Short Story 1 PLAN: Plot outline and characters

SUMMARY 

The story follows a stalker, Marco de Lauretis. He begins a journey of obsession with a woman (Maria Bernard). We don't know her name but watch her life unfold from Marco's perspective. One night, Marco notices another car (other than his), parked outside Maria's house. Every time Marco returns to watch Maria, the car is there still. Another man is watching her. Marco's journey of stalking Maria results in him finding out secrets about her past, and the woman he fell in love with from afar, turns out to be very different up close. 

Location: New York City

CHARACTERS UP CLOSE

Marco de Lauretis

Marco de Lauretis is insecure, feels rejected, and extremely introverted. He grew up in a small town in Mississipi and tended to keep a low profile. He went through high school with very few friends, partly due to his inability to socialize and his highly insecure nature. The couple of friends that he did have, were wallflowers, and friends purely out of convenience. This continued into college, where he studied Mathematics and continued to remain insociable, having no luck with friends or women. His life as a 43-year-old adult man follows a strict routine: he wakes up at 7am, heads to the cafe around the corner for his morning coffee, followed by spending his days as a data analyst, before heading home at 5pm and watching films. This is an endless cycle that has been going on for 20 years. He's never left his current job and has no desire to progress his career. 

Maria Bernard

Maria is what many would describe as a strong, confident woman. She dresses in expensive designer clothes almost every day (always wearing heels, paired with a Chanel handbag) and has an obsession with money and materialistic things. Yet, she doesn't have a job. Instead, she spends her time having brunch with "the girls", visiting the galleries in the city, and spending her evenings at bars, picking up men, or spending time alone reading. She lives by herself in a flat in Manhattan. 

PLOT IN-DEPTH

1. The story begins with a description of Marco and his strict daily routine. We gain an insight into his life. His boring, uneventful, sad life. He meets Maria whilst he sits drinking his coffee. Well, he doesn't meet her but watches from afar. He is struck by her beauty and her energy is nothing he's come across before. Every morning she walks in at 8am, picks up her coffee, and walks out. We find out that Marco has been following her for a while. His normal routine has been shaken by her presence and he now spends his evenings watching her from his car. He had figured out where she lived and would wait from across the street for her to come home. He's too insecure to ever speak or interact with her but is completely obsessed. 
2. One night, Marco notices another car parked on the street. Another man sits there for hours watching her. A competitor perhaps? The next morning at coffee, the same man is sitting at a table, waiting for Maria to enter. Yet he too does not interact with her, and she clearly is unaware of his presence. Marco is not a bold man, he watches Maria from a far and only follows her to her social events, rather than attending them himself. He notices that the other man is in fact following her even into the bars. So his boundaries are pushed and he too, enters the bar. 
3. A woman about his age (Claudia Bailey) sits down next to him and they begin to talk. It turns out that she's friends with Maria and Marco manages to find a way into their friendship group. He's not interested in Claudia, and neither of them have anything in common, but it's a way for him to get closer to Maria. He finds out from Claudia, all of Maria's secrets. She is lived in Florida, and her husband supposedly drowned in a boating accident and his body was never found. As a result, she managed to receive the inheritance and a large sum of money from life insurance, allowing her to move back to New York City whilst not having a job. We also find out from Claudia that Maria used to be completely different before she met George Bernard. She was a single girl in the city, who loved to party and socialise. But when she met her husband and chose to move out to Florida, she became unhappy with her life choices and sought a beneficial way out.
4. Marco continues to get his morning coffee and one day, the other man sits down next to him. He proceeds to question him and alerts Marco that Maria is a potentially dangerous woman and that he has been hired as a private investigator by George's family to investigate her and hopefully find some evidence of George's murder. The private investigator urges Marco to use his new connections to get into Maria's flat and investigate. Marco, fuelled by his obsession with Maria obliges. 
5. He attends with Claudia a flat party hosted by Maria and at the end of the night sneaks into her bedroom. He enjoys looking through her things in her wardrobe and then is just about to open a large heavy gift box on her top shelve when she speaks from right behind him. She orders him to put it down and questions him about what he's doing. Her normally confident, flirty personality has shifted and she seems angry, yet equally afraid. She orders him and Claudia to leave immediately and Marco relys on about what happened to the private investigator
6. The private investigator takes on a manipulative approach. He's noticed that Marco was stalking Maria and is obsessive over her. He urges him to find out what is in the box that made Maria so angry. 
7. Marco decides to break into Mari's flat whilst she's out one night. He's certain that she won't come back for a while and that he has time to check that box out. He discovers a hammer wrapped up in cloth. He immediately puts it back, and is about to turn around and head out the door when he feels a gun against the back of his head. 
8. Maria questions Marco intensely and it becomes clear that it is the murder weapon she used to kill her husband. The story ends with Marco being shot by Maria.