My footsteps echoed off the faces of buildings towering around me. It was three in the morning, the air void of daytime noises of cars and crowds. I pushed forward, fingering the Zippo lighter in my pocket, rushing to buy smokes at the corner only five minutes away so I could go back home – go back to Will.

A solo voice barked down the road as if a man was arguing with himself. I squinted and saw the familiar bum yelling at a light post. He was a perpetual landmark in the neighborhood, as if the streets, sidewalks, curbs, gutters, dumpsters and bus stops were his home. He moved slowly around his domain, day after day, stopping to talk to a fire hydrant, or a wastebasket, or a sewer lid. He's either Asian or Aboriginal, I couldn't really tell – his long black hair covered his face and features. His dark beard grew wiry thin like a character in a kung-fu film.

I crossed the street to avoid him, and he crossed, too, mirroring me. My hands clenched into nervous fists in my pockets.

"You're not going to fucking get me with your phone rays," he screamed. He moved closer to me and I took out my fists. He stopped abruptly, as if hitting an invisible glass wall, and I hurried passed him. His snarls faded away behind me, and my hands relaxed.

Relieved to reach the corner store, I sidestepped small talk with the clerk, bought two packs of De Maurier Balanced, and made my way home taking a different route – the long way.

I smoked four cigarettes by the time I reached my condo.

Opening the door of my unit and throwing the packs of smokes on the coffee table, I dashed to the hallway and saw the spare room door open. I paused, thinking to myself. Had I left it open?

"Will?"

No answer.

On my laptop in the living room, the email icon was blinking with a new message. It was Marie's fourth email asking why I hadn't replied. I ignored it and opened Will's Facebook profile.

The posts were written very eloquently, like passages from a novel. The way he spoke and the way he wrote were worlds apart. It seemed to me, that the voice in his posts was the voice Will wanted for himself. In person, he cursed, mispronounced words, spoke in double negatives – but on Facebook, he was almost divine with his language. In his posts, he replicated the words of a seasoned author or playwright.

Each post was written in the present tense, in first person, describing things as if they were happening in the moment, like the line: "I'm eating dinner very slowly, savoring the juiciness of the steak. The warmth of the meat blends with the coldness of the cranberry sauce."

One entry began: "In a record shop in Manhattan, I rummage through a crate of vinyl records and sneeze from the dust. I lift the crate from its side handles, and carry the stack of records into the listening booth. Hours pass, absorbing the soothing, changing, invigorating and inspiring melodies, when someone tells me to give other customers a chance, and I tell him to go fuck himself".

Then the post goes on to list each record in the crate:

The Beatles, The White Album.

The Beatles, Revolver

The Beatles, Rubber Soul

The Bee Gees, One Night Only

And so on.

I read for the better part of ten hours and was still on Will's 2013 posts. Sitting there, I wondered – did Will write from his phone while simultaneously experiencing moments in his life, or were his posts memories of other days long passed? Or was he writing his posts like how I write my blog -- collecting events from the day and recording them?

Is the entire profile nothing but a dream – a work of fiction?

Or maybe it was a combination of all those things, I thought.

Each post breathed life into Will – his essence inflating before my eyes with each word. One post read:

Real Will

November 27 via mobile

The mob in Syntagma Square, mostly university students, is chanting something in Greek and the line of police behind clear shields and body armor are shuffling nervously. I join the mob in the chant, copying their syllables, unaware of what I'm saying. It can be fuck the police, or we want ice cream, but it doesn't matter to me. The sound of a whistle pierces the air and the police march forward into us. A boy with a bandana covering his face throws something over the line of police officers. Two loud bangs rock the air and two tear gas canisters skip on the pavement, leaving trails of pink smoke through the crowd. I hear gunshots and we all scatter. There's a girl lying on the ground and no one is helping her.

In later posts, he described dancing in a street festival in Ibiza, then getting drunk at a café in Rome. Will fucked two girls at the same time at a brothel in Amsterdam, bursting out of the door without paying, laughing shirtless down the street. In Bangkok, he was dragged out of a night club by a large, dark-skinned bouncer.

I forced myself to read faster, my eyes hardly able to keep up with my desire to know more. Will seemed to drink heavier in later posts – taking more risk, toying with danger.

Real Will

January 7 via mobile

I'm weaving between tourists and rich locals passed a row of clothing boutiques in the Alabang outdoor shopping mall. The humidity is making my shorts stick to my thighs. I'm starving, but I have nothing left. Each air conditioned store displays a tiny Filipina with a dark neck and pale powdered face, smiling at me from the front window, trying to entice me to go inside and buy a pair of jeans. Ahead, I see a Starbucks. A hundred pesos for a coffee grande. Two hundred for a muffin. Rich locals leave the shop holding their Starbucks cups like badges of wealth. In the parking lot, a street kid drinks from a discarded fast food cup that he found on the ground.

At the edge of the Starbucks patio are two European tourists sipping ice coffee in clear plastic cups. On the table between them is a digital camera with a ridiculously large lens. I snatch it and run through the parking lot between cars. I hear one of the tourists yelling in a Swedish accent behind me. What a great photo op for the two tourists, too bad they don't have a camera. I can't stop laughing.

Another reads:

Real Will

January 28 via mobile

I'm sitting on a curb outside a San Pedro whore house decorated in Christmas lights. I'm drifting in and out of consciousness. I feel a hand slipping inside my pocket. My mind snaps awake like a cobra and I grab the wrist of a street kid squatting beside me. He is saying something in Tagalog that sounds like let me go. He is whispering though, and I think he's more afraid of alarming the police than he is of me. With my free hand I open the butterfly knife I purchased from a street vendor in Tagaytay. I slide the blade along the boy's arm. He jerks free from my grip and runs away leaving drops of blood on the cement.

An hour passed and the words on the page became clearer in my vision -- sharper -- the excitement of Will's life building to a climax. And then suddenly, the tone of the next post shifted -- Will had met someone special. The post read:

Real Will

March 1 via mobile

Her hair is pitch-black and her cheekbones peaked high on her tanned face. Her sensuous figure is liberated by her scanty bikini. It is nighttime and she sits with me on the beach, looking up at the constellations. In the moonlight her teeth gleams silver. I see a shooting star and I ask her if she saw it, too. She says no, it was probably a plane. She asks if I know which stars are planets. That's Mars, I lie, and that bright one, Jupiter, and that dim one, Pluto. She says that's impossible because Pluto is not a planet anymore, and not visible to the naked eye. I tell her that Pluto will always be a planet to me.
I stop talking, intrigued that an entire planet is up there, unseen. I imagine myself as an astronaut standing on Pluto, so cold, quiet and distant. I imagine Pluto's surface, probably grayish jagged shards of ice, baron of life for billions of years. An entire world created by God that will never be visited or walked on by any life form for all eternity. And I think to myself, does the planet even exist?

Another post read:

Real Will

March 11 via mobile

We stop at a small shop selling all kinds of drums along the side of the dirt road. I'm banging on a big one when she points her camera at me. Don't, I say. She asks me why not. I say that I used to take photos all the time, and it was a big mistake. All I remember from those times, I say, were the photos themselves, and everything else just slipped away. Even the moments behind the snapshots were lost, I say. She points a camera at me and I scowl at her. I'm serious, I say, and she points the camera away.

And another:

Real Will

March 22 via mobile

In the luxurious Makati hotel room I feel like I'm vacationing in a first world country until I hear the rooster crowing outside. We lie in bed naked, sweaty and drinking bottled water. The sheets are kicked off the bed. I have something for you, she says. You do? Yup. Close your eyes and hold out your hands. Hey, stop peeking! I squeeze my eyes shut and laugh, waiting. I feel a folded sheet of paper in my hand. Okay, look. It is a printed e-ticket for a flight to Toronto. I don't say anything. Is something wrong? I don't know if I should accept this. She tells me it's just a vacation for me, and that I'll have a place to stay there now that she has the house from the divorce settlement. We turn on our sides to face each other. My fingers tangle in her sweaty hair and I kiss her. Our lips move with a controlled urgency. Her mouth moves down to my neck where the skin is so sensitive that it seems directly connected to my feet. My toes curl and she lets me go. She looks at me, her eyes and mouth shining. I clear my throat. Blood is singing in my ears like music. Don't leave me, I say, and she nods her head.

I read about Will and the woman stopping over in Hong Kong, drinking hot tea in the airport and talking about keeping her dating life a secret until the divorce is final -- lawyer's orders. I read about the woman massaging Will's hand and cracking his knuckles. I read about Will and the woman in a bubble tea shop in Scarborough, in her car, and in a pharmacy. I read about Will and the woman playing cards, talking, and fucking in a Sears change room. Nothing was happening, and everything was happening, and I wasn't sure which.

Sitting cross legged on my sofa, my heart raced as I read the post dated June 26 - nearing the end of his latest posts. Outside my window, the dawn sky turned from purple to orange, and the city sounds began to fill the haze.

There was a knock on the front door, so gentle that I wondered if I had just imagined it. Waiting and listening, I heard another set of soft knocks.

Will?

I closed the laptop and hurried to the door. Through the peep hole, I saw Marie slouched over, hugging her purse over her chest. I opened the door and forced a smile.

"Hi," I said. "Come in."

She walked in slowly, looking around. I sat down on the sofa and bounced my knees up and down.

"So, what happened?" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"No email... all night?"

"Oh," I said. "Sorry, I got really busy with work."

"It's... it's an email. It takes two seconds," she sighed and sat next to me. She picked a piece of dirt or dust from her lip and scanned the room. "I always wondered what your place looked like."

"Have you slept yet?" I said, concerned.

"No, I came straight here... from work," She said. "I was worried about you." She eyed me and I pretended not to notice. When she put her hand on my leg, I finally looked at her. I placed my hand on top of hers, and she placed her other hand on top of mine, creating a layer cake of fingers and thumbs. Her touch soothed me, and for a second, Will left my mind. I noticed the warmth of her skin on mine, and the softness of my sofa cushions, and the noises of the traffic outside. Because of her, I felt like I was there in my living room, in the building, and in the world. Since the night before, obsessing on Will's words, I had forgotten that feeling of reality, but it returned again.