Эмили Мандел - The Glass Hotel

“No need,” Saparelli said, but there was something about the way the steward was staring at them, so Leon nodded and let Mendoza lead the way. Saparelli shot Leon an irritated look.

Mendoza spoke quietly over his shoulder as they descended. “I saw him hit a woman once.”

Saparelli visibly flinched. “Who? Bell?”

“This was a few years ago, when we were on rotation together on another ship. There was a woman on board, an engineer, she and Bell had a thing. We had a barbecue on deck one night, I heard her and Bell arguing, so I turn my back, you know, give them some privacy—”

“Wait,” Leon said, “you were all out on deck together?”

“Yeah, this was back before they banned alcohol on the ships. It used to be possible to have a drink with your colleagues after work in the evening, just like a normal adult. Anyway, I turn my back, pretend I’m interested in the horizon, and then I hear a slap.”

“But you didn’t see it,” Saparelli said.

“I know what a slap sounds like. I turn around fast, and it’s obvious he just hit her. She’s standing there holding her hand against her face, crying a little, they’re both staring at each other, like in shock or something. I’m like, what the hell just happened, what’s going on here, she looks at me and says, ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’ I say to him, ‘You just hit her?’ and she’s like, ‘No, he didn’t hit me.’ Meanwhile there’s practically a handprint on the side of her face, this red mark appearing.”

“Okay.” Saparelli exhaled. “What did Bell say?”

“Told me to mind my own business. I’m standing there, trying to figure out what to do, but if she’s insisting nothing happened, who am I to say something did? I didn’t actually see it.” Mendoza was walking down the stairs very slowly, so Leon and Saparelli were walking slowly too, struggling to hear him. “She looks at me,” Mendoza said over his shoulder, “she looks at me and says, ‘No one hits me. You think I’d let someone hit me?’ And I’m a little exasperated, I mean, it’s so goddamn obvious, but what can I say? So I leave them and walk away a little, and I hear her say to him, ‘You do that again, I’ll throw you overboard.’”

“Then what. What did he say.” Saparelli’s voice was flat.

“He says, ‘Not if I throw you overboard first.’”

They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Leon’s heart was beating too hard, and Saparelli looked like he wanted to be sick. Leon was imagining the report: Upon investigation, it emerged that Geoffrey Bell previously threatened to throw a woman off a ship.

“When was this?” Saparelli asked.

“Eight years ago? Nine?”

“No similar incidents since then?”

“No,” Mendoza said, “but you don’t think that one incident is kind of bad?”

“Did you report the incident to the captain?”

“I talked to him the next day. He told me he’d keep an eye on Bell, but if the woman’s insisting nothing happened, then what can we do? It’s hearsay, my word against theirs, except I didn’t even see it.”

“Right,” Saparelli said. “Where’s that woman now? The engineer he was dating?”

“Raising her kids in the Philippines, last I heard.” Mendoza looked away. “Keep my name out of it, will you? When you put this in your report.”

“I can do that,” Saparelli said, “but why didn’t you tell me any of this in our interview earlier?”

“Because I liked Geoffrey. This thing I’m telling you about, it doesn’t mean Geoffrey had anything to do with whatever happened to Vincent. But after I talked to you earlier, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Thought you should know.”

“Thank you. I appreciate you telling me all of this.”

Leon and Saparelli didn’t look at one another in the car, but both wrote in their notebooks. Leon was recounting the conversation, as close to word-for-word as he could remember, and he assumed Saparelli was doing the same. At the hotel by the airport, they checked in and Saparelli took Vincent’s duffel bag from him. “Good night,” Saparelli said, when they had their room keys. It was the first thing he’d said to Leon since the port.

“Good night.” Instead of going upstairs, Leon went to the bar for a while, because he was in his seventies and had no money for travel and this was probably the last time in his life he was going to have a drink at a bar in Germany, but the flattening influence of the nearby airport meant that everyone was conversing in English. He wished Marie were here. He finished his drink and went upstairs, ironed his other button-down shirt, and watched TV for a while. Trying to imagine what that last conversation would look like in the report: An interviewee reported that Geoffrey Bell once threatened to throw a female colleague overboard. He and this colleague were involved in a romantic relationship at the time. The interviewee reported the incident to the captain. However, no mention of the incident appears in Bell’s personnel file, which leads to the conclusion that the company took no action. He lay awake all night, rose at four-thirty a.m., and drank four cups of coffee before he went downstairs to meet Saparelli and catch their car to the airport.

“Is that the same suit you were wearing yesterday?” Saparelli asked. They were sitting together in the business-class cabin, an hour into the flight. Saparelli looked as terrible as Leon felt. Leon wanted to ask if Saparelli had been awake all night too, but it seemed too intrusive.

“Short trip,” Leon said. “Didn’t think I needed two.”

“You know what I was thinking about?” Saparelli was staring straight ahead. “The way a bad message casts a shadow on the messenger.”

“Is that Nietzsche?”

“No, that’s me. May I please see your notebook?”

“My notebook?”

“The one you were using in the car yesterday,” Saparelli said.

Leon extracted it from the front pocket of his bag and watched as Saparelli flipped to the last page of notes, read it over quickly, then tore off the last two pages and folded them into an inside pocket of his jacket.

“What are you doing?”

“We actually have similar interests,” Saparelli said. “I was thinking about this last night.”

“How are your interests served by taking pages from my notebook?” Leon felt that he should be furious about the notebook, but he was so tired that he felt only a dull sense of dread.

“I know you’re not retired,” Saparelli said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I know you live in campgrounds and work in fulfillment warehouses at Christmas. I know you spent last summer working at an amusement park called Adventureland. Where was that again, Indiana?” He was staring straight ahead.

Leon was quiet for a moment. “Iowa,” he said softly.

“And the summer before, I know you and your wife were campground hosts in Northern California. I know you were recently employed doing menial labor at a Marriott in Colorado. I know that that’s your only suit.” He turned to look at Leon. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. I read up on the Ponzi scheme when I came across your victim impact statement. Obviously a lot of smart people got blindsided there.”

“Then what are you saying, exactly? I’m not sure what my employment history has to do with—”

“I’m saying that you want more consulting contracts, and I want to be able to walk down the hall without everyone thinking Oh, there’s that guy who wrote that awful report that leaked to the press and got people fired. You want that too, by the way. You want to walk down the halls and have people not look at you like you’re some kind of avatar of doom or something.”