The Window Census

01Survey deposit

The first discrepancy appeared in a routine lighting survey of Mereglass Quay. Surveyor Ada Pell counted forty-three illuminated windows along a terrace scheduled for demolition. The maintenance ledger listed forty-two. She checked her photographs at the office and found no mistake: one narrow window had been fitted between two adjoining houses, where there was no room behind the brick.

Pell returned before dawn. Every house was empty, with the floors removed and the stairwells exposed. Only the narrow window remained lit. Through its glass she could see a desk like her own, a coat like her own, and a woman checking photographs. The woman looked tired enough to be familiar, but never turned toward the street.

02Unreconciled total

That afternoon, the survey database acquired a new column headed OCCUPIED. Pell had not created it. Forty-two addresses were marked vacant. Beside her apartment, eight miles inland, someone had entered the number one. When her colleague changed it to zero, the office lights went out for the length of a held breath.

Pell's final photograph contains forty-four windows. One shows the desk. The other shows a man in a maintenance uniform counting the lamps outside an unfamiliar building. No one in the department recognizes him.

The terrace has since been demolished. Its replacement streetlights still report an extra unit to the electricity meter. On wet evenings the pavement beneath that unit stays dry, in a rectangle exactly the size of a window.