Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,16
told him that she could be his princess. He blushed until he almost wept. Later, when she was gone, his prayers became high-pitched and frantic. “The Beloved Life was spared, but not the pain, the Beloved Life was spared but not the pain.” He broke down in tears. Corrigan was able to get Norbert’s passport back and he drove him out to the airport in the brown van to get a flight to Geneva. Together they prayed and then Corrigan dispatched him. He looked at me as if he expected me to be leaving also.
“I don’t know who these people are,” he said. “They’re my brothers, but I don’t really know who they are. I’ve failed them.”
“You should leave this hole, Corr.”
“Why would I leave? My life’s here.”
“Find somewhere with a bit of sunshine. You and me together. I’ve been thinking about California or somewhere like that.”
“I’m called here.”
“You could be called anywhere.”
“This is where I am.”
“How did you get his passport back?”
“Oh, I just asked around.”
“He was robbed at gunpoint, Corr.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to get hurt.”
“Oh, give me a break.”
I went to the chair by the window and watched the large tractor-trailers pulling up under the highway. The girls jostled to get at them. A single neon sign blinked in the distance: an advertisement for oatmeal.
“The edge of the world here,” said Corrigan.
“You could do something back home. In Ireland. Up north. Belfast. Something for us. Your own people.”
“I could, yeah.”
“Or shake up some campesinos in Brazil or something.”
“Yeah.”
“So why stay here?”
He smiled. Something had gone wild in his eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was. He put his hands up close to the ceiling fan, as if he were about to thrust them in there, right up into the whirling blades, leave his hands there, watch them get mangled.
—
IN THE RAW OF mornings the girls stretched in a line along the block, though daylight thinned them out. After his morning matins, Corrigan went down to the corner deli to buy The Catholic Worker. Through the underpass, across the road, under the awning. Old men in their undershirts sat at the door, pigeons working bread crumbs at their feet. Corrigan came out carrying the paper tucked under his arm. I could see him as he crossed back, framed through the concrete eye of the underpass. Out of the shadows, he passed the hookers and they called to him in their singsong. It hit the scale on about three different notes. Corr—i-gan. Cor—rig-gan. Caw-rig-gun.
He passed through the gauntlet. Jazzlyn stood chatting with him, her thumb hooked under the strap of her swimsuit. She looked like an old-time cop in the wrong body, snapping the thin, lime-colored straps against her breasts. She leaned close to him again, her bare skin almost touching his lapel. He did not recoil. She was getting a charge from it all, I could tell. The lean of her young body. The hard snap of the strap. Her nipple against the fabric. Her head tilting closer and closer to him.
As cars passed, she turned to watch them, and her morning shadow lengthened. It was like she wanted to be everywhere, all at once. She leaned closer still and whispered in my brother’s ear. He nodded, turned, and went back towards the deli, came out carrying a can of Coke. Jazzlyn clapped her hands in delight, took it from him, pulled the ring off, sauntered away. A row of eighteen-wheelers was parked along the expressway. She propped her leg on the silver grille and sipped from the can, then suddenly threw the drink on the ground and climbed up into the truck.
Halfway in the door, she was already removing her swimsuit. Corrigan turned away. The cola lay in a black puddle in the gutter beneath her.
It happened times in a row, Jazzlyn asking him for a can of Coke, then throwing it to the ground when she found a mark.
I thought I should go down to her, negotiate a price, and treat myself to whatever trick it was she was able for, grab the back of her hair, bring her face close to mine, that sweet breath, curse her, spit on her, for wringing out my brother’s charity.
“Hey, leave the door open for them, will ya?” he said to me after he came home. I had taken to closing the locks in the afternoon, even though they pounded on the door.
“Why don’t they piss in their own houses, Corrigan?”
“Because they don’t have houses. They have apartments.”