Free Angels by Denis Johnson Page B

legs seemed to end at the knees. “Me?” she said.
    This is me.
    He was gone. On the bed were her two children, and in her hand were two ten-dollar bills. This is me. Did you get what you wanted? Because I gave you everything.
    This is me this is me this is me.
    I have drifted, Bill Houston told himself, out of my league. Everybody’s got a foreign accent. Fruits and vegetables are for sale.
    He had wandered all the way up to Howard, the line between Chicago and Evanston. The Chicago side of the street was littered with small taverns and package stores, while the Evanston side, where liquor establishments were forbidden, offered vacant lots and the struggling concerns of inconsequential merchants. He stood at a newsstand and read the caption beneath the photo of a woman who looked just like Jamie: Search for Friends Ends in Tragedy. “Twenny cents,” the newsguy said, as if calling out some kind of destination.
    â€œJesus Christ,” Bill Houston said, “I don’t believe it. I know her.” He was lost. “They raped her.”
    â€œC’mon,” the newsguy said. In his hunting cap and bulky plaid coat, he looked to Bill Houston like a moron somebody had dressed up to take into the woods; and Houston stood for a moment at the edge of violence, looking him over. He reached into the pocket of his surplus army coat, and very carefully handed the man a quarter.
    They were vacuuming the Crown & Anchor in the afternoon. Through two windows on the street side, you could tell the day was turning sunny. There was no one but a couple of out-of-work substitute teachers in there, and Bill Houston, and the bartender running his machine back and forth across the defeated rug. “Teachers?” Bill Houston said. “Maybe you could teach me a few things,” and the women laughed. I don’t know why they respond to me, he thought; I have to look puked-on. “If you could give me some change,” he said to the bartender. The bartender acted like he didn’t hear, and Houston went over close and said, “Don’t act like you don’t hear.” The bartender was not a big man. He silenced the puling of his machine by prodding it with the toe of his boot, and went inside the horseshoe-shaped bar and worked the register. Bill Houston handed him a twenty and said, “Give it to me in quarters. I got business.”
    Standing at the pinball machine by the payphone near the restrooms, he cracked open his roll of quarters and dropped one down the slot. It was one of the new machines that go blip blip toot toot. Stupid. Okay. In rapid succession he shot his three chances, paying the progress of each metal ball no mind whatever, and studied the contraption’s face—a space-age tableau of the rock group Styx, the lead guitarist of whom was evidently about to be fellated by a mindless jungle woman strewn before his feet. Behind them, intergalactic bodies flashed with electricity, the phosphorus-fires of infinite patience. Essentially you could never defeat these things, because they were the living dead. He moved his operation over to the telephone, dialled the number and deposited the money and said, “Mom.”
    The two substitute teachers were merry souls. They had taken to throwing ice at one another, giggling, chewing up their skinny red plastic straws. Mournfully indicating the ice cubes on his rug, the bartender reprimanded them. They found the idea of the rug hilarious. “Where’s James, Ma?” Bill Houston said into the phone. “I’m looking for James.” The teachers wanted another round, and the bartender tried to talk them into beer. Bill Houston dialled and deposited. The teachers were entertained by the suggestion that they might enjoy a beer now, and countered by suggesting that the bartender engage in solo sexual maneuvers while freshening their drinks. “James?” Bill Houston said into the telephone, “You