The first series are pictures of me looking for this camera—on the table where I had left it for just a moment, on the other chairs, underneath, and apparently into the sky, as if it could have leapt onto the awning of the café or been stolen by a pigeon. These photos were taken from close range, and if the camera could see me, I should have been able to see the camera. In one, I am asking other tourists. In another, I am looking straight into the lens. In the next few, I am wandering along the boardwalk and streets back to my hotel.
The second series are pictures of you. At least I assume they are. Your feet in sandals, on the pebbles. The arc of your hip, with the sea as background. Your hand grasping a blue scarf. Edges of shoulder, neck, earlobe, lips, always in a new location, in order from pre-dawn to post-sunset, never in a mirror. Hints. Nothing to identify you.
The third series are pictures of things I would never have seen without you. At least, I would never have seen them in the same light, from the same angle, with the same ideology, with the same patience. A seagull picking at a crab shell, unnoticed by the crowd tanning on the other side of a big rock. Five shots of a particular tomato at a fruit stand being examined by five different customers over the course of a day. Another sequence, of an ice cube melting on your pelvis, first to match the curve, then to vanish entirely. A hang-glider as he runs towards a cliff, one shot of his face in reflexive terror, the next in perfect exhilaration. I had a dream like that. Did you know?
When I found my camera again, it was the last day of my trip, my bags were with me, right beside me, and it was on my table at the café, exactly where I had left it. How did you know I would come back? Perhaps you returned every day, set the camera down and watched. It is such a crowded café. I suppose the owner must have been in on it, too. She always seemed to know something.