The Stars at Noon

by Denis Johnson

  “I understand,” I lied, completely sorry that I’d come here.

  “My mother hasn’t done anything,” he said. “My sister hasn’t done anything. But they’re both in prison.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’re a journalist, a North American—if you ask about her, my sister, my mother—it will be a big help. Show them you know the names of my mother and sister.”

  He gave me a piece of paper bearing their names.

  “If I can,” I said.

  “You can. Go to the Office of Defense. It’s only one street away from Interturismo, do you know it? Ask them what’s become of these two people. They’ll believe these names are known in the United States. Things will go better for my mother and sister, do you see?”

  “I see.”

  “And then we can help you. We need to make arrangements. Tell us what you’d like, and we’ll arrange it for tomorrow.”

  “What rate of exchange do you offer?” I felt miserable, sick, and confused.

  “The rate of exchange must be decided tomorrow.”

  “And you’ll have dollars tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so. But my companion will help you.”

  The other looked too young to help anybody, even himself.

  “Why do you want cocaine?” he said.

  “It was a mistake to talk about cocaine,” I said. “I’m nervous. My Spanish is very poor. . .”

  “No one here will give you cocaine.”

  “I understand. I made a mistake.”

  “We barter currency.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry. What time will I come back tomorrow?”

  “What time would you like to come back tomorrow,” he said.

  “I can come about nine o’clock.”

  “In the morning?”

  “If that’s not too early.”

  “It’s fine. In the meantime, permit me to take your passport. I’ll make a photocopy in just a few minutes. I want to verify you.”

  “I don't want you to verify me.”

  “Then I have no money for you. No U.S. I have Swiss.”

  “Swiss?”

  “It can be exchanged fast, not here, but in San José, in Honduras, U.S.”

  “What about Costa Rican?”

  “Nothing today.”

  “I need U.S. or Costa Rican.”

  In English he said, “Yew air estewpid.”

  “What.”

  “You tell me where you go. I go Costa Rica, I go U.S.” He went on in Spanish, “Nothing is verified about me but you’re talking. This is exactly what an American woman is. Our women have learned a new way. It’s a war.”

  “If I go to get a photocopy, will you wait?”

  “We’ll be here until three o’clock,” the older man said.

  It wasn’t yet two. “I need dollars only. U.S. Only U.S.,” I said. “I’ll bring a photocopy of my passport.”

  “Good,” he said.

  The other said, “She doesn’t honor us with her faith. She doesn’t trust her friends.”

  “It’s true.” I said.

  “It’s good,” the first said, as he rose to show me out the door.

  It was hotter outside, but I noticed I wasn't perspiring as much, not half as much.

  Your passport. In every encounter they wanted my face, and they wanted my name . . .

  I knew of a copying service not too far off—I'd often passed the sign—the place was nothing more than a shack squatting on a mound directly across the street from the Cultural Center. I went there right away and poked my head through the doorway.

  Inside, a solemn man in a white shirt, wearing a necktie, tinkered with his machine. There was hardly any light to see by. “It’s not ready,” he said. “One moment.” There was a lamp on a tripod, a chair for photographees, a tiny curtained closet where I gathered he developed his photos. The floor was earth. He’d quickly removed the outer case of his photocopier and now he was gently violating the mystery of its robot ganglia with a penknife.

  I moved to the doorway and smoked a cigaret in the barrage of traffic noise. The road narrowed here, and the suicide-macho rattleheaps contended for the only lane, while the pods of the giant frangipanis wept down onto their hoods. In a few minutes the man said, “It’s ready.”

  I gave him my passport to copy, but the machine still didn’t work. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said with the terrible sadness of a heart surgeon.

  It was only two-thirty when I was already back at the defunct travel office, knocking repeatedly on the door and rattling the knob and getting no answer at all from those bastards.

  I saw it plainly, I’d go back time and again to see people I couldn’t make myself clear to . . . I’d spend forever listening to irrelevancies . . . The whole matter would get impossibly snarled . . . In the end I would take whatever I got, and gladly . . .

  By the power of my desperation I forced a pay phone to function and called that worthless homo, the Vice-minister.

  “Come in and talk to me,” he said. He was speaking English.

  I hesitated.

  “You must. It’s safe.”

  “Why are you talking English?”

  “Because I want to talk to you only.”

  “What do you mean,” I said, “It’s safe?’’

  “Will you come here—today,” he said. “I can’t find the word. Now. Right now you come.”

  “Is it about the money? Your friends? I’m looking for your friends.”

  “No, it’s another business, something that isn't for me—they don’t tell to me.”

  “Who doesn’t tell you?”

  “Please come now.”

  Nothing ever happened over these phones. “Okay. I’ll get a cab.”

  He hung up.

  And it was exactly then, I believe, that I made my mistake, the gesture up out of the flames that brought me to the attention of the torturer.

  Because I happened to be at a functioning phone, clutching some change in my hand, I dropped in two cordobas and dialed the Inter-Continental. I thought I’d call Mr. Watts Oil and arrange a meeting; I’d fill him in on whatever the Vice-minister was about to tell me—after all, this new issue of “safety” probably arose from the Englishman’s activities as a blabbermouth, it seemed to me.

  I’d keep the Englishman abreast, I'd do the Englishman a favor. In this place, a favor!

  I didn’t know why I should want to help him even a little.

  When I called the Inter-Continental, he wasn’t there. I told them I'd leave a message.

  “He has check out.”

  Oh. Ah.

  “Smart man,” I said. “Do you mean he’s taken his luggage and everything?”

  “Yes.”

  So the Englishman wasn’t there. I did him no favor.

  But I swear to you that I’ve tracked it down to that, each bit of it, going backward, from the moment much later in the holy rain when I finally identified every one of us—you, me, him, the Devil, God

  From that moment many lifetimes later in the jungle cathedral, I’ve traced it back step by step to that thwarted, fated try at calling the sucker from Watts Oil: that attempt to help one of these miserable victims. It started there.

  NOT TWENTY minutes later I stood at the doors of the Interturismo offices while the Vice-minister, heading me off before I could announce myself to his secretary, warned me, “You down espik espunish, you down espik espunish . . .” He introduced me to his secretary himself: “This is Miss America. She doesn’t speak Spanish.”

  His secretary, a beautiful young lady in a red pantsuit to whom I’d spoken a good deal of Spanish only yesterday, smiled at me.

  The Vice-minister also smiled at me. “It’s no good at all,” he said in English. “A very bad situation.” This last word pronounced, not inappropriately, “stewation.”

  He took me into the hallway, and then the staircase. “I think you must begin to move. Go right now. Go to any place. Managua is no good at all.”
/>   “No good at all? That’s not exactly news.”

  “The people come from the Department of Defense to talk about you.”

  “They will come? Or they already came.”

  “Yes, it's not clear, excuse me, they already came a little time ago. This is no good. They were very bad to me, muy brusco. They wish to talk about you.”

  “What did they ask you?”

  “They want me to help them find you, and we will take away your passport.”

  “My passport! Did you tell them where I live?”

  “No. But they can find out. It will be fast.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Something very bad. Go away of Managua, right now, today.”

  “This is crazy. Can’t you come outside and tell me in Spanish?”

  “No. We’re finish talking right now. Goodbye. I tell you it’s very bad, it’s enough. Please, for you it’s enough now.”

  “Your secretary knows I speak Spanish. I was in here yesterday.”

  “Goodbye, Señorita.”

  Only last week I’d held his head to my breast, kissed the spots on his scalp showing through the thin hair . . . All his life he’d wanted so willing a woman, but these days he was useless. . . Only last week! we’d been naked together and his fat thighs had hung down and he’d cried . . . “Please,” I said. “Please.”

  He began breathing rapidly in a way that meant he was going to be stubborn. “Señorita,” he said reverently and sadly, and shrugged. “No more is possible.”

  Okay—no more was possible. “I appreciate what you’ve been able to do,” I forced myself to say.

  “You are nice to be courteous,” he said. “And also, goodbye.”

  WHEN I got back to La Whatsis I entered the lobby, and it was just as if nothing had ever happened to me and nothing ever would. In the lobby the Señora relaxed and fanned herself slowly with a newspaper, while Radio Tempo sang to her and one more meaningless day died into history. Of course she did; it was crazy to do anything else.

  The Englishman was in my room, sitting on the bed. I thought I might be able to save myself if I could just get rid of this man.

  “The Señora let you in?” I asked.

  “Haven’t I been hiding here all day?”

  “What are you planning to do?” I said to him.

  “I have no idea what to plan, except that I’d better get to London. And I don’t want to talk to any more Costa Ricans. I thought I’d better ask you about how to proceed.”

  “I can’t suggest a thing. You’re all screwed up over at the Inter-Continental, is all I know—anyway, they told me you’d packed up and left.”

  “Well, certainly. I left last night.”

  “They told me you checked out.”

  “Checked out did you say?”

  “I could’ve gotten it wrong. It was over the phone. And also, did you know the Department of Defense is after you?” It seemed best not to include myself in this news.

  He made a vague limp-wristed gesture. He wasn’t taking this in at quite the rate of presentation.

  “You never said anything about those guys; the Defense people.”

  “Well, they’re all the same to me. I hadn’t really thought anybody was after me. This OIJ fellow wanted to keep tabs, that was my impression.”

  “Listen,” I said, “it’s probably not as serious as we’ve been thinking.”

  “I’m absolutely at a loss,” he said. “Absolutely. Completely. I don’t know what to do now.”

  “Why don’t you go back to the Inter-Continental and get this taken care of? Confront them? Staying here won’t help.”

  “I don’t think I should confront anybody. I don’t want to be detained in this country. I’ve got to get back to London right away.”

  “Well you can’t stay here, honey. I’m sorry, but that’s the condensed version. If I let you stay I’ll end up wishing I’d never met you.”

  “Please help me,” he begged, goddamn him, “somebody’s got to check the hotel for me. And somehow I’ve got to change my airline reservation without being detained. If you’d please give me some assistance, if you’d check for me at the hotel in person . . . Wait, that’s it, that’s just the thing—you go to my hotel, ask for me in person . . .”

  He seemed to be fixating on this idea of asking for him at the hotel. Did he expect I’d find him in? “Look,” I told him, “I promise I’ll try to change your airline reservation, and straighten out your life, and what else, help you get dollars somehow—I’m seeing these two guys tomorrow, in fact. I’ll ask about what they can do with an American Express card, or whatever you carry.”

  “I’ve got traveller’s checks.”

  “On you?”

  “On me?”

  “I mean do you have them with you?”

  “No,” he said, “they’re at the hotel.”

  “There’s nothing at the hotel, they say. The lady said your luggage was gone.”

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “It didn’t register when you first mentioned it.”

  “Well, is it registering now?”

  Who was this person? Had he been assigned by his head office to lose himself in the labyrinth of my arrangements, and land at my door starving?

  “All right. I’m tired and I’ve got to rest,” I told him. “Fend for yourself.”

  I lay down on the bed. Was there any air at all in this horrible room? It was the worst time of day to be indoors—or outdoors, if it came to that; it was the worst time of day. Even before he was done bothering me with his next question, I was asleep . . .

  And woke I didn’t know how much later . . .

  He was sitting on the floor, resting his shoulders against the bed and paging through La Biblia, one of my very few books. “They say all the answers are in there, if you can decipher that tiny print.” I felt lazy and serene.

  “All unintelligible to you, is it?” he said.

  “No. It’s just that the print's too small and too blurry.”

  “Try these.” He handed me his glasses over his shoulder, and I put them on.

  Everything became elongated, and somehow both two-and three-dimensional. Somewhat like the view through pay-binoculars—but how much sharper, how extra-crisp! I looked over his shoulder at the print. “God, these work!”

  “You must need glasses, I’d imagine.”

  “I can read all right,”

  “Maybe you’re nearsighted.”

  “No, I see fine if I hold the book up close.”

  “Well, that’s what it means to be nearsighted.”

  I put the book away.

  “Is your Spanish good?” he asked.

  “I can read newspapers. The Bible’s a little beyond me.”

  “Then why do you keep it right here by the bed?”

  “To read. I do read it, it’s all that’s left—it’s the only thing that hasn’t been torn up for toilet paper. I just don't read it very well, is all.”

  “The painted lady with the Bible in a foreign tongue, the undecipherable Bible. Something poetic in that, hey?”

  “I’ve got two English books, too. American. Poems, as a matter of fact.”

  As soon as I got up to rifle my suitcase for the rest of my library, I felt the sweat travelling my spine. Wouldn't the day’s rain ever fall? “I know a poem that's written just for fugitives like you on a hot day like this.” I handed him the book open to the place.

  “Oh do you,” he said.

  I'd forgotten what the poem was about but I knew it ended by saying, “It is Sunday.”

  It is Sunday forever and begins to snow.

  I am going into the snow

  as I have wanted to do for years.

  “It fits, huh?”

  He tensed, as if memorizing these lines, or maybe himself. “Yes. You might say that.”

  “James L. Whatever. A true denizen of Hell.”

  “Lives in Hell, does he then?” I could see all this talk was eating at his moorings. He looked at the
cover. “White. James L. White.”

  “A former inhabitant, actually. Poets who live in Hell go to Heaven when they die.”

  “An interesting mythology begins to emerge . . .”

  He lay down beside me on the bed.

  In a minute or two his eyes fell closed and consciousness began bubbling up out through the lids . . . If you want to sleep as certainly as if you’d overdosed, it’s simple, lay yourself down in a soft place under one of these baking roofs. Just as you think you’ll expire of the sweat, you lose touch with all the world’s unkindness . . . In a while, who knows how long, we opened our eyes and found each other. It was too hot to make love, but we were awake now and there was nothing else to do . . . He didn’t understand. He was looking at me warily. “We’ll bring the price down,” I said. He said: “I wouldn’t want you to cheapen yourself,” and I said, “Well, you know what they say—there’s no such thing as a hundred-dollar whore; there are only twenty-dollar whores and hundred-dollar customers.” “No,” he said, “I hadn’t heard that one.” We were kissing all through this. We were dying of thirst, we were drinking each other. I was so aroused I felt my controls giving way. I put him inside of me.

  Later, in the middle of it, because it felt momentarily true, I told him, “You’re the best I ever had . . .”

  Then we just lay beside each other. It would take us decades to cool off. His pale skin was blotched red, as if making love, for him, was unhealthy and dangerous. “And was there something of a discount then,” he said. It was obvious he felt some childish, also in my opinion boorish, excitement over having dredged for himself one small free lunch in all this jungle. And of course he was looking better and better to me: the blood had raged into my eyes, I couldn’t see straight. I'd liked him from the first minute, it seemed, but until just now I hadn’t liked his looks. . .

  He said, “What did you do Stateside, do you mind my asking.”

  “Oh well, you know. A little of this and a little of that.”

  “And mostly a little of this, I suppose.”

  “No! Well, one semester I picked up some extra money, in college. Money,” I said, “with which to visit the museums.”