Free Angels by Denis Johnson

these rooms, screaming into the palm of a man’s hand. She would have liked to bang on the door here, but she was a ghost without a fist. In the dim illumination of the hallway, the true color of the plywood was not revealed—it might have been grey, or white, or blue. Within, incoherent voices conspired beneath pounding rock and roll. She witnessed the flaming communication on the door across the hall:
    Madame Kay
    Gifted from GOD with ESP
    READER AND ADVISOR .
    We are in Hillbilly Heaven, she heard herself say out loud, and then she began to vomit as the brother-in-law started in on her from behind. Directly before her face, one of the Seven Dwarfs loomed up dayglo on the wall, brandishing a middle finger.
    The brother-in-law wanted to do something with a knife. Ned Higher-and-Higher, wearing the dress cap of an officer in the United States Marine Corps, was trying to calm him down. He was talking and talking, faster than anyone had ever spoken in Jamie’s presence. I need a cup of coffee, Jamie thought. Keep that person away from me. I’m talking about my kids, my kids. Okay; you can even do things with the knife. I just want to live through this. I just want to take care of my kids. She clocked the brother-in-law’s knife with an eye as bland and dead as a camera’s. There it is, she thought. The whole answer is right there in his hand.
    I want you to know, her heart said to the room, that I will do anything to see my children spared.
    Something came around from behind Randall and slammed into the side of his head, and he sat down on the floor against the wall with his legs sticking out like a teddy bear’s. “What for?” he said. “What for?” Ned Higher-and-Higher was standing there in his Marine hat with a desk-lamp dangling from his hand. “You are the dumbest fuck,” he told his brother-in-law. Randall started to cry. “This is the last time,” Ned Higher-and-Higher told him. Okay, Jamie thought, we’ve crossed that one. We’ve gotten past the knife. Things have changed.
    She was on her back with her hands cuffed behind her, her knees locked under her chin by the ongoing adrenaline convulsion of fear. Peripherally she understood that nobody human was messing with her like this, but something much more dangerous, a dark configuration of people and events, something original, something about to be named. She saw that it required what was left of her, and she felt able to meet its requirements. For the sake of her children, she found its name. She begged and begged and begged. She traded away her soul.
    â€œWhat we have here is a case of fate. Of pure, dumb luck.” At the very instant the dealer was offering this conclusion, Bill Houston was peeking at enough of the card beneath his ten of clubs to see that it was a diamond ace.
    â€œAce and a ten count as blackjack in here?” he asked.
    â€œAre you serious? Is this guy serious?” There were tears in the dealer’s eyes, and for two heartbeats Bill Houston experienced for him a searing pity. The dealer was bankrolling his own operation; this was not Las Vegas.
    The restaurant the men played in was closed for business and almost entirely dark. Only the one light above them showed them the way as they laid out their bets and took their chances, glad to be among strangers.
    There were four of them in the booth, and two men sitting in chairs. “What’s that—five in a row?” somebody said. The others around him reacted appropriately to Bill Houston’s good fortune or failed to react, according to each one’s interest in his own hand. Bill Houston was betting thirty dollars at a shot right now, but in a minute the man dealing, a young fellow wearing a shabby hat for luck, would have to lower his limit owing to a lack of funds. Bill Houston warred successfully against the urge to count his money, while his heart rushed among accumulating numbers. The young man with