Nobody Move: A Novel by Denis Johnson

Author:Denis Johnson [Johnson, Denis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0374222908
Amazon: 0312429614
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2009-04-27T12:00:00+00:00

Later she drove by the house. He probably wasn’t home. No reason he’d be home at two in the afternoon. But his gray Lexus sat in the driveway. The Lexus didn’t mean he was home. He might be driving a second car. He could afford one. He could own eight cars by now. He could be heading a parade of newly purchased automobiles down Main

Street. In her shaking hand the key chain jingled. She put the key in the lock. She swung open the door. He was home.

“Babylove,” he said. “I’m pouring you a drink.”

Seven minutes later he went down on the floor by the bed. She said, “I like you on your knees, Daddyman.”

She saw tears in his eyes.

She was weeping too. “Now beg.”

Ernest Gambol proceeded into the traffic and across the street looking neither right nor left, setting his aluminum cane down hard with each step forward. The pain was good pain. Different than before.

He entered the parking lot of the Circle K. As he passed behind the Wonder Bread truck idling out front, its reverse lights flared. He struck the nearest one with his cane and shattered it. He made his way to the pay phone, where he rested his weight on both feet equally and allowed four minutes to pass. He punched the buttons and called the pay phone out front of O’Doul’s.

Juarez answered. “Alhambra here.”

“It’s me.”

“Are you ready to laugh?”

“I’m ready.”

“You got your pants on?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Are you ready?”

“I said I was.”

“Do you remember Sally Fuck?”

PART

THREE

MARY poured some bourbon over ice and asked Gambol, “Do you want a drink?” He’d already told her twice to

shut up, but she couldn’t help herself.

Gambol, sitting on the couch in his boxers and Mary’s blue nylon robe, said nothing. He stared at his wounded right leg, outstretched before him on the ottoman. His brow looked even heavier than usual. He kept his lips clamped together. It didn’t seem possible, but maybe he was thinking.

Mary took her drink to the coffee table and sat beside him on the couch. Together they watched the final minutes of Law & Order. No conversation but the fraught dialogue of cops and crooks, no other sound but the ice in her glass when she sipped from it.

When the show was over, Gambol looked at his wristwatch.

Mary knelt on the floor beside the ottoman and parted the hem of his robe and examined the wound. He couldn’t appreciate the work. When it came to suturing, she was better than most doctors she’d assisted. “You’re healing fast, but I’m leaving those stitches in awhile. Seven days minimum for a wound to the proximal lower extremity. Ten days would be better.”

He placed his hand gently on her head. She laid her cheek on his thigh and stared at his crotch. “Did I say you had one leg still working? Make that two out of three.” She reached for the remote and killed the power, and he relaxed on the couch while she knelt between his splayed knees with her head going up and down.

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