Free Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson

room?"
    "He'll be asleep. I could say you're my cousin."
    We pressed ourselves together gently and furiously. "I want to love you, baby," she said.
    "Oh, God. But I don't know, with your husband there."
    "Love me," she begged. She wept onto my chest.
    "How long have you been married?" I asked.
    "Since Friday."
    "Friday?"
    "They gave me four days' leave."
    "You mean the day before yesterday was your wedding day?"
    "I could tell him you're my brother," she suggested.
    First I put my lips to her upper lip, then to the bottom of her pout, and then I kissed her fully, my mouth on her open mouth, and we met inside.
    It was there. It was. The long walk down the hall. The door opening. The beautiful stranger. The torn moon mended. Our fingers touching away the tears. It was there.
     
    Happy Hour
     
    I was after a seventeen-year-old belly dancer who was always in the company of a boy who claimed to be her brother, but he wasn't her brother, he was just somebody who was in love with her, and she let him hang around because life can be that way.
    I was in love with her, too. But she was still in love with a man who'd recently gone to prison.
    I looked in all the worst locations, the Vietnam Bar and so on.
    The bartender said, "Do you want a drink?"
    "He doesn't have money to drink." I did, but not enough to drink for the whole two hours.
    I tried inside the Jim jam Club. Indians from Klamath or Kootenai or up higher---British Columbia, Saskatchewan---sat in a row along the bar like little icons, or fat little dolls, things mis-
    treated at the hands of a child. She wasn't there.
    A guy, a slit-eyed, black-eyed Nez Perce, nearly elbowed me off the stool as he leaned over ordering a glass of the least expensive port wine. I said, "Hey, wasn't I shooting pool in here with you yesterday?"
    "No, I don't think so."
    "And you said if I'd rack you'd get change in a minute and pay me back?"
    "I wasn't here yesterday. I wasn't in town."
    "And then you never paid me the quarter? You owe me a quarter, man."
    "I gave you that quarter. I put the quarter right by your hand. Two dimes and a nickel."
    "Somebody's gonna get fucked up over this."
    "Not me. I paid you that quarter. Probably it fell on the floor."
    "Do you know when that's it ? Do you know when it's the end?"
    "Eddie, Eddie," the Indian said to the bartender, "did you find any dimes and nickels down here on the floor yesterday? Did you sweep up? Did you sweep anything like that, maybe two dimes and a nickel?"
    "Probably. I usually do. Who cares?"
    "See?" the guy said to me.
    "You make me so tired," I said, "I can hardly move my fingers. All of you."
    "Hey, I wouldn't fuck you around over a quarter."
    "All of you, every last one."
    "Do you want a quarter? It's bullshit. Here."
    "Fuck it. Just die," I said, pushing off.
    "Take the quarter," he said, very loudly, now that he could see I wouldn't touch it.
     
    Just the night before, she'd let me sleep in the same bed, not exactly with her, but beside her. She was staying with three college girls of whom two had Taiwanese boyfriends. Her fake brother slept on the floor. When we woke up in the morning he didn't say anything. He never did---it was the secret of his success, such as it was. I gave four dollars, almost all my money, to one of the college girls and her boyfriend, who didn't speak English. They were going to get us all some Taiwanese pot. I stood at the window looking at the apartment building's parking lot while the brother brushed his teeth, and watched them leave with my money in a green sedan. They ran into a phone pole before they were even out of the parking lot. They got out of the sedan and staggered away, leaving the car doors open, clinging to each other, their hair flying around their faces in the wind.
     
    I was sitting on the city bus---this was in Seattle---later that morning. I was down front, in the long seat that faces sideways. A woman across from me held a large English-literature textbook in her lap. Next to her