Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,99
else. I don’t know who got Jigsaw’s money, but I’d say it was the syndicate.
There’s only one thing moves at the speed of light and that’s cold hard cash.
—
Couple of months after Jigsaw got scrambled, I saw Andy Warhol coming down the block. He had eyes that were big and blue and schizoid, like he just came from a day of token-sucking. I said, “Hey, Andy honey, you want a date?” He said, “I’m not Andy Warhol, I’m just a guy wearing an Andy Warhol mask, ha ha.” I pinched his ass. He jumped back and went, “Ooohh.” He was a bit square, but then he talked to me must’ve been ten minutes or more.
I thought he was going to put me in a movie. I was all jumping up and down in my stilettos. I woulda kissed him if he put me in a movie. But in the end he didn’t want nothing except to find himself a boy. That’s all he wanted, a young boy he could take home and do his thing with. I told him that I could use a big pink strap-on and he said: “Oh, stop, you’re getting me hot.”
I went around all night, saying: “I turned Andy Warhol on!”
I got another trick I thought I recognized. He was young but bald on top. The bald spot was very white, like a little ice rink on his head. He got a room in the Waldorf-Astoria. The first thing he did was he pulled the curtains tight and fell on the bed and said: “Let’s get it on.”
I was like, “Wow, do I know you, honey?”
He looked at me hard and said: “No.”
“Are you sure?” I said, all cutesy and shit. “You look familiar.”
“No,” he said, real angry.
“Hey, take a chill pill, honey,” I said. “I’m only axing.”
I pulled off his belt and unzipped him and he moaned, Ohyeahyeahyeah, like they all do, and he closed his eyes and kept on moaning, and then I don’t know why, but I figured it out. It was the guy from the weather report on CBS! Except he wasn’t wearing his toupee! That was his disguise. I finished him off and got myself dressed and waved goodbye but turned at the door and said to him, “Hey man, it’s cloudy in the east with the wind at ten knots and a chance of snow.”
There I was, cracking myself up again.
—
I used to love the joke where the last line was: Your Honor, I was armed with nothing more than a piece of fried chicken.
—
The hippies were bad for business. They were into free love. I stayed away from them. They stank.
The soldiers were my best clients. When they came back they just wanted to pop—popping was the only thing on their minds. They’d had their asses handed to them by a bunch of half-baked slanty-eyed motherfuckers and now they just needed to forget. And there ain’t much better to help you forget than popping with Miss Bliss.
I made up a little badge that said: THE MISS BLISS SOLUTION: MAKE WAR, NOT LOVE. Nobody thought it was funny, not even the boys who were coming home from ’Nam, so I threw it in the garbage can on the corner of Second Avenue.
They smelled like small little graveyards walking around, those boys.
But they needed loving. I was like a social service, word. Doing my thing for America. Sometimes I’d hum that kiddie song while he scraped his fingers down my back. Pop goes the weasel! They got a kick outta that.
—
Bob was a pross cop with a hard-on for black girls. I musta seen his shield more’n I had hot breakfasts. He arrested me even when I wasn’t working. I was in the coffee shop and he threw the badge and he said, “You’re coming with me, Sambette.”
He thought he was funny. I said, “Kiss my black ass, Bob.” Still he took me down the pen. He had his quota. He got paid overtime. I wanted to slice him up with my nail file.
—
Once I had a man a whole week long at the Sherry-Netherlands. There was a chandelier surrounded with grapes ‘n’ vines in the ceiling and violins carved outta the plaster and all. He was small and fat and bald and brown. He put a record on the player. Sounded like snake music. He said, “Isn’t this a divine comedy?” I said: “That’s a weird thing to say.” He just smiled. He had a nice accent.