The Surveillance State of Mind

The fedora felt ridiculous perched on my head, a relic from noir films where men like me were supposed to look dangerous instead of tired. I'd been tailing the target for three weeks—some mid-level accountant at Bear Stearns who might be embezzling, or might just be having an affair with his secretary. The client didn't care which. Neither did I.

I did most of my surveillance from my apartment window, where my cat Mr. Whiskers provided intermittent company. A rescue with one ear and a permanently skeptical expression, he'd seen me through three divorces and a career arc that had somehow spiraled from legitimate private investigator to whatever I was now. Corporate spy. Or maybe just a creep with a telephoto lens.

The woman across the street appeared four days into the job. Something about her caught my attention—the morning coffee ritual, the way she practiced ballet in her living room at dusk, the elaborate feathered hat she wore on weekends. I told myself I was just being thorough. A good spy notices everything.

I started photographing her too.

The revelation came on a Tuesday. My client—whose name actually was Bear, something I'd found too funny to mention in our emails—called demanding results. The embezzler had already fled the country. Meanwhile, my surveillance target, the accountant, turned out to be working for someone else. Documenting me.

She wasn't a neighbor. She was cleanup.

That night, as Mr. Whiskers watched from his perch on the windowsill, she crossed the street toward my building with a purposeful stride. My fedora felt ridiculous. I looked at my life—the stakeouts, the photos, the hollowed-out feeling of being a man who watched other people live—and realized I'd become what I'd always secretly feared: a zombie. Something that moved and ate but never truly lived.

"Your cat," she said at my door, camera bag slung over her shoulder. "He's the only thing that looks alive in any of these."

She didn't kill me. She asked if I wanted to grab dinner.

Some days I still wear the hat. Most days I don't. But Mr. Whiskers and I are learning to be in the picture, not just taking it.