Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

You never tell no one, don’t you know nothing? You never tell no one—

Frankheimer rose up, covered his exquisite body with a ragged robe of brown cloth, headed toward the dining room, shutting 248 / Denis Johnson

behind him the door to the study and closing the robe’s folds over the arc of his sesquipedalian dick. Now they were linked, Fairchild and this giant, Melissa the author of this union and in some sense its off-spring. Now in this woman they were mixed. Fairchild had known him as a plumbing contractor, the kind you’re sorry you hired, who sometimes had to be rousted out of this very house, where he sat surrounded by his weird books and theories, the kyrie eleison on his stereo, the cocaine and the channeling, the people inside his walls. Now they were married.

— I’m convinced of it, everybody’s dead inside. Jerking, empty carcasses. Their souls have gone out like lights.

Fairchild knocked on the door. He watched through the window as Frankheimer went about lighting his fire. He knocked again. Drew back a foot to kick at the door and then his guts subsided and he tapped on the window. Frankheimer must have made him out, if vaguely, beyond the glass. He raised one finger and crossed to the door and opened it.

“Well. Here’s somebody I don’t owe money to.”

“Can I come in?”

“That might be interesting. Sure.”

He left Fairchild to shut the door after himself and reached to pull the cord at the window and shut the drapes. Now it was nearly dark in here. Frankheimer perched on the stone lip of the fireplace and picked up a hurricane lamp and occupied himself with the business of getting them some light.

“A little early for curtains,” Fairchild said—“or a little late,” and sat some feet away in an easy chair with his hands in his lap.

Without having to stand up to accomplish this, Frankheimer set the lantern on the mantel. The living room wasn’t in process at all. It had served as ground for some manner of apocalyptic visitation. “Yeah.

PG&E resents me. The power’s off. I haven’t been functioning.”

“But didn’t I just hear the TV? Among other things?”

“It’s been off for two minutes. They don’t turn you off till you’re in the middle of a program.”

“Not that you were watching.”

From the study, no sound came. He might have confronted her then and there. But he had no curiosity about how she’d act.

Frankheimer said, “This is fun!”

Already Dead / 249

He regarded Fairchild, smiling, and moved away from the fire, as it was quite hot now.

A curious trick of Fairchild’s mind suddenly rendered the fireplace irrelevant, and he witnessed a man seated next to some burning wood.

The man’s eyebrows were arched in a fixed expression of curiosity, and when he leaned back into the shadows the sockets filled with darkness, making him look masked, giving his features the aloof inquisitiveness of a raccoon’s.

“Is your father living?” Fairchild felt moved to ask him.

The giant reached up with thumb and forefinger and removed from his mouth two widely spaced artificial teeth wired to a plastic upper plate. He replaced them and shut his lips around them. “My father’s alive. He’s a Southern Californian. I owe him money.”

“My father’s dead. Three days ago I attended his funeral.”

“Funeral for a snake.”

“For Christ’s sake, you’re talking about my father.”

“He was a snake before he was your father.”

“I’ll tell you something else.”

“Will you.”

“Billy blew his own head off. I just saw him with his brains coming out the back. Sitting at his own table. And I don’t understand it.” The sobs came up now. “I can tell you that much for goddamn sure.” Frankheimer scowled and coughed, but didn’t speak. He used a sliver of redwood to drag something from the fire’s edge. A cigarette butt. He skewered it and put its end into a flame.

“I want to find that friend of yours. And I know goddamn well he’s your friend or at least well known to you, so just fuck any attempt to fucking mislead me, just fuck that.”

“Okay. Consider it fucked.”

“Carl Van Ness. Where is he.”

“Unknown.”

“Give him up. He’s dead sooner or later.”

“Sooner’s fine with me.”

“You think I’m that gullible.” Fairchild raised his voice. “Hi, Melissa!” He stared at Frankheimer. “I know she’s there.”

“She won’t come out.”

“I know that too.”

Frank brought his cigarette butt to his lips, puffed up a glow. “Did Billy really kill himself?”

250 / Denis Johnson

“Billy. He really really did.”

“You saw him.”

“All messed up and completely dead, I mean it.”

“Shot?”

“Yes.”

“Did they say it was suicide?”

“They? The authorities? The authorities who authorize nothing? They don’t even know he’s dead.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him who pulled the trigger.”

“Maybe it was Carl Van Ness.”

“If that’s what you really think, don’t worry. I don’t care, pal, I’d roll over on him in a heartbeat, but I don’t know his whereabouts.”

“Is Van capable of that in your opinion?”

“Oh yeah. He’ll end up at Quentin. In the gas chamber.”

“Yeah?”

“No question. He’s all twisted up. He’ll see. Van worked this strange trick on himself a long ways back. I’ll tell you how to understand it.

He’s not psycho, not warped, wasn’t brought up bad, no. He’s not corrupted by this or that, like a politician, or a priest. But it’s like this. Did you ever get a thing going with yourself where, let me make up an example, you start to feel that if you tie the left shoe first, something bad’s gonna happen, so you tie the right shoe first? Then you’re about to catch the doorknob with your right hand, but no, that’s gonna fuck things up, so you have to”—he made a motion—“gotta use the left hand. Gotta pay with this dollar, leave this other dollar alone. Can’t scratch my head till I count to five. Stuff like that all day long?”

“Some days. Many days. Quite often.”

“So what do you do to keep from turning into one big neurotic knot?”

“Me? I resist.”

“Exactly, man. You say fuck it. You override the impulse as a general thing. That’s where Van is at, right there , but on another level, much further on down. He’s turned that inside out. It’s genius. He overrides any override , see boy? He actualizes every impulse. Years ago he started this — I knew him — we were comrades — I’m privy to this. Man. He’s made himself into a knife. Just cuts right on through. Do it, don’t think twice. That’s his idea of freedom.”

“You’re absolutely right. I recognize him there. You’re right.” Already Dead / 251

“I don’t admire it. Just on paper. No tragedies on paper. But life ain’t paper.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yeah. He’s not a crook — he’s a demon. Transformed from the flesh.”

“He’s beyond good and evil.”

“Right, how many’s that — four words. He read four words of Nietzsche and ran out and built a life.” Frankheimer laughed now. “I was the one who made the mistake of introducing him to Nietzsche.”

“Nietzsche! I shit on Nietzsche. Have you ever tried to spell Nietzsche? Good luck!”

The door to the study opened. Melissa came out, looking at neither man, and sat by the fire staring into it. Fairchild leaned forward. He held out his hands for her to see. “I have been inauthentic. This isn’t me.”

She looked up at the ceiling and sang out, “Right now, it’s impossible!”

Fairchild wept. “Nothing can hide it from me now: I loved my father.