Prewitt
by Jonathan Rose

I was not following him. A person in my condition wouldn’t be able to do that anyway, couldn’t stay with him, unless this guy up ahead—presumably a healthy grown man or at least a man in reasonable physical shape, making normal adult-sized strides—was held up, slowed down by something. Maybe he’d stop, say, for a coffee, or give pause to consider the aroma of a street vendor and buy a late-afternoon snack, or decide to linger in front of a shop window, or kneel to tie his shoe, or maybe he’d just be halted by an exceptionally long street light. It was possibly him up there ahead, a figure resembling someone from my past—that is, a person who, based on what he looked like from forty-fifty yards away and in front of me, bore a resemblance to someone I once sat next to for an hour a night, years ago and in a distant city.