Denis Johnson - The Stars at Noon

“I believe I’ll sit by myself at the window.” I moved my bowl and spoon to a table across the room.

I didn't eat much. The air held that tar-and-brine combo that made you feel already out at sea, and sick of it. . Maybe this had been a resort once, but no more. Across the street was a very brief stretch of sand interrupted by blacktop boat-slips. Only two palm trees remained of the sunny era I'd anticipated entering here when the soldiers had said “resort,” two trees sort of on the order of pachyderm feet, mashed into the sand. .

I didn’t leave, and neither did he. In another twenty minutes the fog had gone and the sunlight was burning up the dirt street. There’d been no rain for two days, I could feel it coming over the horizon though no sign of it was visible. . The moment was suddenly narcotic, and although we were separated by half a room and the gulf of our pretenses, I think that fellow-feeling overcame each of us. Two Americans, two stupid Americans. Nobody will ever understand what that’s like.

He rested his arm on the bar, the other hand in his pocket, his legs stretched out comfortably. And, finally, said something, talking across the room: “You know what I think? College never ends. .”

I hated him for that, for starting in with his lies. .

“Look at it this way,” he said, getting up and coming over and joining me, “your travelling companion and I work for rival outfits. It’s all this college-boy stuff, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “Well, we’d like to fuck up their action. Basically, and it’s really this simple, I need a signature on a report. And it has to be your signature.”

“What are you sitting at my table for? Are you going to chase me all around the block? If you only knew how sick everybody gets looking at you, even knowing you exist. Don’t you know what an asshole you are?”

“Don’t you know what an asshole he is?” Now he leaned forward and took over the whole table. . “He didn’t just move things from one part of his desk to another part — he changed the future of two countries, do you see that? He turned over charts and documents and a whole economic future to an outlaw state.”

I couldn’t come back at him with anything but an empty, open mouth. The effect of this big talk was irresistible. The dream-like trouble chasing us took on force and a shape — charts, documents, the power of money.

“Whose side is your British friend on? In whose interest is he operating, or can you tell me in whose interest does he think he’s operating?”

The infinite hopelessness of it left me floating: “I believe he said in the interest of fairness.”

The pain that screwed up his face was genuine, I was convinced of that. “But the balances here, and the contests, are going according to loyalties to people and groups .”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.

I said, “What if the oil’s not there? Doesn’t that blur the edges a little?”

“I’m a reporter. Aren’t you a reporter? We make reports, don’t we? What they do back at the main desk is beyond us. What goes on under the earth, as far as oil deposits and whatnot, that’s all out of my hands.”

He leaned forward again. His expression was alert. A gust of wind blew a little dust and sea dampness through the doorway into the room; everything seemed to be waking up.

“But I’ll tell you this,” he said, “because I think the masks have fallen away, and you wouldn’t be talking to me at this moment if you didn’t think it was completely in your interest to be talking: Whatever the situation as regards oil, at some point things are going to come down very hard on this man. If you insist on staying connected with him right up to that point, then at the very least it’s going to hurt to feel that connection broken. Doesn’t that make sense? And that’s looking at it in the most positive light I possibly can. I'd be prepared for a bigger job coping on that day, frankly.”

“You’re so full of bullshit.” I was embarrassed to sound like a child.

“Look, we’re both in the business of reporting. Yesterday you were interested in me. Maybe you and I should pack in together after all.”

“Pack in. Pack in? Pack in?”

“Okay. Okay,” he said.

“You mean go with you? Are you threatening me with arrest?”

“You’re so far off the mark,” he said.

“Well what are you threatening me with, then?”

He rubbed his face. He looked at his watch. Perhaps he was wondering how much longer he had to go on being polite.

“Who would I be pulling for in this situation?” he asked. “Will you look around and tell me if you see any possible allies around here for me? Based on what I’ve been saying? I’m not threatening you. Everybody around here is threatening us. And especially you, because of your friend.”

“What’s wrong with my friend, really? What crime did he commit, really and truly?”

“I think somebody’s going to have to take him out.”

“What?”

“He’s so completely off the map. Nobody knows what to do with him.”

I was so stunned I couldn’t think. “You lied. That’s a threat,” I said. “You said you weren’t threatening,” I cried out stupidly.

“Remember where we are,” he said. “The connections down here are so sexy because down here this stuff really does happen. Isn’t that why we all came down here?”

“Oh Down Here. Down Here . . You said mistakes could be corrected. ”

I was weeping.

His attitude seemed to change completely. I didn’t know what it was. It was as if he’d finished his drink, but actually he didn’t have a drink. It was as if he were no longer thirsty.

“There,” he said. “That’s what I was talking about when I came up to you right here a few minutes ago.”

He watched me a minute. “Are you listening to me?” he said.

I nodded.

“You cross the border this afternoon. You go to Liberia, and you get a bus to Los Chiles.”

“Los Chiles? Where on earth is that?”

“It’s a few dozen miles northeast of Liberia, right on the San Juan river. Border town.”

“What do we want to do there?”

“Assuming everything’s gone off okay, that’s where you get paid.”

He didn’t understand anything — life! words! faces! moments!

He’d made me cry, he’d scared me, he’d beaten me at the game of conversation. But he hadn’t won . .

“There’s nothing to get paid for. I’m not signing anything.”

“You’ll sign when you get a halfway grown-up understanding of the goddamn situation. Which is going to be soon.”

“Go to hell.”

He got up from the table, and my first thought was that I’d driven him off with curses.

But actually he was rising, with a bright smile, to greet the Englishman: “I just got into town.”

“How remarkable to see you again. Especially here,” he said.

“I know, it’s weird, it’s great,” the American agreed, “I’m really glad. What are you guys doing? Should we pal around a little this afternoon? See the sights?”

The Englishman ignored all that. “The manager fellow is brewing me some tea,” he told me. “I'll be in the room, is that all right? We should be thinking about an early start.”

“Okay,” I said.

Maybe he saw that I’d been crying, because he asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

“We’ll talk again, okay?” the American said.

The Englishman looked at him, and then at me. By straining to cover up his anger, he made his face seem young and weak. “I don’t have anything to say to you,” he told the consultant.