The Camera Man Read online

  A bus drives past and I see my reflection in its windows.

  And a man behind me, holding a video camera.

  Turning, I look around and see nothing but other pedestrians waiting at the same crossing. Just as I'm about to think that I imagine the man, however, I spot him again, although this time he's all the way over at the corner of a building. Now that I'm seeing him clearly and in broad daylight, however, I can see that he's definitely the same man who was opposite the restaurant yesterday, and he's holding a camera right in front of his face with the lens aimed straight at me.

  “Hey!” I call out, pushing past the other pedestrians and hurrying toward the man. “Wait!”

  Suddenly the man turns and walks away, quickly disappearing around the corner. I run after him, almost slamming straight into several people in the crowd, but when I get to the corner I find that the man has disappeared. I look around, but there are far too many people here and I don't have a hope of spotting a man who could have gone anywhere.

  He's been filming me, though. I'm sure of it now. For some reason, he's been filming my every move and -

  No.

  I sound completely insane.

  No matter what I think I'm seeing, I have to remember that I'm prone to these delusions. The camera man is just like the woman I thought I saw in the garbage all those years ago. She wasn't real, and the camera man isn't real either.

  I can't afford another slip.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “No, I'm sure she's fine,” I tell Claudia as I follow her through the crowded bar after work. “I don't want to worry you, I was just wondering whether you've heard from her.”

  “Not since last week,” she replies, before muttering a few curses as a passing drunk bumps into her and almost spills her drinks. “Can you believe some people? Goddamn rude...”

  “If you bump into Chrissie any time soon,” I continue, “can you ask her to call me?”

  “Are you sure nothing's wrong?”

  “I'm sure. Well, I mean I hope. To be honest, it's a while since I last saw her. She kind of shot out on me over lunch yesterday, and I haven't been able to get in touch with her since.”

  “Classic Chrissie!” she laughs.

  “That's what I keep trying to tell myself, but I'd really like to hear her voice and -”

  Before I can finish, another customer bumps past me, mumbling a brief apology as he almost sends me crashing onto somebody else's table. By the time I've managed to pull myself together, I see that Claudia has almost reached a different table at the far end of the bar, where her friends are waiting. I consider waving goodbye and leaving, but then I spot another of Chrissie's colleagues at the table and I figure it might be worth checking to see if she knows anything. I start making my way over, but then my attention is suddenly grabbed by a large video screen on the far wall. To my surprise, I see my own face staring back at me.

  “What the...”

  Too shocked to move, I stare up at the screen and make eye contact with myself. It takes several seconds before I realize that there's a small camera at the top of the screen, but that still doesn't make me feel entirely comfortable and I watch for a moment longer before cautiously making my way toward Claudia's table. To my surprise, however, the camera moves and follows me, keeping its lens trained on my face so that my features remain plastered across the screen.

  “Uh-oh,” Claudia says with a grin as I reach her. “Looks like the karaoke monster might be about to get you.”

  I turn to her. “Sorry?”

  “It's a facial recognition thing,” she continues. “This bar's got one of those high-tech systems that scans your face and follows you around. At some point, the computer system'll automatically nominate you to sing something over at the microphone.” She slaps me on the back. “Don't worry, you'll love it. It's a load of fun.”

  “I don't think I want to be filmed like that,” I reply, turning my back to the screen.

  “You don't get a choice in here, Jess,” one of the other girls at the table says, holding her phone up and aiming its camera at me. “Didn't you see the sign at the door. By entering this club, you're granting permission for them to use your image in the computer system for as long as you're on the club's property. Can't say you weren't warned!”

  “There are cameras everywhere!” another girl laughs.

  Glancing around, I see that she's right. Even though the club's lights are low, I can make out a dozen cameras just near this table alone, and I'm sure there are many more in the shadows. For a moment, the thought of all those little lenses focusing on me is enough to send a shiver down my spine, and I've got to admit that I feel deeply uncomfortable. I want to turn away, so that none of the cameras can get a shot of my face, but wherever I look I just see more and more of the damn things, until finally I turn to Claudia and find that she and her friends are grinning at me.

  “Are you not into karaoke?” one of them asks.

  “I have to get out of here,” I reply, turning and hurrying back through the crowd, trying not to push too hard even though I really, really want to get away from the cameras.

  As soon as I'm out on the pavement, I take a few steps toward the bus stop before stopping again as I see a camera watching me from high up on a lamppost. I instinctively turn away, but there are half a dozen more cameras mounted on various buildings nearby, and finally I force myself to stay calm and stop worrying so much. A couple of passersby have already cast concerned looks my way, so I take a series of deep breaths and then I keep walking, while trying to ignore all the cameras on nearby buildings.

  I can do this.

  I can stay calm.

  There's only so -

  “And now let's talk to a random stranger on the street!”

  Suddenly a guy blunders into my way, blocking my path as he holds a phone in my face.

  “Hey,” he continues excitedly, as a young, scantily-clad girl stops next to him, helping to control the myriad wires that are trailing from his jacket, “we're doing some vox pops for an online show, and you're live right now to over four hundred and fifty thousand subscribers around the world. What we want to know is, how do you think Londoners should react to the events that took place last week? Do you think we need more unity and more togetherness, and more tolerance, or is it time to reaffirm the city's identity and show what we're made of?”

  Too startled to reply, I stare at the phone's tiny camera for a moment before holding a hand up, trying to block its view.

  “We need to see your pretty face,” the guy continues, grabbing my hand and forcing it back down. “Come on, everyone's got an opinion on everything. What's yours?”

  “What's my what?” I stammer.

  “Don't you think London's having a bit of an identity crisis?” he asks, suddenly putting a hand over my shoulder as he keeps the camera aimed right at my face. “What does it mean, to you, to be a Londoner?”

  “I -”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “I really just -”

  “If you had to name one thing that energizes your sense of place, what would that be?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” I tell him, turning away so that the camera's no longer pointed at me. At the same time I pull my hand free and start hurrying a different way along the street, hoping against hope that this guy is not going to follow.

  “Hey!” he calls after me. “I just want your opinion on a few things! Okay, well, ladies and gentlemen at home, there goes somebody who apparently has no opinions about anything. Let's try someone else, shall we?”

  By the time I get around the next corner, I feel as if I can barely breathe. I've never had a panic attack before, but I'm pretty sure this must be how they feel. My chest is becoming impossibly tight and my knees are shaking, and I feel hot and cold at the same time. Leaning back against the wall, I have to really focus in order to pull my thoughts together, but finally I manage to stop freaking out. Glancing around, I look for any sign of another
camera watching me, but to my surprise I don't see any such thing.

  I keep looking, but there are no cameras here at all.

  No, wait, that can't be right.

  I'm next to a side-road, close to one of the main roads that runs through this part of London, and I know damn well that there have to be cameras here. I continue to look around, waiting to spot at least one lens staring at me, but so far there really seems to be nothing. A nearby lamppost carries what looks to have once been the platform for a camera, but it seems that at some point the camera itself was removed and never replaced. I look up at the side of the nearest building, but once again there are no cameras anywhere to be seen.

  And yet deep down, I can already tell that I'm being watched.

  There's a camera here somewhere, and I'm not going to rest until I've found it. Taking a step forward, I turn around and try to spot the tell-tale black dome, or the little lens. With each passing second, I'm more and more certain that a camera is trained on me somewhere, from some angle, but I'm running out of places where it could be hiding. There's an ATM about two hundred meters along the street, and I guess there must be a camera there, but it's too far away and I doubt I'm in its line of sight. Determined to figure out what's watching me, I take a step back and turn, only to inadvertently bump against a passerby.

  “Careful!” the man says with a smile as we rub shoulders, but he hurries on and I barely pay him any attention at all. He doesn't seem to be carrying a camera, but now it occurs to me that maybe I should be looking for one that's attached to someone.

  I look at all the people who are rushing past, searching for a phone that's pointed at me or maybe just some kind of camera attached to a lapel pin.

  There has to be something.

  And then I look up.

  High above, the gray evening sky is starting to darken, and clouds are beginning to move in. I search for some kind of drone or plane, figuring that maybe there's an eye in the sky, and then I realize that maybe there's a camera even further up, a camera I can never see but one that can still see me. Attached to a satellite, perhaps, and recording what's going on down here at street-level.

  But no.

  That's not it.

  The camera I'm sensing is closer. Looking up at the windows of nearby buildings, all I can see is the gray sky reflected in scores of glass panes. But as I stare at those panes, I swear I can feel a camera staring back at me. Somebody is in one of those rooms, aiming a camera straight at me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As evening turns to night, I sit at my living room window and watch the abandoned office building opposite. Around 5pm, the light seems to soften and become warmer, and the office windows shine bright. By 6pm the sun has dipped low enough that the windows have become darker, and by 7pm the sun has set and I'm left watching the dark building. I can't really make anything out, but at least I have a trick up my sleeve.

  Opening the new app on my phone, I active up the night-vision setting and then hold my phone up. Sure enough, I now have a hazy, slightly blocky but reasonably clear view of the office building's windows. The resolution isn't perfect, but at least I can see into the rooms, and I can check each of them in turn and see that – so far, at least – there's definitely nobody watching me.

  Still, it's early.

  If I'm right, and if somebody really is following me with a camera, he should show up eventually.

  I've left my laptop running with the volume low, showing some old sitcom that I found on one of the streaming sites. I'm not really paying attention to the noise, but it's good to not be sitting here in silence and somehow the occasional bursts of studio audience laughter make me feel better. I guess deep down I'm hoping and praying that this is all going to turn out to be a mistake, that nobody will appear in any of the windows opposite and by morning I'll realize that the whole thing was in my head.

  I mean, that at least has to be possible.

  Maybe the guy outside the restaurant and the guy in the street earlier were two different people.

  Maybe they just happened to each be filming something near to where I was standing.

  Maybe I was wrong about seeing a figure in the office building last night.

  Maybe Chrissie'll call in the morning and have some horrendous story about a douche-bag guy who wasted her time for a couple of days.

  None of that is remotely impossible. This time tomorrow, I might be sipping a cocktail in some bar with Chrissie, and laughing at how easily I started to crack.

  What's the alternative, anyway? That some weirdo has started stalking me? Women like me don't get stalkers. I'm mousy, I'm quiet, I look pretty bland and I don't do anything to draw attention to myself. Whenever I'm out, I trail around after Chrissie, letting her lead us into interesting situations, but I'm always very passive. I just don't have what it takes to be an extrovert, and I even struggle to make conversation with people unless I know them pretty well. When I'm not with Chrissie, I lead a quiet life that basically involves going from my apartment to work, and then to the store, and then back home to my apartment, with just an occasional detour to the gym. That's it, that's all I do with my life.

  If anyone did start stalking me, they'd soon get bored and stop. Or they'd start following Chrissie instead. I mean, she's like a diamond in the rough.

  I'm the rough.

  “You're losing your mind,” I say out loud finally, as 8pm rolls around and I realize I've been sitting here at the window like a lunatic for several hours now. I guess I'll look back on this and laugh at some point. “Yeah, Jess, you're really going down the rabbit-hole with this one. Shame you don't have anything better to do with your time.”

  Realizing that at some point the sitcom stopped playing, and that I didn't notice, I head over to the coffee table and see that the screen is filled with a dialog box asking if I'm still watching the show. Feeling a little as if the website is mocking me, I click to confirm that I am still watching and the latest episode resumes with an immediate, loud burst of audience laughter.

  “Thanks,” I mutter under my breath as I head back to the window and peer out at the dark building opposite. After a moment I raise my phone again and figure I might as well conduct one of my periodic checks of the most obvious windows.

  The screen shows a fuzzy, green-tinted image of each window, but all I see are empty rooms with the occasional desk or chair that got left behind when the companies moved out. The whole scene is pretty sad and derelict, really, although I suppose there's something poetic about all those empty little spaces. I remember when I used to see people working late at night in some of the offices. One night, a guy even glanced this way and saw me, and I ducked out of view.

  I had fantasies about that for a while. About what might have happened if we'd made those glances a regular thing. Of course, in real life, I never saw him again.

  Lowering the camera, I sigh as I look out the window. I'm not lonely, definitely not, but at the same time I feel that I should be. Chrissie's my only real friend, and when she's not around I tend to spend my time pottering about without much human contact. A normal person would get out there and meet someone. A normal person wouldn't accept that this is their lot in life. A normal person would make things happen. All I do, meanwhile, is drift along and hope that some day someone will swoop in and shake my life up for me. I'm the opposite of Chrissie, but that's fine. It's not boring being boring, and I find ways to fill my time. So at least I've got that going for me.

  And then I feel it.

  The hairs on the back of my neck start to rise, and I'm flooded by a very sudden, very clear sense that I'm being watched. There's nothing gradual about this feeling; instead, it's as if a switch was suddenly flicked and now I can feel someone's gaze aimed right at me. I instinctively turn and look back across my low-lit living room, but of course there's no sign of anyone. I've got the door locked and bolted, so there's no way an intruder could get inside, even if they were equipped with a hairpin.

  Yet that feeling of
being watched is getting stronger by the second, and finally I realize my hands are trembling. I check the night-vision screen again, looking at the windows opposite, but there's still no sign of anyone. Finally I get to my feet and close the blinds, and I realize that this has gone too far.

  I'm losing my mind.

  Setting my phone down, I head to the sofa and take a seat. I need to get a grip and focus on the fact that while Chrissie is still AWOL, there's no reason to assume the worst. There's also no reason to let my fears get out of control, and I need to put all that nonsense about a man with a camera out of my mind.

  “This is how people go crazy,” I say out loud, before checking my pulse and finding that my heart is racing. “This is how ordinary, normal, boring people end up in lunatic asylums.”

  I need a shower.

  I need to take a shower, calm down, and turn this into just an ordinary night.

  A few minutes later, once I'm in the cubicle and I've got the water running, I start washing my hair. I still don't feel entirely settled, but I guess I'm starting to calm down a little, and I've just about managed to convince myself that the worst of my fears were just a paranoid fantasy. I'm still worried about Chrissie, but the more I think about the way she vanished at lunch yesterday, the more I realize that this behavior isn't completely out of character for her. Sure, it's inconsiderate and self-absorbed, and downright rude, but Chrissie can be all of those things and more.

  I'm going to give her hell next time I see her.

  I don't care what kind of guy she's met. I don't care if he's the richest man on the planet and the hottest too. She can't just run off like this. Doesn't she realize that I worry about her?