Denis Johnson - The Stars at Noon

“Oh, my God,” he said. “It didn’t register when you first mentioned it.”

“Well, is it registering now?”

Who was this person? Had he been assigned by his head office to lose himself in the labyrinth of my arrangements, and land at my door starving?

“All right. I’m tired and I’ve got to rest,” I told him. “Fend for yourself.”

I lay down on the bed. Was there any air at all in this horrible room? It was the worst time of day to be indoors — or outdoors, if it came to that; it was the worst time of day. Even before he was done bothering me with his next question, I was asleep . .

And woke I didn’t know how much later. .

He was sitting on the floor, resting his shoulders against the bed and paging through La Biblia, one of my very few books. “They say all the answers are in there, if you can decipher that tiny print.” I felt lazy and serene.

“All unintelligible to you, is it?” he said.

“No. It’s just that the print's too small and too blurry.”

“Try these.” He handed me his glasses over his shoulder, and I put them on.

Everything became elongated, and somehow both two-and three-dimensional. Somewhat like the view through pay-binoculars — but how much sharper, how extra-crisp! I looked over his shoulder at the print. “God, these work!”

“You must need glasses, I’d imagine.”

“I can read all right,”

“Maybe you’re nearsighted.”

“No, I see fine if I hold the book up close.”

“Well, that’s what it means to be nearsighted.”

I put the book away.

“Is your Spanish good?” he asked.

“I can read newspapers. The Bible’s a little beyond me.”

“Then why do you keep it right here by the bed?”

“To read. I do read it, it’s all that’s left — it’s the only thing that hasn’t been torn up for toilet paper. I just don't read it very well, is all.”

“The painted lady with the Bible in a foreign tongue, the undecipherable Bible. Something poetic in that, hey?”

“I’ve got two English books, too. American. Poems, as a matter of fact.”

As soon as I got up to rifle my suitcase for the rest of my library, I felt the sweat travelling my spine. Wouldn't the day’s rain ever fall? “I know a poem that's written just for fugitives like you on a hot day like this.” I handed him the book open to the place.

“Oh do you,” he said.

I'd forgotten what the poem was about but I knew it ended by saying, “It is Sunday.”

It is Sunday forever and begins to snow.

I am going into the snow

as I have wanted to do for years.

“It fits, huh?”

He tensed, as if memorizing these lines, or maybe himself. “Yes. You might say that.”

“James L. Whatever. A true denizen of Hell.”

“Lives in Hell, does he then?” I could see all this talk was eating at his moorings. He looked at the cover. “White. James L. White.”

“A former inhabitant, actually. Poets who live in Hell go to Heaven when they die.”

“An interesting mythology begins to emerge. .”

He lay down beside me on the bed.

In a minute or two his eyes fell closed and consciousness began bubbling up out through the lids . . If you want to sleep as certainly as if you’d overdosed, it’s simple, lay yourself down in a soft place under one of these baking roofs. Just as you think you’ll expire of the sweat, you lose touch with all the world’s unkindness . . In a while, who knows how long, we opened our eyes and found each other. It was too hot to make love, but we were awake now and there was nothing else to do . . He didn’t understand. He was looking at me warily. “We’ll bring the price down,” I said. He said: “I wouldn’t want you to cheapen yourself,” and I said, “Well, you know what they say — there’s no such thing as a hundred-dollar whore; there are only twenty-dollar whores and hundred-dollar customers.” “No,” he said, “I hadn’t heard that one.” We were kissing all through this. We were dying of thirst, we were drinking each other. I was so aroused I felt my controls giving way. I put him inside of me.

Later, in the middle of it, because it felt momentarily true, I told him, “You’re the best I ever had . .”

Then we just lay beside each other. It would take us decades to cool off. His pale skin was blotched red, as if making love, for him, was unhealthy and dangerous. “And was there something of a discount then,” he said. It was obvious he felt some childish, also in my opinion boorish, excitement over having dredged for himself one small free lunch in all this jungle. And of course he was looking better and better to me: the blood had raged into my eyes, I couldn’t see straight. I'd liked him from the first minute, it seemed, but until just now I hadn’t liked his looks. .

He said, “What did you do Stateside, do you mind my asking.”

“Oh well, you know. A little of this and a little of that.”

“And mostly a little of this, I suppose.”

“No! Well, one semester I picked up some extra money, in college. Money,” I said, “with which to visit the museums.”

“You’re beautiful. Beautiful.”

I laughed, covering my bad teeth.

We fell asleep again.

I WOKE up. I was alone. I pulled on my skirt and blouse and stuck my head out the door.

The Englishman was sitting at the desk in the lobby, and he was in a state. “I’ve been trying to phone the airline for half an hour. It’s maddening — the bloody phone’s an instrument of torture, nothing more. It goes on ringing, it's unbelievable — is anybody in today at all?”

“The phone’s a joke. So why aren't you laughing? Everybody knows the phone’s a joke.”

“I’ll have to go right down to British Airways and see them in person.”

“And tomorrow you’re going to have to go right back again,” I warned him. “You have to go everywhere twice before anything happens.”

He sat back in the Señora’s swivel chair and looked at the lobby. The sun was falling through the door, and a yellow fog of dust moved in the light. The Señora was sitting on the divan next to the hi-fi with her feet flat on the floor and her knees apart and her eyes closed, fanning herself with her newspaper in her sleep. “The airlines,” the Brit said, “are computerized.”

“Kind of like the telephones,” I suggested.

“I did get through to the desk at the hotel. They’re clear enough that I’m no longer registered there.”

“And?”

“And beyond that we don’t seem to communicate.”

I took the phone from him and dialed the InterContinental.

“I certainly haven’t checked out of there myself — are you ringing them, I hope.”

I got a desk clerk on the line and she told me the same thing again. “She says you’ve checked out.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“Were you there when he left?” I asked the clerk.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Please, may I. .?”

I gave him the receiver.

“I haven’t checked out of anywhere,” he said. “Excuse me — I am he, you see. I beg your pardon? Un momenta — Now,” he told me, covering the receiver with his hand, “she's speaking in Spanish and I can’t understand.”

“They always do that. It means she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

He handed me back the phone and I said, “Were you at the desk when he checked out of the hotel?”

“The Watts Oil travel representative checked out for him and removed his baggage.”

“Somebody took your luggage,” I told him. And I told the clerk, “Very bad. He’s with me now. He wanted to stay.”

“He must contact his companions at Watts Oil right away.”