Excerpt from The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The phones in Freetown emit that English ring-ring! ring-ring! The caller speaks from the bottom of a well:

"Internet working!"

Working!—always a bit of a thrill. My machine lay beside me on the bed. I played with the buttons, added a PS to Tina:

I drew cash on the travel account—5K US. Credit cards still aren't trusted. Exchange rate in 02 was 250 leones per euro, and the largest bill was 100 leones. You had to carry your cash in a shopping bag, and some used shoeboxes. Now they want dollars. They'll settle for euros. They hate their own money.

I sent my e-mails, and then waited, and then lost the internet connection.

The BBC show was World Have Your Say, and the subject was boring.

The walls ceased humming and all went black as the building's generator powered down, but not before I had a short reply from Tina:

Don't go back the way you came.

Suddenly I had it. Bruno. Bruno Horst.

*   *   *

Around three that morning I woke and dressed in slacks, shirt, and slippers, and followed my Nokia's flashlight down eight flights to the flickering lobby. Nobody around. While I stood in the candle glow among large shadows, the lights came on and the doors to both elevators opened and closed, opened and closed once more.

I found the night man asleep behind the desk and sent him out to find the girl I'd seen earlier. I watched while he crossed the street to where she slept on the warm tarmac. He looked one way, then the other, and waited, and finally nudged her with his toe.

I took an elevator upstairs, and in a few minutes he brought her up to my room and left her.

"You're welcome to use the shower," I said, and her face looked blank.

Fifteen years old, Ivoirian, not a word of English, spoke only French. Born in the bush, a navel the size of a walnut, tied by some aunt or older sister in a hut of twigs and mud.

She took a shower and came to me naked and wet.

I was glad she didn't know English. I could say whatever I wanted to her, and I did. Terrible things. All the things you can't say. Afterward I took her downstairs and got her a taxi, as if she had somewhere to go. I shut the car's door for her and heard the old driver saying even before he put it in gear: "You are a bad woman, you are a whore and a disgrace…" but she couldn't understand any of it.

Excerpted from The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson. Copyright © 2014 by Denis Johnson. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.