Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,51

of the vain. They wanted it simple—hate your enemy, know nothing of him. It was, he claimed, the most un-American of wars, no idealism behind it, only about defeat. There were over forty thousand to account for now in his Death Hack, and the numbers kept growing. Sometimes he would print the names out. He could unfurl them up and down the stairs. He sometimes wished that someone would hack his program from outside, chew it up, spit it all back out, give life again to all those boys, the Smiths and the Sullivans and the Rodriguez brothers, these fathers and cousins and nephews, and then he’d have to do a program for Charlie, a whole new alphabet of dying, Ngo, Ho, Phan, Nguyen—wouldn’t that be a chore?

—You okay, Claire?

A touch on her elbow. Gloria.

—Help?

—Excuse me?

—You want help with those?

—Oh, no. I mean, yes. Thanks.

Gloria. Gloria. Such a sweet round face. Dark eyes, moist, almost. A lived-in face. A generosity to it. But a little perturbed. Looking at me. Looking at her. Caught in the act. Daydreaming. Help? She almost thought for a second that Gloria wanted to be the help. Presumptuous. Two seventy-five an hour, Gloria. Clean the dishes. Mop the floor. Weep for our boys. A chore indeed.

She reaches high into the top cupboard and pulls out the Waterford glass. Intricate cut. Distant men do that. There are some that aren’t savages. Yes, that’ll do nicely. She hands it to Gloria, who smiles, fills it.

—You know what you should do, Claire?

—What?

—Put sugar in the bottom. It keeps the flowers longer.

She has never heard that before. But it makes sense. Sugar. To keep them alive. Fill up our boys with sugar. Charlie and His Chocolate Factory. And who was it called the Vietnamese Charlie anyway? Where did it come from? Some radiospeak, probably. Charlie Delta Epsilon. Incoming, incoming, incoming.

—Even better if you clip the bottom of them first, says Gloria.

Gloria takes the flowers out and spreads them on the dish rack, takes a small knife from the kitchen counter and lops off a tiny segment of each, sweeps the stems into the palm of her hand, twelve little green things.

—Amazing, really, isn’t it?

—What’s that?

—The man in the air.

Claire leans against the counter. Takes a deep breath. Her mind whirling. She is not sure, not sure at all. A nagging discontent about him too. Something about his appearance sitting heavy, bewildering.

—Amazing, she says. Yes. Amazing.

But what is it about the notion that she doesn’t like? Amazing, indeed, yes. And an attempt at beauty. The intersection of a man with the city, the abruptly reformed, the newly appropriated public space, the city as art. Walk up there and make it new. Making it a different space. But something else in it still rankles. She wishes not to feel this way, but she can’t shake it, the thought of the man perched there, angel or devil. But what’s wrong with believing in an angel, or a devil, why shouldn’t Marcia be allowed to feel that way, why wouldn’t every man in the air appear to be her son? Why shouldn’t Mike Junior appear on the wire? What is wrong with that? Why shouldn’t Marcia be allowed to freeze it there, her boy returned?

Yet still a sourness.

—Anything else, Claire?

—No, no, we’re perfect.

—Right-y-o, then. All set.

Gloria smiles and hoists the vase, goes to the louvered door, pushes it open with her generous bulk.

—I’ll be right out, says Claire.

The door swings back shut.

She arranges the last of the cups, saucers, spoons. Stacks them neatly. What is it? The walking man? Something vulgar about the whole thing. Or maybe not vulgar. Something cheap. Or maybe not quite cheap. She doesn’t quite know what it is. To think this way, how petty. Downright selfish. She knows full well that she has the whole morning to do what they have done on other mornings—bring out the photos, show them the piano Joshua used to play, open the scrapbooks, take them all down to his room, show them his shelf of books, pick him out from the yearbook. That’s what they have always done, in Gloria’s, Marcia’s, Jacqueline’s, even Janet’s, especially Janet’s, where they were shown a slide show and later they all cried over a broken-spined copy of Casey at the Bat.

Her hands wide on the kitchen counter. Fingers splayed. Pressing down.

Joshua. Is that what rankles her? That they haven’t yet said his name? That he hasn’t yet figured into the morning’s chatter? That they’ve ignored him so