Free Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson Page A

sat a light-skinned black man. "Yeah," she said to him. "Today's payday. And it feels good, even if it's not gonna last." He looked at her. His big forehead made him seem thoughtful. "Well," he said, "I got twenty-four hours left in this town."
    The weather outside was clear and calm. Most days in Seattle are grey, but now I remember only the sunny ones.
    I rode around on the bus for three or four hours. By then a huge Jamaican woman was steering the thing. "You can't just sit on the bus," she said, talking to me in her rearview mirror. "You've got to have a destination."
    "I'll get off at the library, then," I said.
    "That'll be fine."
    "I know it'll be fine," I told her.
    I stayed in the library, crushed breathless by the smoldering power of all those words---many of them unfathomable---until Happy Hour. And then I left.
    The motor traffic was relentless, the sidewalks were crowded, the people were preoccupied and mean, because Happy Hour was also Rush Hour.
    During Happy Hour, when you pay for one drink, he gives you two.
    Happy Hour lasts two hours.
     
    All this time I kept my eye out for the belly dancer. Her name was Angelique. I wanted to find her because, despite her other involvements, she seemed to like me. I'd liked her the minute I'd seen her the first time. She was resting at a table between numbers in the Greek nightclub where she was dancing. A little of the stage light touched her. She was very frail. She seemed to be thinking about something far away, waiting patiently for somebody to destroy her. One of the other dancers, a chop-haired, mannish sort of person, stayed close to her and said, "What do you think you want, boyo?" to a sailor who offered to buy her a drink. Angelique herself said nothing. This virginal sadness wasn't all fake. There was a part of her she hadn't yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place, that was true. But she was mostly a torn-up trollop. "Just trying to get over," the sailor said. "The way they charge for these drinks, you think you'd be half-complimented." "She doesn't need your compliments," the older dancer said. "She's tired."
    By now it was six. I walked over and stopped in at the Greek place. But they told me she'd left town.
     
    The day was ending in a fiery and glorious way. The ships on the Sound looked like paper silhouettes being sucked up into the sun.
    I had two doubles and immediately it was as if I'd been dead forever, and was now finally awake.
    I was in Pig Alley. It was directly on the harbor, built out over the waters on a rickety pier, with floors of carpeted plywood and a Formica bar. The cigarette smoke looked unearthly. The sun lowered itself through the roof of clouds, ignited the sea, and filled the big picture window with molten light, so that we did our dealing and dreaming in a brilliant fog. People entering the bars on First Avenue gave up their bodies. Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen. Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here. The rapist met his victim, the jilted child discovered its mother. But nothing could be healed, the mirror was a knife dividing everything from itself, tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar. And what are you going to do to me now? With what, exactly, would you expect to frighten me?
    Something embarrassing had happened in the library. An older gentleman had come over from the checkout counter with his books in his arms and addressed me softly, in the tones of a girl. "Your zipper," he said, "is open. I thought I'd better tell you."
    "Okay," I said. I reached down quickly and zipped my fly.
    "Quite a few people were noticing," he said.
    "Okay. Thanks."
    "You're welcome," he said.
    I could have gotten him around the neck right then, right there in the library, and killed him. Stranger things have happened on this earth. But he turned away.
    Pig Alley was a cheap place. I sat next to a uniformed nurse with a black eye.
    I recognized her. "Where's your boyfriend