Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,148

of people’s rooms: a white enamel jar against a window frame, a round wooden table with a newspaper spread out, a pleated shade over a green chair. What, I wondered, were the sounds filling those rooms? It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.

A small blade of pain shot through me each time I stepped, but I could handle it—there were worse things than a torn-up pair of heels. A pop song traveled across my memory, Nancy Sinatra singing about her boots being made for walking. I had it in my thoughts that the more I hummed the less my feet would hurt. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you. One corner to another. One more crack in the pavement. That’s the way we all walk: the more we have to occupy our minds the better. I started humming louder, not caring a bit who saw or heard me. Another corner, another note. As a little girl I had walked home through the fields, my socks disappearing into my shoes.

The sun was still high. I’d been walking slow, two hours or more.

Water ran down a drain: up ahead some kids had opened a fire hydrant and were dancing through the spray in their underwear. Their shiny little bodies were beautiful and dark. The older kids hung out on stoops, watching their brothers and sisters in their wet underclothes, maybe wishing they too could be that young again.

I crossed to the bright side of the street.

Over the years, in New York, I’ve been mugged seven times. There is an inevitability to it. You can feel it coming, even if from behind. A ripple in the air. A pulse in the light. An intent. In the distance, waiting for you, at a street garbage can. Under a hat, or a sweatshirt. The eye flick away. The glance back again. For a split second, when it happens, you’re not even in the world. You’re in your handbag and it’s moving away. That’s how it feels. There goes my life down the street, being carried by a pair of scattering shoes.

This time, the young girl, a Puerto Rican, stepped out of a vestibule on 127th. Alone. A swagger to her. Shadows from a fire escape crisscrossing her. She held a knife in under her own chin. A drugged-out shine to her eyes. I had seen that look before: if she didn’t slice me she’d slice herself. Her eyelids were painted bright silver.

“The world’s bad enough,” I said to her, using my church tone, but she just pointed the blade of the knife at me.

“Give me your fucking bag.”

“It’s a sin to make it worse than it is.”

She looped the handbag on the blade of the knife. “Pockets,” she said.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” she said, and pulled the handbag high on her elbow. It was as if she already knew from the weight that there was nothing inside but a handkerchief and some photographs. Then, swiftly, she leaned forward with the knife and sliced open the side pocket of my dress. The knife blade ran against my hip. My purse, my license, and two more photos of my boys were kept inside the pocket. She sliced open the second side.

“Fat bitch,” she said as she walked around the corner.

The street throbbed around me. Nobody’s fault but my own. The bark of a dog flew by. I pondered the notion that I had nothing to lose anymore, that I should follow her, rip the empty handbag from her, rescue my old self. It was the photographs that bothered me the most. I went to the corner. She was already far down the street. The photos were scattered in a line down the pavement. I stooped and picked up what remained of my boys. I caught the eye of a woman, older than me, peeping out the window. She was framed by the rotting wood. The sill was lined with plaster saints and a few artificial flowers. I would have swapped my life for hers at that moment, but she closed the window and turned away. I propped the empty white handbag against the stoop and walked on without it. She could have it. Take it all, except the photos.

I stuck out my hand and a gypsy cab stopped immediately. I slid into