Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,66

picked up a piece of toast and just held it at my lips, but even the smell of the butter nauseated me.

Out the window I saw an antique car with whitewall tires pull up against the curb. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a hallucination, something cinematic hauled from memory. The door opened and a shoe hit the ground. Blaine climbed out and shielded his eyes. It was almost the exact same gesture as on the highway two days before. He was wearing a lumber shirt and jeans. No old-fashioned clothes. He looked like he belonged upstate. He flicked the hair back from his eyes. As he crossed the road, the small-town traffic paused for him. Hands deep in his pockets, he strolled along the windows of the diner and threw me a smile. There was a puzzling jaunt in his step, walking with his upper body cocked back a notch. He looked like an adman, all patently false. I could see him, suddenly, in a seersucker suit. He smiled again. Perhaps he had heard about Nixon. More likely he hadn’t yet seen the paintings, ruined beyond repair.

The bell sounded on the door and I saw him wave across to the waitress and nod to the men. He had a palette knife sticking out of his shirt pocket.

—You look pale, honey.

—Nixon resigned, I said.

He smiled broadly as he leaned over the table and kissed me.

—Big swinging Dickey. Guess what? I found the paintings.

I shuddered.

—They’re far out, he said.

—What?

—They got left out in the rain the other night.

—I saw that.

—Utterly changed.

—I’m sorry.

—You’re sorry?

—Yeah, I’m sorry, Blaine, I’m sorry.

—Whoa, whoa.

—Whoa what, Blaine?

—Don’t you see? he said. You give it a different ending. It becomes new. You can’t see that?

I turned my face up to his, looked him square in the eye, and said, No, I didn’t see. I couldn’t see anything, not a goddamn thing.

—That girl was killed, I said.

—Oh, Christ. Not that again.

—Again? It was the day before yesterday, Blaine.

—How many times am I gonna have to tell you? Not our fault. Lighten up. And keep your fucking voice down, Lara, in here, for crying out loud.

He reached across and took my hand, his eyes narrow and intent: Not our fault, not our fault, not our fault.

It wasn’t as if he’d been speeding, he said, or had had an intention to go rear-end some asshole who couldn’t drive. Things happen. Things collide.

He speared a piece of my omelet. He held the fork out and half pointed it at me. He lowered his eyes, ate the food, chewed it slowly.

—I’ve just discovered something and you’re not listening.

It was like he wanted to prod me with a dumb joke.

—A moment of satori, he said.

—Is it about her?

—You have to stop, Lara. You have to pull yourself together. Listen to me.

—About Nixon?

—No, it’s not about Nixon. Fuck Nixon. History will take care of Nixon. Listen to me, please. You’re acting crazy.

—There was a dead girl.

—Enough already. Lighten the fuck up.

—He might be dead too, the guy.

—Shut. The. Fuck. It was just a tap, that’s all, nothing else. His brake lights weren’t working.

Just then the waitress came over and Blaine released my hand. He ordered himself a Trophy special with eggs, extra bacon, and venison sausage. The waitress backed away and he smiled at her, watched her go, the sway of her.

—Look, he said, it’s about time. When you think about it. They’re about time.

—What’s about time?

—The paintings. They’re a comment on time.

—Oh, Jesus, Blaine.

There was a shine in his eyes unlike any I’d seen in quite a while. He sliced open some packets of sugar, dumped them in his coffee. Some extra grains spilled out on the table.

—Listen. We made our twenties paintings, right? And we lived in that time, right? There’s a mastery there, I mean, they were steady-keeled, the paintings, you said so yourself. And they referred back to that time, right?

They maintained their formal manners. A stylistic armor about them, right? Even a monotony. They happened on purpose. We cultivated them. But did you see what the weather did to them?

—I saw, yeah.

—Well, I went out there this morning and the damn things floored me. But then I started looking through them. And they were beautiful and ruined. Don’t you see?

—No.

—What happens if we make a series of paintings and we leave them out in the weather? We allow the present to work on the past. We could do something radical here. Do the formal paintings in the