Look. There is a man filming a movie across the street from the bus stop. He lounges on the hood of a parked car in a spandex bodysuit. His face is covered by a handheld camcorder. When he lowers it, you see he’s wearing a black ski mask.
Peek through the window of his camera. He is filming two boys, eleven and twelve, waiting for the bus.
Each morning they stand right here on Fifty-First and First Avenue until the first of two public buses takes them to school. The block is at an incline overlooking the United Nations building, where flags flap like dusty rugs shaken out in a backyard. The bus moans toward the stop and gasps open. The boys, with their shirt buttons and book-bag zippers, step through the doors. Follow them. Watch when one of their small hands reaches for the cord above the window. Listen for the ping and see the sign light up in red above the driver’s head. Next stop is where they get off.
Notice when they sit down on the bench to wait for their second bus, the man in the mask is already there, standing across the street with his camera pointed in their direction.
There he is again, at the first bus stop, the following morning. Now he hangs from scaffolding like a monkey off a tree and uses his free hand to snap photographs of the boys.
And there he is the following day, kneeling with his camera aimed up at their faces. He has moved to their side of the street, closer than he was before. Notice his mask is made of leather and fastened with laces at the back of his head.
One morning, as one of the boys leans against a brick building waiting for the bus, the masked man comes over and leans right beside him. When the boy shifts position, the man does the same, mimicking the boy’s movements.
You think they must know each other. You think this is performance art. You think he wants money, but he is harmless. You wonder if he does this all day. You wonder if you’ll read about him in the papers. You think you’ll say something if the man gets any closer to the boys, but the next day he does, and you don’t.
On this particular morning, the masked man approaches one of the boys seated inside the bus kiosk and sits down beside him. When the bus arrives, the boy stands up and so does the man. He raises his fist as if he might hit the boy but punches the wall instead. This all seems so choreographed and intentional, it must be an act, you think. But years later, you’ll see the boy on TV telling the talk-show host how frightened he was. “It seems as though he was mad,” the boy will say. “Like we didn’t do something we were supposed to.”
The next time the boys arrive at the bus stop, they are joined by an older brother for protection. He spots the masked man and alerts the police. The following morning, when the masked man begins filming, an undercover officer is watching in a parked car nearby.
When the masked man spots him, he gets into his car and drives off. Follow the siren lights down the block. See the man pull over.
Now he is pressed against a car door. He is without his mask, but his back is to you as he’s placed in handcuffs so you can’t see his face.
You watch an officer open the trunk of the man’s car. Inside, there are stacks of videotapes, hundreds of hours of footage the man shot of his three subjects—the two boys at their bus stops, and a third child, a little girl. Every day she walked to school, unaware that a masked man was filming her, following close behind. You wonder if someone will tell her now, or if she’s better off not knowing.