Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,49

flowers, but nobody notices. The laughter ripples around, a reconciliation song, circling them all, making a little victory lap, and settles right back down at Marcia’s feet.

—And then I stopped running, says Marcia.

Claire settles on the arm of the sofa again. No matter that she didn’t take care of the flowers. No matter that there’s no water reboiling. No matter that there’s no vase in her hands. She leans forward with the rest of them.

Marcia has a tiny quiver in her lip now, a little tremble of portent.

—I just stopped cold, says Marcia. Dead smack in the middle of the street. I almost got run over by a garbage truck. And I just stood there, hands on my knees, eyes on the ground, breathing heavy. And you know why? I’ll tell you why.

Pausing again.

All of them leaning forward.

—Because I didn’t want to know if the poor boy fell.

—Ah-huh, says Gloria.

—I just didn’t want to hear him dead.

—I hear you, ah-huh.

Gloria’s voice, as if she’s at a church service. The rest of them nodding slowly while the clock on the mantelpiece ticks.

—I couldn’t stand the mere thought of it.

—No, ma’am.

—And if he didn’t fall…

—If he didn’t, no …?

—I didn’t want to know.

—Ah-huhn, you got it.

—’Cause somehow, if he stayed up there, or if he came down safe, it didn’t matter. So I stopped and turned around and got on the subway and came up here without even so much as a second glance.

—Say gospel.

—Because if he was alive it couldn’t possibly be Mike Junior.

All of it like a slam in the chest. So immediate. At all of their coffee mornings, it had always been distant, belonging to another day, the talk, the memory, the recall, the stories, a distant land, but this was now and real, and the worst thing was that they didn’t know the walker’s fate, didn’t know if he had jumped or had fallen or had got down safely, or if he was still up there on his little stroll, or if he was there at all, if it was just a story, or a projection, indeed, or if she had made it all up for effect—they had no idea—maybe the man wanted to kill himself, or maybe the helicopter had a hook around him to catch him if he fell, or maybe there was a clip around the wire to catch him, or maybe maybe maybe there was another maybe, maybe.

Claire stands, a little shaky at the knees. Disoriented. The voices around her a blur now. She is aware of her feet on the deep carpet. The clock moving but not sounding anymore.

—I think I’ll put these in water now, she says.

—

HE WOULD WRITE letters to her about the wheel wars late at night. Four in the morning at his terminal under the white fluorescents, cutting code, when sometimes a message flashed up. Most of the intrusions were from members of his own squad, linked in a couple of desks away, working on other programs, the tallies of war, and it was just a thing to pass the time, to hack another man’s code, to test his strength, find his vulnerability. Harmless, really, Joshua said.

Charlie and the Viet Cong didn’t have any computers. They weren’t going to sneak in past the cathode tubes and transistors. But the phone lines were linked up back to PARC and Washington, D.C., and some universities, so it was possible, every now and then, for a single slider—he called them sliders, she had no idea why—to come in from somewhere else and cause havoc, and once or twice they blindsided him. Maybe he was working on an overlap line, he said, or a code for the disappeared. And he would be in the zone. He would feel, yes, like he was sliding down the banisters. It was about speed and raw power. The world was at ease and full of simplicity. He was a test pilot of a new frontier. Anything was possible. It could even have been jazz, one chord to the next. All fingertips. He could stretch his fingers and a new chord was suddenly there. And then without warning it would begin disappearing in front of his eyes. I want a cookie! Or: Repeat after me, Bye-Bye Blackbird. Or: Watch me smile. He said it was like being Beethoven after scribbling the Ninth. He’d be out on a nice stroll in the countryside and suddenly all the sheet music was blowing away in the wind. He sat rooted to