Nobody's Watching

She's tall - with feathery brown hair that floats to her shoulders, and a frame that seems both thin and shuddering.

She's an actress, but playing a nameless role - part of a sweet, effortless, unassuming beauty, manifested in her flower-like face, her button nose, her doe eyes. Her smile could have come straight out of a 90's Disney movie. Even on a stage, even in a costume that makes her look like an idealistic housewife, even with nothing to say, she's beautiful. She's gorgeous. She really is.

Of course, I can't see her in the dark. She's just a silhouette in the wings across the stage, beyond the golden pool of light that illuminates the cartoonish sets. The rest of them have deserted the theatre, down to the lighting crew that routinely congregates at the back. It's just her. And also me, but I don't count.

I almost don't see the figure behind her, rising from the shadows, boiling up beside her, where she is alone in the wing. Just as I am alone in mine.

I recognize him, even in the dark. He's taller than she is - stronger, broader, not nearly as shy, and as he approaches, a terrible sort of stillness comes over her body; she shrinks nervously as though cornered, threatened. Her hands fumble together at her chest as he moves toward her, his subtle smile visible through the dark. As he comes too close, she backs away until she meets the wall; he's saying something, and her palms are still clasped anxiously together.

My toes brace on the gritty black floor. I'm utterly still, my fingers brushing the fuzz of the curtain at my back. It's playing out like a Hollywood movie, with his hands now braced to the wall above her shoulders, only there are no huge close-ups of their faces almost touching, no images of their profiles blackened by the light. You can't see each shaky breath shimmer in the air; you can't see her lip tremble; you can't see the way that her fingers curl in on themselves.

They're a tumble of grey shadows, and I'm just sitting, watching, as they meld together. Deeply. Soaringly.

I think I should feel embarrassed. Ashamed. I'd even take fascination. At the very least, I ought to feel intrusive. But I don't. I don't feel anything. I'm just a speculator, an observer, given to nothingness as much as they are unaware of me. To them, it's as though nobody's watching.

And nobody is.