Denis Johnson - Angels

“Blood on the mirror,” Dwight repeated.

“I used to play cards with a couple dopers on the Reservation up by Tacoma,” Bill Houston told his brother. “They were always spraying shit on the wall like that when they were done shooting up. You think I don’t know what that blood is?” He appealed to Dwight: “Didn’t even try to hide it,” he said

Burris shrugged, examining his boots and behaving as if there were something on one of his boots that needed to be scraped away.

“I ought to jerk your fucking head off for you,” Bill Houston said. He was on the brink of tears.

“We’ll discuss this in a minute. I’ve got to get these out of the public eye,” Dwight said, and moved to carry the duffel bag into the bathroom. “Bring the flowers,” he told James over his shoulder. “Burris, stay with the car.”

When Bill and James had joined him inside, James holding the bouquet of flowers, Dwight said, “I think we should just proceed as planned.” He knelt on the floor and took the machine pistol from the duffel bag along with two boxes of rounds. “If he’s too high to function, we can improvise.”

James had nothing to say. He looked deep into the mirror stained with grease and a string of minute bloody flecks; his expression, as he greeted his own face, like that of someone suddenly released.

“Improvise?” Bill Houston said. “Jesus Christ, improvise?” He accepted the sawed-off shotgun from Dwight, and then a box of one dozen shells. He looked about them at the walls and floor of the obliterated john, but couldn’t find anything to point to that would explain why he felt it necessary to abort their plans. “Hey,” he said to James finally. “Unwrap them daisies, how about.” He broke open his weapon and began inserting shells. It was a pump-action Remington, and it made him feel happy in spite of himself.

“You never can tell. He just might function with a little more finesse.” Dwight opened his garish tropical shirt and slipped the machine pistol into a holster rigged with a cowboy belt and black electrician’s tape that girded his chest, the pistol resting along his rib cage under his left arm. He helped Bill Houston unwrap and re-wrap the flowers, the sawed-off Remington now among them. James loaded both revolvers — a nine-millimeter Ruger of stainless steel and his own long-barrelled Colt — and replaced them in the duffel bag along with the boxes of ammunition.

They all three stood up straight and looked at one another — Bill Houston clutching the lethal bouquet, James with the duffel bag, Dwight holding his arm close alongside like the victim of a stroke — with something akin to love, a kind of immense approval, because now they were in one another’s hands.

“I’m getting excellent vibes here,” Dwight said. “Obviously no one wants to scrap this thing. Let’s just take it along the projected route. If Burris fucks up, we’ll shut down and do it all over again tomorrow.”

Neither brother dissented. The time was now, it was obvious.

Burris had another shrug for them when the three got into the car and nobody said anything except, “Drive on.” He knew they sensed his incompetence. “Where’s my piece?” he said.

“In the bag here. You can keep my little monster when we go into it,” James told him. “I’m taking the Ruger.” As he said these things he looked out of the window, and spoke casually.

Burris followed Dwight’s orders carefully, turning west only when directed, north only when directed, taking it one block at a time. He wanted them to know that he was competent: that half a bag — not a lethal dose, by any means — was just about right here, focusing his attention and rounding off some of the corners. He was in a good place, and felt relief beyond the mere action of heroin: he’d taken a chance getting off like this, that went without saying. He could have taken too much, he understood that. But sometimes the proper induction of chemicals was a requirement. He was surprised when Dwight said, “Stop here.” They were in front of the Central Avenue First State Bank. “We’ve come to where the flavor is,” James said. He set the forty-four Colt on the seat between them, touching Burris’s thigh. “Street looks sunny and calm,” Bill Houston said, and Dwight said, “Remember: motor running at all times.”

And Burris’s Adam’s apple filled with wet cement and his eyes clouded with burning teardrops. “We’re going to be seven minutes maximum,” he heard Dwight’s voice telling him. “But suppose we’re in there for seven hours?”

“Nothing,” Burris said. “I stay here,” he said. Although he knew they all knew he wasn’t competent.

They went into it slowly, testing each inch of space.

As they went into it James felt his nostrils dilate painfully, and jism dripped from his penis and stained his underwear. The stainless steel barrel of the revolver touched his thigh like a loving finger, and he said to it in his mind, You’re everything to me. For the next seven minutes you are my wife, my lawyer, and my money.

Shallow breath now, he told himself, and drew oxygen slowly. The odor of wildflowers, as beside him his brother shifted his bouquet from one hand to the other, was overpowering. The bank opened away from his face like a tremendous bell to be kept absolutely silent. Every surface was capable of ringing.

James had walked past these windows many times in recent weeks, on the other side of the glass, and had thought himself familiarized. But he hadn’t been prepared, somehow, for the largeness of it all, for the insignificance of the people surrounding them, as if this great chamber with its oversized plants and tall, thin fountain of water had been constructed for a race of monsters. He wanted to detain his partners, invite them to get a sense of the place. But it was too late. It was already in progress. Bill Houston went past the high semicircular security desk, the elderly guard elevated by some means — perhaps on a platform-without looking at the man. James was happy with the calm manner in which his brother laid out his flowers on one of the check-writing counters and folded his hands over the package, staring forward at the row of tellers’ windows. Dwight moved to the officers’ area in the rear and, his back to the several desks where a few men and women pored over figures or chatted with customers seeking favors, he put his left hand to the buttons of his Hawaiian print shirt.

James went deliberately to the guard’s C-shaped desk and leaned against it, putting his right: hand at belt-level beneath the hem of his shirt, fingers brushing the Ruger’s grip. The guard, immaculate, silver-haired, and gentlemanly, looked down at James through pale grey eyes, and it seemed to James that they looked straight into each other’s minds, that both of them understood completely the requirements and parameters of this situation. He’d been about to speak inconsequentially — this the bank that gives toasters? don’t I know you from Thursday bowling? — and chat till the signal came down. But now he saw the understanding in this person’s eyes and froze completely: he knows. He knows; he’s going to draw out on me; goddamn it, Dwight, let me see the nod or I’ll start this thing myself—

Dwight nodded once. The weapons came out.

Dwight called out clearly, “Ladies and gentlemen: your money is my money.”

James put the Ruger up against the guard’s nose Bill Houston raised the shotgun high to advertise his power and cried, “We want everything completely quiet!”—although no one had said a word or made a noise of any kind. The single audible sound was the action of water on water as the oblivious fountain ceaselessly fell into its pool — a sound all mixed up with the crashing of blood in James’s arteries, his pulse so urgent he could feel it in the palm of his hand where he gripped the revolver. Most of those present — there were no more than a dozen customers this morning, some in the tellers’ line, a couple at the counters, two or three at the desks with the bank’s officers-found some reason to look away, not yet understanding that they represented hazard to these bandits and would be required to move. One man went on writing in his checkbook next to the torn green wrappings of the bouquet, a multi-hued assortment of wildflowers scattered at his feet, his head lowered — ignoring the armed man who stood with feet braced apart not two yards from his elbow — refusing any connection with this mysterious and violent event.