I’d like to have a parasol the day I go. I’ll hang myself from the jolly pipes and look all pretty underneath.
I’ll do it for the girls. They don’t need no one like me. They don’t need to be out on the stroll. They’re better off this way.
Jolly pipe, here I come.
I’ll look like Mary Poppins swinging underneath.
They got these religious meetings take place in the Gatehouse. I went this morning. I was talking to the chaplain about Rumi and shit, but he’s like, “That’s not spiritual, that’s poetry.” Fuck God. Fuck Him. Fuck Him sideways and backwards and any which way. He ain’t coming for me. There ain’t no burning bushes and there ain’t no pillars of light. Don’t talk to me about light. It ain’t nothing more than a glow at the end of a street lamp.
Sorry, Corrie, but God is due His ass-kicking.
One of the last things I heard Jazz do, she screamed and dropped the keyring out the door of the paddy wagon. Clink it went on the ground and we saw Corrigan coming out to the street with a muscle in his step. He was red in the face. Screaming at the cops. Life was pretty good then. I’d have to say that’s one of the good moments — ain’t that strange? I remember it like yesterday, getting arrested.
There ain’t no such thing as getting home. That’s the law of living far as I can see. I bet they don’t have no Sherry-Netherlands in heaven. The Sherry-Never-lands.
I gave Jazzlyn a bath once. She was just a few weeks old. Skin shining. I looked at her and thought she gave birth to the word beautiful. I wrapped her in a towel and promised her she’d never go on the stroll.
Sometimes I want to stab my heart with a stiletto. I used to watch men with her when she was all growed up. And I’d say to myself, Hey that’s my daughter you’re fucking. That’s my little girl you’re pulling into the front seat. That’s my blood.
I was a junkie then. I guess I always have been. That ain’t no excuse.
I don’t know if the world’ll ever forgive me for the bad I slung her way. I ain’t gonna sling it the way of the babies, not me.
This is the house that Horse built.
I’d say good-bye, except I don’t know who to say it to. I ain’t whining. That’s just the fuck-off truth. God is due His ass-kicking.
Here I come, Jazzlyn, it’s me.
I got a knuckle-duster in my sock.
THE RINGING GROOVES OF CHANGE
BEFORE THE WALK, HE WOULD go to Washington Square Park to perform. It marked the beginning of the city’s dangerous side. He wanted the noise, to build up some tension in his body, to be wholly in touch with the filth and the roar. He secured his wire from the ribbed edge of a light pole to another. He performed for the tourists, tiptoeing along in his black silk hat. Pure theater. The sway and fake fall. Defying gravity. He could lean over at an angle and still bring himself back to standing. He balanced an umbrella on his nose. Flipped a coin in the air from his toe: it landed perfectly on the crown of his head. Forward and backward somersaults. Handstands. He juggled pins and balls and flaming torches. He invented a game with a Slinky — it looked like the metal toy was unwrapping itself along his body. The tourists lapped it up. They threw money in a hat for him. Most of the time it was nickels and dimes, but sometimes he’d get a dollar, or even five. For ten dollars he would jump to the ground, doff his hat, bow, throw a backflip.
On the first day the dealers and junkies hovered near his show. They could see how much he was making. He stuffed it all in the pockets of his flares, but he knew they’d roll him for it. For his final trick he scooped up the last of his money, put the hat on his head, rode a unicycle along the rope, then simply pedaled off the ten-foot drop, onto the ground and away through the Square, down Washington Place. He waved over his shoulder. He came back the next day for his rope — but the dealers liked the trick enough that they let him stay, and the tourists he brought were easy hits.
He rented a cold-water apartment on St. Marks Place. One night he strung a simple rope across from his bedroom to the fire escape of a Japanese woman opposite: she had lit candles on the ironwork for him. He stayed eight hours, and when he emerged he found that some kids had tossed shoes up on the wire, a city custom, the laces tied together. He crawled out on the wire, which had grown loose and dangerous, but was still taut enough to hold him, and walked back in through his window. He saw immediately that the place had been ransacked. Everything. Even his clothes. All the money was gone from the pockets of his pants too. He never saw the Japanese woman again: when he looked across the candles were gone. Nobody had ever stolen from him before.
This was the city he had crawled into — he was surprised to find that there were edges beneath his own edge.
Sometimes he would get hired to go to parties. He needed the money. There were so many expenses and his savings had been plundered. The wire itself would cost a thousand dollars. And then there were the winches, the false I.D.’s, the balancing pole, the elaborate ploys to get it all up to the roof. He’d do anything to get the money together, but the parties were awful. He was hired as a magician, but he told the hosts that he couldn’t guarantee that he’d do anything at all. They had to pay him, but still he might just sit there all night. The tension worked. He became a party regular. He bought a tuxedo and a bow tie and a cummerbund.
He’d introduce himself as a Belgian arms dealer, or an appraiser from Sotheby’s, or a jockey who’d ridden in the Kentucky Derby. He felt comfortable in the roles. The only place he was entirely himself, anyway, was high on the wire. He could pull a long string of asparagus from his neighbor’s napkin. He’d find a wine cork behind the ear of a host, or tug an endless unfolding scarf from a man’s breast pocket. In the middle of dessert he might spin a fork in the air and have it land on his nose. Or he’d teeter backward on his chair until he was sitting on only one leg, pretending he was so drunk that he’d hit a nirvana of balance. The partygoers were thrilled. Whispers would go around the tables. Women would approach him in a cleavage lean. Men would slyly touch his knee. He would vanish from the parties out a window, or the back door, or disguised as a caterer, a tray of uneaten hors d’oeuvres above his head.
At a party at 1040 Fifth Avenue he announced, at the beginning of dinner, that he would, by the end of the evening, tell the exact birth dates of every single man in the room. The guests were enthralled. One lady who wore a sparkling tiara leaned right into him. So, why not the women as well? He pulled away from her. Because it’s impolite to tell the age of a lady. He already had half the room charmed. He said nothing more the whole night: not a single word. Come on, the men said, tell us our age. He stared at the guests, switched seats, examined the men carefully, even running his fingers along their hairlines. He frowned and shook his head, as if baffled. When the sorbet came out, he climbed wearily into the middle of the table, pointed at each guest one by one and reeled off the birth dates of all but one in the room. January 29, 1947. November 16, 1898. July 7, 1903. March 15, 1937. September 5, 1940. July 2, 1935.
The women applauded and the men sat, stunned.
The one man who hadn’t been pegged sat back smugly in his chair and said, Yes, but what about me? The tightrope walker whisked his hand through the air: Nobody cares when you were born.
The room erupted in laughter and the walker leaned over the women at the table and, one by one, he removed their husbands’ driver’s licenses, from their handbags, from their dinner napkins, from under their plates, even one from between her breasts. On each license, the exact birth date. The one man who hadn’t been pegged leaned back in his chair and announced to the table that he’d never carried his wallet, never would: he’d never be caught. Silence. The tightrope walker got down from the table, pulled his scarf around his neck, and said to the man as he waved from the dining room door: February 28, 1935.