Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

“He ain’t here. End of story.”

“He’s in the wrong place, if he ain’t here. Because I just came to a decision concerning a shitload of stinky green sinsemilla.”

“We keep it.”

“He can send somebody after us if he wants.”

“Anybody he sends — we’ll send back the bastard’s pecker in a FedEx pack.”

“We been killing people lately anyway!”

“Oh, yeah.” Falls runs his hand along Tommy’s belly and crotch, and Tommy swims off leaving Falls alone standing in water up to his chest.

With the plunging sounds of water Falls strides toward the shallow end. He can’t tell what’s going on here. Is he supposed to be angry or happy?

Thompson faces him, but Falls can’t see his face. “We’re moving now, man, we’ve stirred the waters. It’s kind of a lustful thrill.”

“Let’s go see some people.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?”

“Let’s do it.”

“Piss on that,” he says as Tommy makes to get his pants on. He walks away toward the gate without touching his own stuff. “I’m breaking out, I wanna feel it all.”

“Wo. Do it.”

Already Dead / 371

“Super-sensitized all over. Not even shoes,” he hears himself saying,

“are in style this particular evening.”

“Oh. Oh. I like it. I mean—”

“I mean it’s like this marauder bonzai fuck .”

“It’s a party,” Tommy says. “This is all I’m wearing,” he says, picking up the Casull. “It’s so delightful.”

“It’s so delightful,” Tommy said. He spat out the open window and said, “What happens to your spit in a wind like that? Does it disintegrate?”

“I don’t know. Who knows?”

“My skin should feel freezing, but it don’t.”

“Past a certain boundary, freezing equals hot.”

“I like it.”

“It just lifts you up and sails you, don’t it? How we doing?”

“One set of lights about a million miles back there. Otherwise the world is ours. Unless we’re walking into a scene full of armed security.”

“If they had security they’d be stationed at the gate.” Falls killed the engine and they looked at the temple’s dome like a storm cloud blacking out the constellations.

“You got them cutters?” Tommy said.

“They’re electrician’s cutters, man. That’s number-one chain link.”

“We gotta scale it and cut the bob-wire.”

“No we don’t. We just climb that spiky gate.”

“One slip and you’re castrated.”

“Probably the best thing for me,” Falls said.

Any front entry to the building itself was impossible. These Buddhists had barred the big, medieval castle doors from within.

Thompson stooped and panted for breath, still tired from the climb over the gate, one hand on his knee and the other dangling his Casull.

“Right or left?” he asked.

“The least-resistance thing,” Falls said, walking a ramp off the side of the vast porch down to the ground and feeling along the wooden siding.

“We need a moon,” Thompson said.

“This is the place,” Falls said.

“Where?”

372 / Denis Johnson

“We’re standing on it. It’s a root cellar. Maybe it’s connected.”

“It don’t open.”

“Get off it.”

The door pried upward as they felt along it edge by edge and heaved.

“The question is, are there steps. And how deep is it. Other shit like that,” Tommy said, but Falls just lowered himself into the hole and dropped and slid backward and went down in blackness amid a multi-tude of dirty spherical things he guessed were potatoes.

“Bart, Bart,” Tommy called.

“I’m swimming in food.”

Thompson thumped down and stumbled against him and laughed in fear.

“Keep your weapon outta my face,” Falls said. “Keep your finger off the trigger.”

“It isn’t cocked.”

“Nevertheless,” Falls said.

“I don’t cock it till I know my target.”

“I found stairs,” Falls said.

“Look up — that’s the stairs back up. We could’ve walked down,” Thompson said.

They’d descended maybe eight feet below ground level into this bin.

“I’m measuring off with my hands about like…ten feet from wall to wall”—Thompson thumped and swore—“and now I’m on my ass again.”

“It keeps going,” Falls said.

Where would it go? — a sort of tunnel, completely dark, Falls feeling with one hand along the wooden wall and the left hand wavering before him. He didn’t even know if he had a body.

Tommy shuffling along behind him — brief rapid scraping gasps — he touched Falls’s spine with the flat of his palm.

Falls couldn’t help himself, and said: “Do you feel like we’re way over the top here?”

“Way over, yeah, I do, a long way.”

“Do you feel like cancelling out?”

“I’m scared shit if you are.”

This drove Falls two more steps into the thing.

Thompson followed, touching his back. “Why do you do that? You just get me to admit I’m scared so then you can fucking ignore me.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Already Dead / 373

He caught at Falls’s neck in the dark, caught at his shoulder, spun him around. “No, man. Don’t flatter. I gave up my insides. Now I want the same from you.”

Falls drew him close, groin to groin.

“Look, we been in this thing a long time,” Tommy said. “I mean it’s happening. It’s happening like you want it to.”

“Oh, now you’re gonna say you love me. Tommy loves Barty…Does Tommy love Barty?”

“That’s it.” Thompson pushed him aside and moved on despite his own blindness. “You get nothing from me now.” His gun struck against something in the dark. Falls came up close behind him and a fissure opened in the boundless black as Thompson pushed backward against him, pulling open a door.

They mounted a dozen wooden stairsteps and walked naked into a chamber almost like a public school gymnasium in its dimensions, its motionless atmosphere fogged with sweet incense. The light was meager but quite bright to their eyes. Small statues, many hundreds of them, overwhelmed the walls — icons, looking like gold. The quiet was vast, but seemed to fit itself around Falls’s head. Breathing it in gave him a hopeless feeling. When he moved, the smoke moved right through him.

He wanted to mention that he’d dematerialized, but he just couldn’t put a crack in this silence.

Thompson looked all around them at the colors — gold, blue, winking bits of red. The light came from thousands of candles burning next to little Buddhas in a vast honeycomb of cubbyholes. “This whole scene’s on fire and it’s making me feel cold.”

“Don’t whisper, man.”

“What.”

“It’s ridiculous. Don’t do it.”

Thompson cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m losing my authority.” Falls looked everywhere at this world, its horizons miraged with re-duplicated icons, and moved forward with the machinery of grief suddenly grinding inside him.

“What is it?” Thompson said.

“These things are wood. They’re just wood painted gold.”

“It’s a scam. Like religion in general.”

“There’s gold here somewhere.”

“Maybe it’s gold paint. Like real gold, gold leaf.”

“Don’t be a hole.”

374 / Denis Johnson

“Jesus,” Thompson said irritably, following him through a little door into a tiny room where a man sat meditating on a pillow with an army blanket around his shoulders. A youthful-looking guy with wisps of hair sticking out. Baby hair. His legs crossed in a knot.

He looked at them as if they were people he’d forgotten but was now forced to remember as Thompson put his gun hand on his hip and jutted his groin.