Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,100

cocaine and caviar and champagne in a bucket. It was a blow date, but all he had me do was read to him. Persian poems. I thought maybe I was already in heaven and floating on a cloud. There was a lot of things being said about ancient Syria and Persia. I laid out on the bed buck naked and just read to the chandelier. He didn’t even want to touch me. He sat in the chair and watched me reading. I left with eight hundred dollars and a copy of Rumi. I never read nothing like that before. Made me want to have a fig tree.

That’s long before I went to Hunts Point. And that’s long before I ended up under the Deegan. And that’s long before Jazz and Corrie rode that van to doom.

But if I was given one week to live, just one week again, if that was my choice, that week at the Sherry-Netherlands is the one I’d repeat. I was just lying on the bed, naked and reading, and him being nice to me, and telling me I was fine, that I’d do well in Syria and Persia. I never seen Syria or Persia or Iran or whatever they call it. Someday I’m going to go, but I’ll bring Jazzlyn’s babies and I’ll marry an oil sheik.

—

Except I been thinking about the noose.

—

Any excuse is a good excuse. When they ship you off to prison they give you a syphilis test. I came back clean. I was thinking maybe I wouldn’t be clean this time. Maybe that’d be a good excuse.

—

I hate mops. I hate sweeping brushes. You can’t trick your way outta prison. You have to wash windows, clean the floor, sponge the showers. I’m the only hooker in C-40. Everyone else is way upstate. One thing for sure, there ain’t no pretty sunsets out the window.

All the butches are in C-50. All the femmes are where I am. The lesbians are called jaspers, I don’t know why—sometimes words are weird. In the canteen, all the jaspers want to do is comb my hair. I’m not into that. Never have been. I won’t wear no Oxfords. I like to keep my uniform short, but I won’t wear a bow in my hair either. Even if you’re going to die, you might as well die pretty.

—

I don’t eat. At least I can keep my figure. I’m still proud of that.

I’m a fuck-up but I’m still proud of my body.

They wouldn’t serve the food to dogs anyway. The dogs would strangle themselves after reading the menu. They’d start howling and puncture themselves dead with forks.

—

I got the keyring with the babies on it. I like to hang it on my finger and watch them twirl. I got this piece of aluminum foil too. It’s not like a mirror, but you can look in it and you can guess that you’re still pretty. It’s better ’n talking to a mouse. My cell mate shaved the side of the bed in order to put the mouse in wood shavings. I read a book once about a guy with a mouse. His name was Steinbeck—the guy, not the mouse. I ain’t stupid. I don’t wear the dunce cap just ’cause I’m a hooker. They did an I.Q. test and I got 124. If you don’t believe me, ask the prison shrink.

—

The library cart squeaks around once a week. They don’t got no books I like. I asked them for Rumi and they said, “What the hell is that?”

In the gym I play Ping-Pong. The butches go, “Ooohh, look at her smash.”

—

Most of the time, me and Jazz, we never robbed nobody. Wasn’t worth it. But this asshole, he took us all the way from the Bronx to Hell’s Kitchen and promised us all sorts of scratch. Turned out different, so all we done was we relieved him of the chore, that’s the word, relieved him. Just lightened his pockets, really. I took the rap for Jazzlyn. She wanted back with the babies. She needed the horse too. I wanted her off it, but she couldn’t go cold. Not like that. Me, I was clean. I could take it. I’d been clean six months. I was banging coke here and there, and sometimes I sold some horse that I got from Angie, but mostly I was clean.

In the station house Jazz was crying her eyes out. The detective leaned across his desk to me and said: “Look, Tillie, you wanna