Sometimes completely normal people do very inappropriate things. We notice this all the time, don't we? The quiet, mousy school teacher that drives to Colorado with her 7th grade science student. The kind-eyed bus driver with a sex dungeon in his basement. We suck our teeth and wonder how we missed something so perverse. We gird ourselves against the possibility of the world's hidden sickos. We tally up the idiosyncrasies, the moments that should have given it all away, the passing thoughts that should have raised a flag. I fear I have become one of those people. I hope that my co-workers will not pass such whispers about me over their cubicle walls. I may be a stalker.

I started innocently enough. We ride the same Metra train. We catch the 6:53 at 91st street. I like sitting on the top deck, he sits directly across. He reads really great books. I mean, first of all, he reads. Who reads these days? He reads. Like literature. He wears ties everyday, so I don't think it's for school either. The guy reads voraciously.

It started with Lord of the Flies. Okay, pretty basic high school English, but one I really liked. You know, formative literature. It stood out. I remembered it. He read Lord of the Flies in late May. Late May on the Metra is pretty gorgeous. The top deck, the big rectangle windows, you get the blur of first buds framed up all nice. Tree tops. I still have the image in my head. He's got on a goldenrod shirt with a maroonish tie. Yeah, bold choices, but he always does it just right. Goldenrod shirt, maroonish tie, reading Lord of the Flies with the new buds of May blurring behind him. And he reads fast too. I mean, I know this sounds crazy. I know. I know. Why do I know how long it takes him to read books? I watch. Like four days a book, on average. Sometimes less. So, Lord of the Flies, then White Teeth by Zadie Smith - which surprised me, then Me Talk Pretty One Day, which didn't. The Michael Eric Dyson Reader. The Sound and the Fury, the Cantos of Ezra Pound, East of Eden, The Human Genome Project, Saving Ophelia, The Boondocks anthology. I mean, who is this guy? Freud's Interpretations of Dreams. Toni Morrison's Jazz. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Barack Obama's first book. That takes us to about early August. So, he reads. He reads stuff I like, stuff I knew I was supposed to read but didn't. At the very least, we'd have some great conversations. I mean, it would be at least a month before we ran out of stuff to talk about, and I know people who have fallen in love in less time than that. Gotten engaged even.

Okay, handsome - check. Literate - check. Employed? - maroon tie, check. That's really enough. And most women, I guess, would just say hi. Ask for a date. But I like mysteries, and I wanted to stretch out that part as long as I could. So it started with me just looking at him reading, imagining what kind of guy he must be, what his library at home looks like, what his home looks like, his mail box, his door mat, his kitchen fixtures. Picturing him making couscous. What his eyebrows do when he's surprised, concerned, aroused…

One day I got to the station a few minutes earlier than usual. 6:30ish. I hadn't slept much the night before because my cat was sick. My cat's name is Jean Michel. He has a very smart face. Anyway, I got to the station early because I couldn't fall back asleep so I just stayed up, went for a run, polished my nails, and started to get ready for the office. By then I had killed enough time that I figured I could have a coffee and a Danish at the station before the train came and not have to wait too terribly long. I saw him pull up. He has a newish wine-colored Nissan. There was a boy in his passenger seat, teenaged. He looked half-asleep and had on checkered pajama pants and a grey hoodie. When the mystery man got out, the kid took over the driver's seat. Dropping him off, driving the car back home, and going back to sleep, I thought to myself. But is he really old enough to have a teenaged son? Does he have a wife?

A terrible damp cold filled my throat. If he had a wife at home that would ruin everything. My little morning game would be completely drained of all its excitement. I mean, the plan was to eventually talk to him, flirt, date like a normal person. Eventually. But this was the best part, where I could really fill up. Without the possibility of the accidental meeting, the sparkling conversation, his surprised delight that I had so much insight into his tastes and character, without that on the horizon, all of this seemed silly.

I watched him disinterestedly in my peripheral vision. I stood several feet away when we finally stepped out to the platform as the train blasted in. I made sure he boarded ahead of me so I could get a seat directly across, as usual. I tried to catch of a glimpse of his hand before he climbed up to the top deck. I couldn't tell, though. He was carrying an umbrella, and the way his hands - beautiful hands - bent around it, I couldn't see if he had on a ring or not.

I wanted to see where he lived. I had to make sure he didn't have a wife, that my attention wasn't impeding on the happiness of a lovely family with a son and a dog and a landscaper. I don't want to be that woman. I couldn't tell from the evening commute because I always took the 5:15 and I never saw him. I've taken the 4:50 and the 5:30 and still never see him. I've even walked through the whole train. So he doesn't take the Metra home at night. Or if he does, he takes an off-peak train. I tried to figure that part out for a long time.

I went home right after work, the 5:15 as usual. Jean Michel seemed to be feeling much better. I made tea, I paced the kitchen. I laid on the sofa and watched Law & Order, but Jean Michel could tell I was anxious so he paced on my stomach. Oh, damn it all, I thought to myself, I'll just drive around and see. No use sitting here stuffing up my head with questions, driving myself even more crazy. I had to get away from myself for a few minutes. He took the 91st Street train, so he had to live in the area. There are only so many blocks to Beverly. And there can't be that many wine-colored Maximas. I mean, there could be quite a few actually. But I remembered that the first two letters of his license plate were JM. I only remembered this because I saw it and thought, how about that? Those are Jean Michel's initials….

Look for the full text of "Intersect" in our debut issue.