Denis Johnson - The Stars at Noon

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said. “Russians.” The two of them sat before the counter of a soda, flanked by distinterested patrons, and mopped their faces and looked a million miles toward home.

“Officers,” the Englishman said.

“Russian officers,” I repeated. The sight of them absolutely disoriented and frightened me.

“Have you never seen a Russian person before?”

In my homeland, I might have told him, we're trained to rank the presence of uniformed Russians with the coming of the Kingdom. “They’re not supposed to be real,” I said.

“And yet there they are,” he said. “Helping, I could very easily add. Meanwhile, the representatives of your government are somewhere far off, assisting the Contras.”

“Am I supposed to defend the stupid CIA now?” I said, driving on. “Okay, I’m Hitler’s daughter just by virtue of my passport. And you can feel just as smug as you want to, because you’ve struggled so hard to get yourself born a fucking Englishman.”

“Thankfully,” he said, “we’ve come to the waterfront and we can change the subject.”

“If the CIA hadn’t intervened in World War Two, you probably never would have been born.”

“A little imprecise on dates and things,” he said, “but I understand your point.”

The hotel we were looking for was right on the bay, which was full of commerce and smelled like machinery. Because of the sight of Russians, maybe, I felt that everything on the blurry waters was secret and military — a big ship moving like a mystery across the view, and down to the south a huge docking area where it appeared a lot of construction was going on, lit with a fuzzy orange glow in the fog.

I felt how wonderful it would be to get out of here.

Although its sign had fallen down and been carted away somewhere, the hotel still showed the world a presentable face. The entrance gave onto a large barroom with an immensely high ceiling and bottles, many of them empty and plainly just for looks, behind the bar on shelves going up to the roof.

But the rest of the building, the part we were expected to sleep in, was like someone’s basement; the floors were dirt, there were cobwebs. . The walls were rough and armed with splinters, and actually these walls were nothing more than six-foot-high dividers serving to break up what was obviously, I realized, a barn into irregularly shaped stalls for humans. There was one electric light in a central spot way up in the rafters.

The owner wouldn’t look at us. He was a youngish man — he’d travelled, probably, and knew he was bedding us down in a filthy swamp.

“Ah me. Oh boy,” the Englishman said.

I felt sorrier for him than for myself.

“We’ll be in Playas del Coco this time tomorrow. At a real resort,” I promised.

In our stall were two cots covered by straw-filled mattresses. The owner lay clean sheets across the foot of the bed and disappeared.

Naturally we were the only patrons. Those with any sense slept in the street at a considerable savings and found equal comfort. But I exaggerate — the place had a freshwater shower in the smallest of the stalls surrounding us. I undressed while the Englishman went to stand under it, and then I stood under it with my eyes closed so as not to know about the bugs.

“Things are looking much, much brighter,” he said when I got back to our part of the barn. “I have a pot of tea.” He was just finishing a cup — actually it was not a cup, it was a glass. “I’ve got but the one cup,” he said, and finishing it, he poured me some.

“And something else almost as wonderful,” he said. He struck a ridiculous fencer’s attitude: “I’ve bought an umbrella.”

While I drank my tea, he commenced to reorganize his luggage.

In his own way he’s a beautiful human, perhaps he’s a hallucination, he’s no easier to credit, in this obscene heat and dust, than a frail white snowflake. We’re trying to outrun the Devil and everybody else, but for him it’s that cozy minute before a journey when the tea tastes fine and the traveller isn’t perturbed by the certain knowledge that all attempts at organization will fail. He’s got his shirts right here, over there his trousers, got his little underthings all arranged, a pocket for the documents; he congratulates himself, silently but perceptibly, for his foresight —two notebooks, an umbrella — and you can see he feels no trepidation whatever at a moment when all others would, as I happen to, be carrying a cold weight in their hearts.

THERE WEREN’T any windows so it was hard to tell, exactly; but I judged it to be only a little past dawn when something woke me. Something, a certainty, a conviction . .

“It’s time for us to get out of here,” I said, poking the Englishman over and over in his throat.

He rolled away, then turned over on his back and looked up at the ceiling without understanding it. “I was sleeping,” he said.

“I’m sorry, but we’d better get out of here, I just know it.”

“Why did you wake me?” he said as if he hadn’t heard me.

“It’s daylight. We’ve got to get a move on.”

He turned toward me, lying on his arm, and saw me finally. “Where would we go? The border won’t be open till — eight, did they say?”

“No, seven. We could sit in the car till they open it up.”

“I can’t think of anything more nerve-wracking. Do you forget I’m a hunted man?”

“I’m serious.”

“Isn’t this just how you felt the night before last?”

“This time I’m not kidding.”

I started putting things in my purse. I was upset to say the least, grabbing useless things, a soiled Kleenex, an empty matchbox. “I’m leaving. And I’m taking the car.”

“Don’t be like this,” he said.

“The best I can do for you is meet you later, at the bridge, where we let those soldiers off.”

“Please.”

“I’ll meet you on the other side of the bridge.”

“I’m staying with you,” he said in absolute fear.

It was awful. He thought I'd abandon him. He didn’t trust me, he had to guess, and second-guess, and guess again . .

“Okay. Okay.” I lay down on my cot, facing him.

In a few minutes I saw he was asleep again and I left. But I didn’t get very far — he had the car keys in his pocket.

It was windy and grey outside. The owner was sweeping the wooden walk out front. There were several ships out on the harbor but none of them was taking me anywhere.

I asked the owner about breakfast.

They actually had my favorite, sopa negra. A poached egg floating in it justified my calling it breakfast. I ate at the bar.

It wasn’t really a bar, it was a counter faced by wooden chairs.

There was no minor back of it — just the shelves of bottles — or I’d have seen our redheaded American from Rivas come in behind me. As it was, he just turned up in the chair next to mine.

“You queer,” I said by way of a greeting. To see him there absolutely ruined me. Now it was clear we were in a lot of trouble.

“I thought you’d be out of the country by now,” he said.

“I’m not turning anybody in.”

“I thought we’d made some sort of connection. I thought you understood. . Okay, I was overly subtle. Let me be a little more direct. I’m asking you to help me with my report. Your British friend interests me, I’d like to include some background on him.”

“Your report is all about him.”

“More or less, yeah, you could say that. He gets a lot of ink, your friend does, because he’s done a minor something that upsets the balance more knowledgeable people are trying to maintain from day to day down here, moment to moment, even — people who know more, people who care more than he does.”