Denis Johnson: Angels

“Oh. For a day’s worth?”

“The most important thing you can do right now,” he said, “is be quiet.”

“Oh. Uh-oh.” She looked away from his bobbing shoulder. She looked at the street. I am ruining this evening.

“I guess I got like a hunnerd and ten left. Something like that,” Bill Houston said.

“Oh,” she said, hurrying to catch up to him and look into his face. “Well, maybe we just better go home,” she said. “If that’s what you feel like, it’s okay with me, because we don’t have to go out ever single night.”

“No. Let’s just step inside of here a minute. And then we’ll take the bus to this one other place I was telling you about.” And abruptly he was in fine spirits. “Oh, come on! What you think — you can’t have you a good time on a hunnerd and ten bones? Well you just step in through here with me, little Miss, and we’ll see about it.”

They stopped at several other bars where Bill Houston drank large and Jamie watched as if scrutinizing a mystery, rarely joining him. She felt she was falling apart with weariness, but Bill Houston seemed oblivious to the whole idea of the Hotel Magellan. “Right here. This is what we been after all along,” he said, gesturing at the entrance of the Tally Ho Budweiser King of Beers. In the window beneath this sign, neon blinked BUD — BUD — BUD. “We’re here to stay.”

“Now, hey — this ain’t the one you were telling about.” She held back. “This one doesn’t even have a band playing or nothing. All they got is Budweiser Beer, looks like. Probably don’t even have a bar.”

“This is a fine place,” he said. “We’ll go in this fine place right here.”

“You don’t even know this place,” she told him.

“This is a fine place,” he said.

“I don’t think you ever been here before.”

“Listen here,” he said. “I grew up here practically. This is practically my home. It was a fine home.” With a hand he influenced her through the door.

Immediately Jamie disliked its insides. There were unescorted women at the bar itself, drinking glumly with their chins sticking out. There were innumerable sounds — low voices, chairs moved, a voice rising with passion and then subsiding — but in her frayed weariness Jamie felt that these were a continual breaking of a general stunned silence, and she was tempted to whisper as in a hospital. “We ought to go back and see what’s happening on the television,” she said not loudly, and Bill Houston cast her a look. “I’m awful tarred right now,” she insisted. They sat down at a table toward the front. In the back a man pounded on his table, spilling a drink, and the woman who was with him suddenly got up and left, her earrings jiggling as she marched away stiffly. All around them men drank alone, staring out of their faces. They’d been here twenty seconds, and already nothing was happening. Nobody came to their table to take their order. A man came over and tried to take Jamie away from Bill Houston. He pointed to the woman he was with, over at the bar, and offered to trade.

“I knew this would happen,” Jamie said.

“This is the third time I’ve picked her up — over at the Far East Lounge,” the man explained, pointing again to the woman at the bar. The woman was scratching her throat with a pinky while looking at herself in the mirror. Bill Houston listened politely.

“Oh, she’s all right,” the man said quickly. “Nothing wrong with her. Just I’ve hung out with her before is all, about six times, and she tells the same old jokes. But they’d be new to you, right? What do you say?” He turned to Jamiie. “What do you say? You don’t mind.”

“I most certainly — Bill! Will you tell him what’s what?” She pulled Kleenex from her purse and started wiping at her make-up. She shifted in her chair and yanked at the hem of her skirt.

The man smiled. “She seems stuck on you,” he told Bill Houston. “But she won’t mind. You won’t mind, will you? She won’t mind. What do you say, old buddy?”

“Well now, I don’t exactly know,” Bill Houston said. “All depends. How much you say you’re paying that lady?”

“Oh, there’s no — it’s very unofficial,” the man said. “We haven’t really gotten around to that yet. She just wants, you know, a present. It all depends.”

“Hey. I don’t know if this is a joke, or what,” Jamie said excitedly. “You stop it. Listen, I can’t use this. What are you doing?”

The man seemed to sense complications. His smile turned wary.

“You think this one’s worth fifty?” Bill Houston asked him.

“Bill!” Jamie caught hold of his arm and clawed it frantically, remaining stiff and erect in her chair.

The man began looking Jamie over. Bill Houston smiled off toward the shadows.

“Oh, yeah, definitely — fifty dollars,” the man said.

She didn’t want to draw stares by rising from her place. She covered her face with her hands. “ Bill, ” she said, into her hands.

“Well now, you were the one crying about money just a while ago.” Then he laughed with embarrassment.

Jamie found herself, behind her hands, considering the amount of fifty dollars. “Stop. Stop. Please,” she said into her hands.

The man stood uncomfortably beside their table, and put his own hands in his pockets.

“Okay,” Bill Houston said. “Guess that’s that. Just a misunderstanding. Nobody’s fault. Right?” he said to the man.

“Oh, hell — a misunderstanding?” the man said. He looked at Bill Houston. “Oh, listen, say, I guess I — boy, I’m sure sorry.” He turned very red even in the dim light, and left their table. He took the woman at the bar by the arm and went out with her, lifting a hand weakly to Jamie while staring angrily at Bill Houston. The woman went where she was urged, trying repeatedly, and failing, to get her purse-strap hooked over her shoulder.

Jamie and Bill Houston said nothing. The bartender came over to their table with two Seven-and-Sevens, compliments of the mistaken gentleman. Jamie wanted to leave right away. Bill Houston downed both drinks and they went out.

They said nothing for a while on the street. Jamie halted at a bus stop on the side of the street pointing home. Bill Houston walked on in apparent ignorance of her stopping, then turned and went back to stand with her, as if puzzled why she was no longer in a partying mood. After a while Bill Houston breathed deeply of the night and then exhaled, saying, “Aaaaaaali!” And then he stretched and yawned and said, “Hey there!” and “Well now!” and other such things.

The bus had passed through Homewood, then Brushton; they’d missed their stop a long, long time ago. Jamie rested her head against the back of the seat and read all the advertisements above the windows. Bill Houston was up at the front of the bus, standing there with his arm wrapped around the silver pole and leaning over as if looking for something he’d dropped in the driver’s lap. “Listen. Got a proposition for you,” he was telling the driver.

“No,” the driver said. “Nope, no propositions. I just can’t listen to any propositions.” He was a compact young man with a boot-camp style crew-cut under an official bus driver’s hat supported solely by his ears. It was plain he didn’t want to talk to Bill Houston.

“You got nothing better to do than listen to me,” Bill Houston said. “Ain’t nothing else happening. We’re the only ones on your bus.”

The driver glanced around and touched the buttons of his shirt with the fingers of one hand. “Look. There’s certain rules on this bus,” he said.

“Course there’s rules! Has to be rules to make everything work out right, right?”

The driver rubbed his chin, unwilling to agree too hastily.