He only wears clothing of solid colors to better camouflage himself into the colorless field of the image. Periodically through the day, he takes refuge in the blind zone behind his monitor. His disappearance is usually prompted by the entrance of a delivery boy. They come frequently, sometimes two to three hours apart. They enter from the bottom or right edge of the screen. As soon as he spots their arrival, he slides sideways, craning his head and arching his back until he is hidden from view. The papers are signed and the packages exchanged in relative obscurity. His torso is never completely blocked; frequently, his head bobs up and his arms jut out at the sides. Typically, he does not return to full view for ten minutes or more.
+++++
The room is internal and artificially lit. It could be difficult to tell night from day if it were not for the traffic. A stream of people shuffling between offices, chatting, exchanging places at the monitors, and pecking at the keyboards establishes the working day. That pace tapers off into dead calm that is only disrupted by a flurry of activity that accompanies the arrival of the cleaning crew.
+++++
She arrived punctually at 9:00 in the morning and left at 5:00 sharp. Her expertise was in multi-tasking. Sometimes, she would carry on a conversation holding the receiver between her chin and shoulder, while she steered the mouse with her left hand and scribbled notes with her right. One day without notice, she disappeared and never returned. A string of office temps has since taken turns filling in, sometimes for only two or three days at a time.
+++++
Daily, stacks of paper collect on his desk, progressively colonizing the surface. They arrive from the adjoining office or from the left edge of the frame. The papers are sorted into distinct piles as they arrive. The accumulations grow from low mounds into towers. As they grow and become more fragile structurally, they are secured with a variety of weights stored in his left-hand drawer. With great precision, he centers the objects on each summit like a trophy. Typically, before the end of the day, the stacks diminish until the desk is fully cleared.
+++++
The activity in the office has followed no discernible pattern. The door is now permanently open and people fluidly come and go. Before the transition, the door was shut most of the time and the occupant was never seen. It was difficult to determine if the closed door was meant to keep others from coming in or to prevent someone from getting out.
+++++
The top of the monitor is home to a continually shifting collection of objects, a makeshift display stand for an indeterminate viewer. The monitor sits in the central office which is lodged between two glass partitions — a situation that implies a symmetry of adjoining sides. As an awareness of the camera’s presence increased, the entire scene began to assume the character of a gallery, then, a shop window with all its contents laid out for the promiscuous consumer.
+++++
Their association seems improbable: she is always in severely tailored business suits and silver bracelets, he in ill-fitting shirts and poorly cuffed trousers. While most encounters are extemporaneous — chance meetings that turn into leisurely conversations — theirs seems timed to a vague logic. At first, he would arrive shortly after she had already left the vestibule. With military precision he enacted a daily ritual: standing in profile, he would mix a hot concoction, usually with soiled utensils, then with a minimum of movement, he would pivot 180ยบ in the opposite profile and drink, then pivot forward, each time striking a pose for several seconds. Then, he would leave. The timing of his entrances have gradually been shifting closer to hers.
