I followed Max as he left work one night. He walked to a bar about six blocks from his office—the 21stStreet Bistro. The place was crowded, so this time I took a risk and followed him inside. I wore a baseball cap pulled down low over my brow and sat at a table on the other side of the dining room, with a line of sight to Max. I watched as he greeted some of his coworkers at a high-top table in the bar.
I was starting to think this was going to be an innocent night for Max, just hanging out with guys from the office, but after a little while his eyes began to wander in that certain way I’d come to recognize.
His eyes came to rest on a woman with chin-length brown hair, sitting alone at the bar. She was drinking a glass of red wine and eating dinner alone. She chatted a lot with one bartender in particular, a woman around her age. They seemed to know each other well.
Max slid in next to her at the bar to order a drink. He smiled. They exchanged a few words. A moment later, the woman called her bartender friend over and she poured him a glass of wine too.
Over the next hour or two, I watched them drink several more glasses, talking and flirting and totally absorbed in one another. Max didn’t even notice when his coworkers left.
They were both clearly very tipsy as they left the bistro together. I crossed to the other side of the street and followed about half a block behind them, all the way to an old Spanish walkup in the Mission District. They kissed in front of the building for a moment, then she unlocked the main door and he followed her inside. They didn’t come out.
Max saw Plain Jane several times, but as usual, after a few weeks, the two seemed to lose their steam and he moved on to another new girl. I called her Boots, because she wore them with literally everything.
Then, a shocking development—Madison met Plain Jane.
One Sunday morning, I followed Max and Madison as they left his apartment together and went to a coffee shop. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Plain Jane inside as well. I figured Max would avoid her since he was with his wife, so I was stunned when the two of them immediately greeted her.
Was Max pretending she was just a friend? A coworker? Plain Jane looked nervous and uneasy, her eyes darting all over the room and her leg incessantly bouncing under the table. They talked for a little while. Eventually, Plain Jane stood up and walked out.
I was dying to know more. Who did Madison think this girl was?
Max returned to Plain Jane’s apartment a few days later. He stopped along the way to grab food from a burger joint and brought it in with him. He only stayed about an hour.
The situation got even more curious when, a few days after that, I followed Madison to Plain Jane’s apartment. She was carrying a bag of groceries and a vase of flowers.
What the hell was going on? Was Plain Jane a friend of Madison’s? Was Max having an affair with someone close to hiswife? It was driving me crazy. I needed to learn more about this girl. Time to start trailing her too.
Plain Jane lived up to her nickname. Over the next week or two, the only places I saw her go were the bistro and an office building, where I assumed she worked. She typically walked everywhere.
One night, I followed her yet again to the bistro, where she sat at the bar and ate dinner alone, chatting with her bartender friend. The bar was square in shape, with seats on all four sides, and the bartenders worked in the center. I sat on the opposite side of the bar from Plain Jane, with my baseball cap down low. From there, I could hear most of their conversation, including Plain Jane’s name, which sounded like “Sammy.” Maybe short for Samantha? And she called the bartender Ellie.
And then I heard her say it.
Plain Jane was pregnant.
It was like a swift kick to the stomach, knocking all the breath out of my body.
Even worse—she said Max was the father.
I started shaking. Tears swelled in my eyes. I stumbled off my barstool and ran to the restroom, where I locked myself in a stall, sobbing.
Max had gotten another girl pregnant, barely three months after we had lost our baby. Did Madison know? The two women had obviously met—but did Madison know the true nature of their relationship?
With my head down, I paid my bill, then quickly left the bistro. I walked home with tears streaming down my face, blurring my vision.
I spent the next two days in bed, alternating between sleeping and sobbing. I couldn’t believe the Max I had fallen for had turned out to be such a sleaze. Somehow, I had missed all the signs. Not only was he married, but in the three months since I had lost our child, he had slept with a revolving door of randomwomen—and now he had gotten another woman pregnant. Did he even remember me? Or our child?
I couldn’t stop thinking about Plain Jane and her baby. Would she lose her baby too? Or would she be blessed with a healthy child? Max’s child? The thought made me nauseous.
I had to know more.
The next day, I followed Sammy to work.
Over the past couple of weeks, I had noticed that when she left for work in the morning, she always locked her front door and immediately put her keys into her right coat pocket.
The following morning, I woke up extra early. Instead of following her from home, I went straight to her office building and waited outside for her to walk by. I noticed a group of teenage boys skateboarding nearby. I approached one of the boys and asked if he’d like to make a quick fifty bucks.
I showed him pictures of Sammy I’d taken with my phone. I said to keep an eye out, and when he saw her approaching her office building, to bump into her and try to snatch her keys out of her right pocket. I’d wait around the corner. If he got them for me, he’d get his fifty bucks.
