Nobody Move by Denis Johnson Page B

talks.”
“A thousand atom bombs don’t matter,” he said, “if you don’t have the sense to push the button.”
She helped him draw the sweater over his head, and then she helped him with his shoes and his pants and boxers, saying only “Here” and “Lift a little” and “How’s that?” The sweater’s left elbow was ripped and dirty, also the left pants leg from hip to cuff. The wound on his right leg looked fine. He hadn’t torn the sutures.
He said, “The mirror on your car is broken.”
“Did it come loose?”
“The sideview mirror. The glass is broken.”
“Somebody hit it?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“Do I want to ask what you’ve been doing?”
“That’s always a mistake.”
“Okay.”
She opened a fresh box of swabs and cleaned the light abrasions on his left hip and elbow with rubbing alcohol and disinfected the area around the right leg’s mended bullet wound and finished by wiping at the grime on his fingers.
“Mind your own business,” he said. “That’s never a mistake.”
“I kind of feel like you are my business.”
“Maybe in other ways.”
“What ways?”
“The various ways. You know.”
She gathered up the dirty swabs in both hands and took them over to the kitchen sink. “Do you want some more milk or anything?”
“Sure. Thank you.”
She tossed the swabs in the bag reserved for medical trash, and brought him milk in a clean glass. He took it from her hands and closed his eyes and sipped. “Well,” she told him, “if you can run around and fall on your face, maybe you’re well enough we could sleep in the same bed.”
She watched him closely, and when his eyelids came up he was already staring at her face. “I don’t know if I’m ready to . . . whatever.”
“Let’s go to bed,” she said, “and maybe I could earn another five K.”
“You’re charging me five for every single blow job?”
“Really I’d just like to sleep with you.”
“Yeah,” he said, and his eyelids came down. “Fuck, yeah. I’m tired.”

    Luntz didn’t know why he was the one driving the pickup. He sat in the driver’s seat covered with Capra’s blood and holding the shotgun in his lap and saying, “Wow. Wow. Wow.” Sally sat in the passenger’s seat hugging himself, leaning forward, sitting back, leaning forward, saying, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Sally. I think I left the door open. The restaurant. The front door, man.”
“Fuck the door. Fuck the door. Fuck the door.”
Sally didn’t say where to go, and Luntz didn’t ask. He drove toward higher ground, away from any part of the world he’d already seen. Sally rolled down his window. He rolled it up again. He said, “Turn on your headlights.”
“What? Jesus, I can see in the dark.” Luntz’s left hand scrabbled over the dashboard. “Adrenaline.” He found the knob and pulled it. The road came up in front of him like an amber wall. “What the fuck is Gambol doing in my world?”
Sally said, “Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay.” He had his cheek against the rear window and the fingers of one hand splayed on the glass.
“Will you stop crying, goddamn it?”
“We’re all crying. You are too.”
“The fuck I am.” Luntz drew a long stuttering breath. He clenched his stomach and tightened his grip on the wheel and drove straight ahead. He tasted snot in his mouth.
“There’s a car following us,” Sally said. “Back there. With one high beam busted.”
“Maybe it’s a bike,” Luntz said, and Sally said nothing. Luntz floored it, got around a bend, and U-turned so quickly he could hear the tools and probably Capra’s body sliding across the cargo bed. Facing back the way they’d come, he floored it again, but he hadn’t downshifted, and he killed the engine.
The vehicle came at them, went past, kept going.
They sat in the silent truck in the middle of the lane, both breathing hard. Sally wept. Luntz lit a Camel. “I knew it would be like this,” he said. “I knew I could never handle this shit.” He turned the