The Name of the World - Denis Johnson [29]
I took Eloise to her place across town. On the way I asked her if she’d been getting a lot of painting done, and she told me not much. “The catering’s slack, and then I paint less. For some reason I work harder when I’m working harder. I’m practically on vacation. I couldn’t keep up with any business anyhow. There’s nobody experienced around to help me but Phil and Flower.”
“That would be Flower Cannon maybe.”
“Yes. She’s—you know her. Have you had her?”
“Hey. Eloise.”
“As a student, Mike.”
“We’re acquainted. I don’t think she’s interested in history.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. This summer she’s the mad cellist. They’re getting together some kind of chamber group, I don’t know. This is my place. What do you think of this contraption?” She meant the car.
“It’s fine. I haven’t driven in years. Anything’s going to feel funny.”
“A BMW can’t feel that funny. How many miles? Ah, plenty.” She was leaning over and peering at the odometer.
“If I don’t wreck it by tomorrow, I guess I’ll buy it.”
“Buy it now! The asshole’s drunk!” She kissed my cheek and got out.
“Do you run into Flower much, or not?” I asked her out the window.
“Flower? No.” She both squinted and leered now. She had a limber face! “Are you after her?”
“After her? Wow. You’re frank as hell, aren’t you?”
“Usually I’d warn a young girl away from the prof. But in this case it’s you who’d better take warning, pal.” She leaned down and spoke with burnt tobacco and peppermint schnapps on her breath. “I am your pal, you know. In the end it’s the likes of us who’ll be stuck with each other.” She stood up and addressed the population generally: “You’ll end up marrying me, the Froggy Bitch with too many cats and a drinking problem every summer! And you’ll thank God!
“At least you’ll have a ritzy car!” she called after me as I drove away.
I had a vivid and disturbing dream that night that sent me out of my bed and down to the kitchen in my bathrobe to putter distractedly there until dawn. I think to recount your dreams is to bore the entire world, and I don’t normally even trouble myself to recollect mine. But since it’s developed, I think we can agree, that the knots in this line, the handholds, are those moments having to do with Flower Cannon, I’ll tell about this one. I’m following Flower Cannon through bureaucratic hallways—the sort of place you find yourself in from time to time with a form in your hand, looking for an office where someone will take this thing and make sense of it, but I had no document, I had only this vague feminine figure somewhere ahead of me as a reason for my wandering. She disappeared in her white garb through a door halfway along a corridor. I now understood that this was a hospital, understood without having wondered, in the state of senility common to the dreaming mind. I followed her through the same door and walked out onto a glaring stage before a vast, shadowy audience of students. My quarry—yes? or my grail?—lay naked on a gurney while a doctor pointed his finger at her breasts and vagina and lectured unintelligibly. I didn’t belong here. My shame was like a child’s. I woke up sweating and chilled with panic. Instantly the words Ted MacKey had sung that afternoon came back:
I went down to St. James Infirmary
And I saw my baby there.
She was stretched out on a long white table,
So still, so cold, so bare.
As I’ve said, dreams are nonsense. But this one was a lot like something that actually happened the very next day. Around four that afternoon I was at the supermarket picking up a few items I probably didn’t need urgently. (I like wandering the aisles and coming up with a couple of days’ menu, just improvising. Then I let the stuff rot at home while I have myself fed in restaurants.) I was standing in the checkout lane reading the headlines of Midnight and Globe and the National Enquirer, trying not to take to heart the messages of the tabloid press: The mighty are fallen; glamor equals misery;