Denis Johnson - The Stars at Noon

“I wasn't suggesting you did,” the American said as I stood up. “But maybe others do.”

I looked around for someone to bring me the check, but the three of us were alone in the place. The Englishman was already leaving, and I followed him feeling defensive and ashamed.

We went back to the room, where I. poured the tea into our single glass as the Englishman stood beside his suitcase opening and closing his umbrella with a succession of breezy whooshes.

“It rains quite a bit in Costa Rica, doesn’t it?”

“It rains a hell of a lot in Nicaragua, too, didn’t you notice?”

“I’m very glad,” he said, “to have an umbrella.”

But I could tell he wanted to know what we’d talked about. He was just too afraid, or too polite, to ask. I could tell he’d reached a point of tightly bound panic because he couldn’t trust anyone, least of all me.

But in a minute he started in: “Onward and upward,” he said. “I hope we have enough petrol to reach the border. I thought you said we had a half a tank, was it half a tank,” he said, “do we have enough gasoline? I’m afraid I really don’t care whether we have enough, by God I’ll walk as far as necessary to get out of here. I think we should try for the northern border,” he said suddenly, “I’m not sure about Costa Rica at all. . I don’t think we should fool around with the Costa Rican border, we’ve drawn too much notice. It may be we’ve — telegraphed our intentions. . What are you looking at? Isn’t it obvious? — we never should have come here. We’ve done everything wrong. But it’s not too late to change our plans. .

“What would you say,” he pestered me, “is there anything you can add to this? Anything at all you can add?”

He looked at me like a beggar, waiting for me to confess whatever I might have done.

But I didn’t know what I’d done. I honestly didn’t know. I thought I’d held out, given nothing away. . “Will you relax? We just talked about exchanging cordobas over the border.”

He wasn’t satisfied with that. But again good breeding checked him from interrogating me.

He sat down on his cot and seemed to be testing the tensile strength of his new umbrella, resting his hands on it like a cane.

“Maybe we should sneak around the checkpoints somehow,” I said.

“Sneak.”

“Is there something wrong with your hearing? I mean smuggle ourselves across the border.”

“No,” he said without a second’s reflection, “I wouldn't want to try anything like that.”

He of the weightless, invisible cojones!

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, “it can’t be that hard to cross illegally. The Contras are all the time wandering in and out of here, you know.” I was getting a little testy, granted; however, his blatantly spineless attitude was taxing my civility.

And apparently something was taxing his: “Will you please shut up? And let’s simply turn our minds to the legal options?”

“Oh do let’s.”

“We can — turn around, give ourselves up to the American Embassy or the British Consul.”

“Yes. Right. We can do the Embassy.”

“Or, as I say, we could go north to Honduras.”

“We could do Honduras.”

“And as one leftist nation to another we might cross more easily into El Salvador.”

“Yeah. Yeah. We could do El Sal. Only there's no common border with El Sal.”

He got up, trembling.

“You are a North American female prostitute-drifter with a press card,” he said, “which has been revoked. You drink like an Apache. You’ll end by killing us both. So much is obvious about you that you really ought to just,” but he ended stammering, “just — shut up.”

His face had turned white, and I thought the tears would flow.

But all I needed was some upper-crust lightweight giving me hallelujah about my circumstances. “Don’t forget, honey,” I said, “the night you found me you were looking for a whore.”

That got him marching around the room aimlessly. He seemed to cast back through the events comprising his life, and then his defeated face agreed that, yes, he had been looking for just that kind of person, and so he sat down and kept quiet for a change.

“Sorry.” I don’t know why I said it, I wasn’t sorry at all. .

“Look here now,” he said, “leave the money behind, will you? And I’ll be certain to redeem it when I can get some dollars, if you can’t afford to lose it — just, please, don't risk our plans.”

“I can make a decent exchange at the border. I won’t lose my ass.”

“I’ll give you a better price than he”—he reconsidered his terminology—“a better rate, whatever your arrangement—"

“What do you mean, whatever my arrangement? You were right there. You know the arrangement.”

“Oh, God, all this, having my tit caught in a wringer — my ass in a sling.” I couldn’t tell if he was sweating or spilling tears down his cheeks. Pretty soon we were laughing together. There’s nothing like hysteria, and thunder in the clouds, to convince you nothing matters.

“It’s just that he can’t be trusted. Of course you see that.”

“He can be trusted to sell us out,” I said.

“No. Nothing is certain, not even that.”

“Look, everybody sells everybody out down here. They can’t afford not to, it’s basic, that’s the situation. If you hang on to even one little tiny scruple it’ll be the death of you, I promise. This is Hell, it’s Hell, how many times do you have to be told?”

“This is apropos of nothing. Are you talking to me or to yourself? You seem to be suggesting that I be the one to throw somebody to the wolves, but I see nobody in the vicinity to be thrown. Do you?”

I was caught up in a cloud of rage . . I sensed cool sanity drifting just beneath me but I couldn’t reach it. “All I’m saying is be ready. Be ready to find out that this is Hell.”

“It isn’t Hell. This is all quite real.”

“If it wasn’t real, it wouldn’t be Hell.”

That seemed to get him thinking.

“You do have a vivid world view,” he said.

THE ENGLISHMAN didn’t like driving on the right. But he drove us to the border anyway. He needed to dominate something, if only a steering wheel.

He’d used up all his words for the time being. Even after we’d crept up the dirt streets and gotten past all of the stores and houses we’d seen last night and crossed the bridge out of town — it stood empty of sentries in the daylight — he kept quiet.

I watched the last of Nicaragua go by. We passed along a stretch of Panamerican Highway quite typical of the south, running a sparse gantlet of crippled vehicles — and here and there a dead dog stretched out beside the road, and wrecked, flip-flopping chickens, and your occasional truck-struck horse, still somewhat alive in the dirt, hindquarters jerking and the all-too-visible ribcage heaving with the desire to get back up and go on protractedly starving . .

We came into the tunnel of tall grasses we’d gone through last night. I wondered if the same soldiers would be at the crossing now . . Whereas I should have felt the terror searching between my ribs for my heart, what I actually remember experiencing was self-consciousness and embarrassment. Instead of a fluttery vertigo I felt a speechless irritation, a paralyzing disgust for every insect that killed itself on the window, a defeated feeling that I was through with sugar fields, a heavy, sleepy hatred for the Englishman that actually made me slur my words when I talked to him. . And then I wanted to make love with him, I wanted to taste his skin . . I realized that I hated my hands, and that my clothes wouldn’t stop touching me. .

Anger is fear. Lust is fear. Grief, excitement, weariness are fear — just feel down far enough, look hard enough.