Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

She slips a couple of books across the table and I’m like, Wow, Rumi, how the fuck did she know?

She says she’ll come again, and I beg her again to bring the babies. She says she’ll ask around, they’re with social services or something. Then she waves bye-bye, scrubbing her eyes dry as she walks away. I’m thinking, What the fuck?

I was walking up the stairs again, still wondering how she knew about Rumi, and then I remembered. I started laughing to myself, but I was glad I didn’t say anything to her about Ciaran and his little pork sword — what’s the point? He was a good guy, Keyring. Anyone who’s a brother of Corrie’s is a brother of mine.

Nothing’s righteous. Corrigan knew the deal. He never gave me no shit. His brother was a bit of an asshole. That’s just a plain fact. But lots of people are assholes and he paid me well for the one time and I blinded him with Rumi. Corrigan’s brother had some serious scratch in his pockets — he was a bartender or something. I looked down and I remember thinking, There’s my dark tit in Corrigan’s brother’s hand.

I never saw Corrigan naked, but I imagine he was swell even if his brother was a Tweety Bird.

First time we saw Corrigan, we just flat-out knew he was undercover. They got Irishes undercover. Most of the cops’re Irish — guys going a little to fat, with bad teeth but still a sense of making the world funny.

One day Corrigan’s van was filthy and Angie wrote with her finger in the dirt: DON’T YOU WISH YOUR WIFE WAS THIS FILTHY? That had us crying we laughed so hard. Corrie didn’t notice it. Then Angie wrote a smiley face and TURN ME OVER on the other side. He was scooting around the Bronx with that crazy shit written on his van and he never even saw it. He was in a world of his own, Corrie. Angie went up to him at the end of the week and showed him the words. He got all blushy like the Irish guys do and he began stammering.

“But I don’t understand — I haven’t got a wife,” he said to Angie.

We never laughed so much since Christ left Cincinnati.

Every day we were hanging out with him, pleading with him to arrest us. And he was going: “Girls, girls, girls, please.” The more we got to hugging on him the more he’d go, “Girls, girls, come on, now, girls.”

Once, Angie’s daddy broke us up and grabbed Corrie by the scruff of the neck and told him where he should go. He put a knife up under Corrie’s neck. Corrie just stared at him. His eyes were big but it was like he didn’t have no fear. We were like: “Yo, man, just leave.” Angie’s daddy flicked the knife and Corrie walked away with blood coming down his black shirt.

A couple of days later he was down again, bringing us coffees. He had a little bandage on his neck. We were like: “Yo, Corrie, you should get-the-fuck, you’ll get tossed.” He shrugged, said he’d be all right. Down came Angie’s daddy and Jazzlyn’s daddy and Suchie’s daddy, all at once, like the Three Wise Men. I saw Corrie’s face go white. I never seen him go that white before. He was worse’n chalk.

He held his hands up and said: “Hey, man, I’m just giving them coffee.” And Angie’s daddy stepped forward. He said: “Yeah well, I’m just giving you the cream.”

Corrie got the daylight kicked out of him seven ways to Sunday, I don’t know how many times. That shit hurt. It hurt bad. Even Angie was hanging off her daddy’s back, trying to scratch his eyes out, but we couldn’t stop him. Still Corrie came back, day after day. Got to where the daddies actually respected him for it. Corrie never once called the cops, or the Guards, that’s what he called them, that was his Irish word for the police. He said: “I’m not calling the Guards.” Still the daddies knocked the shit out of him every now and then, just to keep him in line.

We found out later he was a priest. Not really a priest, but one of those guys who lived somewhere because he thought that he should, like he had a duty thing, morals, some sort of shit like that, a monk, with vows and shit, and that chastity stuff.

They say boys always want to be the first with girls, and girls always want to be the last with boys. But with Corrie all of us wanted to be the first. Jazz said, “I had Corrie last night, he was super-delicious, he was glad I was his first.” And then Angie’d go: “Bullshit, I had that motherfucker for lunch, I ate him whole.” And then Suchie’d go: “Shit, y’all, I spread him on my pancakes and sucked him down with coffee.”

Anyone could hear us laughing, miles away.

He had a birthday once, I think he was thirty-one, he was just a kid, and I bought him a cake and all of us ate it together out under the Deegan. It was covered in cherries, musta been a million and six cherries on it, and Corrie didn’t even get the joke, we were popping cherries in his mouth left and center and he’s going, Girls, girls please, I’ll have to call the Guards.

We almost wet ourselves laughing.

He cut up the cake and gave a piece out to everyone. He took the last piece for himself. I held a cherry over his mouth and got him to try to bite on it. I kept moving it away while he kept trying to snag it. He was stepping down the street after me. I had my swimsuit on. We musta looked a pair, Corrie and me, cherry juice all over his face.

Don’t let no one tell you that it’s all shit and grime and honkypox on the stroll. It’s that, all right, sometimes, sure, but it’s funny sometimes too. Sometimes you just hang a cherry out in front of a man. Sometimes you got to do it, sometimes, for putting a smile on your face.

When Corrie laughed he had a face that creased up deep.

“Say fuhgeddboudit, Corrie.” “Fergetaboutit.”

“No no no, say fuhgeddboudit.” “Fergedboutit.” “Oh, man, fuhgeddboudit!” “Okay, Tillie,” he said, “I’ll fuh-get-bout-it.”

The only whitey I ever woulda slept with — genuine — was Corrigan. No bullshit. He used to tell me I was too good for him. He said I’d chuckle at his best and whistle for more. Said I was way too pretty for a guy like him. Corrigan was a stone-cold stud. I woulda married him. I woulda had him talk to me in his accent all the time. I woulda taken him upstate and cooked him a big meal with corn beef and cabbage and made him feel like he was the only whitey on earth. I woulda kissed his ear if he gave me a chance. I woulda spilled my love right down into him. Him and the Sherry-Netherlands guy. They were fine.

We filled his trash can seven, eight, nine times a day. That was nasty. Even Angie thought it was nasty and she was the nastiest of all of us — she left her tampons in there. I mean, nasty. I can’t believe Corrie used to see that stuff and he never once gave us shit about it, just dumped it out and went on his way. A priest! A monk! The tinkling shop!

And those sandals! Man! We’d hear the slap of him coming.

He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they’re hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.

He said it just like that, but in his delicious accent. I could’ve eaten everything Corrie said, I coulda just gobbled it all down. He said, “Here’s a coffee, Tillie,” and I thought it was the nicest thing I ever heard. I went weak at the knees. He he was like a Motown whitey.

Jazzlyn used to say she loved him like chocolate.

It’s been a long time since that Lara girl came to visit, maybe ten or thirteen days. She said she’d bring the babies. She promised. You get used to people, but. They always promise. Even Corrie made promises. The drawbridge shit and all.

A funny-ass thing happened with Corrie once. I’ll never forget. It’s the only time he ever brought us a trick to look after. Along he comes, real late one night, opens the back of the van and lifts out an old guy in a wheelchair. Corrie’s all cagey and all. I mean, he’s a priest or whatever and he’s bringing us a trick! He’s looking over his shoulder. He’s worried. Feeling guilty, maybe. I said: “Hey, Daddy-o,” and his face goes white, so I stayed quiet and didn’t say nothing. Corrie’s coughing into his fist and all. Turns out it’s the old guy’s birthday and he’s been pleading and pleading and pleading with Corrie to take him out. Says he hasn’t been with a woman since the Great Depression, which is like eight hundred million years ago. And the old guy’s real abusive, calling Corrie all sorts of names ‘n’ all. But it just rolls off o’ Corrie. He shrugs his shoulders and pulls the hand brake on the chair and leaves Methuselah there on the sidewalk.