My friends are always obliging me with ephemera like this—screenshots of sexts, emails to their mothers — because I’m forever wanting to know what it feels like to be other people. What were we all doing? What the hell was going on here on Earth? Of course none of these artifacts really amounted to anything; it was like trying to grab smoke by its handle. What handle?
I put the neighbor’s note on my desk. I was busy, too, but I always have time to worry. In fact, I think I had already been worrying about someone using a telephoto lens to take pictures through our windows when the note arrived. Worrying is the wrong word—more like hoping. I hoped this was happening and had been happening since my birth, or some‑ thing along these lines. If not this man through the windows, then God, or my parents, or my real parents, who are actually just my parents, or the real me, who has been waiting for the right moment to take over, tap me out. Just please let there be someone who cares enough to watch over me. It took me two days to call Brian the neighbor because I was busy savoring my position, like when a crush finally texts back and you want to enjoy having the ball in your court for a while.
“It feels funny to call someone who lives right next door,” I said. “I could have just opened the window.”
“I’m not at home right now.” “Okay.”
He said the man had parked around the corner and that he had not photographed any other homes.
“He may have just been admiring your house,” Brian suggested.
I didn’t like that. I mean, it’s a nice house, but come on. I didn’t spend the last two days not calling because our house is nice.
“I’m a bit of a public figure,” I said, going a little heavy on the false modesty. False modesty is one of those things that’s hard to go easy on, like squirting whipped cream from a can. He said that’s why he was concerned, because of my notoriety. I humbly replied, “Well, thank you, it’s really so nice to know you’re keeping your eye on things.”
“It’s literally my job,” Brian said.
“Right,” I said, snapping out of it. I’m not a household name. I won’t go into the tedious specifics of what I do, but picture a woman who had success in several mediums at a young age and has continued very steadily, always circling her central concerns in a sort of ecstatic fugue state with the confidence that comes from knowing there is no other path—her whole life will be this single conversation with God. God might be the wrong word for it. The Universe. The Undernetting. I work in our converted garage. One leg of my desk is shorter than the others and every day for the past fifteen years I’ve meant to wedge some‑ thing under it, but every day my work is too urgent—I’m perpetually at a crucial turning point; everything is forever about to be revealed. At five o’clock I have to consciously dial myself down before reentering the house, like astronaut Buzz Aldrin preparing to unload the dishwasher immediately after returning from the moon. Don’t talk about the moon, I remind myself. Ask everyone how their day was.
