Denis Johnson - The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

“Is there more than one?” His eyes were getting used to the dimness.

He had it in mind to locate a phone and tell Sands that Jerry Twinbrook was well known in Marshfield, a report he felt he’d promised to make quickly, but he got interested in the cocktail menu instead. “One margarita. Just one. Uno,” he told the waiter, who was elderly and dressed in a black uniform like a miniature cop. “Two,” Leanna said. “Dos,” the waiter said, enjoying himself.

“I have to watch out about how much I drink in this town,” English confessed to Leanna. “One of the cops on the late shift gave me a warning.”

“When was this?”

“Well, it was the car trouble I said I had. Actually, it was more of a small wreck. The guy said he wouldn’t give me a breath test because I wouldn’t pass, but he made a few promises about keeping his eye out for me in the future. No telling what shift he’s working now.”

She looked happy, and covered his hand with hers. “You’re kind of always in the wrong lane, aren’t you?”

“In this case,” he said, “that was exactly it.” He leaned closer. “Is it okay for me to tell you you have beautiful eyes?”

She laughed. “You think you’re so sexy.”

“Animal magnetism is all I have.”

“All you have,” she said, “is a black leather jacket.”

Because Leanna was so enthusiastic about it, they both ate chicken cacciatore. “You’re right, it’s real good,” English said. “But I believe they threw the ass end of this chicken in here.” He raised a piece on his fork to show her. “The Pope’s nose.”

“The Pope’s nose?”

“Yeah, the tail. That’s what they call it in Kansas, anyway.”

“That’s anti-Catholic.” She appeared serious.

“You know what I’d do if I was the Pope? Every time I ate chicken, I’d ask loudly for the Pope’s nose.”

“You’re not funny. You’re too perverse.”

“And then I’d eat it.”

They drank white wine and English felt tired. He had a sense of dead water all around him. “Why are you with me?” he asked her.

“I haven’t got anything better to do,” she said, and he saw that she was only being frank.

“And why are you with me?” she asked. In the candlelight her eyes seemed dark, sacred. Her face was soft and disappeared, when she leaned back out of the glow, into a blankness like that of the faces in Jerry Twinbrook’s paintings.

“It’s because of your face,” he said.

It seemed she’d heard it many times before. She let the subject die in a short silence. “I wanted to ask you something. I was wondering what you meant about being a knight of faith. Remember?”

A cold wind blew through the room but nothing moved. “I don’t know what it means.” He felt terrible. He needed something funny to say. “I just have the feeling I am one.”

“It’s from Kierkegaard, right?”

“That’s not where I got it. I heard a priest talk about it, I think. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Are you going to mop your face with your napkin now?”

“Yeah,” he said, and he did.

“I’ll tell you my secret, if you’ll tell me yours.”

“What’s yours?”

“Is it a deal?”

“Only if I think your secret is worth it.”

“Lenny, is it a deal? Whatever it’s worth.”

“Okay,” he said. “You first.”

“I’m tired of the gay life. I just keep getting hurt. That’s why I’m with you.”

“Is that it?”

“Ever since I saw you at Mass that day, I’ve known it was going to be you.”

“Because I was at church?” It shocked him that he could talk, because all the sensations he’d felt when he’d first had tea with her, lightheadedness, a great momentum, a vision that she was made of air, were coming over him again. “I’m not that religious.”

“I know. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen you at Mass.”

“Because I’m still recovering from it,” he said. “One shot lasts a long time with me. I’m serious.”

“I believe you.” For a minute she just watched his face. “So what’s your big secret? What is it that makes you so — closed up?”

“It’s just crazy,” he said. “A crazy feeling.”

She said nothing, but only held on to the stem of her wineglass, her left hand in her lap, and watched him.

“It’s this crazy feeling that I’m being called,” he said finally. “But I’m not listening.”

“Called to the priesthood — is that it?”

“I don’t know. I told you, I’m not listening.” He felt as if his heart would break now. “I’m running away.”

She said, “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“No,” he said.

“What do you think it is?”

“For all I know,” he said, “I could be the Second Coming.”

She didn’t receive it as lightly as he’d tried to send it. “But, Lenny,” she said with great tenderness, “don’t you see that’s crazy? It’s a delusion.”

“I told you it was. I said it was crazy. But I’m still running away, no matter what. Maybe the idea is just a fantasy, but the fear is for real.”

“But if it’s just some kind of delusion, then what’s there to be scared about?”

“I’m scared it’s not really a total delusion. It could be just a blown-up version of the truth. Like”—maybe he was making a fool of himself, but it was started now—“like a kid who thinks his mother’s calling him to come inside and be the man of the house, when really she just wants him to clean up his room or something like that. But she’s calling, that’s the thing, she’s calling.” He felt the world loosen around him. It was as if the small restaurant suddenly gave him all the space he needed.

Leanna seemed very moved by all this. She laughed, but her voice was hoarse. “Whoever’s calling you, don’t go in, okay? Stay out here with me for a while.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Definitely.”

There was a sweet shyness between them now, a moment that didn’t live through the little conversation with the waiter, the declining of dessert and the business of paying the check. English conceived that he hadn’t, from the start, ever been in charge of this romance, if that’s what it was, and he gave up. Waiting for the change and thinking nothing at all, he hit on the idea that the way to deal with this woman, with his time on this eerie peninsula, maybe with his whole life, was to stand back and look at it as he would a painting he didn’t understand and probably couldn’t appreciate. Climbing up from the dark underground into the decadent glitter of vending, he watched this shopping center as he might one of Jerry Twinbrook’s beaches, the arrested moment of it, and he thought he caught the somber heart of each bright color, the moons, so to speak, of which these colors were the suns, the softer actuality that Jerry Twinbrook had known about for a long time. He was wrenched by a thought: I’ve got to find that guy. It was a necessary thing.

Someone was calling him. “Somebody’s calling you,” Leanna said, catching him at the edge of the walk before he stepped out into the vast parking lot, where they didn’t need to go — the theater was just across the mall. “Lenny English!” It was Phil, his landlord’s cabdriver cousin, lounging against a black limousine-like taxi. “Where are you, in another world?”

“How are things?” English surfaced from his dreams. “You’re on the early shift tonight.”

“I’m on two shifts, man — it’s the prime of my life, time to move, time to make money.” Phil drew English close, his arm over English’s shoulders, and put his head down as if he were going to say something about their shoes. But he had something to say about Leanna, who waited on the walk and looked at the window of a store. “Lenny English,” Phil said. “There’s only one way I can tell you this: That woman there goes after girls. She don’t go after men. You hear what I’m saying?”