Thirteen Ways of Looking

by Colum McCann

  Shifting her weight from foot to foot, she smiles down at Elliot, a thin regal smile.

  —I guess your dad wins, she says.

  —I guess he does, says Elliot.

  And, just like that, he has tucked the credit card away in his shiny brown wallet, as if he had never intended to pay at all. He taps the wallet like the head of a friendly dog. You’re not really serious, are you, son? Just like that? Not an ounce of irony? One two three and then away? Like shit off a shovel? Aren’t we supposed to at least play a little bit of bob-and-weave? Isn’t that what the etiquette demands? You jab, I jab, you duck, I don’t. Who raised you anyway? What barn door opened up and tossed you out? Never touched the boy once in my life, but, ay, he deserves a good rap across the wrist now. Bring Katya along and have her produce peace at this table. The last time I fought with anyone was along the Royal Canal when I fell, ten pins down, after a single slap from some carrot-headed Gypsy boy. It rocked a tooth loose in the back of my jaw. The tongue went to it over and over again. A probe of pain. Like fatherhood. Trying to ease those little aches that spring up each and every day. The promise of consolation outlasting the punishment of living.

  —So you’re off then?

  —You know.

  No, I don’t know, not really.

  —Shit happens, Dad.

  Indeed, it does. Just ask Sally James.

  Oh, the morning seems so distant to me now. Gay gazinta hate. That fine doublespeak. Eileen adopted that phrase when she heard it, she loved to say it over and over, at the door, or at the end of a night, there was something pure Dublin about it for her. Go in good health and Get lost all at once.

  —Sorry to hear about your trouble.

  —Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll crush her.

  Crush her? Really? There’s no doubt that Elliot has, and could, crush many a thing, though perhaps he shouldn’t wear it as a badge of honor. The big rich white man crushing the small brown girl? Hardly a moment of enlightenment. No rewriting of history. How many times has that happened, from Christopher Columbus all the way here, now, to Elliot Mendelssohn?

  —Just look after yourself, son.

  Which is not what he meant to say at all. Rather he should have said: Don’t be despicable, Elliot. Stop twisting women’s arms. Display some heart. Stop whining. Show some character. Grow up. Talk to me about our gone days. Give me something to kvell over.

  Elliot leans down to sip the last of his wine, a trickle in the end of the glass.

  And what is this but a hand coming across the table to shake his, as if they have just done a business deal, no stand-and-hug, no clap on the back, no manly peck on the cheek. Not quite sure, Elliot, if I’ve ever disliked you more than at this particular moment. Is that it? Is that all we get? No sweet words, no revelations, no human resolutions, just a new word added to the lexicon, and not even a good one.

  Elliot swipes a napkin across his wine-colored mouth and throws the crumpled result down upon the table, a mountain of cloth.

  —I’ll call you.

  —You do that.

  —We’ll get a proper lunch.

  Gay gazinta hate indeed. Elliot, son, you could clear a room quicker than the Black Death.

  There he goes, lumbering across the restaurant towards the coat check. Keying something again into his cursed phone. Stared at by Dandinho. He might burn a hole in his back. Go ahead, Dandinho, wrap him in aluminum and sling him out into the street.

  —Rosita.

  She turns immediately from the bar where she is leaning seductively against the counter.

  —Yes, Mr. Mendelssohn?

  —I think I’m finished here. Can you have Dandinho wrap them up? And I’d like to order a dessert.

  —Yes, sir. What’ll you have?

  He should ask her now about her paintings. What is your life really like, out there in Brooklyn, or the Bronx, and that blue on your wrist, is that from a painted sky, because all I can remember of a very blue sky was a day in September when it all came crashing down.

  —The tiramisu, I suppose.

  —Great choice, Mr. Mendelssohn.

  Thank you, my dear. Lovely once and always, moonlight in your hair. Time was, once, when the world was full of the likes of you.

  And there the silhouette of Elliot goes, along past the window, the dark shaping itself into the white of the storm.

  Jilted, then. By my own son.

  And look at that. Two little puddles of rainwater on the floor beneath the table. All that’s left of Elliot.

  Which makes him think: time to tap a kidney.

  He scoots the chair away from the table. And how is a man supposed to negotiate these other tables all sandwiched together? A slalom course. Hit the gates, zoom down the snowy mountain, watch out for patches of ice.

  —How is everything, Mr. Mendelssohn?

  Eagleton, the new manager. A long skinny drink. Awful complexion. Skin all rutted and scarred. It would hardly help to tell him the truth.

  —Just fine, thank you. The salmon was delicious.

  —Good.

  —And the waitress.

  A strange look on Eagleton’s face. Oh, no, no, no. Not that she was delicious. No, no. Or not that she wasn’t. Just a good waitress. Is what I meant. Not delicious.

  —She’s very charming.

  —I’m very glad to hear that, Mr. Mendelssohn. Can I help you there?

  —I’m fine, thanks. A quick visit.

  He nods in the direction of the bathroom. Just standing up, he can feel the necessity. God, oh, God, there are times indeed when the winter gear would help on the slippery slope.

  Through the tables he goes, tapping his cane on the ground. He flicks a quick look towards the kitchen through the circular porthole on the swinging kitchen door. Like ships, these restaurants. He can just about make out Dandinho, ahoy there, in full and animate conversation with a small little aproned man. Not fisticuffs but certainly a little wave bouncing between them.

  A flash of eyes from the aproned man. Over Dandinho’s shoulder. Hardly a hello either, what is the world coming to? Just jocular no doubt. Wonder if that’s the man who prepared my salmon? Though he doesn’t look like a chef. More like a porter.

  Onwards, anyway. The smell of Clorox. Bathe me in it. Cleanse me.

  No emporium of handles in this bathroom but at least it’s clean and tidy. Only a quick whizz anyway. Root around, find the equipment, extinguish, wash your hands, be on your way, two minutes flat, make the fire-hose company proud.

  In the corridor, he glances towards the kitchen once more. No sign of Dandinho or the aproned man. Around the corner, through the tables. Candles in daytime. Snow still out the window.

  Tiramisu on the table, yes. The world restored. Thank you, Rosita. What we all need, from time to time, is a little pick-me-up.

  XI

  He rode over Connecticut

  In a glass coach.

  Once, a fear pierced him,

  In that he mistook

  The shadow of his equipage

  For blackbirds.

  In nearly all interrogation rooms, the camera is set up high in a corner: the cobweb cam. It is preferable to have a glimpse of the doorway—the truth is so often worn in the shape of arrival. The innocent walk in and sit straight down, perplexed, their hands joined together as if eager to be in prayer, but the guilty often pause for a second to look at the room and gauge it, searching for a hiding place, ready to defy their own knowledge of what has happened.

  The furnishings of the room are designed so that there is nowhere to turn: the bareness itself is an accusation. Two or three chairs, near always wooden. A simple desk, generally one with a shallow drawer: no sense of heft or hidden things. In the drawer, a few sheets of paper and a simple pen. A two-way mirror on the far wall, plain, unadorned. Nothing to be used as a weapon: no folding chairs or glass or sharp pencils. No cups or coffee machines. No distracting posters on the walls. A carpet is unlikely, but if it exists, it’s monotone. The baseboards painted
the same color as the walls. The light is often fluorescent and hard, though there is sometimes a table lamp that the detectives turn on when the truth starts to emerge: it softens the light, takes away the edges, redeems the room.

  The camera is positioned high enough that it is not the first thing seen, but those who pause in the doorway—so often the guilty—glance upward at it. There is much to be interpreted from the eye-flick: fear, defiance, insolence, disdain. Often they try to sit with their backs to the lens but the detectives are quick to redirect them to the other side of the table. The detectives count the amount of times their interviewees look up at the camera: the more they do so, the more likely they are to lie.

  Others—so often the innocent—go immediately to sit down, as if they want to protect their truth, keep it tight, hold it in its own little universe for a while, put their arms around it. Theirs is a searing gaze into the lens: a mixture of plea and terror.

  There are times the detectives leave the interviewees alone in the room. They watch, then, through the two-way mirror. It is nearly always the guilty who wave up at the camera: a fuck-you defiance. Some go to the corner underneath the camera to try to hide from it. In some stations there is a second camera set up in the opposite corner, though sometimes it is just a dummy, a second eye.

  The room is nearly always sealed off from sound, though the camera itself is wired to pick up all noise. For backup the detectives also use a recorder.

  When Pedro Jiménez is hauled in for questioning he displays a curious cocktail of innocence and guilt. He arrives in a suit jacket and blue shirt and white chef pants, a sad garage sale of a man, fifty-seven years old, a little isthmus of hair in the center of his forehead. He is thin, but gone a little to jowl, an autumn of skin upon him. He stands in the doorway and glances around but doesn’t look up to the camera, rather turns toward the Latina detective as if beseeching her to make sense of the room. Her hair is dark, her eyes are dark, her clothes dark too. She wears a simple gold chain around her neck. She touches Pedro’s elbow and guides him toward the seat at the bare wooden desk. She is followed moments later by another detective, a pale white loaf of a man who takes his chair to the end of the table. He places the chair backward, puts his chin on the rest, leans close.

  Hemmed in, Pedro glances up at the camera as if he might be able to see his own reflection in the glass, then looks back down at his hands upon the tabletop. Surprisingly he pulls from his pocket a pair of reading glasses, though there is nothing in front of him to read.

  When he perches the glasses on his nose he seems like a different man, not a scruffy dishwasher anymore but something of the disheveled librarian about him.

  The female detective speaks to him at first in a Spanish that seems as if it has been scuffed and rolled on the streets of the city. The date, the time, the exact location of the interview. Is he aware, she asks, that their conversation is being recorded? He has not been arrested, but the word yet seems silently attached to the end of her sentence. She knows that he is a family man. She’d like to help him out. She’s not interested in his immigration status. She is friends with a lot of people in the Costa Rican community, she is from the islands herself, born in the D.R., moved here when she was two years old. She is easy, chummy, open, her body turned sideways in the chair. She knows that he has a past but everybody has a past, isn’t that right, Pedro? Pedro nods, a slight shine behind his spectacles. The detectives stop to whisper in English and then Pedro tells her that he understands perfectly, he’d be happy to do the interrogation in either language. She says that, yes, Rick, her partner, is a bit rusty. We appreciate it, Pedro, she says, we really do. Still, she maintains a lilt to her questions, as if her English has just swum through the Caribbean. She is interested in clean slates, she says. She avoids the word murder. It is an assault, a serious assault, a tragedy really. Is he aware of what happened? Yes. Has he heard anything come along the grapevine? No. Some people just lose it, you know? I suppose so. Did you ever lose it yourself, Pedro? No, I’m a quiet man, I live a quiet life. You live in Brooklyn, yes? Yes. Where? You know, Coney Island. What’s it like living out there, Pedro? Gets windy sometimes. That’s funny, gets windy, you hear that, Rick, it gets windy in Coney Island, Pedro’s a comedian. I’m not trying to be funny, Mami. Just kidding, Pedro—so, how long you been working in the city? Twenty years. How long in Chialli’s? Four. Four? Yes. Hard to look after a family on a dishwasher’s salary? My wife, she’s dead. You get by? I get by. You got a daughter? Yeah, Maria. Maria’s married? She just got divorced, she’s looking for a job. She got laid off? Yeah, she got laid off a couple of months ago. She got kids? Two. That’s a tough life, Pedro, divorced, two kids, just got laid off, want some water, Pedro? No. You look like you might need a drink of water.

  He adjusts the glasses on his nose. She leans forward, the male detective leans back. It is as if there is some sort of swinging pulse in the room, the bodies, like rhyme, dependent on one another.

  So, I’d like to talk about the restaurant, Pedro. Whatever you want, Mami, I’ve got nothing to hide. You can’t remember anything unusual happening that day, like anything to do between you and Dandinho, because we heard a thing or two, let’s be honest, let’s be fair here, Pedro, we heard you had a little bit of puñetazos? He glances upward at the camera but holds a pursed tightness to his lips, shakes his head, no, that argument with Dandinho, that was nothing, Mami, nothing, they have a fútbol pool among the employees, you know, a little betting gig, and there was a—what do you call it?—a question over a Corinthians game in Brazil, a dispute, just a bit of fun, nothing to it. Was there anything else Dandinho said to you? No. You sure? I’m sure. And where did you go then, Pedro? The bathroom. But isn’t that the busiest time of day, the lunch shift, Pedro, what are you doing going to the bathroom then? I was taking a shit. You were taking a shit? Yes. That’s all right, Pedro, everyone takes a shit, but are you sure that shit of yours didn’t get any snowflakes on it? Snowflakes? Did you go out the employee exit by any chance, maybe to get a breather, Pedro, maybe to have a smoke? I don’t smoke. But did you go out, maybe pick up your jacket, maybe pick up your hat, and take a little breather outside, through the employee entrance, out the steel door to Madison Ave? I didn’t go anywhere. Just went back to washing dishes? Yeah. Pearl diving they call it, isn’t that right, Pedro? I suppose. Why do they call it pearl diving? Listen, I’ve got a job, I’ve got two grandkids, I don’t know.

  There is, in the questioning, a moving cadence, sometimes delivered to the point of the desired information, at other times looping in discursive swirls, designed precisely to disguise.

  That’s something we wanted to talk to you about, Pedro. What? About Maria. Maria? You know, her getting divorced, losing her job, coming back in to live with you in Coney Island. She wanted to save money. Did it put some pressure on you maybe? No. Because Maria, she had a good job—where was it she worked again?—what was it she said to us, Rick? You talked to Maria? Of course, we talked to Maria. Maria’s got nothing to do with any of this. Any of what? What are you doing talking to Maria? Any of what, Pedro? Nothing. Nothing? She’s a good girl, is all I said. Of course, she’s a good girl. Then leave her out of it. To be honest, Pedro, well, she had a lot of things to say. Maria wouldn’t say nothing bad about me. Of course, she didn’t say anything bad about you, she’s crazy about you, la niña de sus ojos. So what’s the problem? No problem, Papi. Then what am I doing here? You know the Barner Funds? The what? Maria was working for the Barner Funds. Yeah, what about it? What do you think of the Barner Funds? She had a good job, she liked it there, that’s all. That’s all? That’s it. It didn’t piss you off, Pedro? No, why should it? Even when she got fired? That’s a couple of months ago, I told you. What do you think about the bosses there, Pedro? Nothing, none of my business, never thought about them. Because Maria told us that she was bringing a lawsuit against the Barner Funds for wrongful dismissal, did you know that? Sure. And what did you think? Bueno, no big deal. And you k
now that guy Elliot Mendelssohn? Huh? He’s the son of the guy that got punched outside your restaurant? Yeah. You’ve got to forgive me here, Pedro, but this guy Elliot, he might’ve, I don’t know, he might’ve stepped in between Maria and your son-in-law a few months ago. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know what I mean, before she got fired? What? That’s just what we heard, that he might’ve just had a bit of a wandering hand with Maria, that they—sorry to say this, Pedro, you’re a father, and fathers don’t like to hear this shit, mothers don’t either, trust me, but fathers for sure don’t, right? What the fuck. What I’m saying, Pedro, is they made further acquaintance a couple of times in a hotel in Stamford, where this guy Elliot lives, up there in Connecticut, with his wife and kids, he’s got a fondness for hotels, Pedro, do you know what I mean, are you hearing me, Pedro, is anybody home, knock-knock, who’s there, are you hearing me, Pedro, is anyone there? I don’t know what you mean. You don’t? No, I don’t. Maybe you felt something bad about the Barner Funds, like maybe this guy Elliot was exploiting her, maybe he was dabbling a little too much? Maria never did that, Maria’s a good girl, Maria was married. Don’t get me wrong, Pedro—this guy Elliot he’s a prime-rib asshole, we know that. I don’t know him, never met him. Maybe he was suggesting to Maria that he was going to make her rich, but then he turns around and fires her? I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe he was whispering sweet nothings. I never heard of him before. Maybe the jury’ll buy that story, Pedro? What story? You being a father and all, you punched his father? I didn’t punch no one. Are you sure about that, Pedro? I swear to God, Mami. You can call me Carla. I didn’t punch no one. Maybe you didn’t mean to hit him so hard, just an accident, like? I told you, I didn’t touch him. Maybe pushed him over? No. You want that glass of water now? Are you telling me that I need a lawyer? Look, we’re not trying to nail you here, Pedro. I have the right to a lawyer, I know that. You certainly do, but what we’re trying to do is help you here, that man who died, he was a judge once, Pedro, Brooklyn Supreme Court, and the way things are looking, you’re going to need us on your side. I didn’t punch no one. ’Cause, me and Rick here, we’re on your side.