Dhalgren

  Denny lowered himself. The muscle in his thigh shook till his knee slipped on the blanket.

  "His dick and my two fingers in your pussy," Kid said. "They can't all give out at once. Hey, look at him hump!"

  Her hand lay loose: small fingers on white palms where the sweat was shiny as mica. The fingers moved to close and did not close, moved to open and did not: she touched Denny's shoulders as his pale hair curled against her face. Kid felt the boy shake, the cock sliding on his knuckles. He took his hand from between them to hold himself up. Denny's body flattened on her larger one beneath. Kid prodded between them again. "Hey, boy . . . there you go. You like that, huh?" He balanced himself to rub her arm, and felt a muscle twitch in her shoulder. "You like it too, don't you?" On the seventh or eighth motion, he could again move his middle finger knuckle deep in her beside Denny's scrotal sack which, having shriveled tight as possible, now unwrinkled on his palm. Denny backed up to push. Her hand jerked on his shoulder. Kid could not see her face. Denny pushed again and her counterpush beneath him made her legs sway. They're so silent, he thought, and caught his breath; his own cock was tight and tense and hard enough to hurt. He moved his hand from between them, and lay down beside them, pressed himself against them, his dick along the flexing crevice between, one arm across Denny's back, the other around the top of her head. Denny did not break rhythm. Kid nuzzled between their faces, trying to kiss her, but she would not turn toward him. Denny's breath was loud as an engine. "Hey, you fuck that shit . . ." Kid whispered. "You bust that pussy wide open, cocksucker! Bury him in pussy, bitch!" Denny was a motion against his right hip; against his left, her hip thrust and shook under Denny's falling, and falling, and falling faster. So he moved his hand down between Denny's buttocks; felt the first sweat on the dry body. Denny pushed harder. She had raised her far leg around his thighs, and was panting. Kid reached over her calf, thinking, maybe she won't like that, and between Denny's legs, moving down a few inches so he could cup balls; Denny growled, and he was going to take his hand away, but the growl articulated, "Yeah . . . ! That's right. Go on . . ." He jabbed, his hand forward and she, beneath, jerked in a way that should have had a cry with it. Denny pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and stopped pushing, while she went on, and let out all his air. "Jesus Christ. . ." muffled against her neck. His ass relaxed. Then he began to pant.

  Kid rubbed his neck, and Denny laughed against her, reached up to brush his hair from her face. She was panting too.

  "Hey?" Kid brushed her cheek with his knuckle. Her wide eyes locked his. "You make it this time?" With his other hand, he pushed his cock down against her thigh. "I can go again."

  She flashed an uncertain smile. "I'm okay."

  "Shit!" Kid let his head drop with a bark of laughter. "I'm tired, that's what I am." He closed his eyes, and a breath later heard them making movements. His own groin, still engorged, was numbing. I bet I'm going to wake up with cramps under my balls, he thought, and didn't care. Denny touched his shoulder, tugged a little. So he rolled back against them. Denny made another breathy sound, and hugged Kid tightly, suddenly pushed his face against Kid's neck. "Hey . . . !" He caught the boy, who was giggling all panty like a puppy (like her, he remembered, when she had first fallen against him). He moved his hand down the hard flank till his knuckles touched her softer one. "Go to sleep or something." Denny took his face away, and Kid worked his arm beneath her neck (her hair was much crisper than the boy's, and the back of her neck was moist and hot; his own, moist and cooling) and felt comfortable enough to let himself drift. Drifting, he realized how loud Denny's breath was and listened for hers. It was slower and farther away. Then, after a time that might have been sleep, it was faster. He reached for her, only brushed her, he thought: A strangeness, hey, and beautiful. His lips, drying, had adhered to one another. They tore apart with the breath and the mumbled word: beautiful. Released, he fell away into sleep.

  He woke in annoyance that turned immediately to pleasure. Somebody was blowing him. He grinned on the darkness of his lids, reached down through three levels of thought. Lanya? No, this other girl. His hand glanced from bone under soft hair to hit the hard, tight shoulder. Denny grunted.

  "What you doing?" Kid asked. He rolled his head left, then right on the creased blanket, then again with his eyes open. The girl was gone.

  Denny said, "You were asleep all the time with a God-damn hardon. I was just-" Kid locked his fingers in Denny's hair and pulled his head down.

  "That's what you started doing and you ain't finished me yet."

  Denny dropped his mouth again.

  Kid moved one fist out in the blanket beside his face, hoping it was still warm from her. One fantasy memory of Denny's face between her legs and his penis thrust between them ... he moved from fantasy and lay, with his mouth opened, his head back, each muscle loosening; Denny held Kid's balls while he sucked; and that felt good. Kid held the boy's sides with his legs. And came. It was something like hot oil poured in cotton (cotton into flame; flame, out beneath water. Water and ashes and ashes washed through him); "Come on up here."

  Denny lay down on Kid's chest.

  Kid rubbed his back, dry and papery as before. He wanted to say thanks, but decided it would be silly, so he squeezed Denny's shoulder instead.

  "Your come tastes different from mine," Denny said.

  "Yeah?" Kid closed his eyes.

  "It's more, you know, liquid. And there's more of it."

  "I'm bigger than you."

  "And it's more bitter."

  "You know,'' Kid said, "you're a pretty funny little guy. Where'd your girl friend go?"

  "She got-"

  Somebody came into the room, moved something below them, turned.

  Kid looked down across the blanket as a nondescript top-of-a-head left through the doorway.

  "-got up a little while ago and went out." Denny's fist uncurled on Kid's shoulder.

  "Oh. You two do this a lot?"

  "Huh?"

  "Drag people into bed all the time?"

  "Not like this."

  "Like how?"

  "I don't know. It's her idea, most of the time. She's my best friend here."

  Kid nodded, his chin tapping the top of Denny's head.'Is she a scorpion too?"

  "Naw. She's not a member. Not like Filament. Or Lady of Spain. She just likes to hang around with them." He shifted. "I mean us. I bring guys around for her sometimes. As long as she lets me watch. A couple of times I messed around with the guys, just a little. But not like ... well, what we did."

  "You like messing around with her too?"

  Denny shrugged. "I don't know. I guess so. But I never done that before. I mean get inside."

  Kid laughed.

  "Sometimes she'd tell me I should, but I never did. It just embarrassed me, you know? I couldn't keep it hard, I mean before."

  "Oh." Kid tried not to smile, even though Denny could not see it.

  "I can get guys for her two or three times a week, sometimes. She says she don't wanna be one guy's girl friend."

  "She likes two at a time? I can dig it."

  "Maybe." Denny moved a little. "We do anything together, any old crazy thing, you know? If I told her to do something real crazy, like go up in an old building where there might be people hiding with guns, she'd do it. We found all sorts of junk. In old buildings. There's lots of stuff around."

  Kid crossed his arms over Denny's back; the warm mouth brushed his chest.

  "I like to watch her make it with guys," Denny said. "When I blew you, were you thinking about her?"

  "You'd like that, wouldn't you? No, I wasn't. I mean only a little at first."

  "I don't care what you were thinking about," Denny said. "You think you know an awful lot about what I like, huh?"

  Now Kid shrugged. "I think I like you. How's that?" Relaxing from the shrug, he began to laugh. "You want to suck it, sit on it, that's fine by me. Now you're going to turn around and run off and look all scared and wide-eyed at me eve
ry time we see each other from now on, huh? But I want to make love to you, sometime. Just you."

  "Like I was a girl?"

  Kid sighed. "Yeah. If you want to put it that way."

  "I'd like that."

  "I know you would." He cuffed the back of Denny's head with his hand.

  "When you jerk off, do you do that like what I did?"

  "Huh?"

  "You know. Eat it."

  "Oh. No. I've tasted my own a couple of times. Hell, I guess I ate it once or twice, just to see."

  "I do it all the time," Denny said, with resolve. "How did you know I did?"

  "I've just known other people who did that too, and . . . well. I don't know."

  "Oh."

  "Is she going to come back?" Kid asked.

  Denny shrugged.

  "Oh," Kid said again and thought he'd been saying that a lot. So he closed his eyes.

  He listened for people moving around the house, thinking it must be growing late in the morning. Something-Denny's elbow-hit the side of his head, and he realized he was waking up after drifting off again.

  He opened his eyes and pushed himself to sitting position. Denny lay curled away from him. Kid breathed deeply; his head was heavy with the detritus of pleasure. He rubbed his shoulder and it tingled, paused at the chain that crossed the hair on his chest. It still held: from a very long time ago, a waking and a sleeping and a waking, he recalled the blond Mexican who had surprised him in the street. Kid frowned, and began to reach around for his clothes.

  He had to go to the bathroom, for one thing. His head ached slightly, and his mouth tasted like unflavored gelatin, solid around tongue and teeth. He looked for his pants, stopped, put his hand on Denny's buttock. A face, he thought, hatcheted on the obstetric line. Cheeks, he thought, sucked in with astonishment. If you hang around, I'm going to tear it up. Denny rubbed his nose and was probably awake but not moving.

  Kid pulled on his pants, dragged his vest and his boot over the edge of the platform. The people in the sleeping bags were still there. Bending to put on his vest, he found his flanks sore; he leaned on the jamb to put on his boot, and for the first time in a while wished he had a second. (A vision of his own hands crumbling dirt between them, the dirt falling on water.) He stepped into the hallway.

  The tan shade and the warmth in Denny's loft had intimated a false summer.

  The sky beyond a dirty window pane high on the hall wall was stormy. The bathroom door opened: not Thirteen's girl friend, but Thirteen himself. His long hair was bushy from sleep. "Hey I didn't know you was around here?" Thirteen nodded heavily, his voice roughened by fatigue. "Ain't seen you in a couple of days." Kid went into the bathroom and while he urinated, busied himself not thinking about when the last time he had actually seen Thirteen was. He ground his fist against his sore side and reflected: it probably isn't possible to really fuck yourself to death. Punching his tongue into bitter corners of his mouth, he squinted out the window. Stormy?

  Incredible suspensions in the dry air, and he moved between them, dribbling and/or blowing out all holes. He waited for some bright precipitate. His water splashed and silenced. He massaged his limp genitals, not with desire, but rather to press some feeling back. His knuckles got wet, and he looked down wondering if it were urine or final mucus. Pleasure can be an appalling business, he thought and buttoned his pants.

  In the hallway, he stood sucking his salty fingers until he realized what he was tasting, wondered why he was doing it, and remembered Denny. He grinned: a psychologist had once called him a maddening combination of lability and willfulness.

  Then she walked into the hall without seeing him, and opened the front door. He took his fingers from his mouth, recognized her curly hair, tried to envision her full shoulders beneath the blue sweatshirt she now wore.

  She went down the steps.

  Curious, he walked to the door. If she turns around, he thought, her eyes will be red, hey?

  She stopped by the car, prying beneath the bent rim with one finger, looking absently down the block; looked back at him.

  The little chill was all anticipation.

  She blinked surprised brown eyes at him, from a face that could have been angry.

  "Hey," he said, and smiled at her from the top of the steps, which became more and more difficult to do before her blank blinking, except in confusion. In confusion, smiling, he walked down. "I missed you when you cut out." There are some storms, he thought beneath the mangled sky, it's easier to walk into.

  "Sure," she said as he came down the steps. "I bet you did." Her fingers kept moving on the broken glass.

  "If you keep that up, you're going to cut your-"

  "There's something funny about you," she said with a look of distaste. "That was funny, or queer, or something."

  "Look," he said, "you're not going to call me names," and realized he did not know what hers was. That brought him crashing through his embryo anger till he was much closer to her than he'd wanted to be: his fingers against his leg were trying to take the same position as hers. His face pulled to mimic hers.

  "When he was . . . was with me, that was all between you and him. I might as well not have been there!"

  "When I was with you, that was all between you and him. I might as well have been beating my meat," and felt, saying it, the comparison was unfair. "He says you're his best friend. What is it? He thinks he's doing it for you, you think you're doing it for him?" His face, straining after hers, registered a sudden sadness inside him so intensely it took him instant after instant to see her expression had changed.

  "I used to be the smartest person in my class!" she said, suddenly.

  He wondered why his eyes were burning till he saw tears in hers.

  "I used ... to be the smartest person in my class!" She dropped her head.

  He dropped his, whispered, "Hey . . ." and put his hand (too gently, he thought) on the back of her neck, touched his forehead to hers.

  "Why don't you go away?" she said with sad, exhausted anger.

  "Okay." He squeezed, snorted the faint laughter of withdrawal, and went back up the steps (his palm cold; her neck had been warm). Halfway up the hall, though, he was frowning.

  When he climbed back into the loft, Denny (between Kid's fists) turned over and blinked and grunted. "Hey, your girl friend's outside all upset." "Oh, shit!" Denny said and sat up. He ground the heels of his palms against his eyes, then started for the edge of the loft.

  Kid grabbed his unchained ankle. Denny looked back.

  "You guys go through this much trauma every time you screw?"

  "It's my fault," Denny said.

  "Sure," Kid nodded. "Come on back here, will you?"

  "I better go. I guess I been doing too much talking about you. I guess I ain't talked to her about nothing else for a pretty long time."

  "Which reminds me," Kid said. "You're making a lot more out of that lady in the department store with the bee-bee gun than it's really worth, you know?"

  Denny grinned. "I been talking about you a hell of a lot longer than that," and went over the side.

  Kid lay back, grunted, "Fuck . . ." and rolled over, wishing there was someone else there. Maybe, he thought, very tired, he'll bring her back. Denny, he figured, would return. Should he have actually touched her? (He recognized the beginnings of a welter of paranoid speculation; recognized as well that sleep lay on the other side of it.) Touched her in the street? If they were lovers, he would be able to find out in a day, a week, a month if it was the proper thing to do. Hell, should he have told Denny about it at all? He was being used: he didn't like it. That's not the sort of shit you lay on somebody you just dragged into bed. Lovers? He decided he didn't like her at all. (She, among silent others, had once said, "Goodbye.") On the other hand, he shouldn't go prying around in emotional closets like that. (He turned over again, wishing Lanya had not disappeared.) Silly, stupid kids! Why did Denny drag her in in the first place? Righteous indignation, he finally decided, was easier.
For the first time in a long while he was aware of the chain around him. Careful, he mulled, that it doesn't come apart-not sure why he should be afraid it might. He woke alone.

  Kid sat up, with his eyes closed, for half a minute. The air in the loft was heavy and dry. Would the pulsing at the back of his head become a headache? People moved in other rooms. The bathroom door closed three times. Grinding his knees on the blanket, he turned for his clothes.

  Denny's were gone.

  In another room a black woman laughed.

  His pants were still on. He shrugged up his vest and, with neither buttoned, climbed down. One of the sleeping bags was still occupied. Two others were shed in quilted rings.

  He leaned on the wall to pull up his boot. He wished again he had the other, but felt habit dissolve the wish. He went into the hall wondering if he'd encounter Denny or the girl first.

  From the door ahead, light slapped across the hall and made him squint.

  "Hey, Dragon Lady!"

  Kid looked in.

  Nightmare, squatting on one of the mattresses, kneaded his thick, scarred shoulder. "Hey, Dragon Lady, you been down!"

  The gorgeous beast dazzled about the shabby room.

  Nightmare let himself thud backward against the wall. A figure under a blanket moved away. Nightmare laughed and rocked and jangled.

  "Down and back! Oh, hey, man. And back!" Dragon Lady turned, killed her lights. And laughed. Kid watched her stained teeth gape.

  A dozen people slept around the room. Nightmare and Dragon Lady talked on raucously:

  "I brought you coffee!" She breathed heavily, breasts stretching her vest's rawhide laces. "Adam and Baby are out there now putting it together. Found a whole fucking warehouse full!" Her face was long and dark as bittersweet chocolate. "Brought you back a whole carton."

  "Instant?"

  "No." She made a fist. "No!"-insistent as an economics teacher. "The real thing. My boys are making it in the kitchen."

  Nightmare rocked and hugged his shoulders. "Hey, we're gonna do up a little caffeine here! That's really good. Oh, Yeah!"