Denis Johnson - Nobody Move

“You’re welcome. Now close your pretty robe.”

Juarez called. Gambol couldn’t make sense of the conversation. Juarez said, or Gambol said, “Fucking Luntz.” One of them said Fucking Luntz.

“Gambol. You there?”

“Yeah.”

“Then talk. Don’t just breathe. I been hearing from him time to time.”

“Who?”

“Fucking Luntz. This asshole makes my stomach hurt. He refuses to behave, and he refuses to make sense. I hate him.”

“Fucking Luntz.”

“It’s embarrassing to hate your enemy. When you’re cold, that’s better. Then you can move. You’re more precise — you know where respect comes from? When you’re precise. Gambol. Gambol.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you using a cell phone? What’s her phone?”

“No.”

“Is it a cell phone?”

“I said no.”

“Fucking cell phones, you never know what with them.”

“I like her.”

“Mr. Gambol. . Jesus.”

“Put five K on top. That’s from me.”

“Definitely. Whatever you need.”

“Whatever she wants.”

“Sure. How doped-up are you?”

“Who?”

“Good. But not too much. Put Mary on. She there?”

“She’s always here.” Gambol stuck the phone in Mary’s face and closed his eyes.

Luntz preferred shows with plenty of skin, but tonight he had no opinion. He let Anita control the remote and sat in the only chair with his legs straight out and his ankles crossed, staring at his brown socks and dipping his ashes in a coffee cup. She sat against the wall in the bed in her pinstriped pantsuit. One channel after another.

Around ten they turned in. She wore her bra and panties to bed. They lay side by side, Luntz in his boxers and T-shirt. He rested his cheek on his outstretched arm and tried conversing. She told him she felt sweaty, and she

asked him to keep his distance. He tried touching her bare shoulder with his finger. His hand shook. She turned to the wall, and then she asked to have the outside half of the bed. He got up for that, found one window that wasn’t stuck, and raised it three inches. Anita turned the television back on.

He put on his pants and shoes and went down the stairs.

The café was closed, but there was light in there from somewhere. He banged on the door. Turned his back and watched the road. Not one car.

Sally opened the door. “Jimmy Luntz, as I live and breathe.”

Luntz said, “God. There’s a lot of stars here.”

“Please don’t call me God. I’m a sinner like you.”

“Where’s Capra?”

“Zonked in his Silver Streak. I won’t go in there. It smells like socks.”

Luntz brought his wrist close to his face. “It’s only eleven.”

“You want to set a couple of chairs out back? And wrap up in blankets and listen to the river and watch the stars?”

“What for?”

“Exactly. Exactly, man.”

“Sell me some booze.”

Back upstairs again he stripped to his underwear while she poured a big one, not too much Sprite, and got half of it down without pausing for breath.

“You do drink like an Indian.”

“Or else my pants wouldn’t have come off last night, so don’t complain.” She lay back, raising her drink like a torch to keep it level, and slipped two fingers into the elastic of her panties and snaked them down around her thighs and ran two fingers over her mound, back and forth, and looked right at him until he was forced to clear his throat and swallow. The crushed ice sloshed in the go-cup as she finished her Popov and Sprite and set the cup aside.

The TV emitted a small steady roar. In the show a man clung to the side of a speeding train. Luntz let the TV run so he could see her by its light. All through their lovemaking Anita kept quiet, but she looked right at him. When she came, she said, “No. No. No.”

Next morning Anita seemed morose, sitting naked on the bed’s edge, staring at her clothes all bunched up together on the floor. He came out of the shower and found her like that. She didn’t look at him. He sat beside her on the bed and toweled his hair and lassoed her around the shoulders with the towel, holding the ends in either hand, and she didn’t seem to mind.

He studied the general moment, taking the atmospheric temperature, and let her go. “What’s on TV?” he said. “I usually watch in the daytime.”

“No. Really?”

“I get up late and just stay in bed and burn the daylight down.”

“A night person.”

“That’s right, yeah. I blend in better that way.”

“Not the outdoor type.”

“My idea of a health trip is switching to menthols and getting a tan,” he said. “I don’t like push-ups, sit-ups, ex cetera. Et cetera, I mean.” He’d been corrected in this several times, but always forgot.

“You’re cute enough,” she said, “but you got a sissy body.”

“Didn’t you know that?”

“What.”

“That it’s et cetera, not ex cetera.”

“Yeah, man, I did. I just didn’t feel like embarrassing you,” she said, and headed for the bathroom.

When she came out he told her, “I watched you going to the shower and I almost thought I could break down crying.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Come here.” She sat beside him, both of them naked, and he kissed her, and the temperature felt better. “I’d like to try it sober.”

“Can we wait till after breakfast, when I’m not hung over?”

“Sure. Let’s go downstairs. What are we having?”

“Beer.”

“No problem. Day or night, Sally can fix it.”

“Is he sleeping in the other guy’s trailer? Who’s the other guy again?”

“Capra.”

“Where do they sleep? Downstairs, or in the trailer?”

“Who? Sally and Capra? They don’t sleep together.”

“Sally told me they’re moving in together.”

“Wow. No shit?”

“That’s the story.”

“If it’s love, it’s love,” he said. “I had a woman I lived with off and on for — Jesus. Six years. And it was never love. And if it ain’t love, it ain’t love.”

“I’ll tell you what’s love: Jimmy Luntz loves to state the obvious.”

“Don’t piss on my philosophy.”

“I’m just hung over. And I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“You name it.”

“No. You name it.”

“Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Anything else — hell, I’ll spit right in its face.”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing else.”

“See? Boy loves to state the obvious.”

When they made love a while later he tasted a little beer on her breath, but she was sober. They lay together afterward, and she rested her leg over his. They watched a show on TV about the miracles of forensic science, and

Anita told him it was a bogus show. “There are six thousand unsolved murders a year in this country.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said, and switched it off. “What now?”

“Let’s do what I always do.”

“Which is?”

“Double down, honey.”

“You want to try me in a different position?” The way she said it, his throat tightened and he couldn’t answer.

She asked him to go on his knees by the bed — while she sat on the edge with her feet on the floor and her legs apart — and get into her that way.

It didn’t work. Anita said, “You’re too—”

“I’m not eight feet tall, yeah. It can’t happen.”

But she liked it fine the regular way and called him Daddyman and cried no, no, no when she came. He lay beside her and dried the sweat between her breasts with a corner of the bedsheet. Then to keep from asking questions he sat up and put his feet on the floor and lit a cigarette. But she touched his back with her fingers, and the question asked itself. “Why are you with me?”