Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,59

the hut, pulled open the huge wooden doors where we kept the Pontiac. He parked the car and locked the hut with a padlock and then swept the car tracks with a broom. Halfway through the sweeping, he looked up and gave me a wave that was also a half-shrug, and he set to sweeping again. After a while, there was no sign that we had even left the cabin.

The night was cool. A chill had silenced the insects.

Blaine sat beside me on the dock, kicked off his shoes, dangled his feet out over the water, fished in the pockets of his pleated trousers. The burned-out shadows of his eyes. He still had a three-quarter-full bag of cocaine from the night before. Forty or fifty dollars’ worth. He opened it and shoved the long thin padlock key into the coke, scooped up some powder. He cupped his hands around the key and held it to my nostril. I shook my head no.

—Just a hit, he said. Take the edge off.

It was the first snort since the night before—what we used to call the cure, the healer, the turpentine, the thing that cleaned our brushes. It kicked hard and burned straight through to the back of my throat. Like wading into snow-shocked water. He dipped into the bag and took three long snorts for himself, reared his head back, shook himself side to side, let out a long sigh, put his arm around my shoulder. I could almost smell the crash on my clothes, like I’d just crumpled my fender, sent myself spinning, about to smash into the guardrail.

—Wasn’t our fault, babe, he said.

—She was so young.

—Not our fault, sweetie, you hear me?

—Did you see her on the ground?

—I’m telling you, said Blaine, the idiot hit his brakes. Did you see him? I mean, his brake lights weren’t even working. Nothing I could do. I mean, shit, what was I supposed to do? He was driving like an idiot.

—Her feet were so white. The bottoms of them.

—Bad luck’s a trip I don’t go on, babe.

—Jesus, Blaine, there was blood everywhere.

—You’ve gotta forget it.

—She was just lying there.

—You didn’t see a goddamn thing. You listening to me? We saw nothing.

—We’re driving a ′27 Pontiac. You think nobody saw us?

—Wasn’t our fault, he said again. Just forget it. What could we do? He hit his goddamn brakes. I’m telling you, he was driving that thing like it was a goddamn boat.

—D’you think he’s dead too? The driver? You think he’s dead?

—Take a hit, honey.

—What?

—You gotta forget it happened, nothing happened, not a goddamn thing.

He stuffed the small plastic bag into the inside of his jacket pocket and stuck his fingers under the shoulder of his vest. We had both been wearing old-fashioned clothes for the better part of a year. It was part of our back-to-the-twenties kick. It seemed so ridiculous now. Bit players in a bad theater. There’d been two other New York artists, Brett and Delaney, who had gone back to the forties, living the lifestyle and the clothes, and they had made a killing from it, became famous, had even hit the New York Times style pages.

We had gone further than Brett and Delaney, had moved out of the city, kept our prize car—our only concession—and had lived without electricity, read books from another era, finished our paintings in the style of the time, hid ourselves away, saw ourselves as reclusive, cutting-edge, academic. At our core, even we knew we weren’t being original. In Max’s the night before—pumped up on ourselves—we had been stopped by the bouncers, who didn’t recognize who we were. They wouldn’t let us into the back room. A waitress pulled a curtain tight. She took pleasure in her refusal. None of our old friends were around. We spun backward, went up to the bar, the canvases in our arms. Blaine bought a bag of coke from the bartender, the only one to compliment our work. He leaned across the counter and gazed at the canvases, ten seconds, at most. Wow, he said. Wow. That’ll be sixty bucks, man. Wow. If you want some Panama Red, man, I got that too. Some Cheeba Cheeba. Wow. Just say the word. Wow.

—Get rid of the coke, I said to Blaine. Just throw it in the water.

—Later, babe.

—Throw it away, please.

—Later, sweetie, okay? I’m chomping now. I mean, that guy, come on! He couldn’t drive. I mean what type of fucking idiot hits the brakes in the middle of the