I Like Being Watched

"I can't believe you are leaving such an easy gig."

"I draw the line at spying. Makes me feel all squirrelly. But if it doesn't bother you, then, yeah, it is a sweet job. You can listen to music or audiobooks all day and get paid to do it. Plus, it's a beautiful house. I took maybe like fifty selfies with the soaking tub in the background. My heart aches, knowing it is sitting there, never being used. It should be a crime."

"Do you have the original contact information?"

"Yeah, I'll send it all over. Just... be careful, you know?" she asked, standing, slipping into a massive infinity scarf that had to have taken up four or five skeins of yarn, in a bright mustard yellow color that worked on her and most definitely did not work on me, much to my complete disappointment.

"I'm always careful," I reminded her, slipping into my jacket, bringing our plate and cups over to the mess station.

When it came to friendship dynamics, Perry was the one always kind of following her heart into the oddest of places, often needing to call me to come pluck her up out of a shady situation.

While me, well, I was home using every second of spare time I could find, trying to get more of a following for my art online so that I could eventually make a living doing that.

It was hard, but not impossible. I saw artists strike it big every day. And it wasn't like I was trying to make a fortune or anything. I just wanted to make enough so that I could do it full-time. Or only have to have a very part-time job on the side.

"Text me if you get an interview," she demanded as we moved out onto the sidewalk, the late fall air biting at our heat-accustomed skin.

"Will do. Send me the details to your next show," I told her, smiling as she did a little happy wiggle. It didn't matter to her that it was a very small-time play written by a guy we'd gone to school with, she was as excited as she would be if she landed a leading role in Phantom on Broadway.

That was one of the reasons we had managed all the ups and downs of our college years and beyond. We were both incredibly passionate about our chosen professions. Even though they weren't giving us what we wanted. Yet.

Eternal optimists, despite the often crushing reality.

I had just set up a fresh canvas in my spare room that was too small to have the audacity to call itself a bedroom, but worked rather beautifully for a studio, when my phone rang, bringing with it the links from Perry.

Apparently, whoever posted the ad for help in the first place never bothered to take it down. Whether that was simply a lapse in judgment, or evidence of other people getting the job and getting creeped out about the cameras, and therefore perpetually leaving a position that needed to be filled, I had no idea. It worked in my favor, though, seeing as I couldn't exactly say where I heard about the job in the first place.

Ten minutes later, I had all the information filled out, turned off my phone, and got to work. I never got long between my odd jobs, so when I did have a little span of time, I disconnected from the world, wanting to be able to lose myself for whatever snippet of time I was able to.

I knew artists that got more inspired surrounded by hustle and bustle, who needed to blast music, who needed some other sort of stimuli to get in the zone. I envied them. I needed silence to focus. This was something I could likely blame my mother for. She believed art was a form of meditation. And anyone who ever got their Om on knew that silence was generally recommended or else your mind started to wander.

I figured art school would eventually rid me of finicky habits.

No such luck.

So I had no idea until three hours later while juggling four dog leashes—one belonging to the corkscrew-tailed, severely overweight (and happy about it, therefore completely disinterested in exercise of any sort) bulldog—that there had been a missed call on my phone.

"Shit shit shit. See, Hagrid," I grumbled at the bulldog who looked up at me blankly. "If I didn't have to drag you every step of this walk, I would have checked my phone sooner," I told him, reaching down to give his wide head a pat, something that usually motivated a couple more steps out of him.

I hit the play button, cradling my phone between my ear and shoulder, my heartbeat already skittering around. Some would call this nerves. Interviews of any sort had a way of doing that to you. But I knew better. I knew this feeling all the way back to when I'd casually left my blinds open in my dorm room knowing that the guy standing outside my first-level window was watching me as my hand slid down my body, as it started stoking a fire.