Denis Johnson - Nobody Move

“Your gun’s loaded.” Now he took a rusty church key from the refrigerator door. His actions made no sense to her. He said, “Right? You have your gun?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

He gripped one of the shells, pried an end of it open with the church key, and spilled a lot of ball bearings onto the mattress. “There’s ten — eleven — fuck. Where do they go? Where do they go when you shoot the fucking

gun

?”

He put the shotgun in the duffel and started to zip it and paused, putting his hand to his mouth.

“When did you start sucking your thumb?”

“It hurts.” Jimmy looked all around as if his thoughts were attacking him. “We have to go.”

“I can’t move.”

“What?”

“I’m tired. And you’re all dirty. You’re filthy. You look like a farmer.”

“So do you. Were you sleeping under a bridge?”

“I didn’t sleep.”

Jimmy stood in the bathroom door and looked at the mirror and said, “Jesus.”

Sitting on the bedside, she let her head hang.

“Open your eyes.” He gripped her by the chin. “Here’s the plan. You shower for two minutes. I’ll find us some clothes downstairs. Then I’ll shower for two minutes.”

“Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying. Get in the shower.”

“Jesus Christ, Jimmy, there’s snot on your face.”

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

She stepped under the shower and would have stayed forever, but the bulb in the ceiling blew, and in the dimness under the falling water she thought she saw fireflies clambering from the drain and coming at her face, and she left the stall quickly. She lay on the mattress without looking for a towel and didn’t realize she was falling asleep until something woke her.

Jimmy stood over her in a pair of jeans too short for his legs and too wide for his waist. “Move, honey.” He tossed her a bundle of flannel and denim, and she dressed in jeans and a lumberman’s shirt while he jerked her this way and that, trying to help her, and at the same time babbling math:

“We have ten percent of a plan. We go to see the judge. We take his half. That’s half a million plus for each of us. We put it in two accounts and go in two separate directions. You can deal with your husband or not — that’s later. I’m out of that one.”

“These pants won’t stay up.”

“Use my belt. Where’s your purse? Just give it to me.” He yanked the shotgun from the duffel. “Okay. We’re gone.”

“Gone where?”

“There’s no way to go,” he said, “but the way we’re going. I know how it ends, but there’s no other way.”

“Why?”

“Because Gambol did a bad thing. Let’s go.”

On the stairs down, Jimmy turned to her and said, “What about your shoes?”

“I don’t need shoes.” She got past him on the stairs.

“Don’t you have shoes?”

“I’ve got feet.” She passed the door to the restaurant. It stood wide open.

“Not the Caddy,” Jimmy said. “The truck.” Her bare feet changed course and took her to the truck.

“In. In. In.”

Jimmy tossed the shotgun on the floorboards at her feet. He still held her purse. He took the Caddy’s keys from it and threw the purse in her lap, shut the door in her face and went over to the Caddy and slapped the keys down on the vinyl roof.

As he climbed into the seat beside her he said, “Make it easy for the next owner.” He leaned wearily against the steering wheel as he started the truck.

Gambol woke to the smell of food. Daylight leaked around the curtains into the room. Mary’s cell phone, he saw, had returned to its charger on the nightstand. He took it in his fist and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and said, “Fuck.”

He called O’Doul’s, and a woman answered: “Dooley’s. What.”

“Juarez. That’s what.”

“The name is not familiar.”

“Get Juarez. It’s Gambol.”

“He’s not here.”

“I said this is Gambol. Get him.”

“He’s really not here. He went north.”

“North where?”

“North. That’s all he said.”

“When did he leave?”

“I don’t know. Real early.”

“Who’s with him?”

“The Tall Man.”

“Nobody else?”

“Just the Tall Man. Isn’t that enough?”

He went out to find Mary in the kitchen in her shorty robe, standing over a fry pan with a cigarette jutting from her lips, humming a tune. “Steak and eggs,” she said, “and guess what? Champagne.”

“Juarez is coming up.”

“Up where?”

“Up here.”

“Shit. Here? Shit.”

“Yeah. And the Tall Man.”

“Is that monster still with him?”

“That monster’s always been with him.”

“Was he always like that? Born like that?”

Gambol said, “You mean tall?”

Mary laughed as if nothing was funny. “How did his face get like that?”

Gambol looked at the bloody hunks sizzling in the pan and said, “I’m not hungry.”

Luntz pushed it hard, making sure he heard the tires on every curve. If a cop lit him up, he’d steer it off a cliff.

“You brush against these people, you know? Just brush up — and it’s an electric thing, you get some juice from it, you feel like you’ve got some balls, but — these people are hard.”

She didn’t answer. He gave her shoulder a shake. “No curiosity? Don’t you want the news? Capra’s dead. Gambol blew his head off.”

“In a hundred years we’re all dead.”

“Did you ever know anybody who got murdered?”

Beside him she was white and pale. “The dead come back. Death isn’t the end.”

“Let’s be optimistic,” he said, “and assume that’s bullshit.”

“At night you can see them standing across the river.”

“That sounds like DTs.” He reached for the pocket in his too-large flannel shirt — Capra’s maybe, or Sally’s — and handed her the half pint of vodka. “Have a party.”

She unscrewed the cap. “If you know the crossing

place,” she said, “you can block their way.” She looked like a child in an older brother’s clothes. She turned the bottle up and wrapped her lips around its neck.

Three bikers passed, coming up the other way. Then two more traveling side by side. “Must’ve got an early start from Bolinas. We got out just in time.” Half a minute later, a whole pack — seven, eight, nine, Luntz couldn’t count.

He tried the radio and spun the dial until he hit some music, any music, not even real music — country music. News came on, and Anita slapped at the knobs until it went away.

“Are we in range? Where’s your cell phone?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look in your purse. Let me have it. Don’t just stare at it. Fuck. Call information.”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Get the number for O’Doul’s Tavern in Alhambra.” Luntz grappled for his cigarettes and found one left in the pack. It was ripped in the middle and streaked with dirt. He managed to keep it lit through two drags before he tossed it.

Anita said, “It’s dialing.”

He wrested the phone from her hand as a woman answered: “Dooly’s, babe.”

“Let me speak to Juarez. Right now.”

“No Juarez here.”

“Tell him it’s Gambol.”

“He’s still gone.”

“Don’t mess around.”

“I told you — he’s gone.”

“Where is he at?”

“I told you. He went north.”

Luntz waited for a thought.

The woman said, “Who is this?”

He thumbed the disconnect and drove for several seconds holding the phone out the window, then let it drop.

Anita sat with her hands folded around the empty bottle.

The morning seemed lit by a blowtorch. The edges of his sight shimmered. “Dear Jesus, give me music.” He had to spin the knob several times to get the band to move even half an inch. No music. News of this and that, a local murder.