Eve liked sitting by the window. Every evening as the sun dappled the road gold, an elderly man would come down the road with his little brown Pekinese. Like a couple they would bicker at every tree juncture, with the bitch usually getting her way. As they passed her garden, a boy would come sailing by on a bicycle. And as if on cue, the dog would pause to glare at the approaching nuisance, while her partner muttered.
Eve sometimes giggled. Then quickly clasped her mouth with both hands, as if she might be heard through the glass and the distance. She often wondered if they saw her there. If they noticed the girl with her camera. If the boy she often gazed at noticed her. If he came down this way every day because of her. A silly thought, she reasoned — for he does not even know I exist. But nevertheless she wondered, and her heart wandered, and soon she found herself at the window every day. Just to catch him sailing by.
There were the days when he did not, and she fretted. She held a hand to her chest and her brow furrowed in distress as evening closed on the street. The nights would be restless, the hours ceaseless. The next day she would wait again, and if he came down the road, in his careless and unhurried way, she found herself smiling, with the sun back in her eyes.
Eve often looked into her viewfinder, and imagined herself fair. And saw him in its depths, sailing by and gazing back at her. The shots reeled into a reverie. The days flickered. Eve dreamed.
One day, the boy stopped coming. For days she waited. For days he stayed away. And the days stretched themselves into weeks. The weeks into months. The girl at the window cried as if her heart would break. She cried with all the strength she had in her frame. But nothing she did brought him back. Not the fierce tears. The zealous watch. The dumb prayers.
Eve could not bear to look back into her camera. So she took a picture of herself – watching, but never seen. In the sunset, on the road. Where he would never come again into focus. As a memory of what she once treasured. As a farewell to the dreams only she knew existed.
And she tossed the camera into the river.
