Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,69

ostensibly to buy a newfangled video camera for Blaine, to record the journey of his new paintings. But the only stores I knew were way down on Fourteenth Street, near my old neighborhood. Who was it said that you can’t go home anymore? I found myself driving to the West Side of the city instead. Out to a little parking area in Riverside Park, along by the water. The cardboard box sat in the passenger seat beside me. An unknown man’s life. I had never done anything like this before. My intent had entered the world and become combustible. It had been given to me far too easily, just a simple signature and a thank-you. I thought about dropping it all in the Hudson, but there are certain things we just cannot bring ourselves to do. I stared at his photograph again. It was not he who had led me here, but the girl. I still knew nothing about her. It made no sense. What was I going to do? Practice a new form of resurrection?

I got out of the car and fished in a nearby garbage can for a newspaper and scanned through it to see if I could find any death notices or an obituary. There was one, an editorial, for Nixon’s America, but none for a young black girl caught in a hit-and-run.

I screwed up my courage and drove to the Bronx, toward the address on the license. Entire blocks of abandoned lots. Cyclone fences topped with shredded plastic bags. Stunted catalpa trees bent by the wind. Auto-body shops. New and used. The smell of burning rubber and brick. On a half-wall someone had written: DANTE HAS ALREADY DISAPPEARED.

It took ages to find the place. There were a couple of police cars out under the Major Deegan. Two of the cops had a box of doughnuts sitting on the dashboard between them, like a third-rate TV show. They stared at me, open-mouthed, when I pulled up the car alongside them. I had lost all sense of fear. If they wanted to arrest me for a hit-and-run, then go ahead.

—This is a rough neighborhood, ma’am, one of them said in a New York nasal. Car like that’s going to raise a few eyebrows.

—What can we do for you, ma’am? said the other.

—Maybe not call me ma’am?

—Feisty, huh?

—What you want, lady? Nothing but trouble here.

As if to confirm, a huge refrigerator truck slowed down as it came through the traffic lights, and the driver rolled down the window and eased over to the curb, looked out, then suddenly gunned it when he saw the police car.

—No nig-knock today, shouted the cop to the passing truck.

The short one blanched a little when he looked back at me, and he gave a thin smile that creased his eyelids. He ran his hands over a tube of fat that bulged out at his waist.

—No trade today, he said, almost apologetically.

—So, what can we do for you, miss? said the other.

—I’m looking to return something.

—Oh, yeah?

—I have these things here. In my car.

—Where’d you get that? What is it? Like the 1850s?

—It’s my husband’s.

Two thin smiles, but they looked happy enough that I’d broken their tedium. They stepped over to my car and rumbled around, running their hands along the wooden dash, marveling at the hand brake. I had often wondered if Blaine and I had gone on our twenties kick simply so we could keep our car. We had bought it as a wedding present for ourselves. Every time I sat in it, it felt like a return to simpler times.

The second cop peered into the box of possessions. They were disgusting, but I was hardly in a position to say anything. I felt a sudden pang of guilt for the plastic bag of underwear that I had left behind at the hospital, as if it somehow might be needed now, to complete the person who was not around. The cop picked up the parking ticket and then the license from the bottom of the box. The younger one nodded.

—Hey, that’s the Irish guy, the priest.

—Sure is.

—The one that was giving us shit. About the hookers. He drove that funky van.

—He’s up there on the fifth floor. I mean, his brother. Cleaning out his stuff.

—A priest? I said.

—A monk or some such. One of these worker guys. Liberation theowhateveritis.

—Theologian, said the other.

—One of those guys who thinks that Jesus was on welfare.

I felt a shudder of hatred, then told the cops that