Business

From this tower you can spy on just about anyone. You've got
everybody passing below, you have the boats drifting on the water,
their passengers sunning themselves on the cabin roofs, completely
unaware that other eyes could be viewing them. Then, behind, there are
the riverside houses that sit atop the banks, both sides of the bridge
at this end. Typical of this area - white, ornate, with verandas
encircling the ground floor, which itself is raised off the ground, and
hammocks swinging from the canopy. A throwback to some era...an attempt
to acknowledge some kind of history.

Down below me, the traffic moves back and forth in its endlessly
repeating pattern. It never stops, it just pulsates; lessening at times
and becoming heavier at others. Right now the morning migration of
businessmen to their allocated offices has begun. They have all set off
on the same journey that they make every single day of their lives -
except at weekends, when they do exactly the same things they do every
weekend. Living their lives to a schedule, following the set plan as
dictated by somebody else - somebody they will never meet, or even be
aware of.

There's something oddly soothing about listening to the traffic, whilst
being raised above it. Every vehicle, reduced to the size of a
matchbox, suddenly becomes far less threatening, and the roar of their
carbon monoxide-spewing engines is reduced to a mere hum. The city is
made up more of sounds than of images. Show me one street, and it could
look just like any other. Let me listen to the sounds of people living
there, and I'll probably be able to tell you exactly where it is.

I hear a scuffling noise, and turn to find a hand gripping the edge of
the tower. Another hand appears, and then Cairn pulls himself into
view. He grins at me, then hauls himself up. He stands, his
shoulder-length hair moving slightly in the light breeze. His features,
a smooth mix of oriental and European design, are silhouetted against
the morning sky. "It's a great day," he declares.

I nod in agreement. "Haven't seen you up here for a while,
Cairn."

"I've been busy."

"Doing what?"

"Whatever." He stares out over the water. "I've been making some
money."

"More?"

"You bet. It's a good business."

"No, it's a profitable business," I counter, "it's not a good business.
No business that can get you arrested is a good business."

"Profitable business is good business." Cairn flashes a smile at me. A
shrill electronic noise breaks the peace, and he pulls a compact mobile
phone from his jacket pocket. A short conversation is held, then he
conceals the phone once more, a look of disgust on his face. He notices
my inquisitive look. "Some dumbass jock. He knew it was my day off." He
makes a rasping sound in his throat. "Jerk."

"Always on call, huh?"

"Absolutely."

"You do realise you're just as bad as those guys in the cars down
there, right?"

Cairn frowns. "What you talking about?"

"You're no more free than those office workers down there. You're just
as trapped in your own life."

"Listen, man. We're all trapped in our lives. When you going to see
that?"

"I still think there's something out there."

Cairn laughs and splays his arms out wide. "Out where?" He points to
the city. "Out there? Nothing more out there than what you can see from
here, my friend."

"Perhaps. We'll see."

Cairn sits, his legs dangling over the edge into space. I lie on my
front, the bridge stretching away to the left, just registering in my
vision. I look down at the houses below and to my right. Some of them
are set back a little from the river itself, and have long, rolling
lawns that extend nearly to the water.

On one of the lawns there are four young people sat on the still-wet
grass, looking out over the water. Two girls and two guys. Even though
this lawn is almost directly below me, the sheer height of my perch
makes it difficult for me to make out any features. From my pocket I
take a small object that I found by the roadside a couple of weeks
back, smashed and broken - it once was a pair of binoculars; now only
one side remains intact. Holding the eyepiece up to my left eye, I peer
through the single lens at the people on the lawn below.

"Now that kind of thing can get you arrested, man. And with good
reason, too," Cairn says, "how'd you like it if some unknown guy was
spying on you?"

"It wouldn't bother me," I reply truthfully. "If somebody wants to look
at me, then I won't mind. Why should I?"

"Hm. Whatever. You try telling them that down there. I think they'd be
pretty freaked to see you leering down on them."

"Well, they've never seen me yet, so there's no problem."

Cairn swivels around to look in the same direction. "So who's the new
girl?"

"I don't know. I've never seen her before." Shoulder-length brown hair,
curling inwards slightly at the ends, blue jeans, dark navy-blue
sweater, long black coat wrapped around her. "She looks cold."

"I'm not surprised. What are they doing out this early in the
morning?"

"Watching the sunrise, I guess."

In an attempt to gain my full attention, Cairn grabs my shoulder. "So,
what you doing today?" I shrug and continue to look through the lens at
the girl. I utter some non-committal reply. Truth is, I'm not
interested in what Cairn has to say - not now. My full concentration is
on this mysterious and unknown girl. She looks about twenty, although
it's hard to tell from this distance, even with the lens. Could be
anything from eighteen to twenty-five...age seems to have little to do
with appearance these days, at any rate. Her face, though indistinct
from here, seems to be perfectly composed: a nose and mouth that is
neither too small nor too large, and effortlessly curving skin that
leads your gaze automatically to her innocent-looking eyes, that seem
to be constantly pleading for something. Those eyes...huge. There's
something shining through them-

"Which one you looking at?" Cairn asks.

"The new girl."

"Like the look of her?"

I ignore his question. The four down below are deep in some animated
discussion, clearly of some amusement to them all. Unexpectedly the
girl's face suddenly breaks into a smile, her face emanating a radiant
warmth, that bursts from her eyes and mouth and embraces everything
about her, from her friends, to the grass, to the water, to the
bridge...to myself. I glance up at Cairn, hovering over my shoulder.
"Did you see that?" He looks blank. "Did you see her smile? She's got
an amazing smile."

Cairn laughs and stands. "I think you're getting a bit of a thing for
this girl here." His eyes narrow and he grins at me.

"Yeah, well, she's got a certain something."

Looking down at them, Cairn starts waving his arms and jumping up and
down, right on the edge of the tower. "Hey down there! My friend here
wants to meet you! Yes, you, with the dark hair and the wonderful smile
and the certain something!"

I knock his feet out from under him, and he collapses back on to the
top of the tower. "Stop that," I demand, frowning disapprovingly at
him.

"Hey, sorry. I was just kidding." He flashes another grin at me.

Not that it mattered - they couldn't have heard him from all the way
down there. And, even if they had, they would never have thought to
look up here for the source of the noise. Up here we are cut off from
the world; they would never think that somebody might climb this high
and, consequently, it never becomes a possibility. People never look
up.

I return my attentions to below. Whatever discussion they were having
seems to have taken a turn for the worse - there are no smiles anymore.
The girl suddenly stands, says a few words, and starts to walk quickly
back up the lawn towards the house.

"Mm, somebody's had enough," Cairn says, with a great air of
mystery.

I follow her movement through the lens, watching her feet impact on the
damp grass, the bottom of her coat wave slightly as she moves, and her
hair flow out gently behind her. There's something in that smile, that
walk, which I haven't seen before. A certain openness and honesty
that's hard to find. I lower the eyepiece and suddenly she is at a
great distance. A curious feeling comes over me.

"I'm going to go talk to her," I declare, getting to my feet.

Cairn looks at me in disbelief. "What?"

"I'm going to talk to her," I repeat, already starting to lower myself
over the edge of the tower, "see who she is, meet her - just like you
said."

"What're you going to say to her? 'Hi, I'm the guy who was spying on
you from on top of the bridge?'"

"Yeah, something like that." With that final remark, I begin the climb
down, skipping hand-holds, descending faster than I ever have before. I
see Cairn looking down at me for a while, then his face disappears back
from the edge.