Please. Please. Please.

 

The incident occurred about 10 miles north of Moss Landing, an unincorporated community near Monterey.

Moss Landing. Like some fictional town plucked from the pages of Anne of Green Gables or a summertime Hallmark feature. City-girl begrudgingly relocates from San Fracisco to sell her grandmother’s antique store and meets a handsome small-town birdwatcher named Sam.

But that is not this story. This story is more Son of Sam.

I’d just met a college friend for iced tea and avocado toast at a trendy coffee bar in Menlo Park where the lattes are $6 and the baristas aren’t in any hurry. My plan was to drive two hours down Highway 17 to the 1, hugging the coast until I hit my turn for Carmel Valley. I was attending a writer’s retreat with eighteen other women, organized by an editor I admired and followed on Instagram.

I was prepared. Full tank of gas. Cold Perrier in the cup holder. Sunglasses doubling as a headband. I found the one FM station that I could tolerate, even if it meant suffering through the same timeshare exit attorney ad every 22 minutes. About an hour into my drive, I pulled off the highway to use the restroom at a Chevron station with blooming Lupine out front and the clerk handed me a key ring the size of a lightsaber.

“Women’s is outside. To the right,” he grunted, not bothering to glance up from his phone.

Later, when I returned the monstrous key, I bought a pack of peppermint Trident to legitimize myself as a customer and then doused my hands in anti-bacterial.

Within a few minutes of careening down Highway 1, I became conscious of the SUV trailing me in the right lane, growing closer in the rearview. I was going about 55mph in a 60mph zone and within seconds, the vehicle had narrowed the gap to mere inches. Straightening in my seat, I stole a glance over my shoulder, perplexed as to why the driver wasn’t passing me on the left, leaving my geriatric pace in the dust. With only a few other cars on the road and large gaps in traffic, there wasn’t any plausible reason why the guy couldn’t simply merge.

Baffled, I sped up. But he only accelerated, keeping pace. I reduced my speed to 45, hoping the driver would grow impatient and high-tail it, perhaps even give me the finger, but instead he mirrored every subtle alteration I made. At one point, his car was pinned so aggressively close to my bumper that I was convinced he was going to ram me, thrusting my meagre Honda Civic forward, causing me to lose control.

My foot pressed down on the gas pedal, coaxing it back to 55mph. My heart rate quickened and I forced myself to take a breath, probing for any sensible explanation that might account for such erratic behavior. But I had none.

Craning my neck, I attempted once more to decipher the driver’s profile in the rearview, but his visor was drawn, face hidden in shadow. Afraid of diverting my eyes from the road for too long, I sped up to the U-Haul lumbering along ahead. The SUV kept pace. I merged, passing the truck, and promptly returned to the right lane. Surely, this would do the trick. The guy was distracted, an asshole to be sure, but now he’d continue on. However, instead of racing ahead, the SUV jaggedly swerved back, aligning himself once again on my tail.

I tried again, passing another car, but this time, I lingered in the left lane for longer. He continued to tailgate, shifting lanes only when I did. I white-knuckled the steering wheel and a spiral of fear began to corkscrew through me, spreading like poison until it suffused every limb, every pore, every cell. Sweat gathered under my arms and dampened my back. All at once, I felt sickening, terrifyingly alone—a rabbit caught in the open, staring into the beady eyes of a wolf.

I considered calling the police, but then doubted myself. What would I even say? I couldn’t even rattle off the license plate to my rental car. I scanned the side of the road for a mile marker but there was only grass and trees and a stone wall showcasing clusters of California poppies. I was a single car on a vague stretch of California highway, a tiny dot on a giant globe.

With an exit looming up ahead, I made a split-second decision. Without signaling or slowing, I waited until the last possible moment to jerk the steering wheel before exiting up and off the ramp.

What happened next shook me with a surge of alarm so primal that I’m certain I let out a guttural cry. The SUV skidded off the highway right after me, tires screeching to make the exit, before realigning directly behind my rear bumper. There was no mistaking it now. This was blatant. I was being hunted. Stalked. I didn’t understand why or to what end, but I needed to think. And I needed to do it fast.

The exit itself was deserted, not a gas station or McDonalds in sight, and I immediately sensed the acute danger of leaving the area around the highway. My gut clenched. My muscles twitched. Dread radiated through my core, flushing my blood—a rally cry pumping through a body deciphering between the instinctual call of fight or flight.

In a split-second decision, I veered left, heading for the stoplight at the top of the hill, and prepared to return to the highway, heading in the opposite direction. The light was red. I held my breath as the SUV hung back as though deciding. 911, I thought. I’ll call 911, if they follow. Gradually, the SUV crept forward, coming to a stop in the next lane. I stared stock-still at the light, willing it to turn, unable to look and meet the driver’s eye. Please. Please. Please. The threat seared through my sealed window like a blast of heat. Through glass and steel and concrete lane lines. I imagined him smirking. Running one bony finger sideways along his throat. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look.

I sat there, trembling, trying not to provoke a stranger in an SUV, repeating a word women muster every day, exhaling it like a prayer.  Bracing for impact like a passenger on a downed plane. Please. Please. Please.

I’d read somewhere in a self-dense article that you are always supposed to look a potential stalker directly in the eye. To show him you know that he is there. To take away that element of surprise and rob him of that one iota of power. Eye contact signals to an assailant that you are strong and capable. That you refuse to go down without a fight, that you aren’t and never will be a victim.

When another car filed in behind me and the light turned green, I hit the gas and sped back onto the highway, not caring that it meant driving further from my destination. When the SUV didn’t follow, I sagged with relief, overcome with a gratitude that gradually sobered into a quiet pallor of shame.

I’d failed to look the perpetrator in the eye. I cowered when I was meant to roar.

I drove another five miles before I felt steady enough to exit and turn around again, checking my rearview every few seconds to ensure he was really gone. The radio was off, and as signs for Moss Landing appeared on the roadside—7 avocados for $1 and Roadside Artichokes—I finally allowed myself to exhale, to crack the window and listen to the hum of the engine and the call of seabirds over the dunes. The ocean glinted blue several miles ahead, wild and vast, and I savored the swell of distance like a gift.  

I managed to arrive in Carmel before check-in, so I drove another few miles to a regional park with hiking trails to stretch my legs and breathe in the fresh air.  A smattering of cars was parked in the expansive gravel lot. As the winds picked up, I pulled on my jacket and headed out on the trailhead. The visitor center was closed during the week, but the bathrooms were open, the mirrors rusted and covered in mosquitos. As I proceeded down the path toward the Waterfall Trail, I encountered an older couple with a Border Collie who warned me about the puddles but promised that further up it was all dry. I thanked them just as the late afternoon sun peaked out, warming my face.

I walked for another twenty minutes or so without seeing another soul. There was only birdsong and the pounding of my boots. The muffled gurgle of a nearby stream. Brandi Carlisle crooning in my earbuds.

I heard them before I saw them. Two voices drifting from the shadowed canopy of trees. Both male. And soon enough they were striding toward me on the trail. They were bare-chested and tan, t-shirts tied around backpack straps, the fabric flapping with each step. They nodded in unison as they passed, but I didn’t nod back. Instead, I straightened to my full height, boring into their eyes.

My unease compounded as I progressed further up the hill, startling at every rustle in the brush, every shifting slice of shade. After a while, I yanked out my earbuds, no longer finding comfort in the music, and scanned the switchbacks. I strained to detect the muffled tread of boots—listening for their chatter, sniffing the air for the savage musk of men. I needed to believe that they were good. Decent, nature-loving young guys out for a hike. And in all likelihood, they were, but I couldn’t count on that. I couldn’t bet my life on it. 

I can almost guarantee they weren’t obsessing over me, but I was thinking about them. While they were considering what to barbecue for dinner, I was wondering if the organic lavender sanitizer spray that I’d zipped into my Fannie pack might be a decent substitute for Mace.

I never made it to the waterfall that afternoon. A mile shy, I turned around, too spooked to be out there on my own, tempting fate like a lame antelope drinking from the watering hole.

On the way back to my car, I thought about my daughters and how I might prepare them for this disturbing reality. I thought of our stroll through the French quarter in New Orleans a few weeks back, avoiding the sidewalk potholes and leaky awnings. My youngest was both fascinated and repulsed by the sheer abundance of discarded cigarette butts. (1302 in 3 days, for those who are curious.) Midway through our walk though, a pair of panhandlers with half-lit cigarettes and a glut of purple beads dangling from their wrists draped necklaces around my kids’ necks. Their movements were hasty and insistent, despite my repeated protests. My daughters both smiled and said thank you as they’d been taught when someone gives them something. It was only when the pair stalked us down the sidewalk, voices raised, demanding cash, that the girls’ smiles wavered. As I promptly snatched up the necklaces and returned them, the girls went wide-eyed. They remained quiet for a while and I sensed they were embarrassed by their initial show of gratitude, by the fact that they’d been tricked. Nothing in life is ever free. 

The bead incident was so small and insignificant but someday, something else won’t be. Someday it will matter, and I was angry that such lessons are necessary. I was angry to have to teach my daughters that polite is good, but safe is always better. That as women, they will be in a perpetual state of alert, of never being able to let down their guard, constantly weighing if eye contact might prevent or provoke. I was angry that they’ll never be able turn off their sensor—that tiny voice that warns against walking into parking garages or down alleys or into elevators. I was angry that they’ll need to understand that bedrooms at frat parties only have one exit and that if something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right. Period. That sometimes as women, we have to pass up the waterfalls and that towns called Moss Landing aren’t safe, simply because they sound like a fairy tale.

I despised all that with both sound and fury.

But as their mother, I despised even more the idea of them, terrified and trembling, murmuring the most wretched of refrains: Please. Please. Please.