The Faces of Strangers (23 page)

As he held the door open for Vera, someone grabbed his arm. “Nico?”

Nico answered “Yes?” before he turned to see the man's face. As soon as he did, he was unsure. The man was tall, dirty blond, pale. A scar stretched across his jaw like a threat, and his clear blue eyes were reminiscent of a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, a gentle reminder that Nico shouldn't drink anymore. It was important to remain clear, levelheaded. That just because he wasn't in a New York City restaurant didn't mean that his behavior couldn't get back to constituents back home.

The man's face burst into a smile. “I thought it was you. What are you doing here?”

Nico plastered his public smile across his face. He could already feel his vocal cords calibrating before he launched into his politic spiel.

“I'm visiting...” Nico faltered. He held his hand out. “I'm sorry. I'm very sorry, I don't remember...”

“Heigi.” The man grasped Nico's hand in his own and pumped it up and down furiously. “From Eesti. You sat in front of me in Estonian Literature.”

“Heigi,” Nico said, even though he wasn't sure at all. “Yes, of course. Do you remember Paavo? These are his parents.”

“The famous Paavo,” Heigi said. “
Tere
, it is good to meet you all. You must be so proud. What luck running into you. I'm having a party this evening. You must come, all of you. Come.”

* * *

At ten thirty, Nico found himself walking from his hotel down the one long street of Old Town that didn't have a dead end. Walking through these quaint, cobblestone streets didn't dredge up any memories as he thought it might. In fact, he couldn't remember half of the squat yellow buildings that surrounded him; he was sure that most of the shops didn't exist when he went to school a few streets over. Or was Eesti High School that way? Every which way he turned, there were bookstores and restaurants and souvenir shops, which even at that hour of night were open and lively. There were entire stores devoted to Baltic amber, and window fronts glowed from the golden stones embedded in necklaces, key chains and charms. He felt disoriented and lost from the pallor of jet lag that was starting to cast its dreary shadow over him.

He found himself grateful for the multiple—free—wireless signals that his phone picked up during the walk from his hotel to the address that Heigi gave him, and the little blue dot that stood for his location was starting to blink closer and closer to his destination.

Nico marveled at Europe. He had forgotten how the streets in this continent were built hundreds of years ago, that there had been countless wars, political battles and social revolutions that had taken place right where he stood. The grandeur of New York City didn't stand up to this kind of history, however electric the vibe was at any given hour. It reminded Nico of how in high school, they'd spent one year on world history, one on European and two years on American history, a country with a fraction of the history of the rest of the world. He thought back to his apartment, to his parents' apartment, to the art galleries and hot-dog carts and the trees rich with color in Central Park and of how he wouldn't trade it for the world, for any other history than the one his city had made for itself in its short life. But he had to admit that the Old World was certainly charming.

The narrow street took a slight uphill, and his legs began dragging. The street was lit on either side by gauzy, yellow streetlamps, and the click of his heels reverberated across the buildings on either side of the street. A fleeting but vivid memory skittered across his mind of dashing across these very cobblestones with Paavo. Why were they running? The GPS on his phone confirmed that he was at his destination and he looked up. He could hardly believe it. He hadn't put the two together when Heigi scribbled down the address, but he was standing in front of Pikk 59, the exact place that he and Paavo had scrambled into after they had been running from someone. Paavo told him to run, so he'd run. And then Paavo showed him the structure, and they walked around to the courtyard, found a broken window and crawled inside. The windows that led to the basement were bricked and silent, but the face of the building was still regal with its arched windows and terraced promontories. He could hear the party from the ground floor, lots of laughing, talking, and he was sure he'd heard three champagne corks open in rapid succession.

Nico rode the gilded cage elevator up to the top floor. The door opened before he'd even had a chance to ring the bell.

“Nico!” A woman put her glass of wine on the ground and leaned forward to press her cheek against his. “I thought we'd never see you again.”
This must be how Nora feels all the time,
Nico thought. Why does everyone recognize me, but I can't place them? He slipped his shoes off next to the pile in the entryway and examined the slim woman with long, dark lashes and blond hair with dark roots, a style that looked regal on her rather than trashy.
The European advantage,
he thought.

“Katrin,” Nico said, suddenly recalling her name. “I thought you'd be living in Paris or something.”

“Ah, that was a childhood dream,” she said. “But I have a new one. Well, I suppose he's more of a reality. Tim, come meet Nico. Tim, Nico spent a few months on an exchange program here when we were in high school. Tim is a pilot. He's based in Toronto.”

“Katrin, let him through the door,” Heigi called. “Then you can show off your new arm candy.”

“He's not my arm candy. He's my fiancé.” Katrin glowered at Heigi, but she stepped aside to let Nico into the living room. There were at least a dozen people milling about, but the space was so large it hardly appeared full.

“Come, let's get you a drink,” Heigi said.

“This is huge,” Nico said, following Heigi around the curve of the living room that led to the kitchen. “Does my memory serve me right? Isn't this—”

“The former home of the KGB?” Heigi smiled. “Sure is. Second only to the Bat Cave. How cool is that? My company just finished the work, and I moved in a few months ago.”

Heigi's real estate company focused on buildings with histories. They sought out architectural commodities, gutted the insides, gave the facades a face-lift and resold individual lots inside at what, Nico figured, judging by the scotch collection clustered on the bar, must be an abhorrent price.

“People are dying to live here,” Heigi said. Nico thought about the irony of Heigi's statement. People had been dying in here long before Estonia had been declared independent. They'd been tortured in the building's very basement and the windows were still bricked up in a nod to the attempt to stifle their screams. He thought about Vera's parents. Had they been brought to this building before being sentenced to work themselves to death in a Siberian work camp? Nico wanted so badly to ask Heigi what the plans were for the basement. He pictured a finished game room or a communal bar area where residents could gather, immune and ignorant of all that had occurred around them.

“Are you sure you don't want something stronger?” Heigi asked, passing Nico a glass of wine.

“I'm sure,” Nico said.

“So, have you been doing this for a while?” Nico asked, taking dainty sips.

“Real estate? Nah. It's something new. I started out in construction after Eesti, and then a few years later, I met Magnus.” He nodded toward a broad man in a deep blue suit who was talking animatedly to a woman whose face Nico couldn't see. “He's Finnish, you see. He was just starting out with the Linna Group when we met. They take over some of the most pivotal structures in major European cities. People are clamoring for these addresses. It's incredible what they will pay in order to say that they live on the site of the Führerbunker in Berlin. It's like, the more notorious, the higher the price. It's quite disgusting, really.” Heigi laughed, and poured himself another few fingers of scotch.

“Who are all these people?”

“Actually, I don't know most of them. Friends of friends and so on. The girls in that corner you know. They went to Eesti. You know Katrin, and there's Made and Urve. And their boyfriends,” he whispered. “All rich. All foreign.”

“I guess those are the circles you run in now,” Nico said. He was starting to feel a bit nauseous and wished he'd taken Vera and Leo up on their offer of a nightcap at their home instead. “You have to go after the big fish, right?”

“Oh, they're not my clients. They're the golden ticket out for those gals.”

“What do you mean?”

“They've had it with this country. They'd be out of here by now if they could. But they can't, so they do the next best thing. Marry up and out.”

“That seems sort of harsh. I thought they all work.”

“I'm not accusing them of being gold diggers. Maybe the word I'm looking for is
opportunist
.”

Nico definitely felt sick. “What's so wrong with Estonia anyway?”

“Absolutely nothing, so long as you're in the right business. We're a tiny little country, but tech-wise, Estonia is at the forefront. We're going to be unbeatable one day. TIT is really heating up.”

“Excuse me?” Nico nearly spit out a mouthful of wine.

Heigi chortled. “I'm surprised you're not well versed with the name by now. It's practically Paavo's second home. Tallinn Institute of Technology? It's where he started CallMe
with those two guys from Mustamäe?”

Nico shifted his weight and took a long draught of wine. “I, er, haven't talked to Paavo in a while.”

“Man, what a bright guy. He really played his cards right.”

“It certainly seems so. But it seems he escaped, too, to Prague.”

“Sure, for now. But he knows what he's doing. He'll be back. He's one of the leaders of the e-revolution. One of his mentees helped to reinvigorate the electronic voting system for the last election. We had more than sixty percent voter turnout.”

“That's way more than the States could dream,” Nico breathed. “Incredible.”

“I know.” Heigi smirked. “But of course, we're not perfect. We still have things to work on. If you're not in tech, or something related, there's a huge perception that life is greener outside our humble borders, so lots of people are leaving. For example, you know our generous maternity leave?”

“More than a year, right?”

“One hundred percent paid in full. You know why? We're hemorrhaging people. Losing them to other countries, other sectors all the time. That maternity policy is an incentive to get people to stay here. But I think it's only a matter of time before things begin to right themselves. You couldn't pay me enough to leave right now.”

Nico smiled at Heigi's enthusiasm. It conjured Leo's fond love for this little country when they'd gone foraging for mushrooms all those years ago, even though he'd been denied an Estonian passport for most of his adult life.

“What about people like him?” Nico gestured toward Magnus, whose arm was around the woman he was speaking to, while the other was gesturing so wildly that the vodka in his glass sloshed over the side. Magnus's smile was all teeth and grimace, a shark circling its prey. “People are leaving, but he's coming in?” Nico felt suddenly protective of Estonia.

“The ones who see opportunity are in the right place at the right time,” Heigi said. “While others are impatient to change their lives overnight.”

* * *

Nico moved on to speak with Katrin and Urve, though Made didn't appear to remember him and disappeared onto the terrace with her boyfriend. But as the evening rode onward into the early hours of morning, he felt really ill. Trendy food didn't necessarily mean better food, though he was fairly certain that the feeling in the pit of his stomach was despondency rather than food poisoning. What had happened to the innocence of this little fairy-tale country, with its Gothic steeples and cobblestone streets? With its electronic voting and omnipresent wireless connections, and its experimental tech labs into which neighboring countries were funneling money, its position at the forefront of the future seemed secure. Estonia had grown up. As Heigi rounded up the remaining guests to down shots of vodka on the roof, Nico thanked his host, bade a quick goodbye to the girls, took the winding stairs down to the street, where he could still hear the party echoing, and vomited against a bricked-up window of the former KGB headquarters of Tallinn.

Nico felt instantly sobered, though still confused and disoriented. He felt as if he'd just stepped off the plane in Tallinn for the first time back in September almost a decade ago. And just like that day in September, he felt completely displaced. He could identify the feeling now. It wasn't an upset stomach. He felt alone, completely alone in a city that was never truly his to begin with. Nico in Estonia without Paavo felt illegitimate; he had no reason to be there. He wasn't sure what happened between him and Paavo, but he was sure that he didn't belong here. He wasn't really sure who did.

NORA

New York City
March 2012

Nora had never felt more at home than she did in her office, the SafeSpace headquarters. And she was busier than ever; her schedule was in overdrive. She'd gone from having great gaps of time in her days with which to while away the hours doing endless, interminable Google searches, having long romantic lunches with Shahid in the student haunts near Columbia, where he'd been hired as a tenure track professor, splitting apart the frayed ends of her hair, or when the weather changed for the better, taking long, luxurious walks along the lengths of New York City avenues. But then the article in
New York
magazine had been published and the ringer on her phone seemed as if it was broken—as soon as she placed the receiver in its cradle, it would ring again; as soon as she answered there would be the telltale beep of another caller waiting to get in touch with the psychoanalyst Dr. Grand, whose name and reputation preceded her. She had to hire a secretary to manage her calendar. She hadn't realized that there had been so many people who might need her, who needed the strength of her abilities. It was her creation—patent pending—that would allow her this sort of fame. That one published essay had reached all five boroughs, even parts of New Jersey and Westchester, pulling out all those disbelievers, all those skeptics who worried about their images, what they'd appear to be if they stared someone in the face and told them their problems. Pure humiliation could sometimes drive people away before they even had a chance to consider therapy. So Nora had created SafeSpace. This was like no other safe space in any other therapy session she'd monitored or observed. While technically, all therapy sessions were supposed to be safe, or you had no right to be holding one, SafeSpace was a darkened room with dim lighting where patients could sit or lie or stand erect, however it pleased them. When they were settled, they pressed the glowing green button and a screen would open on the other side whereupon Dr. Nora Grand would emerge and begin. She never saw them; they never saw her, much like a confessional in a Catholic church. But unlike those chiseled wooden screens, decorated with weeping angels and exuding the pungent aroma of a swinging metallic thurible, SafeSpace separated patients with a state-of-the-art slate slider with soundproofing when they just needed a moment—to cry, to talk out loud, to curse.

Throughout her schooling, Nora had scoffed at all the fads—the sleep therapy, the hypnosis—but during psych lab one day, on a particularly difficult run when she wasn't able to identify anyone, not her lab mates or even her advisor, she'd had a brain wave. She had to recognize her returning patients; she couldn't label a disorder or background with the wrong face. She would come across as unprofessional, undedicated, and her condition would undermine the hard work she'd put into everything she'd worked toward.

So she'd blindfolded her subjects, talking to them through microphones one at a time from the other side of a screen, her voice muffled and her body invisible, and realized the power of physical division. People didn't like admitting their feelings, their failings or shortcomings, especially not to a stranger. This was the inherent weakness in therapy in general, that you could always feel judged. Therapists were human, after all, and if someone kept returning to an abusive relationship, or couldn't extricate him-or herself from a deep-rooted gambling addiction, they sat smugly next to you, thinking they were better. They would never make those decisions; they would never stoop quite so low. Nora considered this idea for a long time. She thought first about using masks, but they were frightening to her. She thought about sleep masks, but that was dangerous, too, because patients couldn't see her but she could see them. Finally, she settled upon the dark partitioned room—a dark space, a
truly
safe space.

Between her nine and ten-fifteen appointments, she took a few minutes to unwind in her office. On her desk was the old black notebook that Nico had given her, though at the time he had been Nicholas. She had filled it up completely, but kept it on her desk as a constant reminder of how hard she had struggled in those early days. The notebook was next to a pile of the same issue of
New York
magazine
.
She grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the article out of one of the copies and folded it into an envelope to send to Paavo. The article was titled “Speak into the Dark” and reported Nora's evolution in creating SafeSpace in a wry but unchallenging tone.

She credited Paavo with her success. Talking through her fears had helped her realize her interests and motivations. If it hadn't been for his suggestion to take a few psych classes, she would have ended up a sad philosophy major with no direction, no employment opportunities and a rather unhealthy obsession with wanting to talk about Kierkegaard at dinner parties. Those few psychology classes had transformed her completely. In those final months when Paavo was living with the Grands, Nora was no closer to being able to identify faces than she was when she was first released from the hospital. But she could see one thing extremely clearly: her future in psychology. It had been from learning and studying herself that she'd felt herself transitioning toward the desire to study others. Her prosopagnosia morphed from a crutch to a catalyst.

Now, with her schedule book overflowing with new patients, she knew she'd made the right choice. It was clear that she wasn't alone in her fear of talking to complete strangers, and in her case, even friends and family. At its core, the inherent beauty of therapy was sharing your most intimate thoughts with a stranger, one who didn't know your background or what might be best for you in the long run. But the added benefit of SafeSpace was that you were truly talking to a stranger—someone who didn't even have to lay eyes upon you if you didn't want them to.

SafeSpace was opening up two more centers across the country; Nora's lab mate Stephan was the head of one of them in Chicago. He'd scorned her research at first, but ultimately came around when he saw the immediate results she received from participants who were previously unwilling to talk about their pasts. And she'd received interest from a psychiatrist in Lincoln, Nebraska, whose patient population consisted mostly of geriatrics, a group of baby boomers that seemed morally opposed to the idea of telling a stranger anything at all. She visited each of these offices, ensuring that the screens were within her standards, that the soundproofing had been installed, and felt pretty darned smug about her life's work thus far.

There was a knock at her office door and her new secretary poked her head in. “You have a new patient. Should I send her in?”

“Give me three minutes, Sari,” Nora said, gathering a sheaf of fresh papers and scribbling with one of her pens to make sure it worked. She clicked her glow light on and off so she could see her notes while in the session. “Fresh tape? We ran out just before lunch.”

“Installed it before I stepped out.”

“Background?”

“Just emailed it to you.”

“Let me see.” Nora double-clicked on the email. “No name?”

“Opted out. She's F78A for the files.” Nora smiled. This secretary was already a good investment.

“Okay. Give me five instead. Thanks.” A long, loping scrawl filled the screen. Nora preferred Sari to scan in the files directly so she could glean additional information from patients' handwriting. So much of therapy was based on body language and facial cues and tics; if she had to cut those out in order to provide SafeSpace, she needed as much insight as she could get. She scanned the paragraph, jotting down tidbits and buzzwords that she could refer to if conversation ran dry during their time together, but silence was rare. While this new patient had written quite a bit, it was all fluff; there didn't appear to be much background to her story. Nora frowned. The patient was a career woman whose past was coming back to haunt her and she needed guidance to move forward. Well, if that wasn't vague... Hopefully the woman would say all she needed to say during her session. Nora made sure the red light above her door was on, indicating that her patient was in place and that the session was already being recorded so that Nora could refer to it along with her notes when she debriefed in the evening. She gathered her pad, pen and glow light and pushed gently on the hidden door.

She blinked; it always took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but the track lighting she'd installed helped guide her to her chair. She could sense a body on the other side of the screen; the patient was seated and was jiggling her leg up and down. Nora settled into her chair. She extended her glow light. Her fingers holding the pen cast a long, eerie shadow against her pad.

She slid the listening screen open and leaned forward. “Hi. I'm Dr. Grand. I'm listening.” The jiggling stopped, and Nora could hear knuckles cracking like slow popping corn, one after the other.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” the woman said. She sounded husky yet lyrical, as though she had been singing all night in a smoky club. Nora almost expected her to begin to snap her fingers to the rhythm of her voice, which had a subtle accent. Polish? Swiss? Maybe even Dutch. “I know your office has been overextended since the publication of the article. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Nora said, twirling her pen. She knew this was a bad habit, as she wasn't adept at it, and the pen had often gone hurtling into the darkness. Nora had to clamber onto her hands and knees in the pitch black, her glow light too soft to extend into the corners of the room.

The jerking movements of the woman's leg, which she had started jiggling again, punctuated her speech but she made no attempt to quiet it. “I wanted to see you, particularly you, because I think you can help me.”

“I'll do the best I can. But you know, I can't help you. I can only help you figure out how to help yourself.” Nora felt herself roll her own eyes as she ministered the mantra, but it was imperative to ensure that patients understood her role in therapy. She was no Band-Aid.

“Okay, sure. However you want to work. I guess I'll just tell you why I'm here.”

Transcript of Patient F78A

I did something nine years ago. It wasn't a mistake and to this day, I don't regret it. But I regret how I approached it. That's partly why I'm here, to try to make things right. I'm at a point in my life where I'm ready to get serious with someone. I've dated a little bit, but I have finally met someone who makes me really happy, and my daughter likes him, too. She deserves a solid male figure in her life. Don't get me wrong...we've done great, just the two of us. But I can't move forward if I don't address what happened. I should probably back up to where it first began.

My career as a model started early. I remember having intellectual ambitions once. I don't want to be ungrateful, or pretend that the facts aren't the facts. I am beautiful. I'm lucky. I don't know what it's like to be overlooked or ignored because I've always stood apart. I'm sensitive about the fact that for some time, I also stood out for my brains. But once I was discovered, I started to travel down the modeling path, forgoing
kohuke
even though I loved it because it would give me cellulite and skipping cross-country skiing with my friends because it would accentuate all the wrong muscles.

But before you start to feel too sorry for me, know that I haven't lost out on everything. There's so much I have received over the years because of my looks. I don't think it's fair, but that's the way of the world. It surprised me that it's not just a male thing. Women, too, would give me what I wanted, and I could get away with practically anything. I certainly haven't suffered.

When I first stated modeling, everyone I worked with said I was talented. That's another common misconception, that just because you have a look, that you'll be a good model. That's just not so. You have to learn the trade as much as you do anything else. You have to make it into a career; it's not just a side effect of your looks.

For a few years, it really seemed like this was my future. But then suddenly, things seemed like they were drying up. It was like my feet were in wet cement, trying to make my mark, but it was drying faster than I could move forward. Every time I almost extricated myself, another model slipped ahead of me. There's no explaining it. It's not that I'm ugly or fat or my eyes are too wide apart. Casting agents just want a certain “look.” They can't explain it. They know it when they see it, and apparently for months, mine wasn't it. My agent and booker tried to get me jobs, but the Carmen Kass look was out for the time being. And while I know it's irrational, as a seventeen-year-old, I couldn't have felt less attractive. I needed to do something to pick myself up.

All my friends in high school were dating and having sex, but contrary to what it may look like, I was stalled. Papa was always afraid that my modeling would catapult me into the next generation, that I would grow up too fast, and I'd miss out on my childhood. But as a model, I hadn't had one date. All the male models were too beautiful, truly good-looking, but there was nothing sexual about them. They were sculptures to look at, not to touch. But in my very own house, there was this high school kid who was staying with us as part of a program. He was in my house for four months, no strings attached. While he tried to play cool around me, I could tell that I made him nervous. He blushed when I spoke to him and flirted with me, and I knew I could have him if I wanted. He was right downstairs. I didn't even have to cross Toompuiestee.

After it happened, and Mama took me to the doctor over the summer, I was naturally frantic. But then after some time, I realized it was my way out. I didn't have to be in a situation where I had failed anymore, where I felt transparent and second-rate. With a baby, I had an excuse, but I also had a chance for reinvention. I couldn't stay in Tallinn and sit back and watch all the girls with the right look surpass me. I had to go somewhere new, to the opportunity I'd been afforded before I got pregnant, where they could look upon me like a brand-new entity, exciting and fresh.