Suki Kim - The Interpreter

He is not gone. He is not yet gone from her. He stands with his back turned to the window, which she is facing now. The back of his hair is thinning. He is older than his actual age, perhaps. She notes the wrinkled seams of his gabardine pants and the shiny leather of his dress shoes, which are long out of style. He is awkward in his clothes, she thinks. Those are not his everyday shoes. When was the last time he put those shoes on, what was he like then, what was the rest of his life? But this is a terrible habit, to wonder upon a past, to dig into a history of anything, anyone, even a passing stranger at a fast-food joint in a neighborhood that is not hers. A lack of reserve, or boundary. Yet she still cannot look away. She knows men like him. She imagines how he might have fumbled through the back of his closet to pull out those black leather shoes, which might have sat in the dirt of his buried past for as long as a decade, or even longer, depending on when he had moved to this country, and how he might have shined them all morning with a bit of paper towel and wax, thinking to himself, “Ah they are fine still, they fit still, I am not such an old man after all, this mute delivery guy from Queens whom no one ever looks at, including my own wife, who hasn’t had a day of smiles since she made that bad slip of following me so far, as far as this McDonald’s land in the middle of nowhere, to this bad-food, bad-mannered country where I am nothing but a frail old man, smoking the last butt of a Marlboro in the November rain, as if my life depended on it, as if this life were a thing I could have known when I last wore these shoes.”

She knows men like him. She knows what his days are like, the home he might return to at night, the daughters to whom he no longer reaches out.

She glances at her watch again. Quarter to ten, time’s almost up. Didn’t take so long after all. They must all be waiting for her. The case is nothing without her. She looks up and notices that the man outside is gone.

FORTY-FOUR BURNSIDE AVENUE is a three-story concrete building east of McDonald’s, the sort of place where an insurance agent or an accountant keeps an office, filled with ancient filing cabinets and dubious clientele. The elevator has not worked in months. The “Broken” sign is ripped halfway across, and a tiny scribble in red ink proclaims not so shyly “Your Ass.” The staircase to the basement leads to a chunky wooden door adorned with a musty gold plaque that reads DIAMOND COURT REPORTING.

Inside, a Hispanic receptionist with bright-pink lips is screaming something into the phone. Then she looks up for a second and snaps, “You here for Kim versus Santos ?,” pointing her matching pink-manicured index finger toward the room marked “3” without waiting for an answer.

“Your name?”

Name is always the first thing they ask, not out of personal interest, but because everything has to be recorded here, stamped and witnessed. This is a mini-court. A place of honor, justice, and underpaid lawyers who didn’t make the grade at hundred-thousand-dollar firms.

“Suzy Park,” she answers automatically.

The stenographer scribbles the name in her note and adds, “Love that name Suzy, with ‘z-y,’ right?” Stenographers are always such chatty characters, mostly women from south-shore Long Island, mid-thirties with blond highlights. This one is no exception, although the blond streaks on her head appear almost natural against her blue-shadowed eyes. “As in Suzy Wong?” one of the lawyers blurts out with a chuckle, quickly realizes that no one is laughing, and tries hard not to blush. He is the young one, freshly out of law school and awkward in his crisp tan suit and the awful green tie with tiny boats on it that must have come from Macy’s sale rack. “You mean the Chinese prostitute in that Hollywood classic?” Suzy is tempted to throw back at him, but she ignores him, grabbing the seat next to the one reserved for the defendant, who is still not here.

“Oh, Mr. Kim just went to make a phone call, but he’ll be right back. Nice fella. Too bad about the union mess, though.” The stenographer nudges, as if any of this is Suzy’s business, as if the details of the case matter to anybody in the room at all. “Poor guy, he really doesn’t speak a word of English. I don’t know how they carry on. Amazing, don’t you think?” The stenographer addresses the young lawyer, who is still blushing and is now glad at the chance to redeem himself. “Well, he does know a word or two. A smart man, though. Just because he doesn’t speak the language, it doesn’t mean he’s dumb.” With this declaration he is quite proud of himself, and turns to Suzy, grinning.

The other lawyer glances at his wristwatch with the insolence of a student ready for the bell. He is older, perhaps in his late forties. He is not interested in the Ping-Pongy chat across the table. He’s heard it all, and he is not having it today. He is worried that he might have parked his car in the wrong spot. What the hell, if he gets a ticket, he’ll just bill Santos. But where’s Santos anyway? Should be outside waiting for his line of questioning, even if he doesn’t want to sit face-to-face with this Kim guy! But he’s not sure he turned the headlights off before getting out of his car. Damn rain, shouldn’t have brought his brand-new Honda Accord to this pissy neighborhood. Then he remembers what his wife said to him this morning, about the loan on the car and how she’s not going to help pay a penny of it if he doesn’t pitch in for their Florida vacation this Christmas. And he thinks, Florida. They’ve gone every winter, dragging the kids, well, not really kids anymore, but brooding trench-coated teenagers who’d much rather stay online in their chat rooms than follow their mom and pop to the package hotel where they lie around the pool arguing over loans that seem to tag along with everything they own, from their Forest Hills house to the kids’ prep-school tuition to the brand-new Honda, which is possibly sitting on the wrong street corner with sparkling headlights calling to any thugs who watch from McDonald’s across the street, killing time.

With a mumbling moan, he rushes out. The stenographer, raising an eyebrow, is about to say something and then changes her mind. The young lawyer appears nonchalant, as if this sort of thing happens all the time at a deposition. “Oh well,” he says, “we’re gonna have to start a bit late. Why don’t you ladies take a little break?” Then he excuses himself and walks out also. “A cigarette?” the stenographer suggests, grabbing her white leather bag to head outside, and Suzy declines. They smoke like high-school girls, these Long Island women, usually Virginia Slims or Capri, menthol if they are over thirty-five and newly divorced.

So it’s Suzy all alone in the windowless room, staring at the stenograph mounted on a tripod, which is the only object other than the oversized conference table. The pay is by the hour, so it hardly matters if the case is delayed. Depositions never start on time anyway. Witnesses are rarely the problem. In fact, they usually show up early, nervous and guilty by association. The confusion begins with the whole arrangement of such interested, or disinterested, parties. Lawyers behave like children at a playground. Some are bullies flying on a verbal roller coaster like kids on speed; and others, bored and sullen, reluctantly finish up homework under supervision. Stenographers are jesters, butting in with needless commentaries and inevitably running out of ink or paper right at the crunch of a testimony. The interpreter, however, is the shadow. The key is to be invisible. She is the only one in the room who hears the truth, a keeper of secrets.

In fact, that is why Suzy has stuck with the job thus far. She has never before held a job for more than six months. She’s done what college dropouts do—lie and get on with what she can scrape together. Waitressing required too much smile, although she did give it a shot for a few weeks at a sushi restaurant on Bleecker Street, only to get fired for refusing to pretend to be Japanese. Nightclub hostessing was a disaster, and she hated sleeping through the day and missing the sun. Internet sales made her head spin, as if her life were being gambled on fictitious credits. An artist’s model meant being grabbed in the wrong places by the wrong hands. Copyediting ruined her eyesight. Copywriting was a hoax. The latest gig was a fact-checking stint at a literary magazine. She lasted barely four months. She only got there through the connections of an old college roommate who was an editor and declared Suzy’s career phobia to be “so nineties.” “Get over it,” Jen told Suzy over the phone. “Damian must’ve fucked with your brains.” It was Jen who begged her to reconsider when Suzy packed her bag in the spring semester of their senior year. “Everyone will forget soon, it’ll soon blow over.” Jen had always been the sensible one. She never seemed to suffer from hangovers or PMS. Jen was right, of course. Except forgetting came with its price, as Damian had said. Was it a premonition? How did he know?