Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,85
the 5 train, slips in between the cars, waits for the shudder of movement. No new tags along the walls this morning. Sometimes he thinks he should just buy some cans, hop off the train, and begin spraying, but deep down he knows he doesn’t have what it takes: it’s easier with the camera in his hands. He can photograph them, bring them out of the darkness, lift them up from the alleys. When the train picks up speed he keeps his camera under the flap of his shirt so it doesn’t bounce around. Fifteen pictures already gone from a roll of twenty-four. He’s not even sure any of them will come out. One of the customers in the barbershop gave him the camera last year, one of the downtown hotshots, showing off. Just handed it to him, case and all. Had no idea what to do with it. He threw it behind his bed at first, but then took it out one afternoon and examined it, started clicking what he saw.
Got to like it. Started carrying it everywhere. After a while his mother even paid for the photos to get developed. She’d never seen him so caught up before. A Minolta SR-T 102. He liked the way it fit in his hands. When he got embarrassed—by Irwin, say, or by his mother, or just coming out into the schoolyard—he could shade his face with the camera, hide behind it.
If only he could stay down here all day, in the dark, in the heat, riding back and forth between the cars, taking shots, getting famous. He heard of a girl, last year, who got the front page of The Village Voice. A picture of a bombed-out car heading into the tunnel at the Concourse. She caught it in the right light, half sun, half dark. The spray of headlights came straight at her and all the tags stretched behind. Right place, right time. He heard she made some serious money, fifteen dollars or more. He was sure at first it was a rumor, but he went to the library and found the back issue and there it was, with a double spread on the inside too, and her name in the bottom corner of the photos. And he heard there were two kids from Brooklyn out riding the rails, one of them with a Nikon, another with something called a Leica.
He tried it once himself. Brought a picture to The New York Times at the start of summer. A shot of a writer high on the Van Wyck overpass, spraying. A beautiful thing, all caught in shadow, the spray man hanging from ropes, and a couple of puffy clouds in the background. Front-page stuff, he was sure. He took a half-day from the barbershop, even wore a shirt and tie. He walked into the building on Forty-third and said he wanted to see the photo editor, he had a surefire photo, a master shot. He’d learned the lingo from a book. The security guard, a big tall moreno, made a phone call and leaned across the desk and said: “Just drop the envelope there, bro.”
“But I want to see the photo editor.”
“He’s busy right now.”
“Well, when’s he unbusy? Come on, Pepe, please?”
The security guard laughed and turned away, once, then twice, then stared at him: “Pepe?”
“Sir.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Come on, kid. How old?”
“Fourteen,” he said, eyes downcast.
“Horatio José Alger!” said the security guard, his face open with laughter. He made a couple of phone calls but then looked up, eyes hooded, as if he already knew: “Sit right there, man. I’ll tell you when he passes.”
The lobby of the building was all glass and suits and nice smooth calf muscles. He sat for two straight hours until the guard gave him a wink. Up he went to the photo editor and thrust the envelope in his hand. The guy was eating half a Reuben sandwich. Had a piece of lettuce on his teeth. Would have been a photograph himself. Grunted a thanks and walked out of the building, off down Seventh Avenue, past the peep shows and the homeless vets, with the photo tucked under his arm. He followed him for five blocks, then lost him in the crush. And then he never heard a thing about it after that, not a thing at all. Waited for the phone call but it didn’t come. He even went back to the lobby at the end of three shifts, but the security