Excerpt from Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

That was him. It was most certainly him.

A gust of wind shuts the screen door sharply behind her. She reaches out her arms like someone recently blind. The darkness more visible as her eyes adjust.

In the living room she pauses at the large digital television. A row of lights shine from the contraptions underneath: a cable box, a DVD player. She slips her hand along the edge of the television but can find no buttons. She fumbles in the dark for the remote, bumps against the side of the coffee table. A musty smell rises from the carpet. A dropped spoon. A fallen newspaper.

Only then does she think to strike her lighter.

In the bright flare she spies the head of the remote slipped down between the sofa cushions. A row of menu items, HDM1, HDM2, PC. One needs to be a nuclear engineer these days, just to bring a machine to life. She clicks through. Vampires. Baseball. Cop shows. She is tempted, for a moment, to remain with the Mormon wives.

There are three Spanish-language channels all in close proximity to one another. Surely, at some stage during the night, there will be a repeat. She pulls a cushion tight against her stomach. The digital clock flickers. There is, she knows, a way to record the show, even to freeze the screen—one of the Sisters did it last week during a CBS special on the Shroud—but she might lose the image altogether.

When the report finally comes on, she slides off the couch, onto the floor, sits close to the television. London. A series of peace talks. Representatives from all sides gathering together. An array of microphones set up on a table. A line of five men, two women.

The hairs along her arm bristle: Please, Lord, let it not be him.

The words tangle and braid. Guerilla, peace accord, land rights, low-level talks, reconciliation, treaty.

Then it is him. For three short seconds. She reaches her hand toward his face, recoils. His heavy-lidded eyes. His pixelated mouth. He is close-shaven, sharp, his hair neatly cut. He is a little heavier, more compact. He does not speak, but there is no mistake. He has taken on the aura of a diplomat.

She sits back against the couch, fumbles for her cigarettes. Make Yourself present, Lord. Come to my aid.

When he slapped her face, he would call her puta. In the jungle cage he pulled back her hair, yanked it so hard that her neck felt as if it would snap. A whisper. In her ear. As if he himself couldn't afford to hear the words. Pendeja. In the safe house where she was taken for four weeks, in the white room where she watched the caterpillars crawl along the cracks in the walls, he would read to her aloud from the newspaper before he yanked open her blouse and bit her breast until it bled.





She is woken in the early morning by Sister Anne who sits quietly at the side of the bed. The curtains have been slightly parted.

She pulls back the bed covers, swings her legs out, fumbles for her slippers. She can tell by the angle of light that she has missed morning prayer.

—I overslept. I'm so sorry.

—There's something we must talk about, Beverly.

—Of course.

Sister Anne is a woman who has aged gracefully apart from a shallow set of accordion lines that seem to hurry toward her cheekbones, giving her a vaguely scattershot look.

—By the television, she says. Last night.

It takes Beverly a moment for the evening to return, as if from one of those ancient sets she knew as a child in Galway, a quick flare of light and then a slow bromiding outward. The recollection of his face. The chill that ripped along her body. The manner in which he was constructed, square upon digital square, all the new edges to him.

—I think I must have woken from, I might, I may have been dreaming.

—Well, it's unfortunate, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to stop.

From the book Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann. Copyright © 2015 by Colum McCann. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.