Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,130

to be so disposed. In the case of the People versus Tillie Henderson, the plea is guilty and I sentence you to no more than eight months in prison.

—Eight months?

—Correct. I can make it twelve, if you like.

She opened her mouth in an unsounded whimper.

—I thought it were gonna be six.

—Eight months, young lady. Do you wish to adjust your plea?

—Shit, she said and she shrugged her shoulders.

He saw the Irishman in the spectators’ section grab the arm of the young hooker. He was trying to make his way forward in the court to say something to Tillie Henderson, but the court officer prodded him in the chest with a billy club.

—Order in the court.

—Can I say a word, Your Honor?

—No. Now. Sit. Down.

Soderberg could feel his teeth grind.

—Tillie, I’ll be back later, okay?

—Sit. Or else.

The pimp stopped in the aisle and looked up at Soderberg. The pupils small, the eyes very blue. Soderberg felt exposed, open, unlayered. A blanket of quiet fell over the court.

—Sit! Or else.

The pimp lowered his head and retreated. Soderberg let out a quick breath of relief, then turned slightly in his chair. He picked up the calendar of cases, put his hand over the microphone, nodded across to the court officer.

—All right, he whispered. Get the tightrope walker up.

Soderberg glanced at Tillie Henderson as she was escorted out the door to his right. She walked with her head low and yet there was a learned bounce in her gait. As if she were already out and doing the track. She was held on each side by a court officer. The jacket she wore was crumpled and dirty. The sleeves were way too long. It looked as if two women could have fit inside it. Her face looked odd and vulnerable, and yet still held a touch of the sensual. Her eyes were dark. Her eyebrows were plucked thin. There was a shine to her, a glisten. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time: upside down, the way the eye first sees, and then must correct. Something tender and carved about the face. The long nose that looked as if it might have been broken a few times. The flare of her nostrils.

She turned at the door and tried to look over her shoulder, but the court officers blocked her.

She mouthed something toward her daughter and the pimp, but it was lost, and she gave a little winded sigh as if she were on the beginning of a long journey. Her face seemed for a second almost beautiful, and then the hooker turned and shuffled and the door was closed behind her, and she vanished into her own namelessness.

—Get the tightrope walker up, he said again to his bridge. Now.

CENTAVOS

THERE IS, AT LEAST, ALWAYS THIS: It is a Thursday morning. My first-floor apartment. In a clapboard house. In a street of clapboard houses. Through the window, a quick flit of dark against the blue sky. It is a surprise to me that there are birds of any sort in the Bronx. It is summertime so there is no school for Eliana or Jacobo. But they are already awake. I can hear the sound of the television turned high. Our ancient set is stuck on one channel and the only program playing is Sesame Street. I turn in the sheets towards Corrigan. It is the first time that he has ever slept over. We have not planned it: it has just happened this way. He stirs in his sleep. His lips are dry. The white sheets move with his body. A man’s beard is a weather line: an intersperse of light and dark, a flurry of gray at the chin, a dark hollow beneath his lip. It amazes me how it darkens him, this morning beard, how it has grown in such a short time, even the little flecks of gray where there was none the night before.

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

One arm of Corrigan’s shirt is on, one arm off. In our haste we have not even undressed properly. Everything is forgiven. I lift the weight of his arm and unbutton the shirt. Wooden buttons that slip through a cloth loop. I pull the shirt along the length of his arm and off. His skin is very white, the color of newly sliced apple, beneath his brown neck. I kiss his shoulder. The religious chain around his throat has left a