Surveillance

The photographs fell from David's jacket pocket like snow—black and white images of me, captured without my knowledge. Me buying eggs at the corner bodega. Me walking the dog. Me sitting on this very balcony, staring at nothing.

"What is this?" I asked, though the cold dread in my stomach already knew.

David didn't answer. He just watched the palm trees sway in the Havana twilight, their trunks like spindly fingers reaching for a sky that had suddenly grown hostile.

We'd come to Cuba for our anniversary, a desperate attempt to salvage what twelve years of marriage had slowly eroded. David was an analyst for the State Department. Or so I'd believed. Now the images scattered across the hotel bed told a different story—week after week of my own life, documented with the meticulous detachment of someone who'd forgotten how to simply see.

"You're not my husband," I said. "You're my assignment."

"Not exactly." His voice was calm, which was worse. "I was recruited by the opposition three years ago. They wanted leverage. You were the easiest way to get it."

I thought of our Sunday mornings, his head in my lap while we watched baseball games from the sofa. The way he'd trace the line of my jaw with his thumb, his palm warm against my skin. Had that been surveillance too? Had he been counting my pulse beats, cataloging my tells?

"Do you love me?" It was a woman's question, foolish and desperate.

He turned then, and I saw something crack in his composure. "That's the complication, isn't it?"

Below us, the street musicians began to play, their brass notes curling upward like smoke. I thought about the nature of spying—how it required you to get close enough to see everything, but not close enough to be seen. David had mastered the first part. The second had destroyed us both.

"I'm leaving in the morning," I said, gathering the photographs like fallen leaves. "And I'm taking the dog."

He nodded once, defeated. The palm fronds whispered overhead, conspiratorial and indifferent. I wondered who would photograph me now, and if anyone would ever simply watch me because they wanted to, not because they'd been paid to.

The baseball game on the television continued without us, crowd roaring for a home run in a game that no longer mattered.