His native habitat was a window by moonlight. He would crouch there, gauzed in night mist, his fingers always poised upon his chin, as if rigging speculation, or some unresolved quandary, and he’d find me, writing at the kitchen table, when everyone else was asleep. In the beginning I was frightened by his presence, but then she told me he had been visiting her family home since she was a child, he was simply a spectral extension of the house, and all he ever did was crouch outside the window and stare in. It was as if his entire existence was predicated on this singular activity: observation. I was no longer afraid of him. I understood him. Empathized. One night, I was compelled to put down my pen and go outside to approach him, cautiously, with a sense of care. When I got to the garden, he was gone. If he had ever been there at all. I moved toward the window and peered in. I saw him sitting at the table, writing in a notebook. He was too absorbed in whatever he was scribbling to notice me. The privilege of absence kept me at the window for a long spell, a portrait of longing which I could only imagine.