Architectural forensics is her field—why buildings do what they do. Often called upon as an expert witness, she is known as “X-ray specs” for her ability to read the inanimate, to intuit what transformed it, to find the otherwise invisible marks of what happened and why. She is the one you want to call when there is a problem to solve—cracking, sinking, the seemingly inexplicable.
Her first appointment is a disaster. From the moment she’s out of the car, she’s uncomfortable. She has flashes of things she doesn’t want to know—other people’s memories. The owner meets her in the parking lot. “It’s an insurance question. It’s a liability question. It’s a question of who’s going to pay,” he tells her, as he sweeps a single long lock of hair across his bald head and sweat pastes it down.
“There’s something wrong with your facade,” she tells him.
“A partial collapse,” the owner says, pointing at the damage.
She circles the building. If the man weren’t watching, she would make herself into a squirrel or a bee and get inside it. She would get between the walls, between what was original and what was applied later. Instead, she simply uses an extension rod and pokes at things.
The owner moves to let her into the building.
“Old keys have more power than new,” she says as the man fumbles.
“Could I have seen it coming? Could I have known? There was no warning.”
“Or was there? Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there—there is something called willful blindness.”
“Is that a legal term?” he asks nervously.
“No,” she says, getting back into her car.
“Don’t you need to get inside?” he asks.
“I’ve seen enough,” she says.
“A woman died,” the man confesses.
She already knows.
A click of the shutter. Her day is spent looking, taking notes with her camera, making permanent what she sees in her mind’s eye. She is a special kind of anthropologist, studying what can’t be touched or seen. She drives, moving through air, counting the molecules.
She is thinking of shapes—volumes, groined vaults of gothic cathedrals, cable roofs, tents. She is thinking of different kinds of ceilings. She is noticing there is a lot of smog, a suffocating layer.
As a child she fell down a well, like something out of a nursery rhyme. “That explains it,” her teachers used to say, but it didn’t. One thing had nothing to do with the next, except that she was curious, always curious, but there was more to it than that.
She walks with a slight limp, an unnecessary reminder. She remembers the well, she remembers thinking that she saw something there—she was eight, almost nine—leaning over, catching a glimpse of something in the corner of her eye.
She remembers screaming as she fell, the echo of her voice swelling the well. Wedged, her leg oddly bent. She remembers silence.
And she remembers her mother shouting down to her, “Imagine you are a bird, a winged thing, and push yourself up. Imagine you are a flower, growing. Imagine you are something that can scale a stony wall.” Her mother shouting; many, many hours of firemen and ropes. She remembers thinking she would fall to the center of the earth, she remembers the blackness. And her picture in all the papers.
After that, while she was resting in bed, her broken leg healing, her mother would hold her hand and stroke it. “What does it feel like to be a kitten? What does a little kitten hear or see?” And slowly her features would change and she would be a little kitten-headed girl. “And what does a kitten do with her paws?” her mother would ask, stroking her hand, and little furry mitts would appear.
“You’re very special,” her mother would say. “When you fell down the well, you didn’t know that.”
She nods, still not sure what her mother is getting at—aren’t all little girls special?
“Some children are born with a fine coating of hair, but when you were born you had feathers—that’s how I knew. When you were living inside me you were a duck, splashing. You know what a good swimmer you are—you had a lot of practice.”
Looking out over the city, she receives a thousand messages at once, a life of information.
The next stop is more promising—a developer wants her opinion about where to build his building.
“You come highly recommended,” the man says, unrolling his plans across the hood of her car.
She reads them. Her eyes are like sea water, Mediterranean blue. When you look at her you have the distinct sense that she’s right.
“If I were you,” she says, “I’d build in reverse, I’d build into the hill, and then on the hill install a big mirror and situate it so that it gives you a view on both sides. Put the parking lot above rather than below. You’ll get a double view, an interesting courtyard effect, and more protection from the wind.”