Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,15

and rewrapped her rosary beads. She had a mane of white hair, blood in the corner of her eyes, an otherworldly stare. “Meet Sheila,” said Corrigan. She could hardly speak anymore, barely able to make a sound. A cabaret singer, she had lost most of her voice to throat cancer. She had been born in Galway but emigrated just after the First World War. She was Corrigan’s favorite and he stayed near her, said the formal prayers alongside her: a decade of the Rosary. She had no idea, I’m sure, about his religious ties, but there was an energy about her in that church she didn’t have elsewhere. She and Corrigan, it was like they were praying together for a good rain.

When we got out into the street again, Albee was dozing in the van, a bit of spittle on his chin. “Goddamn it,” he muttered when the engine rumbled into life. “Pair of pussies, the two of ya.”

Corrigan pulled into the nursing home in the late afternoon, then dropped me off in front of the housing project. He had another job to do, he said; there was someone he had to see.

“It’s a little project I’m working on,” he said, over his shoulder. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll see you later.”

He climbed in and touched something in the glove box of his van before he took off. “Don’t wait up for me,” he called. I watched him go, hand out the window, waving. He was holding something back, I knew.

It was pitch black when I saw him finally arriving back down among the whores alongside the Major Deegan. He gave out iced coffee from a giant silver canister that he kept in the back of the van. The girls gathered around him as he spooned ice into their cups. Jazzlyn wore a one-piece neon swimsuit. She tugged the back, snapped the elastic, edged close to him, gave the hint of a belly dance against his hip. She was tall, exotic, so very young she seemed to flutter. Playfully, she pushed him backwards. Corrigan ran a circle around her, high-stepping. A scream of laughter. She ran off when she heard a car horn blow. Around Corrigan’s feet lay a row of empty paper coffee cups.

Later he came back upstairs, thin, dark-eyed, exhausted.

“How was your meeting?”

“Oh, grand, yeah,” he said. “No problem.”

“Out tripping the light fantastic?”

“Ah, yeah, the Copacabana, you know me.”

He collapsed on the bed but was up early in the morning to a quick mug of tea. No food in the house. Just tea and sugar and milk. He said his prayers, and then touched the crucifix as he went towards the door once more.

“Down to the girls again?”

He looked at his feet. “I suppose so.”

“You think they really need you, Corr?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “I hope so.”

The door swung on its hinges.

I’ve never been interested in calling out the moral brigade. Not my place. Not my job. Each to his own. You get what you create. Corrigan had his reasons. But these women disturbed me. They were light-years removed from anything I’d ever known. The high of their eyes. Their heroin sway. Their swimsuits. Some of them had needle marks at the back of their knees. They were more than foreign to me.

Down in the courtyard, I walked the long way around the projects, following the broken lines in the concrete, just to avoid them.

A few days later a gentle knock sounded on the door. An older man with a single suitcase. Another monk from the Order. Corrigan rushed to embrace him. “Brother Norbert.” He had come from Switzerland. Norbert’s sad brown eyes gladdened me. He looked around the apartment, swallowed deeply, said something about the Lord Jesus and a place of deep shelter. On his second day Norbert was robbed in the lift at gunpoint. He said he had gladly given them everything, even his passport. There was a shine like pride in his eyes. The Swiss man sat in serious prayer for two solid days, not leaving the apartment. Corrigan stayed down on the streets most of the time. Norbert was too formal and correct for him. “It’s like he’s got a toothache and he wants God to cure it,” said Corrigan.

Norbert refused the couch, lay on the floor. He balked each time the door opened and the hookers came in. Jazzlyn sat in his lap, ran her fingers on the rim of his ear, messed with his orthopedic shoes, hid them behind the couch. She