Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,96

TuKwik. He took me on and I worked the best stroll, Forty-ninth and Lexington. That’s where Marilyn’s skirt blew high. Up by the subway vent. The next best stroll was way over on the West Side, but TuKwik didn’t like it, so I didn’t go over there much. There wasn’t as much scratch to be made on the West Side. And the cops were always throwing their badges, strictly on a prop’rty basis. They’d see how long it was since you was in jail by asking the date on your sheet. If you hadn’t been inside in a while they’d curl their fingers and say, Come with me.

I liked the East Side, even if the cops were hard-asses.

They didn’t get many colored girls on Forty-ninth and Lex. The girls were whiteys with good teeth. Nice clothes. Hair done fancy. They never wore no big rings because big rings get in the way. But they had beautiful manicures and their toenails sparkling. They looked at me and shouted: “What the fuck you doing here?” And I said, “I’m just doin’ here, girls, that’s all.” After a while, we didn’t fight no more. No more nails scraping flesh. No more trying to break each other’s fingers.

—

I was the first nigger absolute regular on that stroll. They called me Rosa Parks. They used to say I was a chewing-gum spot. Black. And on the pavement.

That’s how it is in the life, word. You joke a lot.

—

I said to myself, I said, I’m gonna make enough money to go home to Jazzlyn and buy her a big house with a fireplace and a deck out the back with lots of nice furniture. That’s what I wanted.

I’m such a fuck-up. No one’s a bigger fuck-up than me. No one’s gonna know that, though. That’s my secret. I walk through the world like I own it. Watch this spot. Watch it curve.

—

I got a cell mate here, she keeps a mouse in a shoe box. The mouse is the best friend she has. She talks to it and pets it. She even kisses it. Once she got bit on the lip. I laughed my ass off.

She’s in for eight months on a stabbing. She won’t talk to me. She’ll be upstate soon. She says I ain’t got no brains. Me, I’m not going upstate, no way, I made my deal with the devil—he was a little bald man with a black cape on.

—

When I was seventeen I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. Hot-potato time. It was prime, no lie. Nothing in the wrong place. I had legs a hundred miles long and a booty to die for. Adam woulda said to Eve, Eve, I’m leaving you, honey, and Jesus himself woulda been in the background saying, Adam, you’re one lucky motherfucker.

—

There was a pizza place on Lexington. A picture on the wall of all these guys in tight shorts and good skin and a ball at their feet—they were fine. But the guys inside were fat and hairy and always making jokes about pepperonis. You had to dab their pizza with a napkin just to get the oil off. The syndicates used to come around too. You didn’t want to mess with the syndicates. They had a crease in the trousers of their suits, and they smelled of brilliantine. They might bring you for a nice Guinea meal and then you end up taking a dirt nap.

—

TuKwik was flash. He had me on his arm like a piece of jewelry. He had five wives, but I was Wife Número Uno, top of the Christmas tree, freshest meat on the stack. You do what you can for your daddy, you light up fireworks for him, you love him to sunset, and then you go strolling. I made the most money of all, and he treated me nice. He had me ride in the front seat while the other wives watched from the street, steaming.

The only thing is, if he loves you more, he beats you more too. That’s just the way it is.

One of the doctors in the emergency ward had a crush on me. He stitched together my eye after TuKwik beat me with a silver coffeepot. Then the doctor leaned down and kissed it. It tickled right on the part where the thread was coming through.

—

On a slow day, in the rain, we’d fight a lot, me and the other wives. I ran down the street carrying Susie’s wig with a