Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

I opened the rucksack. Five boxes of his favorite. He kissed my forehead. His lips were dry. His stubble stung.

“Who beat you up, Corr?”

“Don’t worry about me — let me see you.”

He reached up and touched my right ear, where the tip of the lobe was gone.

“You all right?”

“It’s a memento, I suppose. You still a pacifist?”

“Still,” he said with a grin.

“You’ve got nice friends.”

“They just need to use the bathroom. They’re not allowed turn tricks. They weren’t turning tricks in here, were they?”

“They were naked, Corrigan.”

“No they weren’t.”

“I’m telling you, man, they were naked.”

“They don’t like cumbersome clothes,” he said with a little laugh. He palmed my shoulder, pushed me back on the couch. “Anyway, they must’ve been wearing shoes. It’s New York. You have to have good stilettos.”

He put the kettle on, lined up the cups.

“My very serious brother,” he said, but his chuckle died away as he turned the flame on the stove high. “Look, man, they’re desperate. I just want to give them a little spot that they can call their own. Get out of the heat. Splash some water on their faces.” His back was turned. I was reminded of how, years before, he had drifted away from one of our afternoon strolls and got surrounded by the tide — Corrigan, isolated on a sandbar, tangled in light, voices from the shore drifting over him, calling his name. The kettle whistled, louder now and shrill. Even from the back he looked like he’d been knocked around. I said his name, once, twice. On the third time he snapped to, turned, smiled. It was almost the same as when he’d been a child — he looked up, waved, and returned waist-high through the water.

“On your own here, Corr?”

“Just for a while.”

“No Brothers? No others with you?”

“Oh, I’m getting to know the immemorial feelings,” he said. “The hunger, the thirst, being tired at the end of the day. I’ve started wondering if God’s around when I wake up in the middle of the night.”

He seemed to be talking to a point over my shoulder. His eyes were deep and pouchy. “That’s what I like about God. You get to know Him by His occasional absence.”

“You all right, Corr?”

“Never better.”

“So who beat you up?”

He looked away. “I had a run-in with one of the pimps.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because why, man?”

“Because he claimed I was taking up their time. Guy calls himself Birdhouse. Only got one good eye. Go figure. In he came, knocked on the door, said hello, called me brother this, brother that, real nice and polite, even hung his hat on the doorknob. Sat down on the sofa and looked up at the crucifix. Said he had a real appreciation for the holy life. Then produced a length of lead pipe that he’d ripped from the toilet. Imagine that. He’d been sitting there all that time, just letting my bathroom flood.”

He shrugged.

“But they still come around,” he said. “The girls. I don’t encourage it, really. I mean, what are they going to do? Pee on the street? It’s not much. Just a little gesture. A place they can use. A tinkling shop.”

He arranged the tea and a plate of biscuits, went to his prayer kneeler — a simple piece of wood that he tucked behind him to support his body as he knelt — and gave his thanks to God for the biscuits, the tea, the appearance of his brother.

He was still praying when the door swung hard and in marched three hookers. “Ooh, snowing in here,” cooed the parasol hooker as she stood under the fan. “Hi, I’m Tillie.” The heat oozed from her: little droplets of sweat on her forehead. She dropped her parasol on the table, looked at me with a half-grin. She was made up to be seen from a distance: she wore huge sunglasses with rose-colored rims and sparkly eye makeup. Another girl kissed Corrigan on the cheek, then started primping in the broken slice of mirror. The tallest, in a white tissue minidress, sat down beside me. She looked half Mexican, half black. She was taut and lithe: she could have been walking down a runway. “Hi,” she said, grinning. “I’m Jazzlyn. You can call me Jazz.”

She was very young — seventeen or eighteen — with one green eye, one brown. Her cheekbones were pulled even higher by a line of makeup. She reached across, lifted Corrigan’s teacup, blew it cool, left a smudge of lipstick on the rim.

“I don’t know why you don’t put ice in this shit, Corrie,” she said.

“Don’t like it,” said Corrigan.

“If you wanna be American you gotta put ice in it.”

The parasol hooker giggled then as if Jazzlyn had just said something fabulously rude. It was like they had a code going between them. I edged away, but Jazzlyn leaned across and picked a piece of lint off my shoulder. Her breath was sweet. I turned again to Corrigan.

“Did you get him arrested?”

My brother looked confused: “Who?” he said.

“The bloke who beat you up?”

“Arrested for what?”

“Are you serious?”

“Why would I get him arrested?”

“Did someone beat you up again, honey?” said the parasol hooker. She was staring at her fingers. She bit a long edge of fingernail from her thumb, examined the little slice. She scraped the fingernail paint off with her teeth, and flicked the slice of nail towards me from off her extended finger. I stared at her. She flashed a white grin. “I can’t stand it when I get beaten up,” she said.

“Jesus,” I muttered to the window.

“Enough,” said Corrigan.

“They always leave marks, don’t they?” said Jazzlyn.

“Okay, Jazz, enough, okay?”

“Once, this guy, this asshole, this quadruple motherfucker, he used a telephone book on me. You want to know something about the telephone book? Lots of names and not one of them leaves a mark.”

Jazzlyn stood up and removed her loose blouse. She wore a neon-yellow bikini underneath. “He hit me here and here and here.”

“Okay, Jazz, time to go.”

“I bet you could find your own name here.”

“Jazzlyn!”

She stood and sighed. “Your brother’s cute,” she said to me. She buttoned her blouse. “We love him like chocolate. We love him like nicotine. Isn’t that right, Corrie? We love you like nicotine. Tillie’s got a crush on him. Ain’t you, Tillie? Tillie, you listening?”

The parasol hooker stepped away from the mirror. She touched the edge of her mouth where the lipstick smeared. “Too old to be an acrobat, too young to die,” she said.

Jazzlyn was fumbling under the table with a small glassine package. Corrigan leaned across and touched her hand. “Not here, you know you can’t do that in here.” She rolled her eyes, sighed, and dropped a needle in her handbag.

The door bounced on its hinges. All of them blew kisses, even Jazzlyn, with her back turned. She looked like some failed sunflower, her arm curving backwards as she went.

“Poor Jazz.”

“What a mess.”

“Well, at least she’s trying.”

“Trying? She’s a mess. They all are.”

“Ah, no, they’re good people,” Corrigan said. “They just don’t know what it is they’re doing. Or what’s being done to them. It’s about fear. You know? They’re all throbbing with fear. We all are.”

He drank the tea without cleaning the lipstick off the rim.

“Bits of it floating in the air,” he said. “It’s like dust. You walk about and don’t see it, don’t notice it, but it’s there and it’s all coming down, covering everything. You’re breathing it in. You touch it. You drink it. You eat it. But it’s so fine you don’t notice it. But you’re covered in it. It’s everywhere.