The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man by Denis Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

in the book.”
    “She moved across town.”
    He couldn’t think why he’d started this, or how to get out of it. Lamely he said, “Well, you’ve got my past all scoped out, don’t you?”
    “You’re a type,” she said.
    “A type. Am I your type?”
    “You’re predictable. Not overly funny.”
    “Oh. Yeah. Predictions. So what about the future? Are you kind of like gifted with that knowledge, too?”
    “Oh, you’ll probably doodle along just like you are now, until you set yourself on fire because you’re smoking one of those cigarettes of yours in bed,” she said, “and then you’ll die.”
    A bad prophecy. He himself had imagined something similar. “I mean, I was talking about the future of my love life. Not if I’m going to burn myself up in bed.”
    “You mean you were trying to flirt?”
    English sweated a lot. He sweated at parties where he was lost, at interviews for jobs he didn’t want, at those times when he met strangers who used to be his friends. “I’m sweating.”
    “Do you take honey?” She started doing businesslike things with their two pots of tea, which had just arrived, giving out a fragrance like detergent, while he mopped his face with his napkin. He thought it was very gracious of her.
    Her manner was straightforward, but she was physically quite languid and—modest, English believed. She talked low, she kept her left hand in her lap and gestured delicately with the right one, or lifted her cup, which she didn’t bend down to, but raised up to her lips, and she had this quality he’d seen in many young girls, and a few women, and which had always made him feel he was being tortured invisibly, this quality of seeming not to weigh even one ounce. And she was having a great time, she was delighted. He burned to be responsible for that. But he knew he wasn’t.
    “What,” she said when she saw him watching her and failing to drink his camomile tea.
    “I was trying to think what I want to say.”
    “And what is that?”
    He was sure the tea wasn’t all that bad. It was only that his stomach was in knots.
    “My fear level is pretty high,” he said.
    “I’ll bet it’s pretty high all the time,” she said.
    “This isn’t my usual kind of conversation at all,” he said.
    “If it’s all too new to cope with, then don’t talk.” She took a sip of tea. “Drink tea.”
    “Am I so funny?”
    She drank her tea.
    “Am I such a fucking joke?”
    She put down her cup. “Now you’re pissed.”
    “I was trying to get someplace with you.”
    “I got that.”
    “But I’m a joke, it’s a fucking joke that I come on to you, just because I’m not a woman? Because if it is—I mean …”
    “You don’t know what you mean.”
    “Yeah. No. I mean, it’s wrong”—he sensed his own biases were showing—“wrong to be so prejudiced, is what I’m getting at.”
    “I’m not prejudiced, I’m gay. I told you I was gay.”
    “Then how come you’re having coffee with me? Tea, I mean. Tea.”
    “Because I’m thirsty.”
    With his napkin English blotted his forehead. “You’re stepping all over me in this little talk. You’ve had practice. You’ve said all this before, and I haven’t.” This silenced her. “I never have.” He pushed his tea away, and his spoon. “The one who’s playing games here is you, and I’m being honest for a change.” The place before him was clear. “And anyway, why have I been sitting here pretending I like camomile tea? In other countries,” he told Leanna, “they soak their feet in camomile tea.”
    She smiled at everything, like a person at the circus. “Lenny? Or Leonard?”
    “Two people meet,” he said. “They each have three or four qualities they can show each other, you know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that always get them by. For the woman it could be that she makes jokes all the time, or she could be kind of self-effacing. The man could be scientific and easygoing. He could show her he likes her jokes