Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

  “I’m pooped,” he said, “but, boy, do I have a story for you.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Boy oh boy.”

  He was undoing the buttons on his shirt and for a moment I thought McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 317

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  he might take the shirt off in front of me, stand in the middle of the room like some round white fish.

  “Guy walked a tightrope,” he said. “World Trade.”

  “We heard.”

  “You heard?”

  “Well, yes, everyone’s heard. The whole world’s talking about it.”

  “I got to charge him.”

  “You did?”

  “Came up with the perfect sentence too.”

  “He got arrested?”

  “Quick shower first. Yes, of course. Then tell you all.”

  “Sol,” she said, pulling his sleeve.

  “I’ll be right out, tell you everything.”

  “Solomon!”

  He glanced at me. “Let me freshen up,” he said.

  “No, tell us, tell us now.” She stood. “Please.”

  He flicked a look in my direction. I could tell he resented me, just being there, that he thought I was some housekeeper, or some Jehovah’s Witness who had somehow come into his house, disturbed the rhythm, the celebration he wanted to give himself. He opened another button on his shirt. It was like he was opening a door at his chest and trying to push me out.

  “The D.A. wanted some good publicity,” he said. “Everyone in the city’s talking about this guy. So we’re not going to lock him up or anything. Besides the Port Authority wants to fill the towers. They’re half empty. Any publicity is good publicity. But we have to charge him, you know? Come up with something creative.”

  “Yes,” said Claire.

  “So he pleaded guilty and I charged him a penny per floor.”

  “I see.”

  “Penny per floor, Claire. I charged him a dollar ten. One hundred and ten stories! Get it? The D.A. was ecstatic. Wait ’til you see. New York Times tomorrow.”

  He went to the liquor cabinet, his shirt a full three- quarters open. I could see the protrusion of his flabby chest. He poured himself a deep glass of amber liquid, sniffed it deeply, and exhaled.

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  “I also sentenced him to another performance.”

  “Another walk?” said Claire.

  “Yes, yes. We’ll get front- row tickets. In Central Park. For kids. Wait until you see this character, Claire. He’s something else.”

  “He’ll go again?”

  “Yes, yes, but somewhere safe this time.”

  Claire’s eyes skittered around the room, as if she was looking at different paintings and trying to hold them together.

  “Not bad, huh? Penny per floor.”

  Solomon clapped his hands together: he was enjoying himself now.

  Claire looked at the ground, like she could see all the way through to the molten iron, the core of everything.

  “And guess how he got the wire across?” said Solomon. He put his hand to his mouth and coughed.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Sol.”

  “Go on, guess.”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “Guess.”

  “He threw it?”

  “Thing weighs two hundred pounds, Claire. He was telling me all about it. In court. It’ll be in all the papers tomorrow. Come on!”

  “Used a crane or something?”

  “He did it illegally, Claire. Stealth of night.”

  “I don’t really know, Solomon. We had a meeting today. There were four of us, and me, and . . .”

  “He used a bow and arrow!”

  “ . . . we sat around talking,” she said.

  “This guy should’ve been a Green Beret,” he said. “He was telling me all this! His buddy shot a fishing line across first. Bow and arrow. Into the wind. Judged the angle just right. Hit the edge of the building. And then they fed the lines across until it could take the weight. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Claire.

  He put his bell- shaped glass on the coffee table with a sharp snap, then sniffed at his shirtsleeve. “I really must have a shower.”

  He walked over towards me. He became aware of his shirt and pulled it across without buttoning it. A waft of whiskey rolled from him.

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  “Well,” he said. “Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t really catch your name.”

  “Gloria.”

  “Good night, Gloria.”

  I swallowed hard. What he really meant was “ good- bye.” I had no idea what sort of reply he expected. I simply shook his hand. He turned his back and walked out along the corridor.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” he called over his shoulder.

  He was humming a tune to himself. Sooner or later they all turn their backs. They all leave. That’s gospel. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. They all do.

  Claire smiled and shrugged her shoulders. I could tell she wanted him to be someone better than what he was, that she must have married him for some good reason, and she wanted that reason to be on display, but it wasn’t, and he had dismissed me, and it was the last thing she wanted from him. Her cheeks were red.

  “Give me a moment,” she said.

  She went down the corridor. A mumble of voices from her bedroom.

  The faint sound of a bath running. Their voices raised and dipped. I was surprised when he emerged with her, just moments later. His face had softened: as if just being a moment with her had relaxed him, allowed him to be someone different. I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they’re the things that matter.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your sons,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t mean to be so brusque.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ll excuse me?” he said.

  He turned and then he said, with his gaze to the floor: “I miss my boy too sometimes.” And then he was gone.

  I suppose I’ve always known that it’s hard to be just one person. The key is in the door and it can always be opened.

  Claire stood there, beaming ear to ear.

  “I’ll drop you home,” she said.

  The thought of it flushed me with warmth but I said: “No, Claire, that’s all right. I’ll just get a taxi. Don’t you worry.”

  “I’m going to drop you home,” she said, with a sudden clarity.

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  “Please, just take the slippers. I’ll get you a bag for your shoes. We’ve had a long day. We’ll take a car service.”

  She rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a small phone book. I could hear the sound of the bath still running. The water pipes kicked in and there was a groan from the walls.

  —

  da r k h ad fa l le n ou t side . The driver was waiting, propped, smoking a cigarette, against the hood of the car. He was one of those old- time drivers, with a peaked hat and a dark suit and a tie. He suddenly stubbed the cigarette out and ran to open the rear door for us. Claire slid in first.

  She was agile across the rear seat and she swung her legs across the well in the middle of the seats. The driver took my elbow and guided me inside. “There we go,” he said in a big false voice. I felt a little old- black-ladyish, but that was all right—he was just doing his best, wasn’t trying to make me feel bad.

  I told him the address and he hesitated a moment, nodded, went around to the front of the car.

  “Ladies,” h
e said.

  We sat in silence. On the bridge she flicked a quick look back at the city. All was light—offices that looked as if they were hovering on the void, the random pools from street lamps, headlights flashing across our faces. Pale concrete pillars flashed by. Girders in strange shapes. Naked columns capped with steel beams. The sweep of the river below.

  We crossed over into the Bronx, past shuttered bodegas and dogs in doorways. Fields of rubble. Twisted steel pipes. Slabs of broken masonry.

  We drove beyond railroad tracks and the flashing shadows of the underpass, through the fire- blown night.

  Some figures lumbered along among the garbage cans and the piles of refuse.

  Claire sat back.

  “New York,” she sighed. “All these people. Did you ever wonder what keeps us going?”

  A big smile went between us. Something that we knew about each other, that we’d be friends now, there wasn’t much could take it from us, we were on that road. I could lower her down into my life and she could probably survive it. And she could lower me into hers and I could rum-McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 321

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  mage around. I reached across and held her hand. I had no fear now. I could taste a tincture of iron in my throat, like I had bitten my tongue and it had bled, but it was pleasing. The lights skittered by. I was reminded how, as a child, I used to drop flowers into large bottles of ink. The flowers would float on the surface for a moment and then the stem would get swamped, and then the petals, and they would bloom with dark.

  There was a commotion outside the projects when we pulled up. Nobody even noticed our car. We glided up by the fence, shadowed by the overpass. The black steel beams were shimmying with streetlight. None of the women of the night were out, but a couple of girls in short skirts were huddled under the light in the entrance. One was leaning across the shoulder of another and sobbing.

  I had no time for them, the hookers, never had. I didn’t hold any rancor for them nor any bleeding heart. They had their pimps and their white men who felt sorry for them. That was their life. They’d chosen it.

  “Ma’am,” said the driver.

  I still had my hand in Claire’s.

  “Good night,” I said.

  I opened the door, and just then I saw them come out, two darling little girls coming through the globes of lamplight.

  I knew them. I had seen them before. They were the daughters of a hooker who lived two floors above me. I had kept myself away from all that. Years and years. I hadn’t let them near my life. I’d see their mother in the elevator, a child herself, pretty and vicious, and I’d stared straight ahead at the buttons.

  The girls were being guided down the path by a man and a woman.

  Social workers, their pale skin shining, a scared look on their faces.

  The girls were dressed in little pink dresses, with bows high on their chests. Their hair was done in beads. They wore plastic flip- flops on their feet. They were no more than two or three years old, like twins, but not twins. They were both smiling, which is strange now when I think back on it: they had had no idea what was happening and they looked a picture of health.

  “Adorable,” said Claire, but I could hear the terror in her voice.

  The social workers wore the straitjacket stare. They were pushing the kids along, trying to guide them through the remaining hookers. A cop car idled farther up the block. The onlookers were trying to wave to the

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  little girls, to lean down and say something, maybe even gather them up in their arms, but the social workers kept pushing the women away.

  Some things in life just become very clear and we don’t need a reason for them at all: I knew at that moment what I’d have to do.

  “They’re taking them away?” said Claire.

  “I suppose.”

  “Where’ll they go?”

  “Some institution somewhere.”

  “But they’re so young.”

  The kids were being bundled towards the back of the car. One of them had started crying. She was holding on to the antenna of the car and wouldn’t let go. The social worker tugged her, but the child hung on. The woman came around the side of the car and pried the child’s fingers off.

  I stepped out. It didn’t seem to me that I was in the same body anymore. I had a quickness. I stepped off the pavement and onto the road. I was still in Claire’s slippers.

  “Hold on,” I shouted.

  I used to think it had all ended sometime long ago, that everything was wrapped up and gone. But nothing ends. If I live to be a hundred I’ll still be on that street.

  “Hold on.”

  Janice—she was the older of the two—let her fingers uncurl and reached out to me. Nothing felt better than that, not in a long time. The other one, Jazzlyn, was crying her eyes out. I looked over my shoulder to Claire, who was still in the backseat, her face shining under the dome light. She looked frightened and happy both.

  “You know these kids?” said the cop.

  I guess I said yes.

  That’s what I finally said, as good a lie as any: “Yes.”

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  B O O K

  F O U R

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  R O A R I N G S E A W A R D , A N D I G O

  O c t o b e r 2 0 0 6

  She often wonders what it is that holds the man so high in the air. What sort of ontological glue? Up there in his haunted silhouette, a dark thing against the sky, a small stick figure in the vast expanse.

  The plane on the horizon. The tiny thread of rope between the edges of the buildings. The bar in his hands. The great spread of space.

  The photo was taken on the same day her mother died—it was one of the reasons she was attracted to it in the first place: the sheer fact that such beauty had occurred at the same time. She had found it, yellowing and torn, in a garage sale in San Francisco four years ago. At the bottom of a box of photographs. The world delivers its surprises. She bought it, got it framed, kept it with her as she went from hotel to hotel.

  A man high in the air while a plane disappears, it seems, into the edge of the building. One small scrap of history meeting a larger one. As if the walking man were somehow anticipating what would come later. The intrusion of time and history. The collision point of stories. We wait for the explosion but it never occurs. The plane passes, the tightrope walker gets to the end of the wire. Things don’t fall apart.

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  still capable of myth in the face of all other evidence. It has become one of her favorite possessions—her suitcase would feel wrong without it, as if it were missing a latch. When she travels she always tucks the photo in tissue paper along with the other mementoes: a set of pearls, a lock of her sister’s hair.

  —

  At the security line in Little Rock she stands behind a tall man in jeans and a battered leather jacket. Handsome in an offhand way. In his late thirties or early forties, maybe—five or six years older than she is. A bounce in his step as he moves up the line. She edges a little closer to him. The tag on his bag reads: DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS.

  The security guard bristles and examines his passport.

  —Are you carrying any liquids, sir?

  —Just eight pints.

  —Excuse me, sir?

  —Eight pints of blood. I don’t think they’ll spill.

  He taps his chest and she chuckles. She can tell that he’s Italian: the words stretched with a lyrical curl. He turns to her and smiles, but the sec
urity guard stands back, stares at the man, as if at a painting, and then says: Sir, I need you to step out of line, please.

  —Excuse me?

  —Step out of line, please. Now.

  Two other guards swing across.

  —Listen, I’m only joking, says the Italian.

  —Sir, follow us, please.

  —Just a joke, he says.

  He’s pushed in the back, toward an office.

  —I’m a doctor, I was just making a joke. Just carrying eight pints of blood, that’s all. A joke. A bad one. That’s all.

  He flings out his hands to plead, but his arm is twisted high behind his back, and the door is closed behind him with a thump.

  The rancor passes down the line to her and the other passengers in the security area. She feels a thread of cold along her neck as the security guard stares her down. She has a bottle of perfume sealed in a little ziploc bag, and she places it carefully in the tray.

  —Why are you bringing this in carry- on, miss?

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  —It’s less than three ounces.

  —And the purpose of your travel?

  —Personal. To see a friend.

  —And what’s your final destination, miss?

  —New York.

  —Business or pleasure?

  —Pleasure, she says, the word catching at the back of her throat.

  She answers calmly, practiced, controlled, and when she goes through the metal detector she automatically stretches her arms out to be searched, even though she doesn’t set off the alarm.

  —

  The plane is near empty. The Italian finally slouches on, quiet, embarrassed, contrite. He has a hunch to his shoulders as if he can’t quite deal with his height. His light- brown hair in a havoc. A small shadow of gray-tinged beard on his chin. He catches her eye as he takes the seat behind her. A smile travels between them. She can hear him, behind her, as he takes off his leather jacket and sighs down into his place.

  Halfway through the flight she orders a gin and tonic and he extends a twenty- dollar bill across the seat to pay for her drink.

  —They used to give things out free, he says.