The Name of the World - Denis Johnson [36]
Though I’d already said it once, it happened to be true, and so I said, “I admire you because you’re wild.”
She laughed at me for that.
I said, “Oh, you’re wild. You’re light. Even when you’re perfectly still you’re ready to be blown all around by the elements.”
Now she looked shocked. “You did a pretty good job of stammering up till now. But that sounds rehearsed. Either that’s a line of yours, or you’ve been thinking about me. Thinking actual words about me in your head.”
“I dreamed about you last night.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Have you had fantasies about me?”
To get back something of myself, I crossed my arms over my chest. Ten feet away the radio still played jazz. She was still standing. I was still sitting in a chair. I felt like a pupil, a slow one. “You’re a force on the planet, that’s for sure. Where did you get that far-out name?”
“Have you imagined me? Am I your fantasy?”
“All right, yeah. You certainly are.”
“And what have you fantasized, Michael Reed?”
“I don’t know. This conversation is getting pretty close to it.”
“Let me guess what you’re thinking…Okay…And the answer is no.”
“No?”
“No, they’re not redheads.”
“Who?”
“My sisters. They’re brunettes.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“But Goddess bleaches hers out platinum. She’s very L.A. All right—what were you really thinking?”
“I couldn’t possibly remember now.”
“I knew I could make you stop!”
“Okay, okay. I was thinking about your Fourth of July striptease competition. It’s only five days away.”
“Would you like to help me shave?”
“Shave?” That stopped my mouth for two long seconds. “Isn’t it a little early for that?” Although inside I said only, Sweet gah-dam Jesus.
“Come and sit outside.”
And I rose and followed her down the brief corridor, out the back door into the Midwest. She brought with her a small box of light wood—redwood, or cedar—built like a cigar box but naked of any design. When she saw me puzzling over it she opened the lid to show me it held a variety of envelopes, used envelopes, of many different sizes and colors, but generally of the sort for letters or greeting cards. We sat beside each other on the new grass, she with the box in her lap; and she fingered through the envelopes as if searching for one in particular. Her knee lay lightly against my hip. All this was fine, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted something more than mere physical touch. Something unexpected. Something impossible to foresee. I looked at my watch: just past seven, the sun hanging and swelling, the shadows long and cool, though the heat still clung to the land. A banana moon stood above the horizon. Some clouds way to the north; they might disappear or they might bring hail and tornadoes. After these four years in the Midwest I’d learned to expect any kind of weather at any moment. I had rejected the weather, in a way, had walled myself off from any approach of the elements, had made them my enemy after the weather had become, in effect, the murderer of my wife and daughter.
Flower said, “Will you give me a sample of your handwriting?”
I didn’t know how to respond to this. “I’m not sure.”
“Write down a few words for me. A sentence, a phrase, a name, anything.” She closed the box and set it in my lap. “Do you have a business card?”
Here I felt our movement toward the unforeseen, in the direction of something that couldn’t have been predicted. I don’t think I’ll try to explain what I mean by that. Instead I’ll hope it comes clear on its own. I put one of my business cards flat on the lid of the box and pushed the ball point from the pen with my thumb. A phrase? A name? I wrote: the name of the world—across the back of my card and set the box in Flower’s lap.
She looked at my writing and read the phrase aloud. She opened the lid and put the card in one of the envelopes and closed it up with all the others inside their box and held it in her lap again. Her smock was buttoned high, came up just below the cleft of her neck and breastbone. There in her pale skin were one or two unbearably thin