Angels by Denis Johnson

Author:Denis Johnson [Johnson, Denis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, General, Urban
ISBN: 9781409018452
Google: AyEic5TFfb4C
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-09-29T11:00:00+00:00

She was drinking a beer in Dwight Snow’s car in the Bashas’ parking lot, a shimmering lake of molten asphalt, and training the air conditioner’s vents onto her face. Though she’d pushed it up to MAX, the unit was feeble against the heat; when it blew in her face, her knees felt hot; the back seat area was twenty degrees warmer than the front. Dwight was now in the supermarket buying lemons and tequila. He had a pretty nice car here, a Buick Riviera with a red interior that still smelled new. She didn’t know how she got into these places.

Holding the can of beer between her knees, she took an amphetamine capsule from an envelope in her shirt pocket—a Black Beauty, courtesy of the youngest of the Houston brothers—and chewed it slowly. She’d gotten so she liked to break them up with her teeth, liked the bitter taste, the black taste—it was black beauty, wasn’t it? All I eat anymore.

The rear-view mirror returned her face to her, cavern-cheeked and bug-eyed, and when she drew her lips apart she looked into the image of canine hysteria, the teeth yielding a purple tint from days on end of red wine. Almost like a physical reality, somewhere in the upper left quadrant of her chest there lurked true knowledge of what she was doing; and in the remaining three-quarters of her psyche the word on chemical abuse was Fuck You. A person needs pills for the world and wine for the pills. Anything further I’ll let you know.

It was kicking in now: the day looked brighter, and the random slow-jerk of vehicles and figures in the parking lot around her took on the satisfying rhythms and choreography of a dance. The radio’s hillbilly voices prayed for terror—

On the thirty-first floor

A gold-plated door

Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain—

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