The human eye keys on movement, and in this, I am as human as anyone else. Until she stretched out an arm, I had no idea she was there. This is the sort of thing that startles me, these days, at my desk.

For the first time in many years, I work now with a window as my backdrop, though working late on a weekend day is a pattern of sorts for me. Whenever the work stacks too high, I start Monday on Sunday night to get on top of it, and these days I have to go all the way to the fourth floor to get atop my personal Olympus.

Across the street from that window are bars, hotels, and apartments: all manner of interesting spectacles. I claimed this view by right of seniority when this space was abandoned to our use, suspecting the younger men I work with would find it even more distracting. Between the afternoon glare at high summer, and hotel guests and chambermaids twitching curtains suddenly open and closed the whole day through, it's certainly not a visual field designed for concentration.

For all of that, I quite enjoy the view I've claimed, so like the view powerful men must have - and that arm I spotted is part of the reason. It lives on the fifth floor of the apartment building across from me, attached to a lady I've seen more than once. Perhaps she doesn't even live there - certainly the place seems to sit vacant most days - but there have been enough sightings to have earned her an improper proper noun of her own, in my mental catalog of what I might see each day.

(Honestly, I don't peek in windows. This is, however, the only seat with any kind of view I've been paid to sit in for years, and I do tend to look at that view through the day, particularly the parts with girls in them. I am, as I have mentioned, as human as anyone else.)

Fifth Floor Girl startled me when I saw her move - it seemed as if she'd simply appeared in the middle of the apartment. I thought that arm of hers had suddenly turned on all her lights, after she had blocked her window with something big and blank. All I could see of her at that moment was her arm. I'd no idea why she'd open her window completely to the air and then screen most of it off, but then it's always hard to discern motives across a hundred yards of asphalt.

She began moving about the place, and, being human, I took a moment to verify she was wearing clothes. Jeans, black top that must have been comfortable in the warmth of the day, allowing her shape to be known. Too far to tell, but doubtless including spaghetti straps I'd have been pleased to wind around my fork. She seemed to be carrying things behind that screen, and I still had no idea what she was doing, though she moved with a rhythm and a purpose. I did have an idea what I was doing, though, and so I restricted my eyes to my screen and continued doing it.

Things went timeless until I realized I was thirsty. (I enjoy the sort of work I'm doing now, and it absorbs me to the point of affecting my fluid levels.) I opted to walk around the block for a drink, as it was becoming a lovely evening. My thoughts were involved enough in my tasks that I didn't even notice whether the bars I passed were open.

On the way back, I glanced up at her window, and could see from the sidewalk angle several parabolic work lights, clothes-pinning themselves where they could shine out her window. I thought that odd, though it explained the suddenness of her visibility. Still searching for her motives, I had a brief horror that I was going to have to work with a photo shoot going on across the street, but another glance made everything clear.

What was screening my view of her was a canvas on an easel. Turning my head the other direction, toward the public architecture we both spend our days neighboring, was a kind of confirmation. There in the midsummer evening as it slipped toward twilight, the glass, stone, and metal of that building really was as pretty as a picture, and of course someone should be painting it. I sipped and smiled and looked straight ahead as I walked, pleased to have been made to see what was around me, and pleased as always to have divined a motive.

My way back to my desk necessarily passes my window, and so when I returned I was necessarily the object in motion. Glancing across as I took my seat, I was surprised to see Fifth Floor Girl leaning around what was screening her, looking in my general direction. Having unexpectedly been keyed upon, I toasted my plastic bottle toward her offhandedly as I prepared to resume my work.

I admit to some surprise when she stepped out from behind her easel, and stood where her open window would frame her for me, where her work lights would show her clearly. She seemed to have decided to take a break, and her hands moved to light what I presume was a cigarette. She stood otherwise motionless, facing me directly, putting the scene she'd been painting out of her view to her right. And then, for a time, she just stood there.

Whenever you see something scenic, it's worth remembering that you've become part of the view yourself.

I couldn't say it was comfortable to be observed at my work, but then I couldn't say it was less than fair. I tried to pick up the thread of my thoughts, and to not let my eyes drift toward hers in any way that she would notice. That seemed the proper thing for a view to do.

It seemed that it must have been forever that she stood there, but really it wasn't very long at all. She put out her smoke after a few deep drags and then she returned to her work - after all, she was losing the light. You don't want to lose the light.

For a time after that, the light faded slowly, and both of us did what we did. I watched her hands move to her palette from behind what once more stood between us, and I think she may have glanced at me a time or two as I typed. Quickly I grew comfortable, and as the tiny successes I assemble in my work continued to mount up, I began to feel a kind of warmth.

It was good to be, in whatever sense, together with her. Both of us were making something new, something for which we'd come to our places, something so personally important for us to put in our very own time. Her doing with colors and shading what I was trying to do with schema and parsers, to capture and display what that moment was showing us.

There is a special kind of camaraderie in creating along with others, and across a hundred yards of asphalt I was getting whiffs of it again. Perhaps it was just memories of times like that I'd spent before, doing magic all the greater because of the lady there. I couldn't help but remember, and I couldn't help but smile, as my hands kept doing just what they should do. At closer range with shared objectives, I reflected, this is how men and women together make actual babies.

The light, of course, was eventually lost, and she turned to cleaning (apparently) her work area, there in the place that (apparently) was her studio. I had no similar constraints, and worked all the better as the darkness came to hide me. Well, not really darkness, I couldn't get that - the architects who designed the place insisted on having some lights always on to provide the nighttime effect that they wanted, so I could never shut them all off. This at times had frustrated me - I like to work in the dark - but at that moment, I just wanted to keep making new things while some trace of the proper spirit lingered.

After her work lights went out, she moved around as a silhouette, backlit from the light from another room of her place. She ended her evening smoking, while sitting in her window five floors up. Her frame in its frame, hips straddling its sill. It's a pose that drove me to protective distraction the first time I saw her do it on my first day in that desk, and which still makes me crazy every time she does it. I see her do it maybe a couple of times a month.

Don't fall, darling, don't jump - I mean, don't fall. I don't know what I mean. Just stop it. Okay, whatever.

She was leaning against the far side of the window, which was opposite to the habit I thought she had established. This left her facing me, and I realized I was again part of the view, for that silhouette of her with its tiny red glow. The light she'd lost, and which I'd kept thanks to my architects, must have made me clearer than I'd ever been. I smiled and just kept working, after physically jolting a bit at the moment of realization - what the hell, she could watch if she liked. Taking it all together, it was only fair.

When she finished smoking, she got up and crossed the room, and I must confess I sat up straight and watched her. She paused for a moment, facing me... and then she must have thrown a switch, and her lights were all shut off.

After all was dark, I finished up, and made my solitary drive home. I've been damn near living at that place in the days since then, and have just now caught up with my work, but I have not seen her across that asphalt again. Perhaps I never will.

Thanks, Fifth Floor Girl, and good night, no matter where you're sleeping.