Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

caught at his hand, and released it as he started moving after her. In the living room he sat down quickly on the hassock by the stove and rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, staring at the incomprehensible designs in the weaving of a throw rug. His blood flushed against his skin, as if it might burst out. The sensation ebbed away, and he realized he was breathing in rapid gasps and brought it under control. He was aware that she stood by the window, that she lowered the blinds, that she turned and sat across from him in the chair.

He began to feel almost normal except for his eyes, which were teary and molten. “What are you going to say?” he whispered because he couldn’t stand waiting any longer for her voice.

“Did you get a hot rush. Did your skin flush.” He tried to nod.

“That’s only vitamin B-twelve. It passes. Is it past?”

“You gonna scrape off my sweat now?”

“You’re okay,” she said.

He nodded. “This was a mistake,” he said.

She took his hands. “It’s not a mistake. You and this woman have business.”

“What woman?”

“The woman Yvonne.”

“But you.”

“I’m Randall MacNammara. You remember.”

“I remember.” His eyes were feeling better. Except for a slight distancing of events, he’d come around. The little lethargy didn’t seem anything worth fighting. He might have drunk a strong martini.

“John, every moment of life has a lesson to teach. But most of us would rather just daydream our way past them.”

“Ah, yeah. Potions.” He sighed. “Witches and demons. I’ve put the cuffs on a few. I’m not interested in those lessons.”

“This isn’t school. It’s life. What life teaches us is responsibility.” I’m all for that, he thought, but didn’t bother saying it. He only said,

“Snafu and tofu,” and heard himself or remembered himself laughing.

“Sooner or later we take responsibility,” she says, “for having created our world.” Certainly, the demons were in his head. Gumdrops in a dream were not gumdrops, but a dream. But as long as you don’t wake, they’re candy. You can eat them. If they’re poison they kill you. Then you wake, still alive. But in the dream you’re dead.

352 / Denis Johnson

“I had a purpose here,” he reminded them both, or all three of them.

“What was your purpose?”

“I’m looking for Nelson Fairchild.”

“He’s dead.”

“I…Why do you say that?”

“He died this morning.”

“Uh,” Navarro said. He looked around, but at nothing. “Was this on the news?”

“You’re one of the few on earth who know.”

“Well, but…where’s the body?”

“That’s irrelevant. The question is, where is his soul?”

“Okay…Hey, would there be any chance of — talking to him?”

“Not at the moment. Down the line there certainly would.”

“Wow. Reserving the right to call Bullshit — how did he die?”

“I’m not in possession of that information, but it seems he was probably murdered. For some lifetimes now he’s been caught in a drama that keeps turning out that way, I’m afraid. But it’s over now. He’s free.”

She reaches her hand to his jaw and traces the line with her fingertip.

Her own lips tremble as she breathes through her open mouth. He was hard. But the flesh of it felt tired, or cold. As did his lips and fingers.

“Do you like her?”

“Who?”

“Yvonne. The woman.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Especially because you like danger, and trouble, and getting off the track. And that’s why she likes you too. Because you enjoy defending yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the kind of responsibility you believe in.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“But there’s someone who wants to talk to you if only you’ll put aside your defenses. Your moves, your programs, your John Navarro act. It’s all out there waiting to resume, but none of it’s here, in this house. Your certainties, your stock responses. It’s like parking your car by the road someplace and just getting out of it. It’s there, it’s yours, but you shut the door and walk away. You come down the

Already Dead / 353

path to this house. The woman opens the door. You come inside, you come in alone, carrying nothing, you shut the door behind you. You’ve come here alone, you’re alone in here with the woman.

“Come in.” It was Yvonne again. “Come here.” He thought he was in, he thought he was here, but she brings him slowly in.

“You are the holy Son of God himself. Say it.” Turning the light down from someplace, narrowing the light, blacking things down till there’s just the two of them.

“You are the holy Son of God himself.”

She tuned them in, the two of them, until they were very sharp and nothing else was.

“I am the holy Son of God himself.”

She let out a long breath and took in a long breath. A great warmth came off her, an easy welcoming sensual joy. Then she looked pained, her face swimming at him and a series of bad thoughts working on her loveliness. She covered her eyes with her hand and said, “ Oh ?” and it broke him like the song of an old love. She slumped back in her chair and her hand dropped away.

He remembered now. “‘Jeremiah was a bullfrog.’” He spoke the words. He couldn’t sing.

“I am Miran.”

“And who is Miran?”

“There are deeper levels, or higher levels if you prefer. Or lower, if you like it like that.”

“You’re getting us into a different darker Babylon-type thing. I can feel it. I don’t feel good,” he said. In fact a prickly nausea overwhelmed him right along the blood in his veins.

“You’ve never felt good. Your suffering protects you. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free.” She didn’t appear to be looking at him, or anywhere else. But she rolled her shoulders slightly and seemed aware of him, electrically aware.

“Use her body.”

With both hands delicately she raised her hem above her thighs. Beneath her shift she went naked.

“Feel between her legs.”

It was like putting his hand into molten iron and finding it only pleasant.

354 / Denis Johnson

“Isn’t she wet? Take her.”

Darkness all around them and particularly behind her almost like a light that put her in a gray silhouette.

“What are you?”

“I am Miran.”

“Are you male or female?”

“Both. Neither. Both…Take her.”

He couldn’t see if her mouth was moving.

“Take her. Anything. She’s ours.”

He freed his fingers from the slick locks of auburn hair between her thighs. He took her by her forearm’s flesh and then he was on his knees and pulling her forward.

“Throw her on the floor.”

He’s on top. He can almost see her eyes.

“Tear her up.”

He was inside her but he was numb to any pleasure. He wrestled the shift up, covering her head, and raised himself stiff-armed and looked down at this white body in a light that was suddenly falling all over him. It was hotter than physical pleasure, more shivery, more melting.

He raised his vision to where the walls had fallen away to reveal a sort of moving picture, a creature with a gargoyle’s face, but it was her face, too — an angel, a cruel and glorified monster with Yvonne’s iron-colored eyes, looking off, and a mist accompanying her. Great white powerful wings, but scaled, not feathery. Looking off, communicating with someone her satisfaction, the righteous, glutted quality of her content-ment. Sharing it with someone he didn’t want to see.

You want to, Miran said, you want to, it’s hers, make it yours, take it in your hands. He dragged her clothing from her face. Put his fingers around her throat. Touched his thumbs together beneath the larynx and felt it buzz. A little harder, put her out, put her out. He pushed his thumbs against the beat. The lovely face began to fatten and suffuse with the colors of plums and the shut eyes slanted and looked like a happy baby’s, who cooed and wheezed and gurgled. His own life filled him and spilled out of his pores and ears and nostrils, tore through the top of his head. It lit up the air, unbearably bright, burned rapidly all around him and went out. Only the glow of candles now, and it seemed veiled, remembered. He loosened his hands on her throat, and instantly the face blanched and almost disap-Already Dead / 355