The Submission - Amy Waldman [29]
The editor, the chairman, their whole titled, entitled tribe were different, faithful to the truth only until it inconvenienced their clique. So she had defected, and the consequences of that defection were raining down upon the city. Relatives’ Rumination, a journalistic genre that had evolved over the preceding two years, was in full gear. Every reporter had a digital Rolodex of widows and widowers, parents and siblings of the dead, who could be called for a quote on the issue of the day: the state of the site, the capture of an attack suspect, the torture of said suspect, compensation, conspiracy theories, the anniversaries of the attack (first one month, then six months, then yearly), the selling of offensive knickknacks depicting the destruction. Somehow the relatives always found something to say.
The governor, mysteriously absent at the onset of the controversy—awaiting the instant polls, Alyssa was sure—emerged to express “grave concern” about the possibility of a Muslim memorial-builder, not bothering with any of the mayor’s palliative liberal sentiments. Governor Bitman had the glow of a woman in love, or one who has just found an issue that could catapult her to national prominence. Alyssa, her ambitions rhyming with the governor’s, began to imagine trailing a presidential campaign from state to state.
Paul Rubin scanned the restaurant, an Upper East Side bistro he had chosen because no one he knew patronized it. All but empty, as he had hoped, except for a few matrons pickling at the dark-wood bar. Disoriented by the light-spangled mirrors on the mustard walls, he didn’t see Mohammad Khan in the long, narrow room. Then he spotted a dark-bearded man watching him from a table at the back. Paul recalled the photo that had accompanied the Garden’s submission. This couldn’t possibly be Khan. He was—Paul scrambled for the words as he approached the table—“funked up,” his wavy black hair grown longer and swept back, his jawline blurred by a neatly trimmed beard, his eyes by lightly tinted amber rectangles.
Khan stood. He had a good three inches on Paul. He had taken the seat with the view of the restaurant and the door, which was Paul’s preferred seat; sitting with his back to a room unsettled him. Once they sat, Paul sipped water, hoping to imbibe a sense of equilibrium. He noted that Khan was drinking creamed coffee the shade of his skin, then disavowed the comparison for fear it was racist.
“You look different,” he began. “From your picture.”
Khan shrugged. “It was an old picture.” He wore an uncreased white shirt of a fine fabric, the cuffs turned up, a tasteful tuft of dark hair visible at the neck. He looked like Paul’s idea of a Bollywood star. In his bow tie, Paul felt like he had overdressed for the school dance.
A moment of silence. Then another. Even in the restaurant’s dimness, even through the glasses, Khan’s eyes were—and Paul had never said this, even thought this, about a man—beautiful. Beautiful in the way marbles had been to him as a child. Beautiful in a way that women must fall hard for.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Paul began.
“Of course, but I’m curious why I learned this from the Post,” Khan said. There was sketch paper in front of him, a few lines