Colum McCann - Thirteen Ways of Looking

— 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 time. 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 sure s 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.

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.