The Submission - Amy Waldman [31]
Paul’s face burned as it hadn’t in a very long time. With his age, his stature, he had thought himself beyond such humiliation. He was taken back to an incident he had once revisited almost daily. He was twenty-four, a summer associate at a law firm. He had gotten there on brains and determination: always the best student in the class, awkward and shy without a book, fearful of failure or missteps. A senior partner had taken him to lunch. At the stiff, elegant restaurant, where the waiters draped white napkins over their arms, Paul toppled his glass of cranberry juice, a poor order to begin with. The partner did not ignore it, or make a kindly joke. Instead he watched the stain’s migration across the tablecloth as if menstrual blood were on the move. Then he looked straight into Paul’s eyes. To his great surprise—to this day it still surprised him—Paul looked back at the man without squirming or blushing or bothering to blot the stain. He made no eye contact with the waiter who soon rushed over to change the tablecloth in what struck Paul as an unnecessarily billowing flurry. That endless, wordless moment taught Paul what nearly two decades of school, college, and law school had not. Brains were only half of success, maybe less; the other half was a nameless game whose coin was psychological. To win, you had to intimidate or bluff. Over the next few years, this revelation slowly freed him from himself and from a life buried in law books. He never practiced, went straight to an investment bank as a junior associate, making baby deals. He liked the game of risk. Learning that disaster could be survived, even manipulated, freed him. Khan appeared to have learned this, too. Or maybe Paul was teaching him. He wasn’t sure, today, if Paul’s humiliation of Khan or Khan’s of Paul had evoked the memory.
“You seem to think this is a game, Mr. Khan.”
“It is a game. One for which you made the rules. And now you’re trying to change them.”
“I’m changing nothing,” Paul said. “I’m doing due diligence, as I told you. The public may wonder, for example, what their memorial designer was doing in Afghanistan.” Paul hadn’t planned to bring this up, but he decided not to regret it. It would be useful to see how Khan behaved when put off-balance.
He responded with the aplomb of a well-coached judicial nominee. “I went to Afghanistan six months ago on ROI’s behalf,” he said. “We were competing to build the new American embassy there. We didn’t get it—not much of a surprise if you know ROI’s work at all. But I was glad to have the chance to see a country that’s become so important to America,” he finished smoothly.
“Then you’ll care about how important this memorial is to America,” Paul said, and with more urgency: “You won’t want to tear your country apart.”
“Of course I don’t want to tear it apart.”
“Then—it’s hard to see how this plays out any other way. If you persist.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying anything but what I said. I’m not saying anything except that I don’t know why anyone who loves America, wants it to heal, would subject it to the kind of battle the selection of a Muslim would cause. Think of Solomon’s baby.”
“Shouldn’t you be making that point to the people gearing up for battle? I’ve done nothing but design a garden.”
“And they’ve done nothing but lose husbands, wives, children, parents.”
“So that gives them the moral high ground?”
“Some might say so, yes.” Paul gave a wintry smile and turned to summon the waiter.
“I could change my name,” Khan said, when Paul had finished ordering coffee.
“Many architects have,” Paul said. “Mostly Jewish ones.”
“It was a joke.”
“My great-grandfather—he was Rubinsky, then my grandfather comes to America and suddenly he’s Rubin. What’s in a name? Nothing, everything. We all self-improve, change with the times.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, picking a name that hides your roots, your origins, your ethnicity.”