of winning you over."

Helen let out a deep breath. "I just want tranquility once more."

Still, peace was more difficult to come by these days. The nervousness persisted even if Paul ceased his shows—like phantom footsteps behind her, like the itch of being watched. Weeks of quiet terror eroded her patterns and comfort. It was about how swiftly her world had been thrown, how close the line between safety and uneasiness was, not only about Paul anymore.

She would sometimes awaken in the dead of the night, heart racing, hearing his voice in her head's imaginary echoes:

* You are beautiful.

She loathed those words, despised their skin clinging, hated their attempt to reinterpret her discomfort as praise.

And Marianne despised them as well.

One day they saw him once more; he was walking past the coffee shop, pausing as he saw Helen sitting with her friend. He just stayed long enough to be seen; he did not approach. Marianne stood straight away.

"I'm not letting this go anymore," she added.

Helen moved her head. "Not at all. Not escalating it will be any help."

"It is not escalation. It's defenses."

Marianne, face inscrutable, headed directly for Paul.

She said, "You don't get to keep showing up like this."

"I wasn't—"

"Do not lie."

"You're making her uncomfortable. She has told you more than once. Stop pretending this is some fairy tale. It is not. It is harassment."

Paul gazed nervously about him.

"Give a lower voice," he mumbled.

"Why? Embarrassment?" Marianne said louder. "Great. Perhaps next time you'll consider twice before stalking someone ostensibly praising them."

Those around them began to see it. Paul looked around in anxiety, then spun and left.

Helen sat quietly, her belly twisting with an odd mix of consolation and embarrassment as she watched the scene.

She whispered, "Thank you," as Marianne came back.

"Someone should not have to live in terror just to be left alone," Marianne insisted.

Paul stopped showing up weeks later. Perhaps it was Marianne's challenge, maybe it was the eyes of the audience, maybe he just ran out of reasons. The damage had already been done, though. Helen was still fixing her spatial sense and recovering her peace one calm day at a time.

Not much ease was there.

She might have been forgiven.

True silence was more lovely than any praise she had ever received.