Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

“This whole entire thing,” Tommy said.

They napped awhile, waking whenever somebody’s headlights swept through the cab. Lally hadn’t shown by midnight.

Hadn’t shown by 1 A.M. They’d slept more than they could be expected to, all folded up like this. The dogs were kidding around in back, but in a stealthy way. Before too much longer somebody would have to set them loose to do their business. Falls wondered if they missed Sarah, the dead one. They hadn’t exhibited any particular signs of it.

“Okay,” Falls said, “open that glove box there. No, man, no. The notebook. Gimme that, please.” Falls opened his notebook on his lap.

“I got a sequel for you. Part Two of the Ballad of Tommy Thompson.”

“Oh, brother,” Thompson said.

“You remember about loving the waitress and—”

“Desperado in the parking lot, yeah. You should make that the title.

Not the Ballad of Tommy Thompson.”

“Here’s the part that’s really like you’d do it, if this would be you,” said Falls.

“Did you hear me?”

“Of course.”

“I wish to remain anonymous.”

“Desperado in the Parking Lot,” Falls agreed. “Second verse.” Later down the road it’s midnight ,

people sleeping in their beds .

You’d like to come up soft on tiptoe, put a bullet in their heads .

Go downstairs and get a sandwich ,

pop a beer and turn on the news ,

put your feet up, get the phone book, call her and say, You got the blues ?

I got ’em too, hey, come on over ,

no one home but me these days ,

just like you, let’s burn their albums, warm our hearts around the blaze .

Thompson sighed, cleared his throat, jerked up the handle of his door, and spat out onto the ground. “Well, what that is,” he said, “is sick.”

“It’s not sick if it’s from the heart.”

“That’s not like me. I’d never cap some poor family asleep in their beds at midnight just to use the phone, man.”

“Well, I just launch it and let her drift.”

“I hate to tell you, but you drifted way the hell past me. I have no beef whatsoever with regular folks. Just assholes. I know who that’s about. And what it’s about. I know.”

Falls closed his book.

“Aaah,” he said.

“What.”

“I can’t talk to you when you start running tickets.”

“I’m just responding,” Tommy said.

“You’re just repeating shit that you heard.”

“I’m giving you an honest response.”

“No,” Falls said. “You’re just running tickets.” Tommy rested his head against the seat back and jammed his knees against the dash. A car passed and lit them up briefly, but it was just nobody again.

“Look,” Falls said after a silence. “I’m feeling responsible about the various shit-disturbances, man. Like maybe not all of them, but too many of them.”

368 / Denis Johnson

“Aah. It’s been tense. All these unexpected variables.”

“We been ragged-out by this deal, understandably. It’s been seven ways from Sunday and every bit of it wrong. But you’ve hung on every inch of the way, man. You hung on, you made one. You done good.”

“Wo. Wo. I had to keep you on. Or you would’ve booked two days in.”

“Yeah. Yeah. This is my acknowledgment of that.”

“I had to knot the end of your everlovin’ rope and put it in your teeth for you, man.”

“Acknowledged. You done good.”

“Apology accepted.”

Then Tommy laughed, and Bart also laughed, and both said together,

“‘It’s a growth experience .’”

“Ah, man. Ah, shit,” Tommy said. “I should’ve fucked her.”

“You told me you did fuck her. You told everyone.”

“And you believed me? Educated bitch like that always wears flat shoes and glasses? The only one of us who could’ve fucked her was Yates. And Yates did fuck her.”

“Yates? Yates is a ridiculous wimp.”

“He’s a deeply sensitive mass murderer.”

“Yeah. I can see the attraction. From her point of view. From her semiclinical but still cuntly point of view.”

“Well, I never touched her. But when she transferred, Yates lost his mud and he confessed to a few people. I mean, the way it came out, you had to buy it.”

“How come all this got by me?”

“You were gone.”

“She took him out of group. They went to one-on-one, I remember that.”

“You were already out when she transferred.”

“‘Please, you can just call me Doc’…You could’ve fucked her if you wanted to. You just don’t have the confidence,” Falls said. “You don’t understand your own…you know. What about the Mexican girl?”

“Who?”

“You know.”

“With the baby?”

“Why do they always wear T-shirts with American words all over them? It’s kind of pitiful.”

Already Dead / 369

“I wonder if I’ll ever meet her little baby again,” Tommy said, “like later. When he’s all grown up.”

Neither said anything else until Bart said, “Anyway…” Tommy said, “Yeah…”

Thompson settled back, breathed once, sat forward, ran his fingers over his scalp. He reached under his seat for the Casull. “I’m going in.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna climb that gate and sit by that pool in one of those poolside-type chairs and relax.” He got out. “I might take a dip, man.” He slammed the truck shut.

Falls watched him shake the gate in the dark like the door to his own personal cage. “It ain’t locked. Come on,” Thompson called.

Falls followed him in and they stood there beside the pool.

“Where are the chairs?” Thompson asked. “He doesn’t have any chairs.”

“I don’t know,” Falls said.

“Well, I’m going for a little moonlight swim, only there ain’t no moonlight.”

Thompson shed his T-shirt, his shoes, his pants and briefs, and weighted down the pile of them with his Casull. He mounted the diving board and stood on it and spread his arms and said, “Ah!”

“Kind of breezy for such a number,” Falls pointed out.

“Ah!”

“Bullshit,” Falls said.

But Tommy launched himself and went in cleanly without much of a splash.

Falls watches him swim, this almost undiscernible thing in the dark water cutting toward the shallow end and standing upright with a seething liquid sound and saying, though out of breath, “You coming in?”

“Okay.”

His hands shaking, he strips himself down. He can hardly manipulate the buttons on his shirt.

Thompson says, “Your teeth are chattering, man.”

“Yeah.”

“Mine too, huh.”

“Yeah, I guess!”

“Come on in, it’s heated, man.”

370 / Denis Johnson

Falls sits naked at the pool’s edge and let his left leg in up to the knee.

“Heated? Fuck you!”

Thompson turns and kicks off and out into the deeper water, spins in a balletic somersault, the words coming up with his face from under water: “Fuck you !”

Falls lets down both his legs, shivering, his throat pumping in his neck. He slips forward and stands in the shock of it up to his waist.

“Not as bad as a trout stream!” he cries, and sets out into the cold dark toward his friend, and swims past, and Thompson grabs his ankle. He spins around, grabs at Thompson’s crotch. Thompson heads to the side in the deep end, clutching the ladder one-handed, laughing, saying,

“Hey!” as Falls passes his fingertips over his groin again very lightly.

“Hey. Don’t do that, man.”

“What?” Falls grips his thigh and squeezes hard.

“Just wait, just wait, just wait. Hang on. What’s the story on Lally, man?”