I keep running into the same man.
First time: 2009, in a coffee shop in Chicago. He was sitting by the window. We made eye contact briefly. Nothing significant.
Second time: 2011, in London. A pub in Shoreditch. He was at the bar. I recognized him — same face, same build, same particular stillness in the way he sat — and I thought: what are the odds. I didn't say anything.
Third time: 2013, in Tokyo. A train station. He was on the platform across from mine, waiting for a different train. I was certain it was him. Same man.
I'm a person who travels frequently for work. I've told myself: there are people who circulate in the same professional and social spheres, and if you're in airports and hotels and certain kinds of venues enough, you'll see the same people. This is true.
But 2015: rural Portugal, a village with three hundred people. A café. He was sitting at a table outside reading a newspaper.
2017: my own city, a neighborhood I'm in every day, a bookstore I've been to a hundred times. He was browsing the history section.
2019: a highway rest stop at 3 AM in the middle of nowhere. He was sitting at a table with a cup of coffee.
He has never shown any sign of recognizing me. He doesn't avoid me or seek me out. He is simply there, unremarkably, doing ordinary things, in increasingly impossible places to be the same person.
I haven't told anyone. The list of sightings, written out, looks like paranoia.
But I have photographs. Taken without his knowledge, from a distance, on my phone. Seven photographs across ten years and four continents. The same face every time.
He's not looking for me. He's not following me. He's just there.
I'm starting to wonder if I'm the one following him.
I'm starting to wonder what happens if I ask him.