Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

“Here she comes.”

Mrs. Kenmore, or her legal equivalent, headed their way in a tall peaked witch’s cap. With her mask off she looked about Kenmore’s age, late thirties, and they’d probably been together a long time.

“She won’t jail me.”

Navarro didn’t think so either. He got out of the car and met her some yards off. “You can come to the station tomorrow if you want him charged.”

“Can’t you get him out of here?”

“I can send him home. But unless I have your word you’ll go through with pressing charges, I can’t keep him.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Sure, for the rest of your life. But for now? I’d say give it a break.”

“Well…I don’t think he needs to be locked up.”

“Tomorrow’s soon enough to change your mind.” Back in the car with the prisoner, Navarro told him his wife would come to the station tomorrow with a decision as to his short-term future.

“She’ll never jail me.”

“I can take you up to the end of the straightaway there, and let you go.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“But if you turn up here at any time later tonight, I will produce my weapon and empty it into you. Are we clear?” Kenmore’s eyes widened and his ears moved back and his scalp jumped. “Jesus,” he said. “I guess I better agree to your terms.”

“And you come to the station tomorrow at one P.M. sharp.”

“You bet. Whether you shoot me or not.”

Navarro drove along the flat of the empty vale. All the trailers of the former shantytown had been removed to make room for plans and schemes, for some faintly rumored or only imagined luxury resort.

Where the curves began, he put Kenmore on the road and 434 / Denis Johnson

watched as he moved off with a studied lack of bitterness, swiveling his wrists and working his hands, taking it on the heel and toe.

In a few minutes Navarro drove up near the water-treatment facility and turned the car around. He parked by the road at the head of the straightaway, upwind of the imperceptibly boiling green cess. Here he could turn on his dome light and discourage drunk driving among those who’d be heading home soon, just by the sobering sight of him.

And he could read.

He knew these to be the final three pages, because the one in blood had to be the very last, and the other two had been stuck to it. The second-to-the-last bore a single line in ink: I am dying

and the one before that only a small entry: I’m looking for the Lost Coast. Run up against the moment I can’t go into this new thing, I can’t pass the V’s of the valleys divulging bits of Pacific like the throats of silver girls, or this seafood joint with its amber windows and poised above a crimson neon martini a crimson neon fish of sorts. The clefts of the valleys. The decolletage of the valleys .

He thought he could make out the first words of the bloody entry, but the rest were completely illegible. The blood hadn’t behaved like ink, had worked a microscopic dispersion through the fibers and had averaged out into blots, mainly, with occasional stems, so that it looked as if for his last words Nelson Fairchild had composed a piece of musical notation, a song, a melody, an air.

Maybe he’d take it to a musician. Maybe it was, in fact, a bit of music.

But he wouldn’t take it anywhere. He really didn’t want to give it up, give it away. It was his. It spoke the language.

Navarro tried the page at varying distances from his face, seeking just one more word. If it wasn’t for what he held in his hands he’d be lost.

This creation is not my own. I owe the deepest thanks to the genius of Bill Knott, whose “Poeme Noire” provides the plot of this tale, and to his wonderful kindness in letting me elaborate on it as I’ve done.

The terrain where this story is enacted is not entirely as it exists on the maps. Landmarks have been moved and whole small regions created out of thin air. As for the area’s population, the portraits presented here are portraits of no one.

In some passages, the dialog is sprinkled with quotes from the text of A Course in Miracles in a way that distorts their intent. To anybody wanting a truer understanding of some of the notions touched on by the character Yvonne in her discourses, I recommend A Course in Miracles , the Text, Workbook, and Manual for Teachers, available from the Foundation for Inner Peace, P.O. Box 635, Tiburon, CA 94920.