Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson Page B

that snow. They have that fruit with the'light on it, they have that music you can't find. We ended up in a laundromat, where the guy took off his shirt and put it in a washer. He bought some coffee in a paper cup out of a coin machine.
    He read the notices on the wall and watched his machine tremble, walking around the place with only his sharkskin sports jacket on. His chest was narrow and white and hair sprouted from around the small nipples.
    There were a couple of other men in the laundromat. He chatted with them a little. I could hear one of them say, "The cops wanted to talk to Benny."
    "How come? What'd he do?"
    "He had a hood up. They were looking for a guy with a hood up."
    "What'd he do?"
    "Nut'n. Nut'n. Some guy got murdered last night."
    And now the man I was following walked right up to me. "You were on the El," he said. He hefted his cup, tossing a sip of coffee between his lips.
    I turned away because my throat was closing up. Suddenly I had an erection. I knew men got that way about men, but I didn't know I did. His chest was like Christ's. That's probably who he was.
    I could have followed anybody off that train. It would have been the same.
     
    I got back on to ride around some more above the streets.
    There was nothing stopping me from going back to where Michelle and I were staying, but these days had reduced us to the Rebel Motel. The maids spat out their chew in the shower stalls. There was a smell of insecticide. I wasn't going back there to sit in the room and wait.
    Michelle and I had our drama. It got very dreary sometimes, but it felt like I had to have her. As long as there was one other person at these motels who knew my real name.
    Out back they had all these Dumpsters stuffed with God knows what. We can't imagine the shape of our fate, that's for sure.
    Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you even know the difference?
     
    I sat up front. Right beside me was the little cubicle filled with the driver. You could feel him materializing and dematerializing in there. In the darkness under the universe it didn't matter that the driver was a blind man. He felt the future with his face. And suddenly the train hushed as if the wind had been kicked out of it, and we came into the evening again.
    Catty-corner from me sat a dear little black child maybe sixteen, all messed up on skag. She couldn't keep her head up. She couldn't stay out of her dreams. She knew: shit, we might as well have been drinking a dog's tears. Nothing mattered except that we were alive.
    "I never tasted black honey," I said to her.
    She itched her nose and closed her eyes, her face dipping down into Paradise.
    I said, "Hey."
    "Black. I ain't black," she said. "I'm yellow. Don't call me black."
    "I wish I had some of what you have," I said.
    "Gone, boy. Gone, gone, gone." She laughed like God. I didn't blame her for laughing.
    "Any chance of getting some more?"
    "How much you want? You got ten?"
    "Maybe. Sure."
    "I'll take you down here," she said. "I'll take you down over to the Savoy." And after two more stops she led me off the train and down into the streets. A few people stood around trashcans with flames leaping up out of them and that sort of thing, mumbling and singing. The streetlamps and traffic lights had wire mesh screens over them.
    I know there are people who believe that wherever you look, all you see is yourself. Episodes like this make me wonder if they aren't right.
    The Savoy Hotel was a bad place. The reality of it gave out as it rose higher above First Avenue, so that the upper floors dribbled away into space. Monsters were dragging themselves up the stairs. In the basement was a bar going three sides of a rectangle, as big as an Olympic pool,