Dhalgren

  He sat quickly on the floor (despite callous, he noticed again it was so much easier to distinguish textures in the gritty boards with the foot he kept bare than the one he wore booted), pulled the paper Siam had left up from the top of the crate. (His pants pulled across the place he'd scraped his knee climbing into the loft.) The Times was often sloppily laid out with frequent white spaces. Paging through, he saw one, and pulled his pen out of his vest.

  I had a mother, I had a father. Now I don't remember their names. I don't remember mine. In another room, two people are sleeping who are nearer to me by how many years and thousands of miles; for whom, in this terrifying light, I would almost admit love.

  He opened the pages back and placed the paper on the crate. The pages were yellow in the new light.

  And it was not blank space.

  The bottom quarter was boxed for an advertisement. Inside, two-inch letters announced:

  BRASS ORCHIDS

  In smaller, italic type beside the title, set off in quotation marks, were lines of verse.

  He mouthed: ". . . at this incense . . ." and balked. He threw back his head at the chills on his neck (and closed his eyes against the light: inside his lids was the color of orange rind), opened his eyes to look at the paper. A misreading: ". . . this incidence . . ." He let his breath out.

  Why had they taken those lines, he wondered. Without the two before or the one after, they meant . . . nothing? He puzzled on the severed image, clicking his pen point.

  What was the purpose of it?

  (What had he wanted to write?)

  His forehead moistened; his eye drifted to the column of type down the left of the . . . advertisement; and snagged on " . . Newboy . . ." He went to the top, to shake loose the confusion:

  We have lost our poet in residence: To be precise, at six-thirty, after a farewell breakfast prepared by Mrs Alt-Professor Wellman, Mr and Mrs Green, Thelma Brandt, Colonel Harris, Roxanne and Tobie Fischer were among the guests who rose in time. After a rushed (alas) second cup of coffee, our driver, Nick Pedaikis, arrived from Wells Cottage to drive Ernest New-boy down to Helmsford.

  A moving incident at the regretted departure: a young man whom Mr Newboy had been encouraging with his poetry came to wave an admiring farewell at the mouth of Bellona's own Pons Asonorum. So, another celebrity leaves, loved. But Bellona, it would seem, in all its impoverishment, holds myriad fascinations.

  We had heard rumors of the coming of our most recent guest; still we had, frankly, entertained some doubts as to whether this visit would, as it were, come off. Communication with the outside world, as all of you know who have tried it, is an exhausting, inaccurate, and frustrating business here at best. How convenient! In the same trip with which our Nick delivered Mr Newboy onto his journey to Pittsfield, he was able to meet, as per tentative arrangements, with Captain Michael Kamp. They arrived in Bellona shortly after three o'clock. Captain Kamp is indefinite about the length of his stay. We cannot express what a privilege it is to have this illustrious gentleman with us in

  Incense had come as a misreading of incidence; did illustrious echo illusion? Kid wondered.

  He raised his eyes to the bright vista, squinted, and thought: The problem of hallucinating red eyes, even a great red one rising into the sky .. .

  The thought came with a load of monstrous comfort: This is impossible. He stopped clicking his pen. Momentarily he wanted to laugh.

  Hallucination?

  He gazed into the light, tried to open his eyes full to it; they hurt and refused.

  He had wanted to write something?

  This wasn't even hallucination. I'm probably lying in bed, somewhere, with my eyes closed ... is that called dreaming?

  After-images deviled the walls.

  He turned his head away, and into darkness . . . dreaming?

  His cheek was on a blanket. One arm was cramped beneath his side. He was filled with the tingling one has after having laughed a long time. He lay, trying to remember what had just passed, gnawing at his fingers till he tasted blood. And kept gnawing.

  Lanya shifted, made some slow, sleepy sound. Kid took his hand from his mouth, curled his fingertips tight against his palm. "Hey," he said. "Are you asleep . . . ?"

  Lanya stretched. "More or less . . ." She lowered her chin and looked down at the blond head between their hips. "What was his name?" Kid laughed.

  Denny's hand uncurled on Kid's thigh. Then the blond head came up. ". . . huh?"

  "What's your name?" She pushed back cords of his hair.

  Denny's lids slid closed. He sighed without answering and lay down again.

  Kid held his laughter in this time. Lanya shook her head; her hand at Kid's forehead pushing at his coarser hair.

  "How was he?" he whispered, from somewhere down in his chest.

  "Mmmm?"

  "I heard you two when I was sort of half-asleep." He cupped her cheek and she turned to lip the ham of his thumb. "How'd he do?"

  She turned back. A smile and a frown mixed themselves on her face. "Now which one of you was that-" She laughed when he shook her ear. "Very sweet and very energetic." She glanced down again. "Sort of ... up and down, you know? He's got quite a sense of humor." "That's one name for it."

  Her eyes came up again; even in the shadow their green was bright between his fingers baring her face. "Terribly, terribly sweet, mainly." "And how are you?"

  "Mmmmm." She closed her eyes and smiled. "You know what he did this morning?" "What?"

  "He dragged me in here and said he was going to blow me, and then he got that girl in here."

  She opened her eyes; "Oh, is that how it happened." He felt her eyebrows raise. "Well, I guess turn about is fair play."

  "I dig that scene-"

  "So I noticed. You're sweet too."

  "-but she was sort of funny about the whole thing. I didn't like it, I mean with her."

  "So I gathered. Also he's a little boy, isn't he? Or is he another baby face like you?"

  "He's fifteen. She's seventeen. I think."

  Lanya sighed. "Then perhaps you just have to give them time to grow into their own perversions. And by the way, how are you?"

  "Fine." Kid grinned. "I'm really fine."

  And laughing, she pushed her face toward his.

  Hands scrabbled on Kid's belly; Denny grunted.

  An elbow hit Kid's stomach. A knee hit his knee.

  "Hey, watch it," Lanya said.

  "I'm sorry," Denny said, and fell on top of them.

  The scent of Denny's breath, which was piney, joined Lanya's, which reminded Kid of ferns.

  "Oof," Lanya said. "Would you please tell me what your name is?"

  "Denny," Denny said loudly in Kid's ear. "What's yours?"

  "Lanya Colson."

  "You're the Kid's old lady, huh?"

  "When he remembers who I am." Her hand on Kid's wrist squeezed.

  Kid rubbed the back of Denny's neck with one hand and held Lanya's with the other. Again he felt how chalky Denny's skin was. Lanya's was warm.

  "You like this?"

  Lanya laughed and moved her arms farther around Denny's back.

  "Up here, where I live." Denny suddenly pulled back. "You like this?"

  They watched him hunker on the blankets. The side of Kid's thigh on hers was warm. The top, where Denny had been, cooled.

  "You can't stand up," Lanya said. "But it must be good for sitting and thinking."

  "I stay up here a lot," Denny said. "Cause it never gets that hot. Then sometimes I don't come up here two or three days." Suddenly he sat back and pulled a plastic envelope into his lap. "You like this?"

  "What is it?" Lanya asked and leaned forward.

  "It's a shirt." Denny said. "It's a real pretty shirt."

  Kid looked too.

  Beneath the plastic cover, and over green satin, gold strings tangled: the fringe was attached to the velveteen yoke. Velveteen cuffs sported gilt and green glass links.

  "I found it in a store." Denny reach
ed behind him. "And this one."

  Silver thread elaborately embossed the black.

  "Those were the two I liked," Denny explained. "Only you can't wear stuff like this around here. Maybe if I go someplace else . . ." He looked between the two quickly.

  Kid scratched the hair between his legs and drew away a little.

  Lanya had leaned closer. "They are pretty!"

  "What is that one made of?" Kid asked.

  Lanya pressed the plastic covering with her palm. "It's crepe."

  "And I have these." Denny pushed the shirts behind him. "See."

  When the lid clicked off the plastic box, the cubes inside bounced.

  "It's a game," Denny explained. "I found it in another store. It's too complicated for me to play, and there's nobody here to play it with. But I liked the colors."

  Lanya picked up one of the green blocks. On each face was an embossed gold letter: p,q,r,s,o,i . . .

  Denny blinked and held the box open for her to replace the playing piece.

  She turned it in her fingers a long time, till Kid's awareness of Denny's restrained impatience made him uncomfortable.

  "Put it back," Kid said, quietly.

  She did, quickly.

  "And this." Denny pulled out an oversized paperback

  book. "You got to look at those close. They're very funny

  pictures-"

  "Escher!" Lanya exclaimed. "They certainly are."

  Kid reached over her arm to turn the page.

  "Where did you get those?" Lanya asked.

  "In another . . . store." (Kid idly wondered at the

  hesitation but didn't look up.) "In somebody's house," Denny corrected himself. "We broke in. This was there, so I took it. You seen 'em before, ain't you."

  "Um-hm." Lanya nodded.

  Kid turned another page of etched perspective imploded on itself and put back together inside out. Lanya bent to look now.

  "This!" Denny said.

  They both looked. And Kid took the book from Lanya and handed it back to Denny. ("That's all right," Denny said. "She can look at it," ignoring Kid's gesture.) He showed them a silver box. "Ain't this a neat radio? It's got AM and FM and it even says Short Wave." It was the size of a box of kitchen matches. "And all sorts of other dials."

  "I wonder if they do anything," Lanya said.

  'That one says the 'volume'," Denny explained. "The button's there, that one is the AFC thing so it doesn't slide around. But you can't tell around here because radios don't work here any more."

  "Like the shirts," she said. "When you go someplace else, you'll have something nice."

  "If we go someplace else," Denny considered, "I'll probably leave all this stuff here. You can get lots of nice things anywhere around. You just pick it up."

  "I meant somewhere outside the . . .", Kid watched her realize that Denny had not.

  Suddenly she touched the radio. "It isn't square!" she announced. The black and metal box was trapezoidal. She flattened her hands to the sides of it. "It is beautiful," she said in the voice of someone admitting that a puzzle was still insoluble. (What was the name of his roommate in Delaware who had had so much trouble with the paper on mathematical induction? Another thing he couldn't remember . . . and was sad at his ruined memory and happy for Lanya.) "It really is . . . just lovely."

  Kid leaned close to her and kneaded the inside of his thighs. He'd laid the Escher against his calf. The corner of the book nicked; he didn't move it.

  "You seen these pictures too?" Denny brought out another paper-covered book.

  Lanya said: "Let me see."

  She turned over the first page and frowned.

  ". . . Um, did Boucher ever paint religious pictures?" Kid ventured.

  "Not," Lanya said, "for three-dimensional, laminated-plastic dioramas."

  "I think 3-D pictures are great," Denny said, while Kid felt vaguely embarrassed.

  "These are strange." Lanya turned another page.

  A crowned woman in blue stood one foot on a crescent moon while below her two naked men cowered in a rowboat. Ghosts of the same picture at other angles haunted the striated plastic.

  "What's the next . . ." Lanya asked.

  A man who looked like a classical Jesus, in a loincloth, limped on a single crutch, one hand, with stigma, extended.

  "Spanish .. . ?" she mused.

  "Puerto Rican," Kid suggested.

  Lanya glanced at him. "It doesn't have any writing anywhere."

  A woman, perhaps the virgin, as likely an empress, rode on a tiger. "The rocks and moss and water in the background, that's lifted from Da Vinci." Lanya turned to the next. "These are really . . ." She closed the book to a white cover on which was a crowned and bleeding heart behind a cross. "You can't tell me those are Christian. Did you find this in somebody's house too?"

  "In a store," Denny said. He was hunting at the edge of the blanket again. "And these."

  In his cupped hands were three glass cubes set with glittering stones.

  "Dice?" Kid asked.

  "I had four of them," Denny said. "One broke." He rolled them against Lanya's leg.

  Three, two, and six: counting the top numbers was difficult because of pips on other faces.

  "You're really into collecting pretty things." Lanya picked up a cube.

  Denny sat back against the wall and hugged his knees. "Um-hum."

  "Me too." She watched him. "Only I leave them where I find them. Like buildings. Or trees. Or paintings in museums."

  "You just-" Denny let his knees fall open-"notice where they are; and go back and look at them?"

  She nodded.

  Denny tangled his fists in the blanket between his feet.

  "But you don't have to do it that way here. You can just take what you want. Well, maybe not the trees and the buildings. But the paintings, if you find one you like, you just carry it with you. Shit, you can go live in a fuckin' building if you like it! In front of the fuckin' tree!"

  "No." Lanya let her thin back bend. "I'm into collecting pretty, useful objects. Yours are just pretty."

  "Huh?"

  "But if they're supposed to stay useful, I have to leave them where they are."

  "You think there's something wrong with taking that stuff?"

  "No ... of course not. As long as you didn't take it from somebody:"

  "Well it must have belonged to somebody once."

  "Do you think there's something wrong with taking it?"

  "Shit." Denny grinned. "Nobody's gonna catch me. You like taking stuff?"

  "It's not-"

  "Say," Denny came to his knees. "You ever hustle?"

  "Huh?" Lanya recovered from her surprise with an unsteady grin. "I beg your pardon."

  "I mean take money for going to bed with somebody."

  "No, I certainly haven't."

  "Denny has, I bet," Kid said.

  "Yeah, sure," Denny said. "But I just wanted to know. About you."

  Her amusement faltered toward curiosity. "Why?"

  "Would you?"

  "I don't know . . . perhaps." She laughed again and took his knee in her hands. "Are you planning to set me up in business now? There isn't any business here."

  Denny giggled. "That's not what I meant." Suddenly he picked up the plastic box, opened the lid, tossed.

  "Hey!" Lanya shrieked, and scrambled back under the cubes of colored wood.

  Denny picked up a fallen cube and threw it at her.

  "Oh, cut that out-"

  He threw another one and laughed.

  "Damn it-"

  Scowling, she picked up a handful and flung them back, hard. He ducked: they clicked the wall.

  She hurled another that hit his head.

  "Ahh . . . !" He flung one back. She laughed, and threw two more, one with the left hand and one with the right. Both hit. Denny rolled away in hysterics, and scrambled after more gaming pieces.

  "You're gonna lose the . . ." Kid started. Then he stretched across the front edge of the l
oft to keep the pieces from rolling over. Denny's laughter bobbed between octaves. Kid thought, His voice hasn't even finished changing.

  Lanya was laughing too, almost so hard she couldn't throw.

  A cube hit Kid's hip. He knocked if back onto the blanket. Another went over his shoulder, clattering to the floor. He watched them turn and duck and toss and wished they would throw pieces at him. After a while they did.

  He threw them back, tried to guard the edge, gave up, by now laughing himself, till it hurt beneath his sternum, and couldn't stop laughing, so hurled the bright cubes with gold p's, q's, K's, and r's.

  "It's not fair!" Lanya cried against Kid's arm, then laughed again, when they had made him abandon the loft edge.

  "Just 'cause you throw so hard!" Cube in hand, Denny ducked first left, then right.

  "Come on ... now . . ." Kid panted, and couldn't laugh any more.

  Denny looked over the edge. "There're a lot of them on the floor."

  Lanya pulled back, threw another. It deflected from Denny's thigh. She ducked behind Kid.

  Denny glanced back. "There goes another one."

  Lanya looked out tentatively. "Maybe we better go down and pick them up."

  Frowning, Denny turned back for the box. "Yeah . . ." He stopped to place the shirts and books and the glass dice in the corner. Koth regarded the board from his day-glo poster.

  A shirt casing had gotten torn.

  "Let's go down," Kid said.

  Lanya followed him on the ladder.

  They picked up cubes. When Denny came down, she threw one at him as he stepped to the floor.

  "Hey, don't-" Denny said, because the cube went off into the junk beneath the platform.

  "I'm sorry!" Lanya snickered again. "Here, let me help." She followed him into the leaning tools, piled chairs, cartons. She held back an ironing board while Denny dropped down. "Got it . . ."

  She came over with the box, and held it for Kid to put in his handful. While he fingered them clumsily into place, she asked, "Have you ever taken money for having sex with somebody?"

  "Yes."

  "Men and women?"

  One cube stuck against another; Kid pressed, and another jumped out of the matrix. "Just men."

  "Maybe I should try it," she said after a moment. "Everybody thinks about it."

  "Why?" Kid stopped for another cube by his foot.

  "And maybe you've just made a good point."