Angels by Denis Johnson Read Free Book Online

town .”
    â€œDon’t ask,” the bartender said. “You don’t want to know.”
    â€œFair enough. Okay,” Bill Houston said.
    He watched the bartender wash glasses. He was always fascinated by small, deft movements of the hands and arms. His own arms were wrecked. His elbows made popping noises when he flexed them, and his fingers were blunt and misshapen. High living had worked some kind of bad influence on his nerves and caused his hands to quake and rattle when spooning sugar into coffee or raising a glass to his mouth. But he could lift the rear wheels of a V-8 Ford entirely off the ground. “I can’t feel my face,” he told the bartender. It took him a long time to say words.
    â€œThat’s the whole idea, isn’t it?”
    â€œCan’t exactly feel the rest of my body, neither.”
    â€œSo? You complaining?”
    Bill Houston knew that way of talking. “I’ll make you a bet,” he said. “Bet I can ask just one more question, and then I’ll know what town you got here.”
    The bartender seemed to be ignoring him.
    â€œHey—does a bus stop out front there every now and then?”
    â€œWell,” the bartender said, “it ain’t gonna come in here for you.”
    Bill Houston guffawed, thumped the bar, pointed a triumphant finger at the bartender like the barrel of a gun: “Chicago!”
    He was in the back of a spacious, empty establishment trying to woo a large woman named Gail Ann, for whom he was experiencing a tender fascination. They danced. Bill Houston was clumsy, and when they danced nearer the bowling game, he put in a quarter and began flinging the metal puck at the plastic pins hanging down from above the board. David Allan Coe sang on the jukebox as they traded glances across the width of the bowling game, alternately bold and shy glances. They sat at a small round table in the back, talking low, head-to-head. It was an orange table that made him think of things from outer space.
    Now Hank Williams, Jr., began singing out of the jukebox like a swan, and Bill Houston’s heart grew large and embraced the universe. He wondered if the jukeboxes of all cafes and barrooms were owned by the Mafia, like they told you, and he wondered at all the juke-joints he’d walked into, marvelled at the number of them, saw every narrow dance floor stretched out end to end in a panorama not of what he’d traversed, but of what lay before him, as if it were his past he must start living now and not his future; and he asked Gail Ann, “Gail Ann, what time is it?” It was a question weighted with desperation, because he was seized suddenly with the idea there was not very much time. He grasped his drink more firmly. It was cold to the touch.
    Gail Ann told him she didn’t have the slightest idea what time it was. She would get herself another beer maybe and find that out. She went in the direction of the bar, but walked right on past it to the coatrack, grabbed her coat, and strolled out the door into Chicago. The door had one of those vacuum devices on it that prevent slamming, and Bill Houston watched it shut quietly and slowly. He caught a glimpse of Gail Ann’s coat unfurling behind her as she threw it around her shoulders and the door closed. There was a wall-poster on this side of the door, an autographed picture of Frank Sinatra over the legend, “Old Blue-Eyes Is Back.” Bill Houston nodded goodbye to Frank Sinatra.
    The wind was coming down from the North Pole, travelling across the flat of Canada for a thousand miles to slap him in the face as if he were a child. Wilson Street was covered with innumerable bits of trash that picked up and set down in flocks like paper birds feeding alongside the buildings. Bill Houston went, “Oooooooh!”—meaning to launch into a song, like a drunken sailor, but he faded off, forgetting what to sing. He wasn’t a sailor any more anyway. He