Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

  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.”

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 172

  172

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  “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 guard said he could do nothing more.

  “Sorry, my man.” Maybe the editor lost it. Or was going to steal it. Or was going to call him any minute. Or had left a message at the barbershop and Irwin forgot. But nothing happened.

  He tried a Bronx circular after that, a shitty little neighborhood rag, and even they flat-out said no: he heard someone chuckling on the other end of the telephone. Someday they’d come crawling up to him. Someday they’d lick his sneakers clean. Someday they’d be clambering over themselves to get at him. Fernando Yunqué Marcano. Imagist. A word he liked, even in Spanish. Made no sense but had a nice ring to it. If he had a card, that’s what he would put on it. FERNANDO Y. MARCANO. IMAGIST. THE

  BRONX. U.S.A.

  There was a guy he saw once on television who made his money McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 173

  L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

  173

  knocking bricks out of buildings. It was funny, but he understood it in a way. The way the building looked different afterward. The way the light came through. Making people see differently. Making them think twice.

  You have to look on the world with a shine like no one else has. It’s the sort of thing he thinks about while sweeping the floor, dunking the scissors, stacking the shave bottles. All the hotshot brokers coming in for a short back and sides. Irwin said there was art in a haircut. “Biggest gallery you’re ever going to get. The whole of New York City at your fingertips.” And he would think, Ah, just shut up, Irwin. You ain’t my old man. Shut up and sweep. Clean the comb bottles yourself. But he was never quite able to say it. The disconnect between his mouth and his mind. That’s where the camera came in. It was the unspoken thing between him and the others, the brush- off.

  The train shudders and he presses nonchalantly with the palm of his hands on each car to keep himself steady, and the engine gets going, but then stops again with a quick halt, a screech of brakes, and he is shunted sideways, his shoulder taking the brunt of the whack and his leg presses hard against the chains. He quickly checks the camera. Perfect. No problem. His favorite moment, this. Stopped dead. In the tunnel, near the mouth. But still in the dark. He catches the metal lip of the door with his fingers. Rights himself and leans once more against the door.

  Nonchalance. Ease. In the dark of tunnel now. Between Fulton and Wall Street. All the suits and haircuts getting ready to pile out.

  There is no new rumble from the train and he likes these silences, gives him time to scope out the walls. He takes a quick look down the car to make sure there’re no cops, places one foot on the chains and shunts himself up, grabs the lip of the car, one- arms himself high. If he stood on the roof he could touch the curve of the tunnel—good place for a tag—

  but he holds on to the lip of the car and peers out over the edge. Some red and white markings on the walls where they curve. A few yellow lights sulfurous in the distance.

  He waits for his eyes to adjust, for the little retina stars to leave. Along the rear distance of the train, small bars of color bleed out from the edge of each car and spray outward. Nothing on the walls, though. A tagging Antarctica. What did he expect? Hardly going to be any writers downtown. But you never know. That would be the genius. That would be the point. Buff this, maricón.

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 174

  174

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  He feels the chain jiggle beneath his feet, the first warning of movement, and he holds a little tighter to the rim of the car. None of the bombers ever get the ceiling. Virgin territory. He should start a movement himself, a brand- new space. He looks out along the length of the train, then goes a little higher on his toes. At the far end of the tunnel, he spies a patch of what could be paint on the east wall, a tag he hasn’t seen before, something quick and oblong, with what looks like a tinge of red around silver, a P or an R or an 8, maybe. Clouds and flames. He should make his way back through the cars—among the dead and dreaming—

  and get closer to the wall, decipher the tag, but just then the train jolts a second time and it’s a warning signal—he knows it—he hops back down, braces himself. As the wheels grind, he trills the sighting through his mind, matches it up against all the old tags in other parts of the tunnel, and he figures it’s brand new, it must be, yes, and he gives a quiet fist pump—someone’s come and tagged downtown.

  Within seconds the train is in the pale station light of Wall Street and the doors are hissing open, but his eyes are closed and he is mapping it out, the height, the color, the depth of the new tag, trying to put a geogra-phy on it for the way home, where he can take it back, own it, photograph it, make it his.

  A radio sound. The
static moving toward him. He leans out. Cops.

  Coming up from the end of the platform. They’ve seen him, for sure.

  Going to drag him out, give him a ticket. Four of them, belts jiggling. He slides open the door to the car, ducks inside. Waits for the slap of a hand on his shoulder. Nothing. He leans back against the cool metal of the door. Catches sight of them sprinting out past the turnstiles. Like there’s some fire to get to. All of them clanging. Handcuffs and guns and nightsticks and notepads and flashlights and God knows what else. Someone’s bought it, he thinks. Someone’s gone and bought it.

  He squeezes sideways through the closing doors, holding the camera sideways so it doesn’t get scratched. Behind him, the door hisses shut. A jaunt in his step. Out the turnstile and up the stairs. To hell with the barbershop. Irwin can wait.

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 175

  E T H E R W E S T

  It’s early in the morning and the fluorescents are flickering. We’re taking a break from the graphics hack. Dennis gets the blue-box program running through the PDP- 10 to see if we can catch a good hook.

  It’s Dennis, Gareth, Compton, and me. Dennis is the oldest, almost thirty. We like to call him Grandpa—he did two tours in ’Nam. Compton graduated U.C. Davis. Gareth’s been programming for must be ten years.

  Me, I’m eighteen. They call me the Kid. I’ve been hanging out at the institute since I was twelve.

  —How many rings, guys? says Compton.

  —Three, says Dennis, like he’s already bored.

  —Twenty, says Gareth.

  —Eight, I say.

  Compton flicks a look at me.

  —The Kid speaks, he says.

  True enough, most of the time I just let my hackwork do the talking.

  It’s been like that since I sneaked in the basement door of the institute, back in ’68. I was out skipping school, a kid in short pants and broken glasses. The computer was spitting out a line of ticker tape and the guys McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 176

  176

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  at the console let me watch it. The next morning they found me sleeping on the doorstep: Hey, look, it’s the Kid.

  Nowadays I’m here all day, every day, and the truth is I’m the best hacker they got, the one who did all the patches for the blue- box program.

  The line gets picked up on the ninth ring and Compton slaps my shoulder, leans into the microphone, and says to the guy in his smooth clip so as not to freak him out: Hi, yeah, don’t hang up, this is Compton here.

  —Excuse me?

  —Compton here, who’s this?

  —Pay phone.

  —Don’t hang up.

  —This is a pay phone, sir.

  —Who’s speaking?

  —What number’re you looking for . . . ?

  —I have New York, right?

  —I’m busy, man.

  —Are you near the World Trade Center?

  —Yeah, man, but . . .

  —Don’t hang up.

  —You must’ve got a wrong number, man.

  The line goes dead. Compton hits the keyboard and the speed dial kicks in and there’s a pickup on the thirteenth ring.

  —Please don’t hang up. I’m calling from California.

  —Huh?

  —Are you near the World Trade Center?

  —Kiss my ass.

  We can hear a half- chuckle as the phone gets slammed down. Compton pings six numbers all at once, waits.

  —Hi, sir?

  —Yes?

  —Sir, are you in the vicinity of downtown New York?

  —Who’s this?

  —We’re just wondering if you could look up for us?

  —Very funny, ha- ha.

  The line goes dead again.

  —Hello, ma’am?

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 177

  L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

  177

  —I’m afraid you must have the wrong number.

  —Hello! Don’t hang up.

  —I’m sorry, sir, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.

  —Excuse me . . .

  —Try the operator, please.

  —Bite me, says Compton to the dead line.

  We’re thinking that we should pack it all in and go back to the graphics hack. It’s four or five in the morning, and the sun’ll soon be coming up. I guess we could even go home if we wanted to, catch a few zees instead of sleeping under the desks like usual. Pizza boxes for pillows and sleeping bags among the wires.

  But Compton hits the enter key again.

  It’s a thing we do all the time for kicks, blue- boxing through the computer, to Dial- A- Disc in London, say, or to the weather girl in Melbourne, or the time clock in Tokyo, or to a phone booth we found in the Shetland Islands, just for fun, to blow off steam from the programming. We loop and stack the calls, route and reroute so we can’t be traced. We go in first through an 800 number just so we don’t have to drop the dime: Hertz and Avis and Sony and even the army recruiting center in Virginia. That tickled the hell out of Gareth, who got out of ’Nam on a 4- F. Even Dennis, who’s worn his OCCIDENTAL DEATH T- shirt ever since he came home from the war, got off on that one big- time too.

  One night we were all lazing around and we hacked the code words to get through to the president, then called the White House. We layered the call through Moscow just to fool them. Dennis said: I have a very urgent message for the president. Then he rattled off the code words. Just a moment, sir, said the operator. We nearly pissed in our pants. We got past two other operators and were just about to get through to Nixon himself, but Dennis got the jitters and said to the guy: Just tell the president we’ve run out of toilet paper in Palo Alto. That cracked us up, but for weeks afterwards we kept waiting for the knock on the door. It became a joke after a while: we started calling the pizza boy Secret Agent Number One.

  It was Compton who got the message on the ARPANET this morning—it came over the AP service on the twenty- four- hour message board.

  We didn’t believe it at first, some guy walking the wires high above New York, but then Compton got on the line with an operator, pretended he was a switchman, testing out some verification trunks on the pay phones, McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 178

  178

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  said he needed some numbers down close to the World Trade buildings, part of an emergency line analysis, he said, and then we programmed the numbers in, skipped them through the system, and we each took bets on whether he’d fall or not. Simple as that.

  The signals bounce through the computer, multifrequency bips, like something on a flute, and we catch the guy on the ninth ring.

  —Uh. Hello.

  —Are you near the World Trade Center, sir?

  —Hello? ’Scuse me?

  —This is not a joke. Are you near the World Trades?

  —This phone was just ringing out here, man. I just . . . I just picked it up.

  He’s got one of those New York accents, young but grouchy, like he’s smoked too many cigarettes.

  —I know, says Compton, but can you see the buildings? From where you’re standing? Is there someone up there?

  —Who is this?

  —Is there someone up there?

  —I’m watching him right now.

  —You what?

  —I’m watching him.

  —Far out! You can see him?

  —I been watching him twenty minutes, more, man. Are you . . . ?

  This phone just rang and I—

  —He can see him!

  Compton slaps his hands against the desk, takes out his pocket pro-tector, and flings it across the room. His long hair goes flying around his face. Gareth dances a little jig over by the printout table and Dennis walks by and takes me in a light headlock and knuckles my scalp, like he doesn’t really care, but he likes to see us get our kicks, like he
’s still the army sergeant or something.

  —I told you, shouts Compton.

  —Who’s this? says the voice.

  —Far out!

  —Who the hell is this?!

  —Is he still on the tightrope?

  —What’s going on? Are you messing with me, man?

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_03_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:34 PM Page 179

  L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

  179

  —Is he still there?

  —He’s been up there twenty, twenty- five minutes!

  —All right! Is he walking?

  —He’s going to kill himself.

  —Is he walking?

  —No, he’s stopped right now!

  —Standing there?

  —Yeah!

  —He’s just standing there? Midair?

  —Yeah, he’s got the bar going. Up and down in his hands.

  —In the middle of the wire?

  —Near the edge.

  —How near?

  —Not too near. Near enough.

  —Like what? Five yards? Ten yards? Is he steady?

  —Steady as shit! Who wants to know? What’s your name?

  —Compton. Yours?

  —José.

  —José? Cool. José. ¿Qué onda, amigo?

  —Huh?

  —¿Qué onda, carnal?

  —I don’t speak Spanish, man.

  Compton hits the mute button and punches Gareth’s shoulder.

  —Can you believe this guy?

  —Just don’t lose him.

  —I’ve seen SAT questions with more brains than this one.

  —Just keep him on the line, man!

  Compton leans into the console and takes the mike again.

  —Can you tell us what’s happening, José?

  —Tell you what, man?

  —Like, describe it.

  —Oh. Well, he’s up there . . .

  —And?

  —He’s just standing.

  — And . . . ?

  —Where’re you calling from, anyway?