Denis Johnson - Angels

Jamie could feel the muscles in her leg jerk, she wanted so badly to kick Miranda’s rear end and send her scooting under the wheels of, for instance, a truck. Clark Street at nine PM was a movie: five billion weirdos walking this way and that not looking at each other, and every third one had something for sale. Money-lickers; and black pimps dressed entirely in black, and a forest of red high heels. There were lots of lights — everyone had half a dozen shadows scurrying in different directions underneath them.

Paced to Jamie’s exhaustion, the scene moved in slow motion. A black youth in a knit cap, long coat and white tennis shoes bopped by, smiling at: her and then looking away and singing, “Time for us to go get high, hmmmmmmmm?”—and moving on when Jamie said nothing. Baby Ellen was awake in her mother’s arms, protesting even a moment’s consignment to her infant seat, and the little black balls in the midst of her eyes tracked the youth’s passage serenely and mechanically. For a second Jamie was struck with the peculiar notion that this scene of downtown Chicago was the projection of her daughter’s infant mind.

Jamie had her reasons for being here. She just couldn’t think what they were, at the moment. She had waved Bill Houston goodbye as he’d boarded his bus back to Chicago in a state of hopeless inebriation, suddenly convinced in his mind that something or other awaited him among these sorry strangers. Jamie, for her part, had still had possession of two tickets to Hershey, and she’d waited around a few days — first until a loan from her sister-in-law had arrived, and then longer, until it was nearly spent — and then she’d seen the uselessness of everything and had realized that she had a few words to say to Bill Houston. His departure had looked like the end of their involvement. But it was not the end. You got so you could feel these things.

Now she stood on Clark Street out of ideas. Miranda straddled the suitcase, riding it like a horse. There weren’t any hotel-type monstrosities in sight. Some of these theaters looked all right, and some of them looked like X-rated. The two or three restaurants she could see were closed. A bitter wind seemed to blow the light around among the buildings. None of these people they were among now looked at all legitimate.

“Ma-ma,” Miranda said, “Ma-ma, Ma-ma, Ma-ma”—just chanting, tired and confused. A man in a cheap and ridiculous red suit standing two yards away seemed to be taking an unhealthy interest in her as she bounced on the suitcase. “Come here, hon,” Jamie said, yanking her off it by the arm. The man kept looking at them. “You are sick,” she told him. The El train screeched around a curve in the tracks a half block away. Everything suddenly seemed submerged in deafness. “Shit,” Jamie said. “My eyeballs feel like boiling rocks.”

“What?” Miranda peered up at the shadow of her mother’s face. “Lemme see, Mama.”

The man in the red suit had approached. “Good evening.” Hands jammed in his pockets; collar turned up.

“I hate this part,” Jamie said. “I hate the part where the hilljack in the red suit says good evening.”

“I’m not a hilljack,” the man said. “I know everybody from here to about six blocks north of Wilson.”

“I lack the strength to talk to you,” Jamie said.

“Well, I just thought I could probably help you.” He gestured, palm up, toward Miranda, and the suitcase, and then the baby in Jamie’s arms, as if introducing her to her difficulty. “I drank two cups of coffee in the lounge there”—with the same hand, he now included the bus station behind them among her troubles—“and you were just kind of hanging around inside the door the whole time. Now you’re out side the door. I mean, are you waiting for somebody? What’s your story?” He had a thinly nervous quality of innocence — he seemed, all of a sudden, not too dangerous.

“I haven’t got a story,” Jamie said. “I’m on empty.”

“I really don’t care what you think of my suit,” the man said. “I don’t have to explain anything to anybody about my suit. I’m on Voke Rehab, is the thing. I have a disease. I don’t need to work or buy or sell. Do you know what?” he said to Miranda. “All I ever do is go in one joint after another, and talk to the people about anything — whatever they want to talk about. That’s how I know everybody from here to Wilson and beyond. So I wanted to help your mother, but she just thinks I’m a hilljack in a red suit or something. Is this one a boy or a girl?” he asked Jamie, peering closely into the shadowed face of Baby Ellen, wrapped in a blanket and nestled in her mother’s arms. “Got black eyes.”

“Girl,” Jamie said.

“If you’re waiting for somebody,” the man said, “they’re sure taking their time, whoever they are. Are you waiting for somebody,”

“I’m looking for somebody. Not waiting. Looking.”

“Who are you looking for? Jeez, it’s cold. Let’s get out of this winter.” He pushed backward through the glass doors of the station, dragging the suitcase with both hands, drawing Jamie and Miranda after him as if by the influence of a galactic wind. “Who are you looking for?” In the brighter illumination, his suit was revealed to be absolutely, absolutely red. “Who you seeking? Your boyfriend.”

“Bill Houston!” Miranda said.

“Bill Houston? I know him.”

“Like I know the Pope,” Jamie said. “You know my mother too?”

“Kind of a big guy, right? Maybe not exactly big, I mean, not huge. Got a tattoo on this arm? Or maybe this arm, I don’t remember.”

Regarding him now with a riveted awareness, Jamie saw that he wore his blond hair all the same length, brandished in all possible directions from his scalp like an electric flame. His suit was the little Elvis Costello kind. He was just trying to be on-the-minute. He was not an unfamiliar specimen.

“Pretty weird that I know him, huh? I told you, I know everyone.” He wandered, with an aura of the victor, over to the row of nickel vending machines against the wall of tiny yellowed tiles. Casually he perused the offerings there: oversized balls of chewing gum, toy finger jewelry and idiot spiders in their individual clear plastic capsules.

“Get me a gum, okay?” Miranda said, trailing after him. “Can I have a piece of gum? It’s only one nickel.”

“Hey,” Jamie said, walking over after some hesitation. “You’re just power-tripping me here, and I don’t like it.”

“What do you mean? I said I could help you and you said I couldn’t. But I really can. That must tell you something. Right?”

Holding the baby in her left arm, Jamie put the fingers of her right hand to her eyes and pushed firmly, obliterating the bus station momentarily and filling her head with exploding geometrical shapes. “Okay, listen,” she said. “Tell me about the Bill Houston you know. Sounds kind of like the one I know. I’d appreciate it. Okay?”

“I just told you about him,” the man said, turning the dial on a machine and grabbing the gum that dropped into its metal trough. “I see him uptown all the time. He’s not a good character for you to be hanging around with. He charms the women, but when he drinks, he goes into a whole different personality.” He handed the gum to Miranda and fed the machine another coin. “That the one?”

“That’s him! Shit, I don’t believe this. Hey,” she said to Baby Ellen, who was unconscious, “he knows your Uncle Bill.”

“I couldn’t tell you where he is, though.”

“Well, where would you guess?”

“Might be in Rheba’s. Might be anywhere uptown. Might be over into like the hippy area. He wanders all over. That’s the kind of guy he is.”