Several months later I had moved in with Amanda. As our car is once again in the shop for something Rick-related, my dad swings by the bookstore to give me a ride home from work. It's after midnight when he turns into my street and we see, parked in front of the main door of my apartment building, Rick's idling vehicle, shadowy profile inside. I had my dad pull over, and talked about what to do for several minutes; all the while Rick is just sitting, ominously, in his vehicle. I was angry that this older man wanted control of Amanda, and had a predilection to menace to me. The police, though having paid Rick several visits to his home, had their hands tied, and I'd had enough. I waited a few more minutes before I made my decision.
Asking Dad to stay put, I got out of the car and started walking towards the apartment from the opposite side of the street, well within Rick's field of view. I saw him cock his head in my direction as he peered through the darkness. He clearly did not know it was me, and once I was 90 degrees to his door, I suddenly turned and ran toward him. I was only steps away from him when he got his car into reverse and peeled away. I kept running toward him as he backed down the street, holding the steering-wheel in one hand, looking over his shoulder to see where he was going. I resisted the urge to stomp on the hood of his car, though I was close enough at one point to do it. Glancing back at me to assess my distance from him, our eyes met as his car shuddered over gravel kicking up dust at the intersection when he threw it into first gear; he screeched away with me still in pursuit. I ran down the middle of the next street, devoid of traffic, chasing him until I could no longer see his car.
Dad pulled up alongside me and rolled down his window. "Jesus, are you nuts?", he asked. I'd given the boots to a car once before, as a teenager walking down the street with a girlfriend. I'd reacted badly to a racial slur hurled in our direction through the window of a station-wagon. I have never been one to swallow intolerance of any kind, and I simply refused to be intimidated by a stalker. I thought chasing him down could serve to send him that message. I wanted him to think I was crazy, too, and that I would do just about anything.
Another eight months passed. With the assistance of my folks we were able to secure a meeting with a lawyer who reviewed our notes, along with copies of the half-dozen police complaints we had filed against Rick so far. He listened to a recent phone message left on Amanda's answering machine we'd taken to the gens d'armes, where they determined that it was "threatening" and, in fact, charged Rick with "criminal harassment". The lawyer agreed with the police, and had us sign documents so that he could go before a judge to ask for a motion restricting Rick's communication with us - a restraining order which, at the time, cost around a thousand dollars.
Fiercely independent, Amanda had been resistant to the notion of telling her parents, who lived in another city, of our problems with Rick. Yet, within days of requesting the restraining order and the day of the grand opening of the bookstore, I was on the street with Amanda's dad, whom I had gotten to know on a few other occasions. He stood next to the door of his car, posturing, and asked me rhetorically, "What the hell are we going to do with this guy, anyway?" adding, "You know, I have a hunting rifle and I could bag him at 300 yards... he wouldn't even know what hit him!"
It's important to remember that these were the days before anti-stalking legislation in Canada. It was like we were living in a war zone, and Amanda's dad was only expressing what every father would feel in the same situation, protective. There was an overwhelming sensation of powerlessness, though we did eventually procure the restraining order against Rick. He could not come within 250 meters of our homes and work. A curious thing, however, happened in the final processing of the order. We had acknowledged to our lawyer that one of the ways we were being harassed by Rick was by telephone. The final document from the presiding judge first recognized this, but then was scratched out with a ball-point pen, siting in the same ink that it represented too much of an infringement on Rick's rights. Weird.
Rick received a copy of the document, and continued to call Amanda's house and our newly opened bookstore at all hours. We thought we finally had him when a stamp-less letter from him was left on Amanda's doorstep. We called the police, and they paid him a visit. They could do not do a thing: he claimed he had had a friend deliver it on his behalf. Even a restraining order meant nothing to him.
Three months later we found ourselves in a courtroom filled mostly with Amanda's friends and family on one side, and Rick on the other, sitting alone to face the charge of uttering threats. His lawyer, notably a woman, stood up to address the proceedings, requesting "a dismissal, on the grounds that this was a personal issue between my client and the witness for the Crown", who happened to be Amanda. The judge agreed and, bafflingly, dismissed the case! This all happened in a matter of minutes and when Rick walked out of the courtroom, I saw the look of relief on his face. Speechless, as I remember the ten or so of us were, I held out on the hope that this would be the motivation he needed to get on with his life and leave us alone.
But that was not to be. The calls continued daily; damage to our car, more inventive and serious. It seemed for a time that there were longer periods between occurrences. Then, out of the blue, he parked his car across the street from the store one day. Thinking this to be a brazen daylight attempt to harass us, I noticed there was a woman in the passenger seat. They got out of the car, holding hands casually as they crossed the street, looking much like a happy couple heading to the cafe next door.
This simply would not do, and so I asked Amanda if she needed a coffee. She said, "I could use one", throwing in, "let me join you", and we stepped out and headed for the cafe. Once in line, we were right behind Rick and his new female friend. Amanda and I both discussed loudly that we should make it clear to Rick's acquaintance that she would be better off not hanging around with him. Surprised, Rick caught sight of us when he turned around. With Amanda and I suddenly on the offensive, we began describing in detail what Rick had been doing to Amanda, her apartment, and my car. Visibly uncomfortable, they left the line and walked out of the cafe. I could tell that the woman had no idea what was going on; her eyes darted quickly between Rick and these two strangers. We matched their stride just steps behind them and continued to delve into Rick's history. Rushing now, they jumped into the car, Rick put the key in the ignition and threw it into reverse almost simultaneously. As the car backed away my eyes aligned with the shaken woman's. I said "Leave him", loud enough to be heard over the roar of the engine.
You may be asking yourselves why I did not take the officer's advice to "beat him to within an inch of his life...". I've asked myself that a number of times over the course of events. When things were darkest, I'd seriously considered acquiring a handgun for personal protection, but I'm not a violent person, and did not consider this to be the usual thoughts and actions of the average bookseller. The closest I came to a physical altercation with Rick was a year earlier when I had gone to Amanda's apartment to pick her up for a movie.
I had parked right at the front door to her building; when we came off the elevator and made our way out the door, we spied movement at the passenger door to my car, not 15 feet away. Rick was using a screwdriver to scratch the glass. I burst into a run, he spun around on his toes and started running away. Taking a short-cut, I jumped through the hedge of a neighbouring yard to cut him off, and when I was about to grab him by the scruff of his jacket, stopped and just let him run off in to the darkness, in the hope that I had sufficiently scared him off. It didn't. We were living under siege.
In fact it took six years of continual harassment, and six years of filing police reports before I received a phone call from a very restrained Rick while the store was being renovated according to the principles of feng shui, asking for a "cessation of hostilities" to which I most heartily agreed. It sounded as though he had turned over a new leaf in his life; scratching my head, I wished him well. We never heard from him again. The whole feng shui thing may have paid off!
Epilogue:
Less than a year before the store closed, and about two years after I had broken up amiably with Amanda, a former mutual acquaintance of ours, Maggie, stepped cautiously over the threshold of the shop. Still in her early twenties when we first got to know her, she had suddenly and mysteriously dropped out of sight. I hadn't seen her in years and ran next door to buy a couple of lattes to drink at the bookstore counter while we caught up. She told me she had a story to tell.
She had been at a lounge with friends at about the same time Rick called me asking for a truce, and met a very nice, intelligent man whom she started dating. Only when Maggie got to know him better did she realize the people he was referring to in a story he told her were, in fact, Amanda and I. He mentioned how awful we were to him, wrongly accusing him of heinous deeds. That we had ruined his life. It was, of course, Rick.
She believed him, and stopped coming to the store to visit. They became very close and moved in together.
Two years passed, they drifted apart, their relationship became strained. She decided it was time to part ways. When she moved out he started stalking her. At this point it had been uneasily quiet for Amanda and I. It was anything but for Maggie. The phone calls, the showing-up-at-places unannounced. She started filing reports to police. He terrified her, and it was more than she could take so she left the city to start a new life elsewhere, several hours away.
One night he came looking for her after he'd managed to track her down over the phone. He pleaded with her to come back to him, swearing that he'd harm himself if she didn't. In a drunken stupor he arrived at her residence; it was close to dawn. An open bottle of wine fell on the road when he got out of his car, emptying its remaining contents. Her sleepless night ended with an early morning call to police, and Rick sobering up in the drunk tank.
All in all, Maggie spent about two hours in my store that day, describing what had been her life. She also needed to express her regret to Amanda and I over the decision she made to believe Rick and stop spending time with us, and to talk about what she called her "poor choices".
Shortly before she left, I asked Maggie how things were for her now. Happily, she told me that she ended up marrying a police officer.
