People look but they don’t see. You can have twelve people looking at the dead horse in the street and ten will give you ten different descriptions of the same thing. And the two people who agree are most likely to have it all wrong. One thing I’ve learned is that if someone is staring at you, you’ve got nothing to worry about. They’re fixated on one thing, your hair or your nose, maybe a freckle on your ear - who the hell knows - but they’re not seeing you, they’re only seeing some small part, and when they have to recall the whole person, they can’t. More times than not, they can’t even accurately remember the thing they were staring at.

I let them stare. Or if I think they’re doing more than looking, actually taking notice of what I look like, then I stare back. Look right at them. They almost always look away, and the minute they look away, they stop remembering. It all goes away, or gets changed around in their minds.

I have a bland face anyway. Tough to remember, harder to describe. Not good-looking at all, but not so bad. Indistinguishable. That was my gift. No one could describe me with any accuracy. I’m fortunate with youthful features, and a mobility of expression which baffles all observers and provides a great strength and chief safeguard. By what signs can one hope to identify a face which changes at pleasure, even without the help of makeup, and whose every transient expression seems to be the final, definite expression? People can never remember what I look like. I was even questioned once an hour after stealing a woman’s jewelry - she’d gotten a good look at me and then standing right in front of me at the police station she didn’t recognize me. By the time the cops had found me, I’d already ditched the stuff, so I stood there and let her look. “It’s not him,” the woman said, and I was free to go.

I go through life as I please and no one pays me any mind. That’s a good life, as long as it lasts.

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