leverage

Eliot: What do you want to know? Names? Dates? Locations? (softly) You want to know what food was on their breath? Their eyes – what color their eyes were? You want to know the last words they spoke? You want to know which ones deserved it. Or, better yet, the ones that didn’t? Do you want to know which ones begged? Do you know why I remember these things? Interrogator: I don’t know. Eliot: You don’t know? ‘Cause I can’t forget. So there’s nothing you can do, no punishment you can hand out that’s worse than what I live with every day. So, to answer your question, no. No, I haven’t counted. I don’t need to.

Sophie: And you’re one to laugh. You don’t even bother to learn their names. They’re just waitress, nurse, stewardess. Eliot: First of all, it’s flight attendant, all right? They don’t like being called stewardess. And, second, I know their names.

He knows from experience that a little of that will always stay with him, even if he leaves now and never sees her again. He’ll always remember her face like this, and that radiant smile, too. He’s good with faces, and sometimes he thinks he collects the faces that give him warm feelings to help counterbalance the other ones.