He actually looks like me.
(Or do I look like him?)
He’s got the same tattoo as me, running down his right forearm.
He’s got the same small scar at the corner of his left eye.
(The way I got that – my mum was having a screaming fight with my dad at dinner. I was only eight, but I’m pretty sure it was something to do with a woman he worked with. At any rate, she threw her chopstick at him, it missed, hit the oven door, broke in two, ricocheted and hit me right in the face. They both looked at me for a few seconds, and when I didn’t cry or anything, they went back to their argument.)
He’s even got the same haircut as me.
Is this the guy Akemi thought I was, back when I first met her in the hotel dining room?
Through the lens, he’s still, focusing on the story he’s reading. No expression on his face.
I zoom out a little, focus on the room he’s in to see if I can get any more information on this guy.
But the room he’s in is blank. White walls with no pictures. No furniture, apart from the simple desk he’s sitting at, and an Anglepoise lamp on that.
Now that I look at him more closely, the stillness on him is next level.
He’s not just physically still (apart from when he turns a page, obviously). It’s like he knows something that the rest of us don’t.
Like he knows he’s supposed to be in that room, reading that book, taking up the space he’s taking up in there.
I’m watching him for three hours, just looking through my viewfinder.
He hasn’t stood up to go to the toilet, to get something to eat or drink.
He’s just sat there, totally focused on his book.
Before I know it, it’s getting dark. I’m only noticing because he reaches out to turn the lamp on.
The light acts as a spotlight, bathing him in golden light while everything else around him – the other windows in the building, the people inside those windows – fades away.
Taking pictures of naked girls again? says a voice right by my ear.
It scares the shit out of me and I nearly fall out of my chair. I look around, and it’s Akemi, squinting, trying to see what it is I’m observing so studiously.
I half-think about getting her to look through my camera at the guy over there in that building, but then realize that would be an awful, awful idea.
I smile and I say, What else am I supposed to do with this dud leg?
She makes her scoffing sound, and she says, Have fun, Mr Peeping Tom.
When she steps through the sliding window back into the penthouse, I lift the camera back up to my eye.
But when I eventually find the window again, it’s dark.
T
HIRTY
-F
IVE
The next morning, the first thing I do when I wake up is head out onto the terrace so I can see what Other Me is doing.
For some reason I can’t find his window.
When I do finally manage to find it, the blinds are open, but there’s just the chair and the desk and the lamp. The book is there, too, propped up against the lamp.
I pan right and I pan left to check the windows either side, but there are other people in those, so they must be different apartments I’m looking into.
All I want to do right now is watch that window, get another glimpse of this guy, but today is the day I get my cast off.
For weeks, all I wanted was to get this stupid thing off my leg. Now the day finally comes, I’d rather sit out here and stare at a window.
No lie, I’d even take the horrendous itch under there that I’m not allowed to scratch, to be able to sit here all day.
But Akemi and Charles come out to take me to the hospital, and there is nothing I can do about it.
How does it feel to have your leg back?
Charles is at the kitchen counter, putting the kettle on to boil.
Me, I’m sitting at the table, desperate to go out there to see if Other Me is in his room again – and if he is, whether he’s doing anything other than reading his book.
