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The keys are where she left them. As well as the Post-it note with her number. And the concierge’s greeting was perfectly natural. She knew immediately that he had left just like that, shut the door, no note, nothing.

The bed is unmade but there’s nothing lying around, no clothes. He didn’t make himself coffee. He didn’t eat. Didn’t touch anything. Didn’t make himself at home.

He gets up, late. He gets dressed. He finds his way to the kitchen, which is also the way out. He sees the Post-it note.

At that point she can’t work out what his expression is. She can’t decipher it.

Or else he wakes when she leaves. He leaps up to catch her, but her taxi has already left. He lets the curtain fall shut again, goes back to bed, and grabs a pillow. He gently scratches his flat belly, his nose buried in the smell of her. He thinks about what they did together, what they said. Or else…

Or else he orders a taxi, waits at the entrance of the apartment block, chats to the concierge, and heads off somewhere, she has no idea where, perhaps in the direction of Topanga Canyon.

She is sore all over but she goes back out to see the concierge. They must have talked. They would have at least said hello to each other. The concierge is black, too.

That’s the first time she’s thought about it. Black, under the red cap. Did he see, did he notice this morning (he notices everything: it’s his job), did a guy with a long coat come by? It feels like she’s describing a thief. But she’s not going to dwell on her private life. ‘He used to be in that series, you know, Connection.’ The series was very popular among African-Americans. And, anyway, a guy like that doesn’t walk through a secure residential complex without being noticed. With his long coat.

But perhaps he had it folded under his arm. It was already hot this morning. She starts again. She is exhausted. Her night, her day, something has made her exhausted. ‘A really tall guy, with long thin braids.’ She knows perfectly well that they’re called dreadlocks. But she can’t do it. Not in front of the concierge. She has never said dreadlocks in her life. Or perhaps once, referring to Bob Marley. ‘A tall guy with a coat. A coloured guy, wearing jeans.’ There is not a single black person living in the apartment block. Or in the entire neighbourhood, now that she thinks about it. ‘Coloured’—how ridiculous.

The concierge’s inertia is getting on her nerves. She feels like asking him what is the point of being a concierge, asking him for the footage from the security cameras. To find out what time he left. What he looked like. What his expression was, his mood. She’d like—she doesn’t know, really—to talk about him. For someone to tell her: ‘I saw him. He’s charismatic. Enigmatic. But what was apparent, as clear as day, was how much he was thinking about you.’

She would like to see him again.

She goes to YouTube and looks at clips from Connection. It’s amazing. There he is, just like she saw him the first time. His voice. His gestures. Not his vocabulary, although he effortlessly delivers a string of motherfuckers. His presence. His glorious presence. Still radiating around her apartment. He was there, here, in her bed. The videos only last three minutes. She wonders about downloading a whole episode. She has to sleep: she’s filming again tomorrow.

His name is there in the different sets of credits, with different spellings, but the most common is Kouhouesso Nwokam. Which is not all that complicated. She doesn’t learn much online, nothing about his private life. On Wikipedia, his date of birth: if it’s correct, he is two years older than her. A Canadian citizen born in English-speaking Cameroon. She had no idea there was an English-speaking Cameroon. Google Images photos, some flattering, others where he is smiling broadly, which doesn’t suit him, others where he is heavier and it suits him.

She jumps: the sound of a text message.

Natsumi. She forgot to return the bra.

A clip from a film that was very successful three or four years ago: Dazed. He plays a cop. It takes place in a house by the sea. His white colleague, the hero, interrogates a handcuffed dealer who swears at them. He doesn’t do much: he’s slightly in the shadows, but he’ll get his turn. He’s going to—no, not speak—but he turns slowly to the bay window. A veil of softness suddenly descends like a halo on the scene, a yellow, powdery light—a weary archangel shaking his wings. As if gazing into infinity, he stares out over the sea. The look of a bored cop, of an actor who is thinking. Beyond that place, beyond the film. He stares at the sea and she’d like to be the sea. He stares at the waves and she’d like to be the waves. She’d like to be the empty space, she’d like to be that place elsewhere, she’d like to be the song he has on his mind and she’d like him to sing it, sing her, let him drift off, yes, but in her direction. She’d like to be that wandering, absent thought, that aside of his in the film from three or four years ago.

He refocuses, back to the action, says the line they’re waiting for. Say something, motherfucker, interrupts the white cop grandstanding as a psychologist, and crushes the head of the dealer against the table. It cuts out, she rewinds…there… right at the moment he’s turning towards the window… there…he’s bored…good cop, bad cop…he really is bored, he stares at the sea, he’s thinking about something else. And the director has kept the take, he saw, that’s why he makes films, for moments like these, the moment when the film slips away, taking advantage of a mistake, a moment of detachment, of reverie, a shift—there: an actor stares at the sea and his grace detonates the image…

The movement, the powdery light, the eyes on the ocean.

It’s like the other evening in the hills. Exactly the same look, the same urgency, and it’s unbearable, and she has to live it, quickly.