Yeah, it’s a relief, I say, as Charles places a cup of green tea down in front of me.

He sits down next to me, sips his tea. Now that you’re fully recovered, I suppose you’ll be heading back home?

I think about Mia, and how Mia is, ugh, Tanner’s now.

I think about my joblessness and my high level of broke-ness.

I think about my homelessness.

And I say, Actually, I was thinking about staying here and maybe doing some more work with you. If that was okay by you, of course.

He raises an eyebrow. What about your girlfriend?

Yeah, I say, burning my tongue on the tea. I don’t think that’s gonna work out, unfortunately.

Ah, he says, that is a shame. I’m sorry to hear that.

Yeah, I say. It is what it is, I guess.

Well, as they say, her loss is my gain, he says, smiling his wide smile and clinking his cup against mine.

This time, I have my tripod set up, on account of me wanting hard evidence that this other me out there is real, and not some figment of my fucked-up, cabin-fevered existence over the last six weeks or so.

Like, see-it-with-your-eyes-on-photographic-paper-you-can-hold-up-to-your-face-and-examine type of evidence. With a magnifying glass, if you have to.

The thing with telephoto lenses, is they are big. Really big. So if you attach one to your camera, you have to use a tripod to make sure you don’t get any blurry shots – especially with low light and slow shutter speeds. If you have a tripod, you should really use a shutter-release cable too, just to minimize any shake from pressing the shutter button.

I look in the direction of the window, and again, it takes me a while to find.

When I do, he’s there.

I get a smack of adrenaline, just like when I’m on the street and I capture a stranger’s image when I’m a metre from their face.

It’s the same as yesterday, he’s sat at his desk, reading his book, with the lamp on. Still as anything.

I press the shutter release, wind the film on, press the shutter release, wind the film on.

And I sit back in the chair, and I watch the silhouette in the window, and I fall asleep.

T

HIRTY

-S

IX

I wake up, alone.

My leg feels small, and light.

It feels cold.

It feels like it can breathe.

I open my eyes, and I’m outside, in my recliner, on the terrace of the penthouse, on account of me falling asleep at my stakeout spot.

I yawn a wide yawn, look through my camera. But he’s not in his room right now.

And then I remember that I’m not an invalid anymore, that I can actually walk now, that I can get out onto those streets down there.

This is me, munching on some you tiao, a few doors down from the building’s entrance.

Waiting for him to come out.

It’s 6:30 am on Tuesday, so if I’m on my game, I should be able to catch him walking out the door on his way to work.

If he works, that is.

The building itself is nothing special. An off-white block on a street of off-white blocks.

Scooters buzz drunkenly up and down the street.

Above, a lady is hanging her washing out to dry on her balcony railings.

I guess Taipei is like London in that way: multimillion-pound projects plonked right in front of your old, run-down buildings.

This is me, munching, keeping an eye on the door. I’ve been here ten minutes or so, and no one has come out yet.

This is me, munching, realizing that I should maybe disguise myself a little – so that if he does come out and see me, he won’t, you know, freak out and have a heart attack or something.

Just your regular dude, hanging out on the street, eating his breakfast.

But what if he comes out the building when I go off to buy my disguise?

I weigh the dilemma up in my head for a minute, and decide it’d be better if he didn’t realize what was going on.

On my way here, I passed a shop that sold cheap baseball caps and sunglasses. The owner was just sliding the shutters up, so I go back and buy a plain black cap and some Wayfarer knockoffs, and I put them on. Inconspicuous like.

Just as I’m about to get to my waiting spot, I see that he’s right there at the front of his building, leaning against one of the tiled columns.

Reading his book.

The plan was to follow him around a bit. See what he gets up to in his day.

But this guy, he doesn’t seem to do anything apart from read that book. And by the looks of things, he’s going to be there for a while, standing comfortable there in that morning slice of warm, golden light as the city wakes up around him.

I watch him for a few minutes.