To wait and be unseen requires the operator to blend into the picture, as if he’d always been a part of it. The two things that attract attention are unexpected movement patterns and new objects in the picture. I was only a new object for a moment, since the average human attention span is less than twelve seconds. An operator gets used to waiting. I can wait for hours. Days. Infinite waiting ability. When I want to. But I didn’t want to.

I approached the mezzanine from the south. The concrete stairs were wide and angled at forty-five degrees to the facade. The mezzanine extended across the entire front. It accessed residential apartments and corridors that plunged deeper into the building. Halfway down, two figures reclined against the balcony wall, deep in the shadow. The glow of a cigarette tip gave it away, then the tinny sound of music from a phone.

Then, the high-pitched whine of derestricted trail bike engines cut the night.

I could make out light and shadow down the south side of Les Brosses. I walked across the mezzanine. Past the couple sharing a cigarette, entwined in darkness. From the mezzanine I could make out a basketball court, fenced in on all sides, screened by a stand of trees. Through the trees, trail bike headlights swung erratically within the caged court.

I came down the stairs. Stayed close to the buildings and then moved off the path into the stand of pine trees. I leaned back against one of them and slowly sank into a crouch, like I was tying my shoe, but I stayed down.

They were playing a game. Each bike had a driver and a rider. Until five or six hundred years ago, knights on horseback would joust, maybe on this very spot. They galloped at each other and tried to throw the other guy off with a lance. The bike guys were doing something similar, like jousting on horseback, but with trail bikes in a basketball court. Maybe it was post-modern.

The riders worked the throttles, red-lining the engines. Then, at the same time, they each dumped the clutch, unloading the power straight to the wheel. They were separated by a distance of around eighty feet. The bikes leapt at each other like fighting dogs. One of them was red, the other white. When they came together the passengers tried to knock each other off. It was pretty brutal and looked like a lot of fun.

The riders had discipline. They didn’t clutch at each other. They kept fingers safe by punching or pushing. The goal was to throw the other rider off. I could hear them laughing and cursing at each other. But it was amiable. They were buddies in a tough neighborhood.