Found Wanting
The New Yorker - Jan 13th 2020
“…I was ashamed of my glasses. They were the cheapest of government subsidized frames; the type that poor pensioners wore, or middle-class students, when they wanted to appear ironic. The lenses were so thick that my green eyes appeared jaundiced and only half the size they actually were. I never wore them when I should. So, I can’t quite picture the Solicitor’s face, but his car was black and German. It glided through the Glasgow smirr like a starling.
I dressed myself nice, and although I felt heavy sad, I waited for him outside Central Station as his letter had instructed me to. It was another dreich day, and my stiff denims sucked up the damp from the pavement. I remember the car was so new that the raindrops domed, and quickly defeated, they streamed off the coat of polisher’s wax. As I sat in his passenger seat, I had a peripheral sense that the man had an ordinary face, thin and forgettable, serious but not unkind. It was edged by a fresh haircut, short on the sides, feathered on the top. Without my glasses everything was aura, and his aura was the colour of liver paste…’
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