So I tried it on the Weasel. What did he have besides a face?
But I guess I wasn’t very good at this yet. All that really stood out was the bowling jacket—which had the name Joe embroidered vintage style across the chest. The rest? Shaggy hair falling aggressively over his forehead. General tallness. Thick-framed gray hipster glasses.
And I don’t know what else. Arms and legs, I guess. Shoulders? Feet?
This was hard.
Normally, in elevator situations with strangers, even if you accidentally talk at the start, you settle back into standard elevator behavior pretty fast: eyes averted, quiet, as much space as possible between bodies.
But I could feel the Weasel breaking the rules. Standing too close. Trying to make eye contact.
Oh god. Had he thought I was checking him out just now?
I felt a sting of humiliation. That was scientific research, damn it!
I dropped my eyes straight to the floor and edged even farther away.
Unmistakable we-don’t-know-each-other body language.
But maybe he didn’t speak that language? I could feel him studying me as we rose to the next floor. “Great sweatpants,” he said then, his voice still at maximum friendliness.
“Thank you,” I replied. Nice and curt.
“Are they comfortable?”
What? Who cared? “Yes.”
He paused, and I thought my one-word answers had done their job. But then he revved back up. “How are you doing today?”
How was I doing? What kind of question was that? “I’m fine.”
“You look good,” he said, like he was somehow qualified to state that opinion.
A memory of his saying the words nothing but blubber popped into my head, and it was all I could do to push out two clipped syllables. “Thank you.”
“How’s your health?”
My health? Um. We weren’t going to talk about my health—or anything at all about me. I didn’t know anybody who lived in my building well enough for a conversation like this. Except possibly Mr. and Mrs. Kim, who lived on the ground floor.
I went on the offensive. “My health is fine. How is yours?”
“Oh, good, you know. Yeah, I was up all night. But that’s nothing new.”
Oh my god. What a monster. How many other women had he menaced since the last time I saw him?
When we reached the top floor, we both started for the doors at the same time, and when he realized the bottleneck, he gestured for me to go ahead with a Shakespearean bow.
Really? Now he was ruining Shakespeare?
I went ahead. Walking a little faster than I really wanted to, trying to leave him behind.
But he followed me. “Do you rent the place on the rooftop?” he asked then as I paused to work the door code to the rooftop stairwell.
Obviously. “Uh-huh,” I said.
“We’re neighbors,” he said, and gestured at the next closest door. “I’m right here. Just under you.”
Could he hear himself?
I nodded without looking up. No eye contact.
“I’d love to get a look at your place sometime,” he said then. “I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like up there.” Then he added, “Especially when you’re clomping around on my ceiling.”
Nope. No thanks. There was no way this wanker was ever going to “see what it’s like up there.”
I turned to face him, double-checking the name on his pocket.
“Look, Joe,” I said, poking my finger—hard—into the embroidered name on his jacket so he’d know I knew it, “I’m not going to be inviting you up to the rooftop.” Then in a tone that very unmistakably said I know what you did to that one-night stand and you’re a terrible person and we both know it, I added, “That’s not going to happen. Okay?”
That shocked him a little—which reminded me of something else Dr. Nicole had said.
During our lengthy coping-skills session before I left the hospital, as she tried to argue that face blindness was not going to be as debilitating as I feared, she told me, among many other things, that even though I couldn’t see faces, I would still be able to read the emotions on them.
“So if someone is shocked or embarrassed or angry, you’ll still be able to tell,” she explained. “You won’t see it, but you’ll know it.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“It’s two different brain systems.”
“But how can I read faces if I can’t see faces?”
“You can still see faces,” Dr. Nicole said. “There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. Your brain just doesn’t know how to put them together to show them to you right now.”