Dhalgren

4

"Hey, Tak!"

"Kid?"

"What are you doing?"

"What are you doing? Can you get down from there? You better watch out…"

Kid let go of the beam and crabbed down the rubble, raising dust banks behind and an avalanche before.

"That was impressive," Tak said. "You're still going around with one shoe? You must have a sole on that foot like an oak board."

"Naw." Kid beat his foot again his black jeans, both legs grey to the knee. "Not really."

"You exploring in there?" Tak pushed up his cap to watch the smoke curl back through the girders. "How come you don't have the rest of the nest? I didn't think scorpions ever traveled alone."

"I come," Kid shrugged. "I go. I take them on runs. Where you going?"

"I'm on a mission of mercy for your girl friend."

"Lanya?"

"I volunteered to help her with her dress for your party."

Kid tried to hold back his laughter. It burst his lips' seal and lights shot either in his eyes or in the windows of the warehouse across from them.

"What's so funny?"

"She's got you turned into a seamstress?"

"She does not. Come on and I'll show you something interesting."

They walked the littered streets.

"You're going to come to the party, aren't you?"

"Not," Tak said, "on your fucking life."

"Huh? oh, man, come on. Calkins wants me to bring my friends. I'm going to take the whole nest along. Don't you want to see what happens when all us freaks get turned loose in there?"

"Not terribly. But I suspect Calkins does — though I've never met the man."

"Aw, come on, Tak—"

"No. Somebody's got to be around to read about it in the next day's gossip column. That's my job. You just have a good time and drink a glass of brandy for me. Swipe a bottle if they've got any good stuff and bring it back. I'm down to Gold Leaf. Somebody got into my liquor connection and made off with just about everything worth drinking."

"We got a liquor store right around our corner. What do you drink? It's got everything. Anything you want. You just tell me, and I'll get it for you."

"Five Star Courvoisier." Tak laughed his whisky growl and hooked his cap down. "Come on." As they left the corner, he asked, "How long you been up?"

"A few hours."

"Oh," Tak said. "Because I got up very early, when it was still getting light. I came over here, and you could see flames…" He nodded down the side street where turbulent smoke blocked vision less than two blocks away.

"You could?"

"Now it's just…" Tak nodded again.

Smoke bellied and heaved about the upper stories. The sky was thick as cheese and eveninged without shadows. I don't (Kid thought) get thirsty any more, but I'm always hoarse. Three boots and one foot ground the gritty street.

'Tak, where's the monastery from here? I don't mean Reverend Amy's church. I mean the monastery."

"Now this is…" Tak stopped. "This goes up into the city and turns into Broadway. You just go straight on to the other end of Broadway and you run right into it."

"Yeah?… Just like that?"

"It's a long walk. I don't know if that bus is still running. Over here." Tak stepped into the street.

The freight ramp sloped to a wooden door studded with rivet heads the size of fifty-cent pieces. Above, on rust-ringed iron, aluminum letters, forward on bolts, announced cleanly: MSE WAREHOUSE SPACE. By the door a black plaque reflected Kid's face askew. White letters obscured his eyes and lips: Mateland Systems Engineering Warehouse. Kid struggled momentarily with a memory of Arthur Richards while Tak took the hasp in both hands, grunted. The door rumbled back from a plank of blackness. Tak looked at his hands, their cleanness emphasized by swipes of rusty grease.

"Go on in." Tak held his hands from his hips to keep them from his pants.

Kid stepped in and heard his breath's timbre change. Iron steps rose to a concrete porch.

"Go on up."

Kid did and stepped sideways through the door at their head.

The skylight, three stories above, mapped continents in dirt and light, among longitudinal and latitudinal tessellations.

"What's in—" the reverberation halted him—"what's in here?"

"Go on," and Tak was without face. He passed ahead of Kid. Each boot heel on the concrete cast back stuttering echoes.

It was very cool.

Blocked by eight-foot plank X's, spools big enough for underground electrical cable sat about the floor among twenty- and thirty-foot stacks of cartons. Kid passed two before he recognized what was wound on them.

Later he tried to figure out what the process of recognition had been. At the moment of seeing there was a period in which all emotions were dead, during which he had gone up to one — yes, he had put out his hand, pulled it back, and just stood there a long while.

In hanks, in dripping loops from the drum (hundreds of feet? Hundreds of thousands? And how many drums were there in the block-square warehouse?) the brass chain, set with prisms, mirrors, lenses, looped.

He stood before the ranked glitter, waiting for it to strike up some explanatory thought.

The end of the chain hung to the floor, where a few feet formed a full (c.300 stars?) Pleiades.

There was an open cardboard carton beside the spool. Kid bent down, pushed back the flap. They looked like copper beetles. He pushed his hand into the metal tabs, picked out one — there was a hole at one end — and tried to read what was embossed on it. The light was too dim, and the corners of his eyes were stinging.

On the carton, however, stenciled in white, was: PRODUCTO DO BRAZIL.

Kid stood.

Tak had wandered some forty feet down an avenue of cartons.

Kid's eyes had cleared to the dim light enough to make out the stenciling on the boxes piled around him.

FABRIQUE FRANÇAISE

MADE IN JAPAN — the initial smudge must have been an 'M.'

IIPARMATA EAAENIKAI.

Kid turned back to the chain. He had begun his observations in curiosity, but what generated had so little to do with answers that even curiosity blanked.

"Tak!"

"What? Hey, come over here. You seen these?"

Kid sprinted up the aisle between the piled cartons.

Tak kicked back a board cover. Nails squeaked, and the echo rolled among pyramided crates. "This is where you come to get 'em if you need any more."

The holders inside the slats reminded Kid of the square cardboards on which eggs were racked.

Some dozen had been removed.

The ones remaining, the size of golf balls and the color of gun metal, were blistered with lenses. The switch-pips all pointed to the left side of the crate. To the right were the metal loops to link them.

Kid picked up his own projector, watched it swing on its chain.

"They don't have any batteries inside them," Tak said. "You have to get those from stores in the city."

Stenciled across the Inside of the" crate top it said, "SPIDER."

On the crates piled around, Kid read:

Kid lifted the corner of the holder. The layer beneath was full. "There must be—" he frowned at Tak—"thousands of them here?"

"I gotta get some stuff from upstairs," Tak said. "Come on."

"Tak." He looked at the myriad crates labyrinthed around. "There must be thousands of these things here! Millions, maybe!"

Dust filled a slant column from the skylight's marbled panes.

Tak went to the metal steps against the wall. "There's a whole lot of weird stuff in here." He leaned over the banister, grinned at Kid, and started up.

"Hey." Kid swung around the metal newel and followed him. "What did you come here to get?"

"It's upstairs."

The cardboard cartons piled by the wall were water stained. Plumbing rose beside them; the asbestos covering the pipes was mottled too.

"Here you go."

They walked down the balcony. Kid ran his hand along the rail, looking out across the warehouse.

"This place always remind me of the last scene in Citizen Kane," Tak said. "This is what I want."

Two bolts of… cloth (it was some sort of lamé. Kid couldn't tell, in this light, whether it was gold or silver) leaned against the wall.

"For the dress?" Kid asked.

"She was talking about it, and I told her I remembered seeing some stuff lying around." He picked up the bolt and unwrapped it. "I don't know if this is what she wants. It's pretty special. Go on and explore, if you want. I'll give a yell when I'm leaving."

Kid walked a dozen steps further, glanced back — Tak was still stretching out yards of cloth — then walked on.

The cartons near him — smaller and piled haphazardly — were stenciled with clumsy representations of zodiacal signs. He stepped around them. Another, opened like the box of tags downstairs, had been left in the middle of the plated walkway.

His own steps, even his bare foot, set off a metallic ring. The open top joggled with the shaking of the floor.

Diagonally across the cardboard was stenciled:

He did not frown. All the muscles of his face urged him toward the expression. But something else was paralyzed. He squatted, pushed back the top.

They had probably all been stacked neatly together once. But movement had jumbled most of them. He picked up one. It was like a concave disk the size of a quarter, cut from a pingpong ball.

It was red.

He turned it in horny fingers. But it doesn't explain it, he thought. Then blinked, because his eyes were filled with water. It doesn't! Gooseflesh settled over his shoulders, his back, his buttocks, like gauze. What could anybody want with…

He blinked again.

The tear fell on the cap's matte surface. Where it spread, the color deepened to the luster of scarlet glass.

No: That was a double thought, with and without word, and hardly an overlap.

The cap cracked in his fingers.

He dropped it in the box, stood in a motion. He let out all his breath, took in some more, and swallowed in surprise at the echo.

He stepped back.

When do they put them on? When do they take them off?? Where do they put them… I would rather think (the thought kaleidoscoped and went lucid) that these have nothing to do, nothing to do with…

Kid stepped back again, turned, hurried up the balcony.

Tak, the lame folded over his arm, squatted by another box. "I got everything I need. Find anything interesting?"

From where Kid stood, looking down, the visor masked the engineer's eyes.

The terrible thing, Kid realized, is that I'm too scared to ask!

"Hey, are you all right?" Tak raised his head. The shadow bobbed on the top half of his face. "You're not going to go into another one of your flip-outs, are you?"

Kid tried to say, I'm all right. All he did was expel another breath.

From the carton Tak removed some square piece of metallic equipment and stood. "Let's go." He sighed.

Halfway down the stairs Kid managed to say, "I'm all right." It hung detached in dusty light, blunted by echoes. Tak gave him a sarcastic glance.

Is this, Kid thought, one of the things that, a minute hence, will slip from the register of memory to take some inaccessible address beside my name? (He closed his mouth, and the roar he had moved through for the last minutes ceased.) More likely it is one of those things that I will never be able to speak of, and never forget.

They were halfway to the door before the first voice proportioned with amusement yawned somewhere and inquired, Never? then giggled, turned over, and went to sleep.

Well not for a hell of a long time.

But he felt a little bit better.

"Did you see those?" Tak nodded down another aisle of crates.

"What?" Kid's heart still beat very fast. He felt light-headed.

"Come on." Tak led him along.

The orchids hung on wooden racks pegged over with dowels.

Kid walked to one stand. "This is… the fancy kind." He looked back. "Like you have, isn't it?"

"Plain ones are over there." Tak stepped beside him. "I really thought you'd probably been in here before."

To Kid's questioning glance, Tak took down the nearest. Beneath it was lettered:

Kid laughed. It made a weak sound in his "throat, but echo lent it body. "Here, let me see that?" Kid took the scrolled contrivance and turned it around and around. "I guess it would be okay if I took this one… wouldn't it?"

Tak shrugged. "Why not?"

Kid folded his fingers together and pushed them through the wrist band. "I left my other one back at the nest. Might as well have two — one for special occasions." He made a sudden feint at Tak. "You like that?" He laughed again.

"Come on." Tak had not moved at all. "Let's go."

They were in sight of the door when Kid got another attack of gooseflesh. But this one just made him grin. He looked up at the skylight, hunched his shoulders, and hurried after Tak. I'll probably never be able to find this place again, he thought. To steal a souvenir (he looked down at the yellow blades about his hand) seemed suddenly the ultimate cunning.

Outside, Tak smoothed the folded material across his arm. "Since this is going to be your girl friend's ball gown, I shouldn't show you how it works. But it's sort of neat. Just a second." He took out of his pocket the piece of equipment — a metal box the size of a cigarette pack with three dials, two knobs, and a small light on one corner. "Give me a loan of the battery in your shield."

"Oh, sure." Kid fumbled the sphere through the blades. The projector clicked open. "I only got one hand. You take it out."

"Right."

Tak opened the back of the box and put the battery in.

"Now watch."

He turned a knob.

The light on the box's corner flickered argon-orange.

"Here we go."

He turned another.

The cloth over Tak's arm — at first Kid thought Tak was shaking it — turned purple.

"Huh?" Kid said.

The metallic scales from which the cloth was made all seemed to have reversed. Some reversed again, and a blot of scarlet grew in one corner, occluded the purple, till it in turn was swept by glittering green.

"Oh, hey…!" Kid stepped back. "That's going to be a dress?"

"Pretty, isn't it?"

The parti-colored flicker, like insect wings, resolved to blue that deepened, and deepened more, to black.

Tak turned off the box. Most of the cloth fell into dull silver. He shook it; and it was all one metallic grey.

"You know how it works?"

"Um-hm." Tak put the box back in his pocket. "It's simple, really. Hey, don't tell Lanya I showed you this. She wanted it to be a surprise."

"Oh, sure," Kid said. "Sure." He looked back at the warehouse. "Hey, Tak, who…?"

"Now that question," Tak said at his shoulder, "if I knew the answer to, I would have already told you."

"Oh," and Kid began to list those to which that could have been an adequate response.

"You want to come up and have a drink?"

Kid said, "Hey, let me see how that stuff works again. That's what I want to see."

Tak sighed. "Sure."

"…gonna kill you, motherfucker!" shrieking like a baby in pain. Kid leaped from the loft, pivoted around the door jamb. Dollar danced in the hall, swinging the plank above his head.

"Hey…!" Copperhead stepped back, his arm before his face.

"— Kill you if you don't leave me alone!"

Copperhead ducked. The plank hit the wall.

Three scorpions (two black, one white) crowded the living room doorway. Two (one man, one woman) stepped in, staring, from the service porch.

Dollar's head went back.

Kid lunged and grabbed; his hand tangled Dollar's hair. He grasped the scorpion's shoulder and spun him back against the wall. Dollar crashed, and clicked his long teeth. The plank corner hit Kid's shoulder and clattered to the floor, while Dollar opened his mouth again. His lips strung out gummy saliva. Dollar tried to shove forward, gasping, Copperhead was trying to pull Kid away.

Kid jammed his elbow back. "Get off!"

"I'm gonna kill 'im!" Dollar shrieked in Kid's face. "He won't leave me alone. I'm gonna kill 'im! He knows I'm gonna kill 'im! I'm gonna kill 'im! I'm gonna kill—"

Kid flung himself against Dollar, spread-eagled them both on the wall. Then his shoulder, still stinging from the plank, exploded in pain, so surprising he couldn't cry out. He just grunted and clawed at Dollar's head. Dollar's teeth came open with a rush of air. He heard Dollar's skull hit the wall twice, and realized he was pounding it. He felt blood dribbling bis arm. Dollar's eyes were unfocused. He was trying to shake his head. His upper teeth were filmed with blood, his lower lip flecked with it.

"You gonna let me take care of him?" Copperhead's voice came out a fifth too low; his words wobbled. "This fuckin' loony is gonna hurt somebody! And then there ain't gonna be no telling. You gonna let us take care of him?"

Kid looked back. Copperhead's bearded chin was buried back in his neck. His freckled fists opened and closed, and he swayed and panted.

"You gonna let us take care of him?"

Dollar rocked his head over the wall. "You tell him to leave me alone!" Tears made the lashes of his. left eye glisten. "I'm gonna kill 'im! He knows it!" Dollar blinked. Tears rolled into the stubble that grew high up his pustuled cheek.

In the stillness, Kid's panic died. What surged in its place was rage. But he could find no words to bellow. He raised his hands and let a roaring breath.

Copperhead blinked and stepped back.

Dollar's eyes stopped rolling.

Kid felt some muscle leaping in his jaw and flexed his mouth to control it. He rubbed his sticky shoulder.

Glass stood in the bathroom door, Spitt, a few steps behind of him. In the open front door, Denny had one hand on the knob and the other on the molding.

Waiting for words to come to him, Kid heard talking.

"…You see that? You see that, the way he did?…" Pepper crowded in the living room door, whispered intently the D-t, who wasn't listening. "…You see the way Dollar went after that nigger, with a damn board? I bet he would've really messed him up, I bet. He better watch out for Copperhead, now, 'cause Copperhead gonna get him. You think he could beat up Copperhead? Huh? If Kid ain't come in to stop it, who do you bet would've got the other one first, huh? If Kid ain't come in…"

Between thin shoulders, heavy with chain, Pepper's face bore its ecstatic, rotted grin.

"You wait, Copperhead," Kid said, "till I tell you to."

Copperhead closed his lips and, more just to move his head than to agree, nodded.

"Go on," Kid said. "Just don't bother with him."

"…Yeah," Copperhead said. His fists opened, "…only 'cause that's what you sayin'…" He turned and walked up the hall; Glass and Spitt shifted their weight.

"I'm gonna kill 'im! He knows I'm gonna—"

Copperhead turned and barreled back.

Kid hit Dollar on the side of his face with both fists meshed. It was a weak and awkward blow (and his shoulder stung and throbbed beneath the sting) but Dollar crumpled with his hands over his ears.

Copperhead grabbed Kid's shoulders (the pain in the left one went up another level) and got two kicks in around Kid's legs.

"Owe…! Naw…!"

Kid shoved Copperhead back. "Someone get him out of here!"

No one moved.

"You two! Get this bastard out of this God-damn nest before somebody kills him!" He turned and put both hands on Copperhead's chest. Copperhead's vest hung down one arm. A chain had fallen over the other. "You leave him alone… otherwise I'm gonna have to bust you too, and then we'll both get hurt!"

Behind him there was a scraping and jangling.

He looked over his shoulder. Denny and another scorpion (neither were the two he had yelled at) supported Dollar, who panted, lurched, and couldn't get his feet under him at all. Kid thought: He must be faking. Damn it, nobody hit him that hard.

Copperhead took another breath, swallowed, shook his head, took another.

"…Dollar would have really busted up Copperhead if Kid didn't stop him, I bet? You think he would've killed him? I bet he would've, I mean you see the way he went after Copperhead with that board? Then Kid just runnin' in like that…"

The front door opened; Dollar's feet struggled with the steps.

Kid breathed hard, clapped Copperhead's shoulder and walked past. He tried to atomize the fragments of the action. He felt terribly clear-headed. But for all his clarity, he could trace no motivations through the memories of blows and pain.

He stood on the service porch kneading his shoulder, listening to people moving again in other rooms.

"Kid…?"

The black girl Dollar had been necking with last night (from her clothes, Kid saw, she wasn't a scorpion) tucked under one arm, Copperhead, still breathing hard, stepped onto the porch. Spitt and Glass were wedged behind him.

"What?" Kid squeezed his shoulder again. "What do you want?" The scrape from the plank had done more harm than Dollar's bite. Rabies, he thought; I'm gonna get rabies from the bastard.

"You let us go out and take care of him, okay? He's hanging around the house. He's just gonna try and make trouble. We work him over, and he'll be all quiet and nice again, once he gets better. I don't know what you're trying to do," Copperhead said. "But it won't work no other way."

"I don't care," Kid said, mainly because his shoulder hurt, "what you do with him as long as you do it outside."

Copperhead looked back at the other two scorpions. "Okay," he said thickly. "Come on."

The black girl stood in the doorway alone, fingering the waist of her maroon jeans. "They shouldn't do that," she said, with an accent out of Florida and an expression of concern.

As clear as he had felt moments back, Kid felt that dull now. Mouth opened, he nodded at her.

Later he stalked through the house, ignoring the people who moved around him. He stood at the front door, then suddenly turned and went to the porch, and stood before the door there, not really looking at the yard outside; when he became aware of it, he went into the kitchen.

Outside the screening a girl was asking: "…inside? Do you know if he's in there? The big…"

Kid opened the door.

Her knuckle leaped to her chin. Her blonde hair, caught in a barrette with plastic flowers, slipped off her shoulder as she turned her head.

"You're about eight blocks off Jackson," Kid said.

June shook her head. "I wasn't looking for…"

Raven (one of the scorpions who owned the Harley) rubbed his dirty hands on his vest, squeezed his long, rough hair together, took the thong from between his teeth, and tied a top-knot large as his head. "I don't know what she wants."

"You… you live here?" June asked.

Kid nodded. "What do you want? If you're not looking for George, who are you looking for?"

Her hand fell from button to button on her blouse. "My brother."

Kid frowned.

"My big brother, Edward."

"Oh…" Kid frowned harder. "What makes you think you'll find him here?"

"Somebody saw… said they saw… you just…" She looked at Raven.

He had settled his thumb in his belt and stared back.

Kid beckoned her inside with a nod. She came sideways through the door. Because the sink had filled up once more, somebody had put the kettle, sides streaked with hardened soup, in the middle of the floor.

June looked at it.

Kid tried to remember how long he'd been stepping around it.

"Somebody told my mother that they'd… they thought they'd seen somebody who…"

They went into the next room.

"My parents don't know I came," she said. "They wouldn't have wanted me to… come here."

Two black girls turned to watch her. A blond boy came up behind them, leaned on their shoulders, sucked in his lower lip and drawled. "Shit…" The three laughed.

"He isn't one of them?" Kid asked. "Is he?"

She looked at the toes of her black shoes; spots of red spread her cheek.

"You want to hunt around?"

She nodded and hurried ahead to interpose him between the leering scorpions and herself. Two more passing the doorway, the short-haired white woman (with a tattoo on her arm) and D-t, caught her eyes, till she suddenly jerked her head away and closed her mouth.

"Come on, I'll show you around."

In the hallway the girl in maroon levis was talking to Siam. June looked at the photograph with its cracked glass at the same time Siam and the girl looked at her.

It's because, he realized, she stands so far away from me, so nervously, that makes them stare like that. She circles, she still circles, she circles in. Yet she's so far away! It's not even (the realization went on) that she's a pretty girl, but rather that there are over two dozen people living in here and the isolation she demands about her destroys our concept of human space. That their hostility comes out in sexual leers and sexual jibes ("You see that pussy walk through here?" somebody, male or female, he wasn't sure, said in the next room. "Where's my knife and fork?") is a generic response to something far more personal than her gender — though she may not understand that for years. Some people are very young at seventeen.

"You don't live in the park any more?" June asked.

"Nope." He looked out on the porch and into the yard. "He's not one of those?"

She shook her head without, he thought, looking.

"Maybe in here." They crossed the hall; Kid opened the door.

It was hot and even Kid sometimes wondered how they slept in the charred half-dark. Four, a girl among them, naked on the big mattress in the corner, sweated inertly, breaths hissing in different rhythms. Cathedral with his back against the wall reading a book whose cover had come off (—Brass Orchids: Kid recognized the title page). In deference to the sleepers, he had not raised the shade. The lion, crouched on the sill, read over his shoulder.

Kid stepped forward.

June, her hand loose before her face once more, followed.

The closet door had been taken down and propped up on boxes. An open sleeping bag hung off it onto the floor. A boy and girl, both with long hair, slept there together. Neither were scorpions and the boy (his hand curled against her neck) looked as though he would have slept easier in the commune.

Someone (Angel?) rummaged inside the closet. Things rumbled and fell and growled, punctuated by, "…shit…" and "…God damn…" and "…shit!.." and "…shit…"

Since Kid had last been in the room, someone had hung up a poster of George as the Moon. Around it were a half dozen Playboy centerfolds, two covers from Black Garters, and lots of naked women playing tennis at some nudist camp.

June closed her fists so tightly in the skirt of her green jumper, they shook.

This is an act, Kid thought. But then, so is this.

"Eddy?" Her voice was firm for all her quivering arms.

"Huh?… Oh, hey…" It was the square-jawed blond scorpion who'd harassed Pepper. "What are you… just a second." He pushed the blanket off his feet and began to lace his sneakers. He snapped his jeans together and searched for his vest. Hair, light as his sister's, made a crushed and sprung helmet of gold foil too big for his head.

"I've… I've never seen anything like this in my life!" June accused, softly. Her face looked as though, expecting milk, she had swallowed orange juice. She actually said: "Eddy… is it really you?"

"Just a second," the blond repeated, got his vest on, and stood, unsteadily on the mattress. He looked too old for Kid's picture of June's other brother. His forehead was creased. His temples were high. Like I'm a baby face, Kid thought, maybe you'd just think he was over twenty-five: but there was a certain youthful unsurety of movement. Like his sister's. Their eyes and upper lips were identical. His lower one was fuller than hers — more like Mrs Richards'. He came toward them. "What'd you come here for?"

"We thought you'd gone to another city, Eddy!" She looked past his shoulder and back. "Oh… if Daddy and Mommy could see you here, in this, like this, they'd just… die… they'd die…"

"What do you want?"

"To talk to you. To see you. To see if you were really… Somebody said they'd seen somebody who looked like—"

"Just a second," Eddy said. "I gotta go to the — I mean I just woke up." He touched his sister's shoulders, then stepped past Kid into the hall. "I'll be right back…"

California turned over on the mattress.

Cathedral looked up from the book.

June's eyes flicked about the shadowed room, caught once on the poster, dodged it. "I liked your book very… I thought it was nice… the part you wrote about us when… no, no!" She said after a moment: "Eddy lives here with you… I mean how long has he…"

Kid shrugged.

"My mother likes your book too," she said after another moment. "She gave it to a few of…"

When she didn't finish, he said: "Say hello for me."

"I wouldn't dare!" After a second, she closed her mouth. "Oh, I couldn't

It isn't worth getting angry, Kid thought. He leaned against the doorway edge. Angel, in the closet, looked out, said, "What…?" got no answer, shrugged, and went back in. I don't answer because there is nothing to say. She turns and stares fixedly at some pile of bedding on the floor she does not really see, sure an answer is demanded of her.

He could walk away and leave her to wait alone.

"Watch it," Glass said behind him.

Kid turned.

"Got it." Spitt hefted Dollar's ankles up under his arms.

"You just put him in there," Copperhead said. "He'll be all right."

June had turned too. Kid was impressed how well, for her nervousness, she looked interested but not hysterical.

Dollar's shoulder hit the door.

"Back him up there, huh?" Glass lifted Dollar roughly by the arm, stepped over, and walked him through.

"…you see that? You see how they done him? He was just hanging around outside, he didn't even run or nothing, when they came after him. Shit, they didn't do that much. Soon as Copperhead hit him the third time he crumpled right up like that. He ain't even got a bloody nose. His eye looks pretty bad, though…"

Below the eye the puffy cheek was scraped. Dollar's arms flopped out on either side. His belt was opened.

"I think he fakin'," Copperhead told Kid, scratching his head. "I think he just didn't want to get hit no more, and he's just fakin'. But he's fakin' pretty good."

"He didn't run when he saw you coming?" Kid asked.

"Where was he gonna run?" Copperhead held his right fist in his left hand. The freckled knuckles were bleeding. "Put him down on that one."

Kid looked, but couldn't see Glass's hands.

Angel came out of the closet again, looked around, said, "Aw, Jesus Christ…" shook his head, and again went back inside.

By the window, Cathedral, who had closed his book, opened it again.

"They put him on Eddy's…?" June began.

The couple on the door shifted. The counterpoint of the naked scorpions' snoring went on without change.

"Excuse me, huh?" With a glare Eddy stepped around Pepper. He walked to his mattress, squatted, and pulled a hank of chains out from under Dollar's shoulder. He looked up at Kid. "They got him?" He shook his head, picked up the blanket and pulled it up over Dollar's shoulders.

That, Kid thought, is for her. The room was too hot for blankets.

Putting on his chains, Eddy came back to the door. "What did you come here for?"

"I don't know… I just don't know — I just don't understand how you can…"

Spitt and Glass had gone. Copperhead looked at June, frowned at Kid, and left.

"Come on," Kid said. "You people want to talk? Let's go out on the porch, huh? People are sleeping here, right?"

Kid let them go first, and took up Eddy's rear.

In the hall, the bathroom door was open; Filament — yes, that was the short-haired white woman's name, he suddenly remembered — was taking her morning crap, jeans around her shins, the Times folded across her knees.

"In there," Eddy pointed over June's shoulder.

June turned through the service porch door, and said, "Oh, I'm sor—"

"Huh?" Raven's stream halted. "There's somebody using the bathroom," he explained, bewildered, to June's bewildered stare; and his urine chattered in the sink again.

"Come on, come on," Kid herded them in. "He'll be finished in a minute."

Raven shook himself, pushed himself back into his pants. "Yeah, I'm finished."

This has been planned, Kid thought smugly. This couldn't just be happening.

Raven left—

"I'll shoo anybody else out," Kid said.

— then ducked back in the door. "Hey, I meant to run some water in the sink, you know…?"

"Later," Kid said.

"Okay." He left again.

June was looking out the window. Eddy was watching her and pulling the hair at the back of his neck. "What did you want, huh?"

June turned.

"I figured," Eddy said, "you would all get out. I mean I thought Mom and Daddy would take you and Bobby to another… city…"

"You didn't tell him," June asked, "about Bobby?"

"I didn't know he was your brother until three minutes ago." Kid said. "June pushed Bobby down an elevator shaft and broke bis neck, accidentally. He's dead." And immediately George's face filled his mind, obliterating all other reactions.

"Mother's very sick," June said. "She really isn't well at all. And I'm worried about Daddy. He goes out to work every day, you know; in spite of it all. But sometimes now he doesn't come home for three, or four days…"

"Huh?" Eddy leaned back against the washing machine. "What…?" which was not a reaction to what June was saying at all.

"I'm so worried I don't… know what to do. I swear…!" Though her sentences were as halting as before, she spoke each fragment more firmly. "Since you've gone, it's all… everything has just fallen apart. Everything, Eddy. Since you went, it's like… like the plug was pulled out and everything ran out. All of it."

"Jesus Christ…" Eddy looked at the floor and shook his head. "Bobby…?"

She circles, Kid thought, she circles, magnificently banal, denying guilt or innocence: if only in her single-mindedness, she is heroic!

Biting both lips, June shook her head. "Are you going to come home?"

And, like an afterthought; She is only a seventeen-year-old, overprotected god. (Somewhere, George leered.)

"Well," Eddy said, "what for…?" Then he said, "Bobby's dead? And Dad doesn't come there any more?"

"Some," she said. "Oh, he comes back…"

Eddy looked up. "What would I come back for?"

"Oh, if you got some nice clothes, and a haircut and stuff, and told them you were sorry…."

"Sorry for what! He said he was going to kill me if I came back!"

"But that's just because—"

"They start it," Eddy said. "They start it every time I go back there and I can't stop it. I don't know how. That's why I went away…"

"But if you said you were sorry for the way you acted—"

"Sorry for what? Yeah, I'm sorry that every time I go back there they start needling me until I blow up and then they blow up right back! I'm sorry Momma's sick, I'm sorry Dad's all upset. I'm sorry Bobby's dead." Eddy frowned, and after a second, he asked, "You killed him…?"

June began to cry, silently, eyes streaming.

"Oh, hey, I'm… look, I didn't mean…" By his hips his hands closed and opened and closed with the motion Kid recognized as the one that had proceeded Copperhead's fury.

"You could take us away…!" Her crying burst full. What Kid thought she said through it was "…from this horrible place!" But with her sobs she was as difficult to understand as some Jackson black. Finally she clamped her mouth, rubbed her eyes, sniffed. "I just wish someone would… take me away!"

"Why doesn't Dad go?"

"He doesn't think Mother will. And… I don't even think he wants to."

"You take them."

"I'm just a girl," June said. "I can't do anything. I can't do anything at all!" She rubbed her forehead on the heels of her hands.

(Eddy's hands turned over on his knees.) "They wouldn't go before?" Eddy said. "I couldn't make them go!"

June lifted her face from her palms. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, softly. "Oh, Eddy, please come home! What are you doing in a place like this? This is just… here… awful!"

"What?"

"I mean," she said, "what do you do here?"

"Mm," Eddy shrugged, "we don't do too much. We all just live here, the scorpions. You know? We're all together. Here. That's all."

"You don't," she began tentatively, "rob people on the street, and beat up people and take their money, and things like that… do you?"

"Naw," Eddy said, indignation. "Naw, we don't do things like that. Why do you think we do things like that?"

"That's what people say," June said. "Sometimes in the newspaper, it says things like that."

"The newspaper says a lot of things that aren't true, you know? You know that. Besides, now the Kid's a friend of the guy who runs the paper, he's having a party for the Kid, and we're all going up there. So the paper will probably do a little better by us, huh?" — this last to Kid.

Kid, by the door, with folded arms, shrugged.

"What do you do, then?"

"I don't know," Eddy said. "We make runs."

"What's that?"

"You know…" Eddy looked at Kid. "Kid is the boss here; he takes us out on runs."

"What do you do on a… run?"

"The guys all get together and we… go some place, check it out; get stuff, stuff we want, stuff we'd like to have."

"Like food?"

"Not food! You don't make food runs if you're a scorpion, unless things have really gotten up tight. You go for other things…"

"Like what?"

"Stuff."

"And bring it back here?"

"If it's something we want."

"You don't look like you have very much here?" June said.

"We don't need much."

"Then what do you do on these runs?"

"Well, we…" Eddy shrugged.

"We break things," Kid said. "Mainly. And if there're people around who don't like it, we rough them up."

"Is that what you do?" June asked Eddy.

"Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes we do that. But most of the places we go, there isn't anybody there. The people you do find, they're so scared they usually split." He looked as though he was trying to remember something. "Oh, yeah. We keep things quiet if somebody has a problem and comes to us. That doesn't happen too much. People are scared of us. So they don't act up."

"That's what other people call our protection business," Kid explained. "Only we don't protect anybody."

"Yeah," Eddy attested.

"But why…?"

"We'd do something else," Kid said, "if there was something else to do—"

"—'Cause it's…" Eddy began. "Look, I'm a scorpion and I like being a scorpion. It's better than anything else I've done. It's a tough, dangerous world out there, and we gotta survive… you know? People are scared of us, and maybe they shouldn't be. But it makes it easier. To survive. The reason I'm a scorpion is because when a bunch of us walk down a street, and somebody sees us, they think—" Eddy snapped his fingers—"yeah. We come along and we get the first pick of whatever is there; and if anybody tries to keep it from us, they better watch out. We're together, you see? For one another. If one scorpion gets in trouble, then the nest comes down and swarm! If something comes at the nest, then you'll have scorpions from all over. The guys here don't care who you are, where you come from, or what you do; they're for you… like a family. When you're a scorpion, you know you're part of something that's important, that means something, that makes people stop, and then think… You know…?"

In the silence, June looked confused.

"Is that why you're a scorpion?" Kid stood in the doorway and shook his head. "Shit… Hey!"

Her eyes snapped at him—

"You haven't found George yet?"

— and widened; her head vibrated, rather than shook in negation.

"Keep looking." Kid tried to smile, succeeded, and found the effort honest. "You will."

Walking down the hall, Kid pondered the probability that Eddy would leave with June. That would be pretty good. He looked in the back room to check Dollar. He was in the same position (as was everyone else) breathing roughly and evenly.

In the loft room, Kid, with his bare toes, nudged Raven's knee. Raven was sitting crosslegged before a pile of bolts and screws. "You can go run the water in the sink now."

"Huh?" Raven looked up. "Oh yeah, in a second."

Kid kicked the knee again with his boot toe. "Will you go wash out the fuckin' sink!"

"Okay, okay. It ain't gonna smell no more in another minute—!"

"I'm not worried about the fuckin' smell. Just go on." Which was true.

"Okay!" Raven got up and left the room.

In sudden fury at the brother and sister, Kid wanted their talk interrupted and both of them out.

He climbed up the notched beam into the loft. Denny, his feet up on the wall, glanced from the Escher propped on his chest, then turned another page. Kid sat with his back against the wall. "Hey?"

"What?"

"Have I taken you guys on any runs, yet?"

"You forgetting things again?"

"You tell me if I have or not and I'll tell you."

"Just that one."

"When?"

"You don't remember?"

"Tell me, cocksucker!"

"When the… sun came up, and you ran everybody over to that house. Where Dollar killed Wally. That's the only run you made, so far. I mean you didn't plan it out like a run or anything. But that's all,"

"Oh."

"You remember that?"

"I remember."

"Mmm." Denny nodded and went back to his book.

"I guess I'm going to have to make another one soon."

"Mmm," Denny said again, but did not look up.

Why do we make runs? Kid thought: Because if we didn't, we'd be a little more crazy than we are now.

Eddy passed the door.

"Hey, Eddy?"

Eddy stopped. "What?"

"She gone?"

Eddy let out a breath. "Yeah."

"And you're gonna stay here?"

"Man," Eddy said, "I can't do anything for them. And she's… Well—"

"I know," Kid said. "Hey, Eddy… don't make any more speeches. You're a really bad press agent."

"Huh?" Eddy stepped into the room. "Oh… yeah. Uh… Kid?"

Kid heard bolts roll across the floor. "Yeah?"

"Well… 'Eddy', see, that's what my sister and family call me. But the guys around here, they all call me Tarzan."

"Tarzan?" It was a question, but with a lowering, not a rising inflection.

"Yeah."

"Okay."

Eddy turned to leave.

"Hey, Tarzan?"

"What?"

"Sorry about your family."

Eddy smiled, briefly and weakly. "Thanks." He left.

Raven came in and said, "Aw, shit! Somebody kicked my fuckin' screws all over the God-damn floor!" He sucked his teeth, squatted, and, out of sight from the edge of the loft, began to roll them back together.

I come. I go. Rather than going, though, I'll stay. This cage seems too easy to flee. Is that what keeps us here? To leave the city: That is the thought that makes me weak in the small of the back and watery in the mind, so much so that it is easier not to remember it once the thought is past. Waiting for a word to push on these walls, with its bass hiss, there is no way to begin. Adjusting the frame to accommodate the day, I am swollen with terror at my inability to distinguish, at any action, what differentiates time after from time before.

"Hi, what are you putting together?" she asked.

"Just a piece of junk—" Raven said.

Denny clapped Escher closed, and rolled to lean over the edge. "Hey! Lanya!"

"Hi, babes. Is Kid up there?"

"Yeah, he's right here."

"Room for me?" Then her head came over the loft's edge, and frowned. "…This one is harder to climb than the ladder on the other one."

Kid pushed up to his knees to grab her shoulder. Denny was already at the edge to help.

"Hey, I think I can do it more easily myself. Let's see…" She scrunched her features. "Um… No, please. I'll get it." She pushed over the edge, almost slipping once. "There." She took a breath. "Now all I have to worry about is getting down."

"You came down to see us!"

"Sure," she told Denny, who now put both hands on her knee. "I told you I would, didn't I?" She took Kid's hand, and one of Denny's. "Tak told me you saw what's going to be my dress." She was wearing jeans and a tan blouse. "Just as well if it isn't too much of a surprise. Have you decided which shirt you're going to wear, Denny?"

"I thought," Denny said, "I could bring all three and sort of change every once in a while."

"What are you wearing?"

"What I have on," Kid said.

Lanya thought a minute. "Wash the pants first. Give them to me and I'll run them through the machine. We have one that works in the basement of our building."

"I only have one pair," Kid said.

Lanya laughed, let go of their hands, and crawled to the back of the bed.

"I'll shave, though."

"I thought you decided to grow a beard."

Raven, from the floor called up, "I got a razor if you want to use it. Everybody else does."

"I probably already have," Kid said. "Thanks."

"I taught all morning and afternoon," Lanya said. "What did you do?"

Denny shrugged. "Nothin'. We haven't been doin' too much of anything. We don't ever do nothin' around here." Denny got his boot out from under him and sat back very close to the edge. "Dollar tried to break open Copperhead's skull with a plank, and Kid jumped in and broke it up—"

"— little bastard—" Kid flexed his shoulder, which still hurt—"tried to chew my arm off—"

"— and so we put him out, but Copperhead and Glass and Spitt went out and got him anyway. He's inside, pretty beat up."

"We don't do too much here," Kid said. "Never guess who came to visit. She left just before you got here."

"Who?"

"June Richards."

"What on earth for?"

"Her brother's here."

"I thought he fell down an elevator shaft and broke his neck."

Denny said, "Was that her brother?"

"Her other brother," Kid said. Then to Denny. "This brother's Tarzan."

"Yeah, I was just here. Remember?"

"Oh."

"What did she want?"

"Family problems."

"I thought you'd had enough of that family's problems."

"So did I." Kid leaned forward and put his head in Lanya's lap. "What did you think of our new nest here?"

"Shall I be brutal?"

"You don't like it, huh?" Denny moved over to sit next to her. "I think it's pretty neat. It's a lot better than the other one."

"On my way from the front door, to the bathroom, and then back to here, I must have wondered seven distinct times how you could stand it!"

"God damn," Kid said, "we roughed it for how long—?"

"That was outdoors, in the open air! And we spent most of our time by ourselves, away from other people anyway."

"I don't think she likes it here," Denny said, letting his shoulders drop. "Don't you think it's nicer than the other place? We got a mattress…"

"You have fifty people in a space that won't hold—"

"Twenty," Kid said. "Maybe twenty-five."

"— twenty-eight that I counted just now between the front steps, the kitchen, the living room, the service porch, the two back rooms-in a space that would be crowded with five or six! There is a pile of shit — human, I assume — by the side of the back steps, which is understandable considering you only have one bathroom. Which I was in, by the way, and that's pretty unbelievable. How do you get these people fed? I mean, I was in the kitchen!"

"We eat pretty well," Denny said. "I think we eat pretty well."

"The lack of privacy would drive me up the wall!"

"You know," Kid said, "that's a funny thing about privacy. If there're two or three people in a room, it's really hard to be by yourself. If there're nine or ten, especially if you're all living together, if you want to be alone, all you have to do is think I want to be alone and everybody else has somebody to pay attention to, and you're alone. I had two roommates in an apartment my first year at Columbia; we had four rooms and it was really impossible. A couple of years later I spent December, January, February and March in three rooms on East Second Street in New York with about ten guys and ten chicks. Cold as a motherfucker, and we were in there all day. All we did is eat, ball, and deal dope: Nicest time of my life."

"Really?" Then she said, "If it was, how did it compare to this?"

"This is not the nicest time in my life. But there've been others a hell of a lot worse."

"We got all sorts of good stuff to eat," Denny said. "You hungry? I bet I can fix some stuff up for you?"

"Thanks, babes. But I just finished lunch.

"We were a lot cleaner there," Kid said, "maybe because there were a few more girls around."

"Male chauvinist pig," Lanya said dryly. "Import a lot of slave labor to wash the dishes and—"

"I'm not a male chauvinist pig," Kid said. "I'm a commie faggot pervert."

"There's nothing to stop you from being both."

"Everybody cleaned. Just like here. We made people take their shoes off when they came in the door. New York slush. It's just nicer with more girls."

"You're preaching. That all may be, but it's not here. I can just manage to resist inviting you to come live with me and be my loves."

"I guess with the place you got, you wouldn't want to come live here," Denny said. "But you could stay for a while.".

Raven suddenly stuck his bushy top-knot over the edge. "Hey, Lady, if they don't want to come live with you, I'd be glad to. I'm clean, I'm friendly. I do a lot of the cooking around here, too; I'm a pretty good lay—"

"Get the fuck out of here, cocksucker!" Kid said loudly, leaning forward.

"Sure." The top-knot disappeared. "Thought I'd make the offer."

"And don't let anybody else up here. We're busy, huh?"

"Okay," from below. Bolts and nuts rattled.

"Oh, there're other reasons I don't move you in."

"I guess Madame Brown wouldn't like it," Denny said.

"She might not," Lanya said. "But I wasn't thinking of that. I just feel I need a place to retreat. Where I can go lick my wounds; when I get wounded."

"Cool," Kid said.

"Are you afraid of us?" Denny took his hand, which had been between her thighs, away.

"Yes." She took his hand and put it back. "But you keep things interesting. I don't know why I should be… oh, nonsense! I can think of four hundred reasons why I should be — or reasons why other people would say I should be. My own? I suppose I'm doing it to find out what they are. Pretty defeatist, huh? Okay, I'm just doing it to find out."

"I guess," Denny said, "it's pretty—"

"…he up there?" someone said.

"He's busy. You can't go up there."

"I only want to talk with him a minute!"

"I said he's busy, man. You can't—"

"Look, lover, I can see the tops of their heads from here so he can't be doing anything that complicated."

Kid went over to the loft edge. "Bunny?"

"Now, you see—" Bunny came forward—"he hasn't even taken off his clothes. Hi there! It's-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta! — me." Bunny's arms extended straight up, fell; with them fell Bunny's smile. "You're supposed to be in charge here, Kid. Have you seen Pepper?"

"Yeah, he's been around."

"Hi, Bunny." Lanya leaned over the edge. So did Denny.

"Ah-ah-ah!" Bunny shook a finger at her. "You know what they say, dear; one at a time, and slowly. Hello." That was to Denny, who was grinning. "What a charming overbite you have," and looked back at Kid: "I approve. You all can't be about to do what I thought you were. Can I come up and sit a spell?"

"We probably were," Lanya said. "But come on."

Bunny raised a platinum brow, forehead wrinkling — or crumpling. "I don't understand these modern relationships. Beneath my glittering exterior, I'm just a sweet, old-fashioned girl. No offense, dear," and nodded at Lanya. "Now — How am I supposed to negotiate this?" Bunny grasped the supporting beam, "Oh, it isn't that hard." Head and scrawny throat (in a black jersey turtleneck gone limp), cleared the mattress. "Now how do I get the rest of the way?"

"Here." Denny kneeled up and grabbed Bunny's shoulders.

"Oh, watch it, oh watch it, watch it now, I… Oh!" Bunny settled on the loft edge, black jeans bunched a little at the waist. "…Thank you! Well, I must say this is rather cozy. You said Pepper was around? I can't tell you what a load that lifts from my frazzled and distorted little brain. You know, he was staying at my place; a few days ago he disappeared. Again. Well, you know I worried. He's managed to take care of himself one way or the other these past twenty-nine years without spending too much of that time in jail — did you know he told me he was once arrested for displaying himself in public? Isn't that too quaint? But I heard you were running a nest and so I thought I'd take a look-see before I made up my mind whether or not to go frantic with grief."

"He's around," Kid said. "But I don't know if he's here just now. You want to take him back with you? That's fine with me."

Bunny's pupils rolled up. "Oh, I'd give my eye teeth to have him back." Bunny's nails, their pearl polish chipped, strayed on the bright beads that circled the small, dark shoulders. "But then, I'm not going to try and make the poor baby do anything he" doesn't want. It isn't good for him. He's got to learn to do what he thinks best. If I go directing his whole life — and you wouldn't believe how much he wants me to; he practically demands I make everything resembling a decision for him — he'll never grow up. One has to be responsible to the people one loves, whichever way they let one." Bunny, hands folded, pale and knobbly, frowned from one to the other. "Three of you? Darlings, that's going to be so much work! Well, you'll have each other to lean on in times of crisis." The frown changed; the hands broke. "You say I can take him away? He hasn't gotten into any trouble around here, has he?"

"Naw," Kid said. "But I had to make loud noises at someone trying to give him a rough time."

"You did?" Bunny pulled back. "Not only do you write beautiful poems, you have a poetic soul! I knew it, I knew it when Pepper first introduced us. That's why I came; because you had a poetic soul." Bunny pulled back further. "Tell me. In that fifth poem. On page seventeen. Mab; now I don't understand the title, and I don't know if I want to, but did I detect a fleeting reference to… me by any chance?"

"Yeah." Kid said. "Probably. I was sitting in the john at Teddy's when I wrote it. You were outside dancing."

"Ahhhh!" Bunny exclaimed with clasped hands and lowered eyes. "That's just the most exciting… Oh!" Suddenly Bunny's hand swirled up and overhead. "Of course, that's nothing to you, dear!" It landed on Lanya's knee. "I mean you're practically the Dark Lady of the Sonnets." Now Bunny leaned forward: "Darling, don't make him miserable." Bunny's hand moved on to brush Denny's shoulder. Denny frowned at it. "You too. Be kind to him." Bunny turned once more to Kid. "You're doomed to tragedy, you know. The ones of us, like you and I, with the Ipana smile, we always are. I mean who could possibly love us? And just because our half of the class brushed with Crest; tragedy begins from such tiny things. But that's why all of us with the ultra-bright grimaces have to be content to end up in Hollywood, as movie stars, hideously famous, fabulously rich, trailing behind us all the heartaches, the broken romances, divorce after divorce- Look at you! Fame and fortune are already glittering up there on South Brisbain. You see? It's begun, already, you poor thing!"

"Far," Denny said with gravity, "fucking out."

Lanya said: "If Bunny's in your book, you should invite him to the party."

"Yeah," Kid said. "You want to come? Most of the guys in the nest are going up. So Pepper'll probably be along."

"Oh, I couldn't!" Bunny's head dropped, with a small shake. "I couldn't possibly," then looked up. "I'd just love to, I really would. But I can't."

"Why not?"

"Principles."

"How do you mean?"

"Well." The space between Bunny's nose and upper lip got longer. "That astronaut person, Captain Kamp, is going to be there, isn't he?"

"He's Calkins' guest. I guess he will."

"That's why."

Denny said, "Is that the guy you met who's been on the moon?"

"Um-hm." Kid nodded.

Lanya said: "I don't understand, Bunny."

"Were you there the night the Captain came to the bar?"

"I was," Kid said.

"Then you know what happened. To me and George."

"No," Kid said, "I don't."

Bunny took a preparatory breath. "As soon as Teddy realized who that glorified fish-bait was — and don't you know, someone had to tell her? — she came over to me and suggested that, considering the clientele that evening, it might be better if I didn't dance!"

"No," Lanya said. "You're not serious, are you? Why?"

"He didn't want to offend the tender sensibilities of our scotch-and-water-sipping national hero. They do not, presumably, have go-go boys on the moon. Teddy figured the shock might be too much."

"When I came in," Kid said, "everybody was sitting around having a chamber of commerce meeting."

"That," Bunny said, "had not begun when Teddy made his pronouncement to me. And when it did, George happened to be there. They were all sitting around asking questions, and George was very interested. So George asked some. One of them — I was watching from my cage — was whether or not Captain Kamp had ever been to George's moon. Some people snickered. But George was serious. And I'll say this for the Captain, he answered it perfectly seriously. I mean, considering the afternoon, it was pretty presumptuous to think any question was that silly. But after a couple more from George, Teddy went over and said something to him. A minute later, George shoved back his chair and walked out."

"What did he say?" Denny asked.

"I couldn't hear," Bunny said. "But I certainly could see the effect. And I know what he said to me."

"George had just left when I came in," Kid said. "Tak told me."

"That sounds so silly," Lanya exclaimed. "Teddy was always a little… formal, but you make him sound like a member of the Rotary Club."

"Daughter of the American Revolution! That naugahide rimmer of rusty Chevrolet nineteen-fifty-two exhaust pipes! I hope the next time she sucks off a number she rips his foreskin in her bridgework!" — which collapsed Denny on his back with hysterics. "There are two reasons — beside the free hooch — that anyone comes into that roach-infested, crab-breeding collapsed douche bag. One is George. The other is me… Oh, yes! A few have wandered by, hoping they might be lucky enough to get a look at the Kid. But don't worry, just give that neo-Nazi time and he'll start asking you to wear a tie next time you come. Mark mother's wise, wise words."

"That's too silly," Lanya said and made an ugly face.

"If I saw George," Kid said, "I was going to invite him. I guess he won't want to go now either?"

"Well," Bunny said, "George is a slightly larger luminary in our local skies; he can, perhaps, afford to be more generous than I. I, I'm afraid, must guard my honor more jealously. After all, dear, it's all I have."

"Next time I saw Kamp," Kid said, "he was down at the blowout George gave for the Reverend Tayler in Jackson."

"Bunny," Lanya said, "you are being silly! About the party, I mean. Kid didn't invite Teddy, he invited you. And for all you know, Kamp came down precisely to see you do your act; Teddy was being stupid and presumptuous. That shouldn't stop you from having a good time."

"I will not," Bunny said, "go up there and perform for those people."

"Nobody's going to ask you to dance—"

"You don't understand, dear heart." Once more Bunny touched Kid's knee. "As far as Calkins is concerned, or any of them up there: you, me, or anybody you know just going up to make an appearance, is putting on a performance. Calkins set up that bar, put Teddy in charge of it. The whole place exists only for his amusement or the amusement of his guests the once a month they should feel like coming down to slum. And while I don't believe for an instant he gave Teddy orders that I wasn't to be exhibited to his new young man from Mars or whatever, it's an attitude inevitable in such a chain, whether there's money involved or not. I simply cannot be a part of it. Negroes and homosexuals, dear! Negroes and homosexuals! Having been lumped together in so many cliches for so long, we are beginning to learn. With women and children—" Bunny nodded toward Lanya and Denny—"it's taking a little longer. Well, you have a few more cliches to overcome. You mustn't think I'm trying to throw a wet afghan over the festivities. You've written a beautiful book — though I didn't understand a line—and you should go up there and have your party, and I hope it's perfectly too fabulous. I really do. I shall just drool over the accounts in the society page next day. But I have to live with myself. You're a dear, dear boy to ask me. And I'm just too crushed that I can not accept."

"You're not going to dance at Teddy's no more?" Denny asked.

"That—" Bunny's hands refolded—"is another thing, No, I still dance there. Every night, three shows. Matinees on Saturdays and Sundays, as soon as brunch is cleared. Oh, we creative types must put up with so much just to do, as it were, our thing. Misery. Pure misery. Shame and humiliation." Bunny regarded Kid. "Oh, you're going to suffer so much it makes me want to weep. But that's the price of having a poetic soul."

"If Teddy is that big a bastard," Denny asked, "why don't you just stop dancing for him?"

Bunny raised an upturned palm. "If I don't dance there, where else can I? I mean here, in Bellona? But we must stop all this. All I'm doing is making me feel sorry for myself. And you're snickering. You said that Pepper was here… where—" Bunny's voice dropped—"do you think I should look?"

"Come on," Kid said. "I'll give you the grand tour."

"Oh, now, you don't have to do—"

Kid pushed himself out between Lanya and Denny and dropped to the floor.

"— let me see, how do I get down from here? My, this is complicated; don't you think a — oh dear! — ladder would be much easier than — there!"

"I'll be back in a second," Kid said to the two faces regarding him over the edge. He stepped around Raven, who glanced up from tinkering on the floor, and, followed by Bunny, went into the hall.

"You know," Bunny came abreast of Kid. "I can't tell you how relieved you've made me feel. Just to know he's here and all right. What I see in him I'm sure I'll never know. But sometimes he smiles, and I go all cream custard inside. Or calves-foot aspic. Yes, much more like calves-foot aspic. I mean it's all clear and quivery and cool!"

"Not like an eclair?" Kid felt quieted and pensive from Bunny's tale.

"Exactly not like an eclair!" Bunny smiled a white, white smile. "You do know!"

"He isn't in the yard," Kid leaned out onto the porch, then pulled back.

"I didn't see him with any of those boys on the front steps," Bunny said. "And he wasn't in the kitchen or the front room."

"Let's try in here." Kid pushed open the door.

Among the sleeping scorpions (Dollar had turned over on his stomach) Pepper, curled on his side in a pile of blankets, hanks of chain over his bony shoulders, fists thrust into the groin of his jeans, slept and hissed through the limp hair across his face.

"He always sleeps like that," Bunny said quietly.

"You want to wake him up and—?"

"No!" Bunny whispered, and raised a wrist before pursed lips. "No… I just wanted to, well… you know." Bunny's smile was worked through with concern. "That's fine. Really. Just to know he's all right. That's all I wanted. One has to be responsible for them, but in ways… in ways they can understand." Bunny's head shook. "And understanding, as I'm sure you know, is not Pepper's strong point. Come, come. There's no need to wake anyone." Black Spider had rolled over and raised his head.

At Bunny's gesture, Kid closed the door.

"Thank you, thank you. A million times, thank you. I've got to run along to greet my audience with—" Bunny thrust out a hip and closed an eye—"the real thing. You're a perfect love. Ta-ta!" Halfway up the hall Bunny turned back and flung out one hand while the other wound among the optic beads. "And have a fabulous time at your party. You were too good to ask me. Thank you, thank you. You really are too good. Drink a glass of champagne for old Bun-buns, and remember, whatever happens, give 'em hell!"

California and Revelation had stopped to stare. Lady of Spain came out of the front room behind them, leaned on their shoulders, and grinned.

Bunny blew all three kisses, fled to the front door, opened it, turned, sang out, with flourishing arms: " 'The shadow of your smile…' " in an astonishing bass; then shrilled, "Bye-bye!" and was gone.

Pondering, Kid went back to the loft.

Seated Raven had a loop of wire and two screws in his mouth. "Who was that?" he asked, voice mangled by metal.

Kid just laughed and climbed up the post. "God damn," he said. "Couldn't you wait for five minutes to get started?"

Denny, naked, lay on top. Lanya still wore her blouse.

"We haven't started very seriously," Lanya said around Denny's forearm.

"Yeah?" Kid climbed up and pushed his hand between their hips (Denny rocked up, Lanya pulled down). "Oh; yeah." He took off his vest.

They made love, breathing softly with wide mouths. For a while, with his belt and pants open, Kid refused to take his pants off—

("I'm sorry, Lady, you can't go up there. Kid's busy.")

("He ballin'?")

("Yeah. Come back later.")

— but after a while they tickled him and, while he lay laughing, pulled them down. Huddled with their heads together, Denny whispered, "That was nice, huh? Lemme fuck you in the pussy and you can fuck me in the ass again while I'm doing it."

"Marvelous," Lanya said and buried her laughter on Kid's shoulder.

"Sure," Kid said. "If you want. Sure."

But, with knees uncomfortably wide, elbows bent, and the boy's dry back brushing his belly, Kid's penis, pulling along the flexing crevice, lay limp. He started to say something, thought better, and kissed Denny's shoulder, kissed him again.

Lanya opened her eyes and, through her catching and catching breath, frowned. She worked one hand free, and licked and licked her fingers. Then she reached around Denny's back. First just the side of her thumb touched his cock. Then his movement in her fist's tunnel made the thing that was not a muscle tighten (and whole webs above and around his pubis that were, relax). His penis filled through her grip.

"I like that…" Denny panted when Kid was inside him.

"It's pretty good…" Kid got out, shifted his weight, and decided that Lanya had the right idea: Talking was silly. He didn't come in Denny's ass, but in hers.

They lay on their sides, Lanya sandwiched between.

"I can feel him," Denny whispered, "Moving. Inside your cunt, on my dick, I can feel him."

"So," she whispered, "can I," and Shhhhhed him. Both Kid's hands were around her chest. Someone held his thumb. He thought it was her because she always used to, but it was Denny. Once he rose from a half sleep to hear them giggling together. He shifted his fingers on the live warmth of her breast. Someone squeezed his thumb again.

He woke, suddenly and fully. They were both still. His cock was erect; but as he raised his head to look down at himself, he felt it soften. He had rolled slightly to the side. His penis lowered toward Lanya's thigh.

It is not touching her, he thought.

Then, the slightest warmth. And pressure.

It is touching her.

Eyes wide, he rolled back, trying to understand by blunt reason that terrifying and marvelous transition.

I am limited, finite, and fixed. I am in terror of the infinity before me, having come through the one behind bringing no knowledge I can take on. I commend myself up to what is greater than I, and try to be good. That is wrestling with what I have been given. Do I rage at what I have not? (Is infinity some illusion generated by the way in which time is perceived?) I try to end this pride and rage and commend myself to what is there, instead of illusion. But the veil is the juncture of the perceived and perception. And what in life can rip that? Is the only prayer, then, to live steadily and dully, doing and doubting what the mind demands? I am limited, finite, and fixed. I rage for reasons, cry for pity. Do with me what way you will.