When people are rewarded or punished

Looking east from her office there's a cement building which she places between 48th and 52nd, and a man there is standing on the balcony with an electronic cigarette and a book. She imagines the life of such a man, who is not sitting at a desk on a Thursday at eleven and who lives in midtown in a building surrounded by glass. She imagines him waking early in the day and watching the city sleepwalking towards his neighborhood, she imagines him watering a bamboo plant and kneading a pain in his lower back. But mostly she imagines him as she does all people: with you, at first as a person in your close orbit and then just as someone walking past you - the man puffing on his e-cigarette with his dog; you, looking down, with the wisps of vapor trailing behind you like delicate magic.