The windows | A short story |

It was a Sunday evening, I was taking a walk along Fondamenta Zattere in Venice, it's a long street along the shore. Some musicians are playing guitar and singing, seem part of promoting team for the famous local drink spritz.
I was on my way to see a friend at 8:30, but it was still early, the sun is setting, releasing comfortable warm light. Walking slowly, observing every notable person on the street, some smiling, some taking photos, some watching the sea, some looking at their phones, some waving, some shouting, some laughing and talking, some walking in hurry, some kids chasing each other, some taking water from the fountain...
And there's this guy I noticed, standing right in front of the library of university, holding a black shirt in his hand, his body was facing the sun, so was the shirt he was holding, but he was looking over the canal, seems looking for something, watching something? All the other people just walked by him. After a while he flipped the shirt around, still holding in the same position. The wind constantly comes from southeast, so his shirt was like a flag in his hands, lifting toward west. Then he turn the shirt around again, still, same position, it's like there's something he wants to catch in the wind, or maybe he wants to catch the wind.
I stopped near him, looked around quickly, nobody else seems notice this guy's weird behavior, maybe it's just me? Anyway, I went up to him and asked:
"Hey, man, what you doing here, is it a some sort of performance or something?" I pointed at his shirt.
He frowned very briefly and turned his face to me slowly.
"If you throw me some coins you can call it performance."
"Well, then... is this some experiment?"
"No."
"Oh, okay, haha..." I faked laughing awkwardly as I always do, "sorry to interrupt you, have a nice evening!" Then I walked away.
"I'm counting the windows!" He said in a high volume, I turned around, I've been a few meters away from him, I quickly looked around, instinctively, still nobody seems notice him.
"Sorry, what?"
"I am counting, how many windows are there."
"How many windows where?" I found the answer quite disappointing, he's counting windows? What... why?
"How many windows are there in my sight," He turned a bit around to me with his feet fixed on where he stood.  "if the number is 999, then something interesting will happen."
"What interesting thing?"
"Look at that yellow house next to the church, I'm there, 893 windows, from left to right, almost to the end." He motioned to the direction he was talking about with his elbow, still holding the shirt. The houses look so small since they are far far away from us.
"Well... okay... then I guess there would be approximately 1000 windows? Or 999 windows, as you said." I was confused, I remember when I was kid, my father asked me to come to the balcony to count how many windows are there on a big building in the centre of the town, I could never get it right, every time I lost my focus in the middle, like "15...16...17...where was I?" So I tried to count the windows on the other side of the canal, without even thinking about a reason why I would do that.
After counting to 50, I already lost my patience , I turned to him:
"Well...."
"Shhh...." he stopped me, frowning, looked very serious.
I just stared at his face, he looked nervous, then I looked to the direction he was looking, it's almost the end, the very right end of the horizon.
Finally he breathed out a long breath with a huge relief. "It, is, nine hundred, ninety-nine windows."
"Whaaat... really?" I looked at him, and then I remembered something important, "hey, didn't you say that something would happen once you counted 999 windows?"
"Yeah, but I can't show you, you gotta see it yourself."
"Well, I technically saw it together with you, I saw you counted to 999."
"That doesn't count, I counted 999 windows, that's my number, you might not find the 999th window, you might find only 998 windows and you'll get frustrated that you miss counted one, then you count it again, it's still 998 windows, then you will wonder what is wrong... well, anyway, you might not find the 999th window.
"Here," he gave me his shirt and stood one step back, "you must hold this shirt like I did, and stand exactly where I am, because this is the exactly right spot."
I obeyed and took the shirt, looking at the very left side, trying to find a reasonable start point, then a question popped up in my head:
"Hey, wait, how long did it take you to count to 999? I got an...." as saying, I turned around and found him disappeared, "...a.. appointment." I murmured the last word. He's gone, nowhere to be found, not on the left side of the street, not on the right side, definitely not in the library, he can't be that fast, it was like only 2 seconds, no one can be that fast.
I took a deep breath and started counting, from the very left side.
I know it seems will take a long time to finish, but hey, counting from 1 to 999, how hard is that, I told myself.
As counting, I smiled to the island, I didn't know why.