Free Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey

would follow a man, sometimes a woman. I made no preferences. The first interesting person that camemy way would be followed. Regardless of sex. Or of age. Or of race. I would follow the chosen person for as long as they walked. I would observe them, and as I observed them I imagined for myself the sort of life that that person was living. I did not much care if my imaginings were accurate or not. What mattered was that I felt at the end of the day that I had met someone new. These walks sometimes lasted a long period of time, hours perhaps, sometimes only a mere few minutes. It was not important. What was important was that I felt, however briefly, that I had witnessed a moment in an interesting person’s life. It may not have been an interesting moment. I did not care. I had been close to an interesting person, someone, perhaps, whom I might have liked to have made friends with. But I found friends were predominantly absent things. I had only one true friend, but I did not meet him until I had begun my employment at the waxworks. My walks through the city streets were, in a way, a consolation. Through them I came as close to interesting people as I was happy to come. I would not have wished those city perambulations, those city chases, to have terminated in a conversation, less still an exchange of addresses.
    My city walks were ended on the day I began my employment at the waxworks museum. Then my days were full. Our working hours were long and we were employed for seven days of the week. I could not, therefore, walk the city streets in pursuit of interesting people any more. I was confined, admittedly happily, to the waxworks museum throughout the day. In the evenings, when my work had ended, I was too tired to spend the time roaming the city in search of interesting people. Though, I remember, I missed them.
    A solution came to me one day on the way to work. On a street pavement I found an abandoned passport photograph. I picked it up. I considered the face. I conceived a history for that face. I kept the passport photograph. In time I hadenough passport photographs to form a collection. This collection, though admired by me, was never a substitute for my major work: the exhibition of objects to be found in the cellar, in that tunnel that led to the church (an exhibition which itself contains a passport photograph, lot 770). It may be realized that passport photographs are not common objects to be found on city pavements. After I had found the first passport photograph, I always walked to the waxwork museum with my eyes watching the city pavements, in search of passport photographs. After three months I had only found one other passport photograph, one other face to consider. I had to change my tactics. It did not take me long to think up a solution.
    Every morning I changed my route to work to include a passport photograph booth. There I preyed on the impatience of man. Passport photographs once taken are not ready for collection for a good three minutes. That is the time it takes for the machine inside the passport photograph booth to develop the passport photographs. This time, a mere three minutes, is considered interminable by a good many people. This is where I took my advantage. By the passport photograph booth that I passed on my way to the wax museum were various shops, shops with window displays, window displays with which to pass away those three minutes while the passport photographs were being developed. Often people waiting for their photographs, and looking through the shop windows to pass away the three minutes, would spend longer than three minutes there. If I saw no one approaching the booth’s photograph dispenser when a sheet of photographs plopped out, I would seize the photographs, I would call them mine and (always careful of the still-drying chemicals) I would hurriedly, in case I was seen, continue on my way to the waxworks museum. I was only caught once and made profuse apologies to the man