Angels

by Denis Johnson

  There were taking place here one or two more things than Jamie could successfully process at a single time. “What?” she said. “What are those? And who are these people?” The whole situation began flashing with a dry potent unreality.

  “I was just asking after Ellen’s middle name, because I was curious. And I was also offering you something to take the edge off. And this is my sister, Jean, and her husband, Randall. And these are two reds. Those white crosses, they always make me feel jumpy a little while after I eat a couple. What about you?”

  “Yeah. I’m a little jumpy, I guess.” Jamie accepted the two reds. “Just for a second there, I was feeling like the whole room was getting kind of yellow and zig-zaggy.” Ned handed her a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and she washed the pills down with a swallow. “Know what I mean?”

  “Definitely. Yellow and zigzaggy. That means it’s time to take the edge off, smooth the whole deal out, sort of. How about you, beautiful?” He offered one red pill to Jean while looking at his brother-in-law for permission. The brother-in-law nodded, and the sister swallowed it rapidly and with an air of furious resignation. Jamie could feel a liquid warm front moving in on the raw borders of her own disquiet. The room began to get slow.

  Ned’s apartment was on the next floor below, the hallway of which lacked but one or two functioning electric bulbs. He fiddled with his keys in the door, entertaining her with a string of chatter to which she found it unnecessary to pay any heed. “Hey,” she said suddenly, watching him manipulate his key in the lock, “how about that?” On several of his fingers, Ned sported the garish flaking rings, the secret decoder jewelry of nickel gumball machines.

  He opened the door onto an interior that pulsed with black-light. Dayglo posters shimmered violently on every wall. His suit was now absolutely invisible, and his hands and head seemed to drift in the air. She followed him into this weirdness. “Your name’s Ned, huh?”

  He shut the door behind them. In the ultra-violet his face appeared deeply tanned, the whites of his eyes now tinged with a faint blue life, like shark’s meat. “My name is Higher-and-Higher,” he said.

  “Do you know about Linda Lovelace?” was the big question on Ned Higher-and-Higher’s mind. “Can you do like Linda Lovelace?” He wasn’t slapping her hard, it just seemed he was trying to keep her conscious. The brother-in-law Randall was helping. “This is so beautiful I can’t stand it,” Ned Higher-and-Higher said. The brother-in-law was quieter. He just kept doing things to her that were rough and hard, one after another, yanking her up by the handcuffs. She accepted that he was evil and that at the very least, he would break her arms. She let them do everything with a ceaseless nausea that could scarcely scratch its name on the barbiturate serenity she inhabited. “Oh man—oh yeah—oh man—oh yeah,” Ned Higher-and-Higher said. Jamie was drifting along the halls outside, worrying about her children. Now she was worrying about Jamie, who was inside one of these rooms, screaming into the palm of a man’s hand. She would have liked to bang on the door here, but she was a ghost without a fist. In the dim illumination of the hallway, the true color of the plywood was not revealed—it might have been grey, or white, or blue. Within, incoherent voices conspired beneath pounding rock and roll. She witnessed the flaming communication on the door across the hall:

  Madame Kay

  Gifted from GOD with ESP

  READER AND ADVISOR.

  We are in Hillbilly Heaven, she heard herself say out loud, and then she began to vomit as the brother-in-law started in on her from behind. Directly before her face, one of the Seven Dwarfs loomed up dayglo on the wall, brandishing a middle finger.

  The brother-in-law wanted to do something with a knife. Ned Higher-and-Higher, wearing the dress cap of an officer in the United States Marine Corps, was trying to calm him down. He was talking and talking, faster than anyone had ever spoken in Jamie’s presence. I need a cup of coffee, Jamie thought. Keep that person away from me. I’m talking about my kids, my kids. Okay; you can even do things with the knife. I just want to live through this. I just want to take care of my kids. She clocked the brother-in-law’s knife with an eye as bland and dead as a camera’s. There it is, she thought. The whole answer is right there in his hand.

  I want you to know, her heart said to the room, that I will do anything to see my children spared.

  Something came around from behind Randall and slammed into the side of his head, and he sat down on the floor against the wall with his legs sticking out like a teddy bear’s. “What for?” he said. “What for?” Ned Higher-and-Higher was standing there in his Marine hat with a desk-lamp dangling from his hand. “You are the dumbest fuck,” he told his brother-in-law. Randall started to cry. “This is the last time,” Ned Higher-and-Higher told him. Okay, Jamie thought, we’ve crossed that one. We’ve gotten past the knife. Things have changed.

  She was on her back with her hands cuffed behind her, her knees locked under her chin by the ongoing adrenaline convulsion of fear. Peripherally she understood that nobody human was messing with her like this, but something much more dangerous, a dark configuration of people and events, something original, something about to be named. She saw that it required what was left of her, and she felt able to meet its requirements. For the sake of her children, she found its name. She begged and begged and begged. She traded away her soul.

  “What we have here is a case of fate. Of pure, dumb luck.” At the very instant the dealer was offering this conclusion, Bill Houston was peeking at enough of the card beneath his ten of clubs to see that it was a diamond ace.

  “Ace and a ten count as blackjack in here?” he asked.

  “Are you serious? Is this guy serious?” There were tears in the dealer’s eyes, and for two heartbeats Bill Houston experienced for him a searing pity. The dealer was bankrolling his own operation; this was not Las Vegas.

  The restaurant the men played in was closed for business and almost entirely dark. Only the one light above them showed them the way as they laid out their bets and took their chances, glad to be among strangers.

  There were four of them in the booth, and two men sitting in chairs. “What’s that—five in a row?” somebody said. The others around him reacted appropriately to Bill Houston’s good fortune or failed to react, according to each one’s interest in his own hand. Bill Houston was betting thirty dollars at a shot right now, but in a minute the man dealing, a young fellow wearing a shabby hat for luck, would have to lower his limit owing to a lack of funds. Bill Houston warred successfully against the urge to count his money, while his heart rushed among accumulating numbers. The young man with the hat tossed him three twenties, made his other payments and collections, and threw down another round of cards. “Limit’s fifteen,” he said blackly to Houston. “Okay, this go-round I’m handing everybody shit.” He gave them their upcards. Bill Houston took back his thirty dollars and laid out a ten and a five. He showed a queen, and there were chuckles. “It just all depends, don’t it?” the dealer said. He presented a jovial face, but it was clear he was deeply angry.

  Miranda was overjoyed to be sitting in the cab’s front seat. “Mama, what do these numbers say?” “Keep your hands off the meter, honey,” the driver told her. “I thought I died,” Jamie said, talking to Baby Ellen in her lap. Ned Higher-and-Higher kept reaching up under her skirt to squeeze her bare thigh. Jamie pushed her face against the freezing window, and that was as far away from him as she could go. “You know something?” Ned said to the cab driver, “I’ve seen you before. Where have I seen you?” “Just keep the kid in her seat,” the driver said, “what do you want to put a little kid up front for?” “Hey, if you don’t like it, we can stop right now,” Ned Higher-and-Higher said. “Ma-ma, what do these numbers say? Is this a little TV scream?” Miranda said. Ned Higher-and-Higher started laughing. “Aaaaah, shit,” the cab driver remarked to nobody. Jamie could not stop weeping and weeping. “Loosen up,” Ned Higher-and-Higher said. “It’s not like you’re a virgin, is it? I’m just
a seducer, that’s all. I’m just a destroyer. You know something?” he said, pinching her thigh and then making his fingers walk around on Baby Ellen’s head, “I never met your boyfriend. I mean, everybody has a tattoo, right? Everybody drinks. Ha ha ha!” He leaned forward, arms draped over the front seat. “Was it in the Baghdad Lounge? Used to be the Thief of Baghdad? Do you ever go there?” When the driver failed to answer, he sat back. “I know I’ve seen you,” he said. To Jamie he said: “I really fooled you, didn’t I?” Out in the world, the streets whirled around them like the blades of a fan. “You have to admit,” he said, “I can really charm the ladies.”

  When the cab stopped, he took her chin in both his hands. “Now, we’re going to go in there and get you a room. You’re going to go in that room and stay there all night and don’t leave. You shut up!” he said suddenly to the driver. And to Jamie: “All right. Let’s go.”

  She stood in a hallway while he rang bells and talked to people she didn’t see. Miranda tried to put her arms around her mother’s legs and go to sleep standing up, but Jamie said, “Don’t touch me.”

  “This way,” Ned Higher-and-Higher said.

  They were standing in front of a door. At the end of the hall another door stood open, and beyond, a greying bathtub with the paws of an animal. Then they were standing in a room, and Miranda was lying down on the bed. “Where’s the seat? The infant seat for Ellen?” Jamie said.

  “The hell with it. Put her on the bed,” Ned Higher-and-Higher told her, and she put the baby on the bed immediately.

  He took hold of her right hand and wrapped her fingers around some money and stood looking intently into her eyes. She wondered what was going to happen. “Do not leave this room until morning,” he said, “do you understand? Do not leave.” She nodded. Part of the room was getting closer, and part was getting unimaginably far away. “Maybe we could get together again,” he said, “huh?”

  Jamie sat on the bed.

  “You mad?” Ned Higher-and-Higher said. “Hey—you mad?”

  She studied her hand. Things were out of reach. Her legs seemed to end at the knees. “Me?” she said.

  This is me.

  He was gone. On the bed were her two children, and in her hand were two ten-dollar bills. This is me. Did you get what you wanted? Because I gave you everything.

  This is me this is me this is me.

  I have drifted, Bill Houston told himself, out of my league. Everybody’s got a foreign accent. Fruits and vegetables are for sale.

  He had wandered all the way up to Howard, the line between Chicago and Evanston. The Chicago side of the street was littered with small taverns and package stores, while the Evanston side, where liquor establishments were forbidden, offered vacant lots and the struggling concerns of inconsequential merchants. He stood at a newsstand and read the caption beneath the photo of a woman who looked just like Jamie: Search for Friends Ends in Tragedy. “Twenny cents,” the newsguy said, as if calling out some kind of destination.

  “Jesus Christ,” Bill Houston said, “I don’t believe it. I know her.” He was lost. “They raped her.”

  “C’mon,” the newsguy said. In his hunting cap and bulky plaid coat, he looked to Bill Houston like a moron somebody had dressed up to take into the woods; and Houston stood for a moment at the edge of violence, looking him over. He reached into the pocket of his surplus army coat, and very carefully handed the man a quarter.

  They were vacuuming the Crown & Anchor in the afternoon. Through two windows on the street side, you could tell the day was turning sunny. There was no one but a couple of out-of-work substitute teachers in there, and Bill Houston, and the bartender running his machine back and forth across the defeated rug. “Teachers?” Bill Houston said. “Maybe you could teach me a few things,” and the women laughed. I don’t know why they respond to me, he thought; I have to look puked-on. “If you could give me some change,” he said to the bartender. The bartender acted like he didn’t hear, and Houston went over close and said, “Don’t act like you don’t hear.” The bartender was not a big man. He silenced the puling of his machine by prodding it with the toe of his boot, and went inside the horseshoe-shaped bar and worked the register. Bill Houston handed him a twenty and said, “Give it to me in quarters. I got business.”

  Standing at the pinball machine by the payphone near the restrooms, he cracked open his roll of quarters and dropped one down the slot. It was one of the new machines that go blip blip toot toot. Stupid. Okay. In rapid succession he shot his three chances, paying the progress of each metal ball no mind whatever, and studied the contraption’s face—a space-age tableau of the rock group Styx, the lead guitarist of whom was evidently about to be fellated by a mindless jungle woman strewn before his feet. Behind them, intergalactic bodies flashed with electricity, the phosphorus-fires of infinite patience. Essentially you could never defeat these things, because they were the living dead. He moved his operation over to the telephone, dialled the number and deposited the money and said, “Mom.”

  The two substitute teachers were merry souls. They had taken to throwing ice at one another, giggling, chewing up their skinny red plastic straws. Mournfully indicating the ice cubes on his rug, the bartender reprimanded them. They found the idea of the rug hilarious. “Where’s James, Ma?” Bill Houston said into the phone. “I’m looking for James.” The teachers wanted another round, and the bartender tried to talk them into beer. Bill Houston dialled and deposited. The teachers were entertained by the suggestion that they might enjoy a beer now, and countered by suggesting that the bartender engage in solo sexual maneuvers while freshening their drinks. “James?” Bill Houston said into the telephone, “You recognize who this is?” He regarded, through clear eyes, the glittering dust that fell through the sun onto the heads of the two women and the man behind the bar. The atmosphere was muted, rarefied, and holy. “James, I’ll tell you straight out,” he told his half-brother, “I’m looking for some shit to get into.” Completely expressionless, the bartender stood before the howling blender, grinding up for his exhilarated patrons another couple of margaritas.

  Somebody at the Tribune told Bill Houston to call the police, and the police instructed him to get in touch with the federal Welfare. “It’s me she was looking for,” he explained over and over, and everyone was helpful when they learned the papers had a line on the situation. He found her at the Children’s Services Division in the afternoon, napping in a chair of torn-and-taped imitation leather. Baby Ellen lay in her lap, and a few chairs away Miranda disputed with a little baldheaded boy about the possession of a coloring book. The place smelled like an ashtray. Everybody was black or foreign or deformed. There were people with crutches and people clutching soiled magazines to their chests, and children all around them. He leaned close and said, “Jamie,” hoping he was being quiet enough.

  When she opened her eyes she said, “I been looking for you.”

  “Well, you found me. How about us getting out of here?”

  “I got to fill out some more forms, I think.” She looked around, apparently trying to locate herself among these others.

  “Shit. Once they start you on filling out forms, it just don’t ever end.” He tried to think of a way of explaining to her that even now, as the two of them dawdled here, these people were inventing the forms that would defeat her grandchildren.

  “Miranda? Look who’s here.” Jamie stretched out her hand and opened and closed her fist as if trying to grab her daughter’s attention. To Bill Houston she said, “Let me get my bearings, okay?”

  “Get your bearings out in the world. There’s no bearings in here, I guarantee you.”

  “Hey—I ain’t ashamed,” she said. “Half my goddamn family’s on Welfare.”

  Bill Houston was exasperated. “You were looking for me, weren’t you?”

  “I had a few words to say to you.” She was gathering up her coat, her kid’s coat, her two kids. Bill Houston watched her closely, trying to determine if she was crippl
ed in the heart. As she laid the baby where she’d just been sitting and helped Miranda get into her coat, she seemed able to concentrate through one eye only, while the other roamed a dreamland. He felt anxious and useless. “I got a suitcase around here,” Jamie said. “Excuse me,” she said to the security woman behind the desk, “whatever happened to my suitcase? I got about fifteen bucks, too,” she remarked to Bill Houston. “I been making money hand over fist in this town.”

  He was taking it as easy as he could. All through Tuesday and Wednesday Jamie was a little too quiet, and then he had to get a sitter and keep her away from the kids almost all of Thursday, because suddenly she was angrier than she knew how to handle. Her favorite movie—Endless Love—was playing one El stop down from their hotel, but they had to walk out of it in the middle because of the noisy conversation they were having in the dark theater. “You mean those monsters pull their shit on me and just keep on living?” She was crying out in front of the Biograph. “That the way it works? That the way it works?”

  Bill Houston handed her his red bandana. “Was there something that works some other way?” He was totally sincere in asking this.

  “For God’s sake, listen, Bill—they went up under my skirt!”

  “I know. I know. I know. But goddamn it. You step out on Clark after sundown, that whole street’s going to go up under your skirt. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Help me stomp their heads down to nothing! Let’s kill those fuckers!”

  “That’s what I’d have to do,” he said. “Ain’t nothing short of that going to make it all right. Don’t you see?”

  “Then let’s do it! They deserve it!”

  “Shit—” a whole lot of reasons choked his speech.

  “We could find them. I know we could find them. They deserve it!” Bitterly she wept.

  “No way,” Bill Houston said flatly. “I never murdered anybody in my life. I’ve done everything else but that, I guess.”