“But that is the definition, not the origin. The stranger stroked the buttons on his coat. “An act of surveillance to detect criminal activity or find a wanted person.” “I can look it up for you.” In no time she had the word pulled up on her phone. It sounds much like staccato, which is a fitting description of its pronunciation.”

“Have you ever pondered at the origins of the word?” said the stranger. If they were there and not at home, they would have scolded her for chewing gum at the front desk. Mahira was sixteen and could already run the place if she wanted to, but her parents would make her go to college first. She chewed bubble gum to offset the nervousness and fiddled on her phone while he rattled off questions. At first he made Mahira nervous, but then she found him entertaining. He had entered and began asking several questions about the kind of guests her parents usually had, but had not asked for a room. He was wearing a black wool coat and sitting with his legs crossed. “That’s an astute observation,” said the stranger. And the guy in room 16 keeps poking through the blinds every ten minutes. And when they pulled in, two other guys who were there for hours just pulled out. “They’ve been sitting in that car for over an hour.

“What gives you that idea?” said the stranger sitting in the chair across from her. “See those two guys over there? I think they’re doing a stakeout.” The word “stakeout,” despite being a very concrete and kinetic word, has an etymology that quite fluidly and, at times, rather abstractly traces through several stakes in history-if by “stakes” we are referring to posts laid along a line to mark a specific location in space, or in the case of this example, locations in time.Īt the front desk of the Red Drape Inn, Mahira Patel gazed out the window at the two men sitting in a car.

An Authentic Derivative by Caleb Coy