Thirteen Ways of Looking

by Colum McCann

  He places the walking stick firmly on the ground, bends his weight into the leg. The creak of the knee. The rumble of the ankle. Here we go. Thank you, Sally. Doing just fine on my own.

  Curious thing, the snow. They say the Eskimos have eighty words for it. An articulate lot. Slush and sleet and firn and grain. Hoar and rime. Crust crystal vapor blizzard graupel. Pendular permeable planar. Striated shear supercooled. Brittle glazed clustered coarse broken. An insult of snow, a slur of snow, a taunt of snow, a Walt Whitman snow, a bestiary snow, a calliope snow, it’s snowing in Morse code, three longs, a short, a long again, it’s snowing like the ancient art of the newspaper, it’s snowing like September dust coming down, it’s snowing like a Yankees Day parade, it’s snowing like an Eskimo song.

  One step two steps three steps five. He stops for a moment at a muni-meter. God be with the days when you could park your carcass for a nickel, what do they cost now, two dollars for ten minutes, less, more? He watches a bus going past, chains on the tires. A woman on a bicycle. Good balance that. The shadow of death crossing to and fro. Careful, young lady. A minivan, beeping its way through the snow, perilously close to the cyclist.

  The flashers flashing. The horn blaring. Good God, don’t hit her. Oh.

  —That was close, Sally.

  The hair on her chinny-chin-chin.

  —Uh-huhn.

  Sally too. There’s a market for that: a razor for elderly ladies. Eileen never had that problem. Smooth as silk.

  He touches his hat and shuffles on. The trusty walking stick needed more than ever. A steel tip on the end. No sound from it today. Muffled.

  —I’m building up an appetite, Sally.

  —Yes, sir.

  He pauses by the fire hydrant, to gather his breath. Can never see a fire hydrant without thinking of the September dust coming down ten years ago. All those young firemen going up the stairs. All intimately connected. A terrible day, he watched the collapse on television. For weeks afterwards every little thing was charged with meaning, even the dust on the windowsill, you were never quite sure what it might contain: a paper, a résumé, an eyelash.

  —Sally, my dear, you are an angel.

  —You’re out of breath, Mr. J.

  —Just pretending, Sally.

  He stands at the edge of the crosswalk. Why is it that the traffic lights are designed to humiliate us? Once he could get across from one side to the other without the little neon man flashing at all. These days he can only get halfway before the red man starts his antics. There is nothing he hates more than when the cars start to inch forward. Mendelssohn, your time is up. Goodbye, thank you, now sidle off to Florida. Or North Carolina. Down there the neon man lasts infinitely longer. It’s a known fact.

  Here they go already, hooting and tooting. It never ceases to amaze him, how downright rude the city can be. Eight million lives colliding all at once. All those tiny little atoms in the process of bouncing off each other. Yes, yes, lady, you will have a chance to move your tush, but please just hush, and give me a chance to move my own.

  One of the things he used to love about New York City was the sheer bravado of it all. It used you up, spat you out. But the more the years went on, the more he began to think that he’d like a little respect from it. He had, after all, put his time in. Sat on the bench. Went to party meetings. A Supreme Court justice. A fancy title, but in reality he got every case under the Brooklyn sun, a clearing house, really, for murders, mobsters, shysters, shucksters. The random stabbings. The premeditated takedowns. Probate matters. Injunctions. Rescissions. An endless ream of paperwork. He stayed within the system even at the worst of times. Never strayed. At half the salary he would have made if he had gone into corporate law. After all that he would have liked just a little ripple of thanks from the peanut gallery. A moment longer in the crosswalk, please. He put his career as a lawyer in the bin for a life of public service, and what did he get? Some fresh young tchotchke in a black SUV with New Jersey license plates looking as if she’d like nothing more than to flatten him in one fell swoop. Windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Her petulant glare. Her lip gloss shining. An ex-Juicy. Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. Don’t think I don’t see you, young lady. Just because I’m going along here slow as molasses doesn’t mean that I’m not aware that you would very much like to put the pedal to the metal, scoop up poor Sally in the process, and drag us along Eighty-sixth Street, hanging to your bumper. A bit of respect, please. Objection sustained. There was a case he handled once of a kid from Bed-Stuy who was tied to the back of a garbage truck and dragged through the streets, he had been left lying on the ground for two hours afterwards, all the evidence was there but the jury wouldn’t convict. Rephrase. Move on. It was hard to leave a case like that behind. Haunted him for years. A young black boy, skidding along. Brutal days.

  Who in the world designed those SUVs anyway? The ugliest damn things on the face of the earth. A big silver grille and a ram on the hood. As if they’re heading off to war. And why in the world are they needed anyway? It’s not as if she’s heading across the Rockies, flooding rivers and endless jungle.

  —It’s always Jersey, Sally.

  —Sir?

  —It’s always a Jersey license plate.

  —You take your sweet time, Mr. J. Don’t mind her. We can stay here until Sunday if we want.

  —We might get snowed in.

  How many mornings, noons, and nights have I walked up and down this street? How many footsteps along this same path? When I was young and nimble and slick I would dart across the road in the Dublin traffic, horse carriages, bicycles, milktrucks and all. Jaywalking. Jayshuffling it is, now. The jaybird. Mr. J., indeed. On the Upper East Side. A lot of volume in this life. Echoes too.

  —Just fine.

  Sally’s hand lies steady on his elbow now. Gripping rather hard into what is left of the muscle. The walking stick in his other hand, propping him up and propelling him along. And why is it that the mind can do anything it wants, yet the body won’t follow? What a wonderful thing it would be to live as a brain for a little while. To be perched in a jar and see it all from there. Without the rigors of the meshuggeneh mansion? A pure clean life. On a shelf. In a row of shelves. Not stuck out here, shambling in the snow, watching the red man flash and the New Jersey lady fume, and listening to her horn beep, and the whole of New York City build up behind her.

  —All right, lady, all right.

  —Shut up! says Sally with a glare.

  The woman yanks the steering wheel hard and then pulls out around him. The tires spin in the light crust of snow. Time nor tide wait for no woman. Especially if she’s from Trenton. Or Wayne. Or worse yet, Newark. Good God, but she’s in a rush.

  Maybe off for a dalliance somewhere who knows, maybe even a tryst with his very own Elliot. How come that boy never learned to keep his equipment in his trousers?

  The red man is static now. Not even flashing. A Geronimo of the avenue. Wasn’t the neon sign a different color back once, long ago? Wasn’t there a large neon hand once? Or is there still? There most certainly was a Walk, Don’t Walk. It was so very New York, the insistence of it, the brash instruction. Walk or else. There was another sign also: Don’t Even Think of Parking Here. And once, long ago, he saw a sign in Hell’s Kitchen that said: Park Here, Motherfucker, and You Will. Which was funny, even if grammatically unsound. Park here and you will park here? Or park here and you will fuck your mother? Or both? Or neither? Or something in between?

  Oh, no matter, Your Honor. Just get across the street. All Wimbledon rules have been suspended.

  Another loud beeping. The traffic on the far side of Eighty-sixth has begun to move towards him. A Sikh in a taxi. Hold your turbines, sir. Good God, a pull of pain through his knees. A fierce tightness in the shoulders. His hips feel as if they’ve been lowered down into cement. We were young once, Sally. It’s like crossing the Styx.

  One foot after the next. That’s all you should think about. One step at a ti
me. Like an Alcoholics Anonymous for geriatrics. Another curb. Borrow the crane. Avoid the grates at all costs. Don’t get stuck in the Styx.

  And hallelujah, thank the heavens, he gets to the edge of the curb and stabilizes himself against Sally. Both of them breathing a little heavily now.

  —They’re even worse if they’re Chinese.

  —Hhhhrrrummmpf, she says.

  —It’s a well-known fact. The Chinese have the worst driving records. I don’t know why. They’re good people but they damn sure can’t drive.

  —Is that so?

  —If you ever meet a Chinese man from New Jersey, buckle up.

  —You’re funny, Mr. J.

  Which, quite plainly, he is not. She doesn’t even have the faintest of smiles. Out here, shivering. She’s not used to it at all. A couple of decades in New York and still she has the Caribbean sunshine in her bones. He should invite her to lunch. Always, every day, she accompanies him, and he brings her home some of Dandinho’s specially wrapped leftovers. She loves them. Twists them open. Puts the food on a plate. Microwaves it. Sits and watches soap operas on her little TV through the night. A tough life she has, Sally James. He would love, now, to see one of her enormous smiles. Something to crack open the day and whisk away the cold. But she’s intent on getting him down the road and squared away for his lunchtime ritual.

  —On we go.

  Moving like a tugboat. The flower shop, the chocolatier, the perfumery, the antique store, the wine shop, the handbag seller, the dry cleaners: everything the modern human needs.

  Roll up, roll up. The shutters of life.

  Hardly any pedestrians on the street today. A few delivery boys and a couple of hurrying mothers with their prams. One brave jogger wearing shorts, bouncing down the avenue like it’s August. Never understood that jogging phenomenon. Chest hair and headbands. Sometimes both at once. Snow in August. A good man wrote a book with that same title, what’s his name, he edited the newspaper once, was in love with Jackie O, so the rumor went anyway, or rather was she in love with him?

  Sally on one side, the walking stick on the other. The hat on my head. The overcoat nice and toasty. The stomach rumbling and ready. What more could a man want? Eileen, Eileen, Eileen.

  And I hate that, I truly do. Those hidden hats of dogshit left sprinkled on the sidewalk. Like little sombreros. Always in wintertime as well. A disgrace. All it takes is a doggie bag and a gentle scoop. Off with the sombrero and into the trash.

  Land ahoy. The brown-and-orange awning. The large plate-glass windows. The beautifully scripted writing in the window. The small pleated curtains. The glow of round lamps. A home away from home. Pete Hamill, that’s the man.

  —Careful now, Mr. J. Watch your step.

  They pause a moment outside the handbag shop, and he leans towards her, sees a snowflake perch on her long eyelash.

  —What time’ll I pick you up, Mr. J.?

  —Elliot will walk back with me.

  —You sure?

  —Sure, I’m sure.

  —Sure sure?

  —I’m sure, Sally.

  How many sures in a row? Love loves to love love. The little snowflake perched there on the ledge of her lash. Beauty comes and beauty goes.

  —You know, I’ve never asked you, Sally.

  —Sir?

  —Which do you prefer? Salmon or steak?

  She blinks and the snowflake is gone. Eyelashes. Towers. And why is it he always just brings her the leftovers anyway? Why is it that she gets the dregs of the day, the diapers too? He should buy her a whole plate and get it specially wrapped by Dandinho. Or even better, dress her up, take her out, celebrate her, she’s a good soul, Sally James, looking after her fine young nephew down there in Scarborough if I’m not mistaken, ah, the mind returns, yes, Tobago for sure, not Trinidad.

  —Oh, don’t you worry about me, Mr. J., she says. I’m just fine.

  —A little brownie perhaps?

  —You’re sweet, Mr. J.

  And she kisses him on the cold of his cheek.

  VII

  O thin men of Haddam,

  Why do you imagine golden birds?

  Do you not see how the blackbird

  Walks around the feet

  Of the women about you?

  The household fly is a masterpiece of evolutionary design: it can see virtually 360 degrees and can piece together a complete image no matter how weak the light. Its compound eye is an intricate honeycomb. Its retina is a convex curve, dotted with hundreds of hexagonal photoreceptors. Each lens of the eye—with support cells, pigment cells, a cornea—harvests its own light and creates a deep visual map.

  The fly can spot movement in shadows, and can pick out distant objects with far more clarity than anything the human can accomplish. The result is a mosaic of light, color, pattern, and speed. The images the fly sees are smashed together in its brain. The more lenses used, the higher the resolution.

  On a microscopic slide, the insect’s eye looks like an exquisite artwork, the tiling on the wall of a mosque, or the curve of a planet we haven’t yet found.

  With the eye of a simple housefly we could see, in a nanosecond, all the intricacies of Chialli’s Restaurant, the tables arranged in diamonds, the door opening on the walk-in fridge, the frantic slice of the knife upon the carrot, the creased folds of the napkins, the busboy adjusting the crank on the espresso machine, the manager turning to the wall for a sly crotch adjust, the slide of the bread basket on the food-station trays, the hostess touching a pencil against her tongue, the clearing of the dead man’s plates from the table, the leap of hot oil from a pan.

  As it is, there are twelve cameras in Chialli’s altogether, neatly hidden in corners around the restaurant. A two-year-old system with a sixteen-camera capability, ports still open for four. Updated software with one terabyte of storage. Good compression, resolution and a full-motion frame rate with thirty images per second. The sort of system that is good enough that the video technicians can pump it to a remote location and examine it off-site.

  It is a well-known restaurant, highly rated, very Upper East Side. A long mahogany bar. Dark wood paneling along the walls. A hardwood floor. A series of stained glass–shaded lights hanging from the ceiling over the tables. The restaurant is known for its Italian cuisine with a surprising South American flavor. The wine list is extensive. The service, impeccable. The speciality of the house is branzino, lightly grilled with mango and peppers. The most popular dessert is tiramisu, prepared with a hint of cachaça. The lunchtime crowd is generally quiet, well-heeled: the ladies who lunch.

  The digital detectives exit the twelve-camera matrix and click on the images one by one: the kitchen, the manager’s office, the hostess station, the dining room, the staff cloakroom, the rear courtyard. They layer them, bookend them, break them apart, look for tiny inconsistencies. Check the time stamps for offset. Zoom in, zoom out, build a dossier for themselves, examining the time close to the murder, 2:19 p.m., searching for anything out of the ordinary.

  There, the coat-check girl, Laura Pedersen, with her book of tickets. There, the oyster shucker, Carvahlo, sharpening his knife. Here, the chef, Chad MacKenzie, adjusting his hair under his tall white hat. There, the manager, Christopher Eagleton, flipping through pages on a clipboard. There, Pedro Jiménez at the dishwashing station. Here, the dropped fork on the kitchen floor. There, the swing of the restaurant doors. Here, the busboy, Dandinho, guiding Mendelssohn to the table. There, Mendelssohn, wiping the napkin against his lip. Here, Elliot calmly sipping his Cabernet. There, the last glass of Sancerre that Mendelssohn ever drank. Here, the waitress, Rosita Oosterhausen, tapping orders on a keyboard and later pinching her nipple through her blouse seconds before she delivers the check, a tried and trusted way to increase tips.

  There is a sequence, too, of the outer foyer of Chialli’s, from Mendelssohn’s arrival to the tail end of his goodbye.

  There are a number of people to mark—not least Elliot Mendelssohn. He arrives late, big
and bundled, in an overcoat and scarf. They watch him and his father dine at a rate of eight-by—the dab of napkins, the quick lift of fork to mouth, the pour of wine, no obvious arguments. They slow the video sequence down for Elliot’s casual stroll toward the front doors, the donning of his wool hat, his walk out into the snowstorm, still nothing overtly suspicious about him, no signal, no nod, no wink. He leaves at 1:52, twenty-seven minutes before the murder. Still, so many killings are arranged by family members and the detectives cannot rule out an accomplice: there is something about Elliot that is distinctly unlikeable, not least his insistence on speaking on the phone during large portions of lunch.

  Then there is Pedro Jiménez who is absent from his dishwashing station for a full four minutes before the murder and five minutes afterward. Pedro, fifty-seven, has no record, no violent past. At 2:12 they watch him and the busboy, Dandinho, in animated discussion by the giant metal sink under the Brooklyn Cyclones poster. It is interesting to watch Pedro remove his apron and throw it on the ground, and to see Dandinho hold him by the shoulders. There is a short pushing match between the two men. Later when they are questioned, it is revealed that Dandinho is Brazilian, and Pedro is Costa Rican, and they have a South American soccer betting pool where some mistakes have been made in the general accountancy. Pedro tells them that he was in the bathroom at the time of the murder. There are, of course, no bathroom cameras, but they do catch footage of him moving down the corridor in the direction of the toilets, a plausible-enough alibi.

  Sally James, too, is tagged, though only half-heartedly. They scrub backward on the video timeline to the early angle outside Chialli’s. They watch the dead man, alive, with Sally at his side. A shuffle to his walk, a distrust of the small coating of snow on the ground. The halting steps of one who refuses to tumble. The bite of wind active in his face. His body a little elongated from the angle. They enter the frame, actor-like, hitting their marks. The detectives halt the image and magnify, hold them in digital suspension, then click a slow motion forward. The pair hover at the entrance. She kisses him on the cheek, then Mendelssohn lets go of his nurse’s arm, shuffles forward, slope-shouldered, and stops at the restaurant door. A single flake briefly obscures him when blown against the screen.