The first time I noticed him I was in the far corner of the parking structure on Crestline, the one with the busted overhead light on level two. I had been there maybe four minutes. He was walking the perimeter of the lower deck in a way that does not make sense for someone going to or from a vehicle. That is the thing I want to be clear about. He was not heading anywhere. He was covering ground.

I want to explain what I mean by the pause. Right before he turns, there is a half-second where the shoulder drops slightly, like he is adjusting something, and that drop is the only cue that a turn is coming. Then the body rotates, and by the time the rotation is complete the face is already pointed in the other direction. I have been thinking about how you would train yourself to do that and I think you would have to practice it. You would have to practice it somewhere that felt safe, doing it over and over until the timing was automatic. That is not a thing a person does accidentally.

I did not photograph him the first time because I did not understand yet that it was a first time. I thought it was an isolated incident, and I want to be honest about that because later I started editing the memory in my head, making it seem like I knew earlier than I did. I did not know. I noticed, and then I filed it, and then a week later it happened again in a completely different location and that is when I understood I had been filing the wrong thing.

The still in this entry is from the third occurrence and he is not in it. by the time the phone was up he was past the fence line. This is the street four seconds after him. I keep it because the emptiness is the record. the streetlight does that flare, and under the flare there is nothing, which is exactly the amount of him a camera has ever been allowed to hold. That bothers me more than I can explain here and I am not going to try.