Read Online The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

forearm and asked if I was okay. I said, “I’m fine, except I need to be smarter.”
    “Smarter isn’t always better though, is it?”
    “Good night.”
    I went over and made an arrangement with the whore in the blonde wig. She stood up, and hand in hand we journeyed to my bed.
    She was drunk, also in some way drugged, and she passed out when we were done—perhaps before we were done, and I simply didn’t notice.
    *   *   *
    Later I woke as the woman was leaving, and I locked the door behind her and lay in bed watching the Chinese cable station, a piece about fourteen baby pandas in the Shanghai zoo. A sudden rainstorm hit the roof like an avalanche and killed the city’s power and sent all of existence back where it came from. I thought of the woman wandering around out there in the roaring dark.
    On my nightstand I found the napkin Michael had written on. By the light of my cell phone I made out the words, but not their meaning:
    He’s my panda
    from Uganda
    he’s my teddy bear
    they say things about him
    but I don’t care
    Idi Amin
    I’m your fan!
    —I read it several times. The rhyme scheme interested me.
    *   *   *
    Not long after six in the morning I heard, through the papery walls, the buzz of Michael’s clippers and the shower running next door, and soon I heard someone going out. A few minutes later came a light tapping. I was heating water for instant coffee—the Suites provided a drip brewer but nothing to brew in it, only a jar of Nescafé. The tapping came again, and I realized it must be Davidia.
    I got close to the wall and said, “I’m awake.”
    Her voice came quite clearly. “Come and see me.”
    “Should we meet in the restaurant?”
    “Let’s talk in here,” she said. “Come over. Or around.”
    “I could easily come right through.” Talking through the wall like this, I felt how close our faces were.
    The lights in the hallway flickered on and off. The door stood open. In the random illumination she waited in a yellow silk robe, barefoot. She stepped aside and I entered bearing my cup and my jar of Nescafé.
    “Where’s Michael?”
    “Taking his morning run.”
    The air tasted damp from the shower. Her underwear was lying around. I smelled her perfume. But she said, “It stinks in here. Sorry. Sometimes he sits down and smokes half a dozen cigarettes one after another. Doesn’t say a word. Lost in his head.”
    She picked up a cigarette from the nightstand and put the end in her mouth. Looked around. Perhaps for a lighter.
    “Do you smoke?”
    She threw it in the pile of butts in the ashtray and said, “I’m so stupid.”
    “Let’s have some coffee. Do you have bottled water?” She gave me a liter jug and I set about heating water in the brewer.
    She sat on the bed. “We had a fight.”
    “I’m surprised to hear that. I mean to say—you were pretty quiet about it. I had no idea.”
    “He wanted to be quiet. So he could hear you through the wall.”
    “Hear me?”
    “You and the girl,” she said.
    “We were quiet too,” I said.
    “We’re a stealthy bunch of idiots,” she said. “And I mean idiots.” She got up but didn’t know where to go. “I’ve been wanting to see you alone.”
    “Why?”
    She paused. “I don’t have a ready answer.”
    “Did you have something you wanted to say?” Seeing I wasn’t helping, I added, “I’m only trying to help you figure it out.”
    “I wanted to see what we were like together.”
    “Oh.” I devoted myself to the cups and spoons and Nescafé. “What were you fighting about?”
    “I thought Kampala was the destination. Now we’re going on to Arua.”
    “But last night at dinner you were ready to swing with it.”
    “‘Swing with it’? Who are you, Jack Kerouac? You reach way back into the last century for your Americanisms.”
    “Nevertheless.”
    “Sure, last night I was a real swinger. Alcohol affects me too. I didn’t realize he wasn’t telling us anything.”
    “Michael doesn’t