Dhalgren

Here I am and am no I. This circle in all, this change changing in winterless, a dawn circle with an image of, an autumn change with a change of mist. Mistake two pictures, one and another. No. Only in seasons of short-light, only on dead afternoons. I will not be sick again. I will not. You are here.

He retreated down the halls of memory, seething.

Found, with final and banal comfort — Mother?

Remembered the first time he realized she was two inches taller than his father, and that some people thought it unusual. Hair braided, Mother was tolerant severity, was easier to play with than his father, was trips to Albany, was laughter (was dead?) when they went for walks through the park, was dark as old wood. More often, she was admonitions not to wander away in the city, not to wander away in the trees.

Father? A short man, yes; mostly in uniform; well, not that short — back in the force again; away a lot. Where was dad now? In one of three cities, in one of two states. Dad was silences, Dad was noises, Dad was absences that ended in presents.

"Come on, we'll play with you later. Now leave us alone, will you?"

Mom and Dad were words, lollying and jockeying in the small, sunny yard. He listened and did not listen. Mother and Father, they were a rhythm.

He began to sing, "Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn…" that had something of the fall of words around.

"Now what are you going on like that for?"

"Ain't seen your mom in two weeks. Be a good boy and take it somewhere else?"

So without stopping he took his Annnnnnnnnnnn down the path beside the house where hedge-leaves slapped his lips and tickled them so that he took a breath and his sound snagged on laughter.

ROAR and ROAR, ROAR: he looked up. The planes made ribs across the sky. The silver beads snagged sun. The window wall of his house blinded him so— "Annnnnnnnnn…" — he made his noise and gave it the sound of the planes all up and down the street, walking and jogging with it, in his sneakers, and went down the steps at the side of the street, crossed over. His sound buzzed all the mask of his face. Shadows slid over him: he changed sound. Shadows slid away: he changed it back. The sun heated the bony spots above his eyes; that changed it again; and again, when the birds (he had wandered into the woods that lapped like a great tongue five blocks into town; soon he had been in them for a quarter of an hour) collided in the leaves, then flung notes down. One note was near enough; he caught it with his voice and it thrust him toward another. Sun and chill (spring had just started) cuffed and pummeled him and he sang, getting pine needles inside his canvas shoes (no socks) and the back of his neck tickling from hair when the wind came.

He climbed the rocks: his breath made windy pauses in the sound and that was interesting, so that when he reached the top he pushed the leaves away and made each note as low as the green whisper—

Three of the five were naked.

Which stopped him.

And one girl was wearing only a little cross around her neck. The silver tilted on the inner slope of one breast. She breathed.

He blinked and whispered another note.

Silver broke up the sun.

The man still in pants pushed one fist up into the foliage (pants undone, his belt lay free of half its loops, away from his hip), pushed his other hand down to scratch, twisting his hips so that more and more, stretching in the green—

The girl who was darker even than his mother rolled to her side: someone else's yellow hair fell from her back and spread. And her hands on the man's face were suddenly hidden by his hands on hers (in the pile of clothing he recognized another uniform, but blue-black where his father's was green) and she was moving against him now, and there was a grass blade against her calf that slipped first one way, then the other.

He held his breath, forgot he was holding it: then it all came out in a surprising at-once that was practically not a note at all. So he got more air back in his lungs and began another.

"Hey, look!" from the other naked one, on elbows and laughing: "We got company!" and pointing.

So his sound, begun between song and sigh, ended in laughter; he ran back through the brush, pulling a music from their laughing till his was song again. He cantered down the path.

Some boys came up the path (this part of the wood was traveled as any park), thumbs in their jeans, hair all points and lines and slicks. Two of them were arguing (also, he saw as they neared, one of the boys was a girl), and one with carroty hair and small eyes glared at him.

He hunched, intently, and didn't look back at them, even though he wanted to. They were bad kids, he decided. Dad had told him to stay away from bad kids.

Suddenly he turned and sang after them, trying to make the music stealthy and angular till it became laughter again. He had reached the playground that separated the woods from town.

He mixed his music with the shouting from the other side of the fence. He rippled his fingers on the wire and walked and looked through: children clustered at the sliding board. But their scuffle had turned to shouts.

Beyond that were street sounds. He walked out among them and let his song pick them up. Cars, and two women talking about money, and something bang-banging in the big building with the corrugated walls: emerging from that, foot-rhythms. (Men in construction-helmets glanced at him.) That made him sing louder.

He walked up a hill where the houses got bigger, with lots of rock between. Finally (he had been flipping his fingers along the iron bars of the gate) he stopped to really look in (now going Hummmm, and hmmmmm, hmmmm, and hmmmmm) at the grass marked with tile squares, and a house that was very big and mostly glass and brick. A woman sat between two oaks. She saw him, cocked her head curiously, smiled — so he sang for her Ahhhhhhhhh — she frowned. He ran down the street, down the hill, singing.

The houses weren't so big any more.

The ribs of day cracked on the sky. But he didn't look up at the planes this time. And there were lots more people.

Windows: and on top of the windows, signs: and on top of the signs, things that turned in the wind: and on top of those, blue where wind you couldn't see went—

"Hey, watch it—"

He staggered back from a man with the dirtiest wrists he had ever seen. The man repeated: "Watch where you're God-damn going—" to nobody, and lurched away. He drew his song in till it bubbled around his mouth. He was going to turn and run down the next street…

The brick were cracked. A plank had come away from the window.

Trash heaped beside the door.

No wind, and warm; the street was loud with voices and machinery, so loud he could hardly catch rhythm for his song.

His sounds — long and lolling over his tongue now — were low, and he heard them under, not over, the noise.

"Hey, look out—"

"What the—"

"Hey, did you see that—"

He hadn't.

"What are you—"

People turned. Somebody ran past him close, slapping black moccasins on the stone.

"Those bastards from the reservation!"

"That's one of their kids, too."

He wasn't; and neither was his mother — she was from…? Anyway, he tried to sing that too, but was worried now. He turned the corner into an alley crowded with warm-weather loungers.

Two women, bony and delighted, stood in the doorway:

One: "Did you see that?"

The other laughed out loud.

He smiled; that changed his sound again.

From the next doorway, fat and ragged, face dirty as the drunkard's wrists, she carried a cloth bag in one fist, with the other beat at the trash. She turned, lumbering in the heap, blinked at him.

His music stuttered, but took it in. He hurried onto the avenue, dodged around seven nuns, started to run, but turned to watch them.

They walked slowly and talked quickly, with sharp small voices. Falls of white broke at breast and knee; black scuffed toes wrinkled white hems.

People stepped around them.

"Good morning, sisters."

Sisters nodded and smiled, probably because it was afternoon. They walked straight, brushing and brushing.

He tried to fit the rhythm of their walk into his music. He glanced around the street, hurried on, making his sounds longer and longer; hurried till he was running and each note took half a block.

Ran around another corner.

And all his breath came hissing between his teeth.

The man's palm lifted, his finger tips stayed down to draw wet lines on the pavement, before he rolled over to show most of the wound. The one standing swayed and sweated. When the woman at the other corner began to call out, "Ohma'god! Ohma'god, he-e-elp!" the standing man ran.

He watched him run, and screamed, a little, twice.

The man on the street was grunting.

Someone running joggled him and he stepped back, with another sound; then he ran too and what had begun as music was now a wail. He ran until he had to walk. He walked until he had to stop singing. Then he ran again: Throat raw, he wailed again.

Once he passed a clutch of unshaven men; one pointed at him, but another put a bottle in the hand shucked with purple.

He ran.

He cried.

He cut across the corner of the woods. He ran some more.

He ran on the wide street under a ribbon of evening. Lights came on like twin necklaces suddenly unrolled down the avenue, traffic and tail beacons between. He shrieked. And fled from the street because people were looking.

This street was more familiar. Noise hurt his throat. Sharp lights in his eyes; hedges marred with darkness. And he was roaring now—

"For God's sake—!"

He came up hard against her hands! Mother, and he tried to hug her, but she was holding him back.

"Where have you been? What is the matter with you, shouting around in the street like that?"

His mouth snapped. Sound to deafen built behind his teeth.

"We've been looking for you nearly half the day!"

None of it escaped. He was panting. She took his arm and led him.

"Your father—" who was turning the corner now— "comes home the first time in two weeks, and you decide to go running off!"

"There he is! Where did you find him!" and his father laughed and that at least was some sound. But not his.

They received him with scolding affection. But more vivid was the scalding energy he could not release. Wanting to cry, he had been silent, chewed on his knuckles, the heels of his palms, his cuticles, and what was left of his nails.

These memories intact solved little as those riddled with gaps. Still, he raised from them, reassured.

He hunted over them for his name. Once, perhaps, his mother calling, from across a street…

No.

And memory was discarded:

How can I say that that is my prize possession? (They do not fade, neither those buildings or these.) Rather what we know as real is burned away at invisible heat. What we are concerned with is more insubstantial. I do not know. It is as simple as that. For the hundredth time, I do not know and cannot remember. I do not want to be sick again. I do not want to be sick.

This lithic grin…?

Not on the lions he'd walked between last night with Tak.

Vaguely he thought he'd been wandering toward the river. But somehow chance, or bodily memory, had returned him to the park.

Inside the entrance was ashy grass; dimmed trees forested the crest.

He turned his forefinger in his nostril, put it in his mouth for the salt, then laughed and pressed his palm on the stone jaw; moved his hand. Stain passed between his fingers. The sky — he'd laughed, flung up his head — did not look infinitely far; a soft ceiling, rather, at some deceptive twenty, a hundred twenty feet. Oh, yes, laughter was good. His eyes filled with the blurry sky and tears; he moved his hand on the pitted jaw. When he took his palm from the dense braille, he was breathing hard.

No gushing breeze over this grass. His breath was thin, hoarse, suggestive of phlegm and obstacles and veins. Still, he'd laughed.

The sculptor had dug holes for eyes too deep to spot bottom.

He dug his finger in his nose again, sucked it, gnawed it; a gusty chuckle, and he turned through the leonine gate. It's easy, he thought, to put sounds with either white (maybe the pure tone of an audio generator; and the other, its opposite, that was called white noise), black (large gongs, larger bells), or the primary colors (the variety of the orchestra). Pale grey is silence.

A good wind could wake this city. As he wandered in, buildings dropped behind him below the park wall. (He wondered what ill one had put it to sleep.) The trees waited.

This park stretches on wracks of silence.

In his mind were some dozen visions of the city. He jogged, jaggedly, among them. His body felt hip heavy. His tongue lay down like a worm in his mouth. Breath in the cavity imitated wind; he listened to the air in his nose since that was all there was to listen to.

In its cage, his fist wilted, loose as a heavy flower.

Mornings after sex usually gave him that I've-been-eating-the-lotus-again, that Oh-all-soft-and-drifty, that hang-over-inside-out where pain is all in the world and the body tingly and good. Delayed? But here it was. The commune? Debating whether to hunt them or avoid them, he found the water fountain.

He spat blood-laced, amber clots. Water tugged them from the pebbly basin. The next were greenish and still gum bloody. He frothed the water, bitter with what was under his tongue, through his teeth and spat and spat till he spat clear. His lips tingled. Yeah, and felt better.

He left the fountain, gazing on grey, his belly cooler, blades whispering at his jeans. Across the damask of doubt and hesitation was unexpected joy like silver.

Something… He'd survived.

He pranced on the hill, happily oblivious to heart and bowels and the rest of the obstreperous machinery. This soft, this ecstatic grey, he swung through, in lop-looped chain, tasting the sweet smoke, buoyed on dusty grass.

The long, metallic note bent, broke to another. Someone was playing the harmonica — silver? Artichokes? Curiosity curved through, pressed down his mouth at both corners.

Like some color outside this grey range, music spilled the trees. He slowed and walked wonderingly into them. His feet came down in hushing puddles of grass. He frowned left and right and was very happy. The notes knotted with the upper branches.

In a tree? No… on a hill. He followed around the boulders that became a rise. The music came down from it. He looked up among leaf-grey and twig-grey. Picture: the harp leaving the lips, and the breath (leaving the lips) become laughter. "Hello," she called, laughing.

"Hello," he said and couldn't see her.

"Were you wandering around all night?"

He shrugged. "Sort of."

"Me too."

While he realized he had no idea of her distance, she laughed again and that turned back into music. She played oddly, but well. He stepped off the path.

Waving his right hand (caged), grasping saplings with his left (free), he staggered on the slope. "Hey… I" because he slipped, and she halted.

He caught up balance, and climbed.

She played again.

He stopped when the first leaves pulled from her.

She raised her apple eyes — apple green. Head down, she kept her lips at the metal organ.

Roots, thick as her arms, held the ground around her. Her back was against a heavy trunk. Leaves hid her all one side.

She wore her shirt. Her breasts were still nice.

His throat tightened. He felt both bowels and heart now; and all the little pains that defined his skin. It's stupid to be afraid… of trees. Still, he wished he had encountered her among stones. He took another step, arms wide for the slant, and she was free of foliage — except for one brown leaf leaning against her tennis shoe.

"Hi…"

A blanket lay beside her. The cuffs of her jeans were frayed. This shirt, he realized, didn't have buttons (silver eyelets on the cloth). But now it was half laced. He looked at the place between the strands. Yes, very nice.

"You didn't like the group last night?" She gestured with her chin to some vague part of the park.

He shrugged. "Not if they're going to wake me up and put me to work."

"They wouldn't have, if you'd pretended to be asleep. They don't really get too much done."

"Shit." He laughed and stepped up. "I didn't think so."

She hung her arms over her knees. "But they're good people."

He looked at her cheek, her ear, her hair.

"Finding your way around Bellona is a little funny at first. And they've been here a while. Take them with a grain of salt, keep your eyes open, and they'll teach you a lot."

"How long have you been with them?" thinking, I'm towering over her, only she looks at me as though I'm too short to tower.

"Oh, my place is over here. I just drop in on them every few days… like Tak. But I've just been around a few weeks, though. Pretty busy weeks." She looked out through the leaves. When he sat down on the log, she smiled. "You got in last night?"

He nodded. "Pretty busy night."

Something inside her face fought a grin.

"What's… your name?"

"Lanya Colson. Your name is Kidd, isn't it?"

"No, my name isn't Kidd! I don't know what my name is. I haven't been able to remember my name since… I don't know." He frowned. "Do you think that's crazy?"

She raised her eyebrows, brought her hands together (he remembered the remains of polish; so she must have redone them this morning: her nails were green as her eyes) to turn the harmonica.

"The Kid is what Iron Wolf tried to name me. And the girl in the commune tried to put on the other 'd'. But it isn't my name. I don't remember my God-damn name."

The turning halted.

"That's like being crazy. I forget lots of other things. Too. What do you think about that: " and didn't know how he would have interpreted his falling inflection either.

She said: "I don't really know."

He said, after the silent bridge: "Well, you have to think something!"

She reached into the coiled blanket and lifted out… the notebook? He recognized the charred cover.

Biting at her lip, she began ruffling pages. Suddenly she stopped, handed it to him—"Are any of these names yours?"

The list, neatly printed in ballpoint, filled two columns:

"What is this shit?" he asked, distressed. "It says Kit, with that Indian last name."

"Is that your name after all?"

"No. No, it's not my name."

"You look like you could be part Indian."

"My mother was a God-damn Indian. Not my father. It isn't my name." He looked back at the paper. "Your name's on here."

"No."

"Colson!"

"My last name. But my first name's Lanya, not Virginia."

"You got anybody in your family named Virginia?"

"I used to have a great aunt Virgilia. Really. She lived in Washington D.C. and I only met her once when I was seven or eight. Can you remember the names of anybody else in your family? Your father's?"

"No."

"Your mother's?"

"…what they look like but… that's all."

"Sisters or brothers?"

"…didn't have any."

After silence he shook his head.

She shrugged.

He closed the book and searched for speech: "Let's pretend—" and wondered what was in the block of writing below the lists—"that we're in a city, an abandoned city. It's burning, see. All the power's out. They can't get television cameras and radios in here, right? So everybody outside's forgotten about it. No word comes out. No word comes in. We'll pretend it's all covered with smoke, okay? But now you can't even seen the fire."

"Just the smoke," she said. "Let's pretend—"

He blinked.

"— you and I are sitting in a grey park on a grey day in a grey city." She frowned at the sky. "A perfectly ordinary city. The air pollution is terrible here." She smiled. "I like grey days, days like this, days without shadows—" Then she saw he had jabbed his orchid against the log.

Pinioned to the bark, his fist shook among the blades.

She was on her knees beside him: "I'll tell you what let's do. Let's take that off!" She tugged at the wrist snap. His arm shook in her fingers. "Here." Then his hand was free.

He was breathing hard. "That's—" he looked at the weapon still fixed by three points—"a pretty wicked thing. Leave it the fuck alone."

"It's a tool," she said. "You may need it. Just know when to use it." She was rubbing his hand.

His heart was slowing. He took another, very deep breath. "You ought to be afraid of me, you know?"

She blinked. "I am." And sat back on her heels. "But I want to try out some things I'm afraid of. That's the only reason to be here. What," she asked, "happened to you just then?"

"Huh?"

She put three fingers on his forehead, then showed him the glistening pads. "You're sweating."

"I was… very happy all of a sudden."

She frowned. "I thought you were scared to death!"

He cleared his throat, tried to smile. "It was like… well, suddenly being very happy. I was happy when I walked into the park. And then all of a sudden it just…" He was rubbing her hand back.

"Okay." She laughed. "That sounds good."

His jaw was clamped. He let it loosen, and grunted: "Who… what kind of a person are you?"

Her face opened, with both surprise and chagrin: "Let's see. Brilliant, charming — eight—four pounds away from being stunningly gorgeous … I like to tell myself; family's got all sorts of money and social connections. But I'm rebeling against all that right now:"

"Okay."

Her face was squarish, small, not gorgeous at all, and it was nice too.

"That sounds accurate."

The humor left it and there was only surprise. "You believe me? You're a doll!" She kissed him, suddenly, on the nose, didn't look embarrassed, exactly; rather as though she were timing some important gesture:

Which was to pick up her harmonica and hail notes in his face. They both laughed (he was astonished beneath the laughter and suspected it showed) while she said: "Let's walk."

"Your blanket…?"

"Leave it here."

He carried the notebook. They flailed through the leaves, jogging. At the path he stopped and looked down at his hip. "Uhh…?"

She looked over.

"Do you," he asked slowly, "remember my picking up the orchid and putting it on my belt here?"

"I put it on there." She thumbed some blemish on the harmonica. "You were going to leave it behind, so I stuck a blade through your belt loop. Really. It can be dangerous around here."

Mouth slightly open, he nodded as, side by side, they gained the shadowless paths.

He said: "You stuck it there." Somewhere a breeze, without force, made its easy way in the green. He was aware of the smoky odor about them for two breaths before it faded with inattention. "All by yourself, you just found those people in the park?"

She gave him a You-must-be-out-of-your-mind look. "I came in with quite a party, actually. Fun; but after a couple of days they were getting in the way. I mean it's nice to have a car. But if you're rendered helpless by lack of gasoline…" She shrugged. "Before we got here, Phil and I were taking bets whether this place really existed or not." Her sudden and surprising smile was all eyes and very little mouth. "I won. I stayed with the group I came in with a while. Then I cut them loose. A few nights with Milly, John, and the rest. Then I've been off having adventures — until a few nights ago, when I came back."

Thinking: Oh—"You had some money when you got here?" — Phil.

"Group I came with did. A lot of good it did them. I mean how long would you wander around a city like this looking for a hotel? No, I had to let them go. They were happy to be rid of me."

"They left?"

She looked at her sneaker and laughed, mock ominous.

"People leave here," he said. "The people who gave me the orchid, they were leaving when I came."

"Some people leave." She laughed again. It was a quiet and self-assured and intriguing and disturbing laugh.

He asked: "What kind of adventures did you have?"

"I watched some scorpion fights. That was weird. Nightmare's trip isn't my bag, but this place is so small you can't be that selective. I spent a few days by myself in a lovely home in the Heights: which finally sent me up the wall. I like living outdoors. Then there was Calkins for a while."

"The guy who publishes the newspaper?"

She nodded. "I spent a few days at his place. Roger's set up this permanent country weekend, only inside city limits. He keeps some interesting people around."

"Were you one of the interesting people?"

"I think Roger just considered me decorative, actually. To amuse the interesting ones. "His loss."

She was pretty in a sort of rough way — maybe closer to "cute".

He nodded.

"The brush with civilization did me good, though. Then I wandered out on my own again. Have you been to the monastery, out by Holland?"

"Huh?"

"I've never been there either but I've heard some very sincere people have set up a sort of religious retreat. I still can't figure out if they got started before this whole thing happened, or whether they moved in and took over afterward. But it still sounds impressive. At least what one hears."

"John and Mildred are pretty sincere."

"Touché!" She puffed a chord, then looked at him curiously, laughed, and hit at the high stems. He looked; and her eyes, waiting for him to speak, were greener than the haze allowed any leaf around.

"It's like a small town," he said. "Is there anything else to do but gossip?"

"Not really." She hit the stems again. "Which is a relief, if you look at it that way."

"Where does Calkins live?"

"Oh, you like to gossip! I was scared for a moment." She stopped knocking the stalks. "His newspaper office is awful! He took some of us there, right to where they print it. Grey and gloomy and dismal and echoing." She screwed up her face and her shoulders and her hands. "Ahhhh! But his house—" Everything unscrewed. "Just fine. Right above the Heights. Lots of grounds. You can see the whole city. I imagine it must have been quite a. sight when all the street lights were on at night." A small screwing, now. "I was trying to figure out whether he's always lived there, or if he just moved in and took it over too. But you don't ask questions like that."

He turned and she followed.

"Where is his house?"

"I think the actual address is on Brisbain South."

"How'd you get to meet him?"

"They were having a party. I was wandering by. Someone I knew invited me in. Phil, actually."

"That sounds easy."

"Ah, it was very difficult. You want to go up there and meet Calkins?"

"Well, everything looks pretty scroungy down around here. I could wander up and see if somebody would invite me in." He paused. "Of course, you're a girl. You'd have an easier time, wouldn't you? To be… decorative?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Not necessarily."

He glanced at her in time to catch her glancing back. The idea struck him as amusing.

"You see that path behind the soccer posts?"

"Yeah."

"It exits right on to Brisbain North. Which turns into Brisbain South after a while."

"Hey!" He grinned at her, then let his head fall to the side. "What's the matter?"

"I'm sad you're going. I was all set for a dangerous, exciting afternoon, wandering about with you, playing my harmonica for you."

"Why don't you come?"

Her look held both embarrassment and collusion. "I've been."

Hammering sounded behind them.

To his frown, she explained: "One of John's work projects. They've gotten back from lunch. I know there's food left. The guy who does the most of their cooking, Jommy, is a friend of mine; do you want to eat?"

"Naw." He shook his head. "Besides, I haven't decided if I want—"

"Yes, you have. But I'll see you when you get back. Take this." She held out the notebook. "It'll give you something to read on the way."

For a moment he let his face acknowledge that she wanted him to stay. "Thanks… all right."

"That's one nice thing about this place," she answered the acknowledgement; "when you come back, I will see you." She raised her harmonica to her mouth. "You can't lose anybody here." In the metal, her eyes and nostrils were immense darknesses, set in silvered flesh, cut through, without lid or lash or limit, by green and green. She blew a discord, and walked away.

As he left the eyeless lions, it occurred to him: You can't make that discord on a harmonica.

Not on any harmonica he'd ever had.

2

He'd walked three blocks when he saw, in the middle of the fourth, the church.

Visible were two (of presumably four) clocks around the steeple. Nearing, he saw the hands were gone.

He scrubbed at his forehead with the back of his wrist. Grit rolled between skin and skin. All this soot…

The thought occurred: I'm in fine shape to get myself invited into a house party!

Organ music came from the church door. He remembered Lanya had said something about a monastery… Wondering if curiosity showed on his face, he stepped carefully — notebook firmly under his arm — into the tiled foyer.

Through a second door, in an office, two of the four spools on the aluminum face of an upright tape recorder revolved. There were no lights on.

It only really registered as he turned away (and, once registered, he had no idea what to do with the image): Thumb-tacked above the office bulletin-board was the central poster from Loufer's wall: the black man in cap, jacket, and boots.

Another door (leading to the chapel itself?) was ajar on darkness.

He stepped back to the sidewalk—

"Hey, there!"

The old man wore maroon bell bottoms, gold-rimmed spectacles; underneath a dull corduroy jacket, a bright red tanktop: beard, beret. He carried a bundle of newspapers under one arm. "How you doing on this pearly afternoon?"

"Hello."

"Now… I bet you're wondering what time it is." The old man strained his ropy neck. "Let me see." He gazed at the steeple. "Let me see. That would be about… eleven… twenty-five." His head came down in wheezy laughter. "How do you like that, hey? Pretty good trick, huh? (You want a paper? Take one!) It is a trick. I'll show you how to do it. What's the matter? Paper don't cost you. You want a subscription?"

"Under your beard… where'd you get that thing around your neck?"

"You mean…" The old man's free hand moved to the peppery hair that went without break from the top of his chest to his chin. He unfastened the necklace, which fell, like a diamond snake. "…this? Where'd you get yours?"

He'd thought collar and cuff hid his own. "On my way here. It says it comes from Brazil."

The old man held the end of the chain close to see:

"…Japan?" then extended the end for him to look.

On the tab of brass were stamped letters: ade in Japan. Before ade there was a squiggle undoubtably m.

The old man got it around his neck again and finally managed to secure it with one hand.

He looked down at the papers: he could read, just at the old man's crumpled cuff:

He frowned at that.

"I didn't see your chain," the man went on, in un-requested explanation. "But you wouldn't have asked if you hadn't got one yourself, now, would you?"

He nodded, mainly to make the geezer continue — an urging not needed.

"I guess it's like a prize for an initiation. Only you didn't know you were being initiated? And that sort of upset you, I bet."

He nodded again.

"My name's Faust," the old man said. "Joaquim Faust."

"Wakeem…?"

"You're pronouncing it right. From your accent, though, I bet you wouldn't put the same letters in it I do."

He reached for Joaquim's extended hand: Joaquim caught his up in a biker shake. "You say—" Joaquim frowned before he let go—"you got yours on your way here? Outside Bellona?"

"That's right."

Joaquim shook his head and said, "Mmmmmmm," while a roaring that had been gathering seconds now, broke over head. They looked up. Nothing was visible in the haze. The jets lingered disturbingly long, then pulled away. The taped organ sounded soft after it.

"On the clock," Joaquim said. "The front face. That little stub used to be the minute hand. So you can about figure out which way it's pointing."

"Oh. What about the hour?"

Joaquim shrugged. "I left the office around eleven. Least I guess it was eleven. I haven't been gone that long."

"What happened to the… hands?"

"The niggers. The first night, I guess it was. When all that lightning was going on. They went wild. Swarmed all over. Broke up a whole lot of stuff around here — Jackson's just down there."

"Jackson?"

"Jackson Avenue is where most of the niggers live. Used to live. You new?"

He nodded.

"See if you can get hold of the paper for that day. People say you never seen pictures like that before. They was burning. And they had ladders up, and breaking in the windows. This guy told me there was a picture of them climbing up on the church. And breaking off the clock hands. Tearing each other up, too. There's supposed to be one set of pictures; of this big buck, getting after this little white girl… a whole lot of stink about them pictures. 'Rape' is the nasty word they didn't use in the paper but rape is what it was. People was saying Calkins shouldn't've printed them. But you know what he did?" Joaquim's twisted face demanded answer.

"No. What?" he ceded, warily.

"He went down and hunted up the nigger in the pictures and had somebody interview him; and he printed everything. Now if you ask me, what he shouldn't have printed was that interview. I mean, Calkins is all interested in civil rights and things. He really is. The colored people in this town had it bad I guess, and he was concerned with that. Really concerned. But that nigger had the dirtiest mouth, and didn't use it to talk nothing but dirt. I don't think he even knew what a newspaper interview was. I mean, I know the colored people got it rough. But if you want to help, you don't print a picture of the biggest, blackest buck in the world messin' up some little blond-headed seventeen-year-old girl, and then runnin' two pages of him saying how good it was, with every other word 'shit' and 'fuck,' and 'Wooo-eeeee', how he's going to get him some more soon as he can, and how easy it's gonna be with no pigs around! I mean not if you want to help — do you? And because of the article, Harrison — his name was George Harrison — is some sort of hero, to all the niggers left over in Jackson; and you'd think just about everybody else too. Which shows you the kind of people we got."

"But you didn't see it, though?"

Faust waved that away.

"There's this other colored man up from the South, some civil rights, militant person — a Mr Paul Fenster? He got here right around the time it happened. Calkins knows him too, I guess, and writes about what he's doing a lot. Now I would guess this guy probably has some decent intentions; but how's he going to do anything with all that George Harrison business, huh? I mean it's just as well—" he looked around—"there's not too many people left that care any more. Or that many niggers left in Jackson."

He resolved annoyance and curiosity with the polite question:

"What started it? The riot I mean."

Joaquim bent his head far to the side. "Now you know, nobody has the story really straight. Something fell."

"Huh?"

"Some people say a house collapsed. Some others say a plane crashed right there in the middle of Jackson. Somebody else was talking about some kid who got on the roof of the Second City bank building and gunned somebody down."

"Somebody got killed?"

"Very. It was supposed to be a white kid on the roof and a nigger that got shot. So they started a riot."

"What did the paper say?"

"About everything I did. Nobody knows which one happened for sure."

"If a plane crashed, somebody would have known."

"This was back at the beginning. Things were a hell of a lot more confused then. A lot of buildings were burning. And the weather was something else. People were still trying to get out. There were a hell of a lot more people here. And they were scared."

"You were here then?"

Joaquim pressed his lips till mustache merged with beard. He shook his head. "I just heard about the newspaper article. And the pictures."

"Where'd you come from?"

"Ahhhhh!" Faust waggled a free finger in mock reproval. "You have to learn not to ask questions like that. It's not polite. I didn't ask nothing about you, did I? I told you my name, but I didn't ask yours."

"I'm sorry." He was taken back.

"You going to meet a lot of people who'll get all kinds of upset if you go asking them about before they came to Bellona. I might as well tell you, so you don't get yourself in trouble. Especially—" Faust raised his beard and put a thumb beneath his choker—"people wearing one of these. Like us. I bet if I asked your name, or maybe your age, or why you got an orchid on your belt… anything like that, I could really get your dander up. Now couldn't I?"

He felt the discomfort, vague as remembered pain, in his belly.

"I come from Chicago, most recently. Frisco before that." Faust reached down to hold out one leg of his belled pants. "A grandpa Yippie, yeah? I'm a traveling philosopher. Is that good enough for you?"

"I'm sorry I asked."

"Think nothing of it. I heard Bellona was where it was at. It must be, now. I'm here. Is that good enough?"

He nodded again, disconcerted.

"I got a good, honest job. Sold the Tribe on the corner of Market and Van Ness. Here I'm Bellona's oldest newspaper boy. Is that enough?"

"Yeah. Look, I didn't mean—"

"Something about you, boy. I don't like it. Say—" Eyelids wrinkled behind gold-rimmed lenses—"you're not colored, are you? I mean you're pretty dark. Sort of full-featured. Now, I could say 'spade' like you youngsters. But where I was comin' up, when I was comin' up, they were niggers. They're still niggers to me and I don't mean nothing by it. I want all the best for them."

"I'm American Indian," he decided, with resigned wrath.

"Oh." Joaquim tilted his head once more to appraise. "Well, if you're not a nigger, you must be pretty much in sympathy with the niggers." He came down heavy on the word for any discomfort value it still held. "So am I. So am I. Only they won't ever believe it of me. I wouldn't either if I was them. Boy, I got to deliver my papers. Go on — take one. That's right; there you go." Faust straightened the bundle under his arm. "You interested in rioting niggers — and just about everybody is—" the aside was delivered with high theatricality—"you go look up those early editions. Here's your paper, Reverend." He strode across the sidewalk and handed another paper to the black minister in pavement-length cassock who stood in the church door.

"Thank you, Joaquim." The voice was… contralto? There was a hint of… breasts beneath the dark robe. The face was rounded, was gentle enough for a woman.

The minister looked at him now, as Joaquim marched down the street. "Faust and I have a little game we play," she — it was she — explained to his bemusement. "You mustn't let it upset you." She smiled, nodded, and started in.

"Excuse me… Reverend…"

She turned. "Yes?"

"Eh…" Intensely curious, he could focus his curiosity on no subject. "What kind of church is this, here?" He settled on that, but felt it hopelessly contrived. What he wanted to ask about, of course, was the poster.

She smiled. "Interfaith, interracial. We've been managing to have services three times a week for a while now. We'd be very happy if you were interested in coming. Sunday morning, of course. Then again, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. We don't have a very large congregation, yet. But we're gathering our flock."

"You're Reverend…?"

"Amy Taylor. I'm a lay preacher, actually. This is a project I've taken on myself. Working out quite well, too, everything considered."

"You just sort of moved into the church and took it over?"

"After the people who were here abandoned it." She did not brush her hands off. She extended one. It might have been the same gesture. "I'm glad to meet you."

He shook. "Glad to meet you."

"I hope you come to our services. This is a time of stress for everybody. We need all the spiritual help we can get… don't you think?"

Her grip (like Joaquim's) lingered. And it was firmer. "Hey, do you know what day it is?"

She looked down at the paper. "Wednesday."

"But… How do you know when it's Sunday."

She laughed. It was very self-assured laughter. "Sunday services happen when the paper says Sunday. Mr Calkins confuses dates, I know. But there's never more than one Sunday every seven days. Or one Tuesday, either. Now, Thursdays slip up. I went to see him about that. A very polite man. And very concerned about what goes on in his city, despite what some people find a trying sense of humor. I had noticed about the frequency of Sundays myself. He explained about Tuesdays; but he held out for arbitrary Thursdays. He quite nicely offered to declare a Thursday any time I asked — if I would give him twenty-four-hour notice." Her perfect seriousness ruptured with a smile. And she dropped his hand. "The whole business is funny. I feel as strange talking about it as you must hearing it, I'm sure." Her natural hair, her round, brown face: he liked her. "Will you try and come to our services?"

He smiled. "I'll try." He was even vaguely sorry to lie.

"Good."

"Reverend Taylor?"

Her sparse eyebrows raised as she looked back.

"Does this street go toward… Mr Calkins's?"

"Yes, his home is about a mile up. You have to cross Jackson. Two days ago some brave soul had a bus running back and forth along Broadway. Only one bus. But then it doesn't have any traffic to fight. I don't know if it's still going. But that would take you to the newspaper office, anyway. Not his home. I suppose you could walk. I did."

"Thanks." He left her, smiling after him from the doorway. No, he decided. That probably wasn't the monastery. He pictured the tape winding and winding as the music dimmed, chord after chord falling from glimmering reels.

Jackson Avenue was a wide street, but the crowded houses, blurred with noon-smoke, were mostly wood. Trolley wires webbing the intersection were down, in a snarl, on the corner pavement. Two blocks off, wreckage fumed. Billows cleared charred beams, then rolled to.

A block in the other direction a heavy figure with a shopping bag paused mid-trek between corner and corner to watch him watching. Though it was an arbitrary Wednesday afternoon, the feel was of some ominous Sunday morning.

3

There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful street. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.

This is what a good neighborhood in Bellona looks like?

The ground floor windows were broken in the white house there; curtains hung out.

The street was clean.

Bare foot and sandal, bare foot and sandal: he watched the pavement's grain slip beneath them.

A door beside him stood wide.

He kept walking. Easier to think that all these buildings are inhabited, than that their vacancy gives me license to loot where I will — not loot. Borrow. Still, it's unnerving.

Loufer had said something about shotguns.

But he was hungry after all and he was going to — borrow food soon.

He broke a window with a stick he had found wedging back a garage door, (eight jars of instant coffee on the kitchen shelf) and sat at the formica dinette table to eat a cold can (can-opener in the drawer) of Campbell's Pepperpot. (Easy!) Marveling between fingerfuls of undiluted soup (salty!), he looked from the paper he'd taken from Faust, to the notebook he'd gotten from Lanya. Made himself a cup of coffee with hot water — after running ten seconds, it was steaming and spitting — from the tap. Finally, he opened the notebook at random and read, in the terribly neat ballpoint:

He looked up at creakings. But it was only some slight architectural shift. Nobody, he subvocalized, lives here now. (The kitchen was very clean.) Without particularly understanding what he'd read (or not understanding it, for that matter) the notes by the absent journalist, coupled with the creak, made the back of his neck tingle.

Déjà vu is a thing of the eye.

This was like reading lines that echoed some conversation he might have followed idly once on a crowded street. The book hinted he pay attention to part of his mind he could not even locate.

He flipped more pages. There was only writing on the right-hand ones. The left-hand ones were blank. He closed the book. He put the coffee cup in the sink, the can in the empty garbage pail: when he caught himself doing it, he laughed out loud, then tried silent justification: he could always stay here, make this place nicer than Tak's.

That made the back of his neck tingle again.

He closed the notebook and, with the paper rucked beside it, climbed back out the window.

He scratched himself on broken glass, but only noticed it a block away when he looked down to see a drop of blood had trickled across the notebook cover, red-brown on the char. He nudged at the new, purple-red scab with the blunt of his thumb, which just made it itch. So he forgot about it and hurried on up Brisbain. It was only… a scratch.

Distance? Or destination?

He had no idea what to expect of either. These lawns and facades needed sunlight, or at least light rain, to be beautiful. The corner trees might be clear green. But mist blurred them now.

Odd that the elements of pleasure were so many greys, so much fear, so many silences. That house there, gaping through drear drapes with intimations of rugs still out in July — someone had lived there. A Doctor sign hung beside the door of that one: he mulled on the drugs closeted behind the Venetian blinds. Well, maybe on the way back…

Charcoal, like the bodies of beetles, heaped below the glittering wall on the far corner. The sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the street's gritty stink. Through a cellar window, broken, a grey eel of smoke slithered the sidewalk to vaporize in the gutter. Through another, intact, flickerings… The singular burning among the dozens of whole buildings was the most uncanny thing he'd seen.

He crossed quickly to the next block.

The loose rhythm of the day carried him through the streets. Once it occurred to him that he was tired. Later, he looked for the tiredness and found it had dispersed, like the eel.

This had to be the Heights.

He trudged on up the sloping street, by a window full of brass: three layers of glass doors in a foyer: the head of a white statue behind a high hedge — all the vulnerable, gloomy elegance bothered him. Break in for another cup of coffee? He wondered why the images of shotguns behind the curtains were stronger here. But laughed at them, anyway.

He moved, and the movement was a rush of sound among his body's cavities. He slapped the paper and bloody notebook on his thigh, thinking of Lanya, of Milly, of John. From his other hip the orchid swung. Chained in points of view, he loped along, an uneasy vandal, suffering for the pillage his mind wreaked among the fabulous facades. He moved, a point of tension, by homes that would have been luxurious in sunlight.

He was not sure why he decided to explore off the avenue.

In the center of the alley was an oak, set in a circle of cobbles, ringed in a decorative fence. His heart beat fast.

He passed it.

The backside of the trunk was ash. Instead of heavy greenery, the rear leaves were shriveled black.

Eyes wide at the vision, he turned as he passed it, to back away. Then he looked at the houses.

On both sides of him walls were sundered on smashed furniture, beams, and piled masonry. The demarcation between lawn and street vanished beneath junk. Twenty feet on, the cobbles were upturned. He felt his face squinch against the destruction.

Bulldozers?

Grenades?

He could not imagine what had caused this. Paving-stones were smashed, loose, or upside down in raw earth, so that he was not even certain where the next street began. Frowning, he wandered in the debris, stepped over a pile of books, vaguely seeking the source of a smoke plume waving fifty feet away, then, suddenly, not seeking it.

He picked up a clock. The crystal flaked out, tinkling. He dropped it and picked up a ballpoint pen, wiped the ashes against his pants, clicked the point in and out. Half under plaster was a wooden chest, slightly larger than an attaché case. With the toe of his sandal, he nudged up the lid. White powder swirled above forks, spoons, and knives bound in grey ribbon, then settled to the purple velvet. He let the lid clack, and hurried to the Avenue.

He practically ran Brisbain's next three blocks, past houses empty and elegant. But now he was aware of lawn poles askew, of shapeless heaps between them, of windows, which, beyond pale curtains, were light as the sky behind them.

He was still clicking the ballpoint pen. So he put it in his shirt pocket. Then, at the next corner, he took it out again and stood very still. If a wind came now, he thought, and caused any sound on this drear street, he would cry out.

There was no wind.

He sat down on the curb, opened to the notebook's first page.

he read once more. Hastily he turned the page over to the clear side. He looked down the four streets, looked at the corner houses. He sucked a breath through closed teeth, clicked the point out and began to write.

In the middle of the third line, without taking pen off paper, he swept back to cross it all out. Then, carefully, he recopied two words on the next line. The second was "I." Very carefully now, word followed word. He crossed out two more lines, from which he salvaged "you," "spinner," and "pave," dropping them into a new sentence that bore no denotative resemblance to the one from which they came.

Between lines, while he punched his pen point, his eye strayed to the writing beside his:

"Annn!" out loud. There was not a pretty word in the bunch. Roughly he turned the notebook back around the paper to avoid distraction.

Holding the last two lines in his head, he looked about at the buildings again. (Why not live dangerously?) He wrote the last lines hurriedly, notating them before they dispersed.

He printed at the top: "Brisbain"

Lifting his pen from the "n", he wondered if the word had any other meaning than the name of the Avenue. Hoping it did, he began to recopy, in as neat a hand as he could, what he had settled on. He altered one word in the last two lines ("cannot" became "can't"), and closed the book, puzzled at what he had done.

Then he stood.

Struck with dizziness, he staggered off the curb. He shook his head, and finally managed to get the world under him at the right angle. The back of his legs were cramped: he'd been in a near-fetal squat practically half an hour.

The dizziness gone, the cramps stayed with him for two blocks. As well he felt choked up in his breathing. That put him in touch with a dozen other little discomforts that he had ignored till now. So that it was not for another block after that he noticed he wasn't afraid.

The pulling in the back of his right shin, or the mental disquiet? He gave up pondering the preferable, looked at a street sign, and noticed that Brisbain N had become Brisbain S.

Click-click, click-click, click-click: realizing what he was doing, he put the pen in his shirt pocket. Along the street, beside him, was a stone wall. The houses across from him, porched and lawned and spacious and columned, all had broken windows.

The car — a blunt, maroon thing at least twenty years old — grumbled up behind.

He'd jumped, in surprise, turning.

It passed, leaving no impression of the driver. But two blocks ahead, it turned in at a gate.

Willow fronds draped the brick above him. Walking again, he ran two fingers along the mortared troughs.

The gate was verdigrised brass, spiked at the top, and locked. Ten yards beyond the bars, the road got twisted up in the shaggiest pines he'd ever seen. The brass plate, streaked pink with recent polish, said: ROGER CALKINS

He looked through at the pines. He looked back at the other houses. Finally he just walked on.

The street ended in brush. He followed the wall around its corner into bushes. Twigs kept jabbing beneath his sandal straps. His bare foot went easier.

In the clearing, someone had piled two crates, one on another, against the brick: children after fruit or mischief?

As he climbed (notebook and paper left on the ground) two women behind the walls laughed.

He paused.

Their laughter neared, became muffled converse. A man guffawed sharply; the double soprano recommenced and floated off.

He could just grasp the edge. He pulled himself up, elbows winging. It was a lot harder than movies would make it. He scraped at the brick with his toes. Brick rasped back at knees and chin.

His eyes cleared the top.

The wall was covered with pine needles, twigs, and a surprising shale of glass. Through spinning gnats he saw the blunt pine tops and the rounded, looser heads of elms. Was that grey thing the cupola of a house?

"Oh, I don't believe it!" an invisible woman cried and laughed again.

His fingers stung; his arms were trembling.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, kid?" somebody behind him drawled.

Shaking, he lowered, belt buckle catching a mortice once to dig his stomach; his toes hit at the thin ledges; then the crate: he danced around.

And went back against the wall, squinting.

Newt, spider, and some monstrous insect, huge and out of focus, glared with flashbulb eyes.

He got out an interrogative "Wh…" but could choose no defining final consonant.

"Now you know—" the spider in the middle extinguished: the tall redhead dropped one freckled hand from the chains looping neck to belly—"damn well you ain't supposed to be up there." His face was flat, his nose wide as a pug's, his lips overted, his eyes like brown eggshells set with tarnished gold coins. His other hand, freckles blurred in pale hair, held a foot of pipe.

"I wasn't climbing in."

"Shit," came out of the newt on the left in a black accent much heavier than the redhead's.

"Sure you weren't," the redhead said. His skin, deep tan, was galaxied with freckles. Hair and beard were curly as a handful of pennies. "Yeah, sure. I just bet you weren't." He swung the pipe, snapping his arm at the arc's end: neckchains rattled. "You better get down from there, boy."

He vaulted, landed with one hand still on the crates.

The redhead swung again: the flanking apparitions came closer, swaying. "Yeah, you better jump!"

"All right, I'm down. Okay—?"

The scorpion laughed, swung, stepped.

The chained boot mashed the corner of the notebook into the mulch. The other tore the newspaper's corner.

"Hey, come on—!"

He pictured himself lunging forward. But stayed still… till he saw that the pipe, next swing, was going to catch him on the hip—was lunging forward.

"Watch it! He's got his orchid on…!"

He slashed with his bladed hand; the scorpion dodged back; newt and beetle spun. He had no idea where they were under their aspects. He jammed his fist at the scaly simulation — his fist went through and connected jaw-staggeringly hard with something. He slashed with his blades at the retreating beetle. The spider rushed him. He staggered in rattling lights. A hand caught him against the cheek. Blinking, he saw a second, sudden black face go out under newt scales. Then, something struck his head.

"Hey, he cut you, Spitt, man!" That was the heavy black accent, very far away. "Oh, hey, wow, Spitt! He really cut you. Spitt, you all right?"

He wasn't all right. He was falling down a black hole.

"The mother fucker! I'm going to get him for that—"

He hit bottom.

Pawing across that leafy bottom, he finally found the remnants of a thought: His orchid had been hanging from his waist. No time had he reached down to—

"Are… you all right?"

— slip his roughened fingers into the harness, fasten the collar about his knobby wrist…

Someone shook him by the shoulder. His hand gouged moist leaves. The other was suspended. He opened his eye.

Evening struck the side of his head so hard he was nauseated.

"Young man, are you all right?"

He opened his eyes again. The throbbing twilight concentrated on one quarter of his head. He pushed himself up.

The man, in blue serge, sat back on his heels. "Mr Fenster, I think he's conscious!"

A little ways away, a black man in a sports shirt stood at the clearing's edge.

"Don't you think we should take him inside? Look at his head."

"No, I don't think we should." The black put his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

He shook his head — only once, because it hurt that much.

"Were you attacked, young man?"

He said, "Yes," very thickly. A nod would have made it cynical, but he didn't dare.

The white collar between the serge lapels was knotted with an extraordinarily thin tie. White temples, below grey hair: the man had an accent that was disturbingly near British. He picked up the notebook. (The newspaper slid off onto the leaves.) "Is this yours?"

Another thick, "Yes."

"Are you a student? It's terrible, people attacking people right out in the open like this. Terrible!"

"I think we'd better get inside," the black man said. "They'll be waiting for us."

"Just a minute!" came out with surprising authority. The gentleman helped him to sitting position. "Mr Fenster, I really think we should take this poor young man inside. Mr Calkins can't possibly object. This is something of an exceptional circumstance."

Fenster took dark brown hands from his pockets and came over. "I'm afraid it isn't exceptional. We've checked, now come on back inside."

With surprising strength Fenster tugged him to his feet. His right temple exploded three times en route. He grabbed the side of his head. There was crisp blood in his hair; and wet blood in his sideburn.

"Can you stand up?" Fenster asked.

"Yes." The word was dough in his mouth. "Ah… thanks for my—" he almost shook his head again, but remembered—"my notebook."

The man in the tie looked sincerely perplexed. With a very white hand, he touched his shoulder. "You're sure you're all right?"

"Yes," automatically. Then, "Could I get some water?"

"Certainly," and then to Fenster. "We can certainly take him inside for a glass of water."

"No—" Fenster spoke with impatient resignation— "we can't take him inside for a glass of water." It ended with set jaw, small muscles there defined in the dark skin. "Roger is very strict. You'll just have to put up with it. Please, let's go back in."

The white man — fifty-five? sixty? — finally took a breath. "I'm…" Then he just turned away.

Fenster — forty? forty-five? — said, "This isn't a good neighborhood to be in, young fellow. I'd get back downtown as fast as I could. Sorry about all this."

"That's all right," he got out. "I'm okay."

"I really am sorry." Fenster hurried after the older gentleman.

He watched them reach the corner, turn. He raised his caged hand, looked at it between the blades. Was that why they had…? He looked back toward the street.

His head gave a gratuitous throb.

He collected the paper and the notebook, mumbling profanity, and walked out.

They'd apparently gone back through the gate. Motherfucker. Motherfuckers, he thought. The gloom was denser now. He began to wonder how long he'd been away from the park. Four or five hours? His head hurt a pot. And it was getting dark.

Also it looked like rain… But the air was dry and neutral.

Brisbain South had just become Brisbain North when he saw, a block away, three people run from one side of the avenue to the other.

They were too far to see if they wore chains around their necks. Still, he was overcome with gooseflesh. He stopped with his hand on the side of a lamp post. (The globe was an inverted crown of ragged glass points, about the smaller, ragged collar of the bulb.) He felt his shoulders pull involuntarily together. He looked at the darkening sky. And the terror of the vandal-wrecked city assailed him: His heart pounded.

His armpits grew slippery.

Breathing hard, he sat with his back to the post's base.

He took the pen from his pocket and began to click the point. (He hadn't put the orchid on…?) After a moment, he stopped to take the weapon from his wrist and put it through his belt loop again: moving armed through the streets might be provocative…?

He looked around again, opened his notebook, turned quickly past "Brisbain" to a clean page, halfway or more through.

"Charcoal," he wrote down, in small letters, "like the bodies of burnt beetles, heaped below the glittering black wall of the house on the far corner." He bit at his lip, and wrote on: "The wet sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the general gritty stink of the street. From the rayed hole in the cellar window a grey eel of smoke wound across the sidewalk, dispersed before" at which point he crossed out the last two words and substituted, "vaporized at the gutter. Through another window," and crossed out window, "still intact, something flickered. This single burning building in the midst of dozens of other whole buildings was," stopped and began to write all over again:

"Charcoal, like the bodies of beetles, heaped below the glittering wall. The sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the street's gritty stink." Then he went back and crossed out "the bodies of" and went on: "From a broken cellar window, a grey eel wound the sidewalk to vaporize at the gutter. Through another, intact, something flickered. This burning building," crossed that out to substitute, "The singular burning in the midst of dozens of whole buildings," and without breaking the motion of his hand suddenly tore the whole page from the notebook.

Pen and crumpled paper in his hand; he was breathing hard. After a moment, he straightened out the paper, and on a fresh page, began to copy again:

"Charcoal, like beetles heaped under the glittering wall…"

He folded the torn paper in four and put it back in the notebook when he had finished the next revision. On the back the former owner of the notebook had written:

Once more he made a face and closed the cover.

The mist had turned evening-blue. He got up and started along the street.

Several blocks later he identified the strange feeling: Though it was definitely becoming night, the air had not even slightly cooled. Frail smoke lay about him like a neutralizing blanket.

Ahead, he could see the taller buildings. Smoke had gnawed away the upper stories. Stealthily, he descended into the injured city.

It does not offer me any protection, this mist; rather a refracting grid through which to view the violent machine, explore the technocracy of the eye itself, spelunk the semi-circular canal. I am traveling my own optic nerve. Limping in a city without source, searching a day without shadow, am I deluded with the inconstant emblem? I don't like pain. With such disorientation there is no way to measure the angle between such nearly parallel lines of sight, when focusing on something at such distance.

4

"There you are!" She ran out between the lions, crossed the street.

He turned, surprised, at the lamp post.

She seized his hand in both of hers. "I didn't think I would see you again before— Hey! What happened?" Her face twisted in the shadow. She lost all her breath.

"I got beat up."

Her grip dropped; she raised her fingers, brushed his face.

"Owww…"

"You better come with me. What in the world did you do?"

"Nothing!" vented some of his indignation.

She took his hand again to tug him along. "You did something. People just don't get beat up for nothing at all."

"In this city—" he let her lead—"they do."

"Down this way. No. Not even in this city. What happened? You've got to get that washed off. Did you get to Calkins'?"

"Yeah." He walked beside her; her hand around his was almost painfully tight — then, as though she realized it, the grip loosened. "I was looking over the wall when these scorpions got at me."

"Ohhh!" That seemed to explain it to her.

"'Oh' what?"

"Roger doesn't like snoopers."

"So he sets scorpions to patrol the battlements?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. Sometimes he asks them for protection."

"Hey!" He pulled loose; she swung around. In shadow, her eyes, glaring up, were empty as the lions'. He tried to fix his tongue at protest, but she merely stepped to his side. They walked again, together, not touching, through the dark.

"In here."

"In where?"

"Here!" She turned him with a hand on his arm.

And opened a door he hadn't realized was beside them. Someone in flickering silhouette said, "Oh, it's you. What's the matter?"

"Look at him," Lanya said. "Scorpions."

"Oh." Leather jacket, cap… and leather pants: long fingers pulled closed the door. "Take him inside. But don't make a big thing, huh?"

"Thanks, Teddy."

There were voices from the end of the hall. The flakes of light on nail-thin Teddy's attire came from candles in iron candelabras.

He followed her.

At the end of the bar a woman's howl shattered to laughter. Three of the men around her, laughing, shed away like bright, black petals: four-fifths present wore leather, amidst scattered denim jackets. The woman had fallen into converse with a tall man in a puffy purple sweater. The candlelight put henna in her hair and blacked her eyes.

Another woman holding on to a drink with both hands, in workman's greens and construction boots, stepped unsteadily between them, recognized Lanya and intoned: "Honey, now where have you been all week? Oh, you don't know how the class of this place has gone down. The boys are about to run me ragged," and went, unsteadily, off.

Lanya led him through the leather crush. A surge of people toward the bar pushed them against one of the booth tables.

"Hey, babes—" Lanya leaned on her fists—"can we sit here a minute?"

"Lanya—? Sure," Tak said, then recognized him. "Jesus, Kid! What the hell happened to you?" He pushed over in the seat. "Come on. Sit down!"

"Yeah…" He sat.

Lanya was edging off between people:

"Tak, Kidd — I'll be right back!"

He put the notebook and the paper on the wooden table, drew his hands through the shadows the candles dropped from the iron webs, drew his bare foot through sawdust.

Tak, from looking after Lanya, turned back. "You got beat up?" The visor still masked his upper face.

He nodded at Tak's eyeless question.

Tak's lips pressed beneath the visor's shadow. He shook his head. "Scorpions?"

"Yeah."

The young man across the table had his hands in his lap.

"What'd they get from you?" Tak asked.

"Nothing."

"What did they think they were going to get?"

"I don't know. Shit. They just wanted to beat up on somebody, I guess."

Tak shook his head. "No. That doesn't sound right. Not scorpions. Everybody's too busy trying to survive around here just to go beating up on people for fun."

"I was up at the Calkins place, trying to look over the wall. Lanya said he keeps the bastards patrolling the damn walls."

"Now there." Loufer shook a finger across the table. "That's like I was telling you, Jack. It's a strange place, maybe stranger than any you've ever been. But it still has its rules. You just have to find them out."

"Shit," he repeated, indignant at everybody's questioning of the incident. "They beat hell out of me."

"Looks like they did." Tak turned across the table. "Jack, want you to meet the Kid, here. Jack just pulled into town this afternoon. The Kid got in yesterday."

Jack pushed himself forward and reached out to shake.

"Hi." He shook Jack's small, sunburned hand.

"Jack here is a deserter from the army."

At which Jack glanced at Tak with dismay, then covered it with an embarrassed smile. "Ah… hello," he said with a voice out of Arkansas. His short-sleeve sport-shirt was very pressed. Army shorn, his skull showed to the temple. "Yeah, I'm a God-damn deserter, like he says."

"That's nice," then realized how flip that sounded and was also embarrassed.

"Tak here has been trying to tell me about how to get along in this place," Jack offered: he had either not taken offense, or just not heard. "Tak's a lot smarter than I am, you know. It's pretty funny here, huh?"

He nodded.

"I was gonna go to Canada. But somebody told me about Bellona. Said it was a pretty swinging place, you know? So I thought I'd stop off here. On the way." Now he looked around the bar. The woman howled again: the purple angora had abandoned her. The howl moved predictably once more toward laughter and she sat, alone, shaking her dark red hair over her drink. "I ain't ever seen a place quite like this. Have you?" Jack offered the conversation back to him.

"Oh, I bet you ain't," Tak intercepted. "Now the Kid here, you know, he's my age? You probably would have thought he was younger than you are. Jack here is twenty. Now seriously, how old would you say the Kid here is?"

"Uh… oh, I don't know." Jack said, and looked confused.

(He wanted to look at the engineer's shadowed face again, but not yet.)

"Where the hell did you run off to this morning, anyway?"

A dog barked, somewhere in the bar.

About to turn and answer Tak, he looked toward the noise. Claws scrabbled; then, bursting between the legs of the people next to them, the black muzzle and shoulders!

He snatched his arm up from the barking.

At the same time, Lanya arrived: "Hey, come on, girl!"

Others had turned to watch the beast bark up at their table.

"Come on. Quiet down." Lanya's hand strayed on the shaking head, played on the black snout. "Be quiet! Quiet, now." The dog tried to pull its head away. She grabbed its lower jaw and shook it gently. "What you making so much noise about? Shhhhh, you hear me? Shhhh!" The dog turned its brown eyes from the table, to Lanya, back to the table. Bright pricks from the candles slid on the black pupils. It licked her hand. "There now. Be quiet." In the other was a wad of wet paper towels. She sat down, put them on the table: they trickled on the wood.

Jack's hands were back in his lap.

Tak pushed up his cap; the shadow uncovered his large, blue eyes. He shook his head, and sucked his teeth in general disapproval.

"Come on, now," Lanya said once more to the dog.

It waited beside the table, panting.

He reached out toward the dark head. The panting stopped. He passed his fingers over the rough hair, the wiry brows. The dog turned to lick the ham of his thumb. "Yeah," he said. "You just be quiet."

"Is Muriel bothering you people?" Purple Angora sucked a sighing breath. "I tell her—" he gestured toward the woman at the bar—"she shouldn't bring her in here. Muriel is just not that well trained. She gets so excited. But she will bring her in here every night. I hope she hasn't annoyed you."

Lanya reached again to rough the dog's head. "She's an old dear! She didn't bother anybody."

"Well, thank you." Purple Angora bent to drag Muriel back to the bar by the collar. Once he glanced back, frowned at them—

"See if you can wipe some of that stuff off your face," Lanya said, wrinkling hers.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." He picked up a towel and held it to his temple; which stung. Water rolled down.

He rubbed the blood off his cheek. Picked up another towel (the first now purple to the rim) and wiped his face again.

"Hey," Jack said. "I think you're…" with a vague gesture.

"Lord—!" Lanya said. "I'll get some more towels."

"Huh? Am I bleeding again?"

Tak took him by the chin and turned his face. "You sure are," and pressed another towel against his head.

"Hey!" He reached across for Lanya's arm. "Look, let me just go to the men's room. I'll fix it up."

She sat again. "Are you sure…?"

"Yeah. I'll be back in a little while." With one hand he held the paper to his face; with the other, he picked up the notebook. ("What happened to him?" Tak was asking Lanya. And Lanya was leaning forward to answer.) He pushed through the people next to them toward where the men's room ought to be.

Behind him, music began, staticy as an old radio; more like somebody's wind-up victrola. He turned in front of the rest room door.

Neon lights had come on in a cage hung up behind the bar. (The redhead's face [forty-five? fifty?] was soap yellow in the glare:

("Muriel! Now, Muriel, be quiet!")

(The fugitive barking stilled and the Purple Sweater sat up once more.) Through the black curtain stepped a boy in a silver lamé G-string. He began to dance in the cage, shaking his hips, flicking his hands, kicking. His ash-pale hair was flecked with glitter; glitter had fallen down his wet brow. He grinned hugely, open mouthed, lips shaking with the dance, at customers up and down the bar. His eyebrows were pasted over with silver.

The music, he realized through the static, was a medley of Dylan played by something like the Melachrino Strings. The "boy" was anywhere between fifteen and an emaciated thirty-five. Around his neck hung glittering strands of mirrors, prisms, lenses.

He pushed into the bathroom as a big man in an army jacket came out fingering his fly.

He locked the door, put his notebook on the cracked porcelain tank (he'd left the paper on the table), looked at the mirror and said, "Christ…!"

Tap turned full, the cold water only trickled over the tear-shaped stain. He pulled paper towels, rasping, from their container, and let them soak. Minutes later the sink was awash with blood; the battleship linoleum was speckled with it; but his face was clear of gore and leakage.

Sitting on the toilet, pants around his shins, shirt open, he turned up a quarter-sized mirror on his belly and gazed down at a fragment of his face with an eye in it. Water beaded his eyelashes.

He blinked.

His eye opened to see the drop, pink with dilute blood, strike the glass and spread to the gripping callous.

He let go, took the notebook from the toilet tank, turned it back on his thighs, and took out his pen. The coil pressed his skin:

He doubted the spelling, but wrote on:

"Seen through blood, her clear eyes…" He crossed out "clear" methodically, till it was a navy bar. He frowned, re-read, rewrote "clear", and wrote on. He stopped long enough to urinate and re-read again. He shook his head, leaned forward. His penis swung against cold porcelain. So he wiggled back on the seat; rewrote the whole line.

Once he looked up: A candle by the painted-over window was guttering.

"Remembering," he wrote, "by candle what I'd seen by moon…" frowned, and substituted a completely different thought.

"Hey!" Pounding at the door made him look up. "You all right in there, Kid?"

"Tak?"

"You need some help in there? Lanya sent me to see if you'd fallen in. You all right?"

"I'm okay. I'll be out in a minute."

"Oh. Okay. All right."

He looked back at the page. Suddenly he scribbled across the bottom: "They won't let me finish this God-damn" stopped, laughed, closed the book, and put the pen back in his pocket.

He leaned forward on his knees and relaxed: The length and splash surprised him. There wasn't any toilet paper.

So he used a wet towel.

Light glittered on the dancer's hips, his shaking hair, his sweating face. But people had resumed their conversations.

He pushed through, glancing at the cage.

"Well, you certainly look a lot better," Lanya said.

Jack said, "Hey, I got you and your girl friend a beer. One for you too, see, because I didn't want you to think… well, you know."

"Oh," he said. "Sure. Thanks."

"I mean Tak ain't let me buy anything all evening. So I thought I'd get you and your girl friend a beer."

He nodded and sat. "Thanks."

"Yeah, thanks," Lanya said.

"She's a very nice girl."

Lanya gave him a small Well-what-can-you-do look across the table and drank.

The music growled to a stop in the middle of a phrase; people applauded.

Jack nodded toward the cage, where the dancer panted. "I swear, I never been in a place like this. It's really too much, you know? You got a lot of places like this in Bellona?"

"Teddy's here is the one and only," Tak said. "No other place like it in the Western World. It used to be a straight bar back before. Improvement's not to be believed."

"It sure is pretty unbelievable," Jack repeated. "I've just never seen anything like it."

Lanya took another swallow from her bottle. "You're not going to die after all?" She smiled.

He saluted her with his and emptied it by a third. "Guess not."

Tak suddenly twisted in his seat. "Ain't this a bitch! Hot as it is in this God-damn place;" He shrugged out of his jacket, hung it over the bench back, then leaned one tattooed forearm on the table. "Now that's a little more comfortable." He furrowed the meadow of his chest, and looked down. "Sweating like a pig." He slid forward, stomach ridged by the plank, and folded his arms. "Yeah, that's a little better." He still wore his cap.

"Jesus," Jack said, looking around. "They let you do that in here?"

"They'd let me take my pants down and dance on the fucking table," Tak said, "if I wanted. Wouldn't they, Lanya-babes? You tell 'em."

"Tak," Lanya said, "I'd like to see that. I really would." She laughed.

Jack said: "Wow!"

The dancer was climbing from the cage down to the bar; he made a joke with somebody below; somebody else gave him a hand, and he leaped lightly away.

At the doorway, a group had just come in.

A couple of men in leather had gone up to a tall black with a khaki shirt: Even by candlelight, sweat stained his shirt flanks. Other black men around wore suits and ties. People were putting tables together.

The redhead's laughter carried her across the bar. She took the black's beam-broad, khaki shoulders. He embraced her; she struggled, still laughing. Muriel barked about their knees.

Sepulchral Teddy, like some leather-sheathed plant, set bottles down, held back chairs. The tall black fell into his seat; his fists cracked open like stone on the table. Others sat around him. He reared back, stretched his arms, and caught the woman in coveralls with one and the sparkling dancer with the other. Everyone laughed. The woman tried not to spill her drink and pushed at the rough, dark head. The dancer squealed: "Ooooo!" His G-string broke. He pulled the cord across his white hip, yanked the whole pouch away, and spun from the circling arm. A black hand smacked the chalky buttocks. The dancer dodged forward, threw back an evil look that ended with a wink, flipped the silver strap over his shoulder, and stalked off, cheek grinding cheek.

"Jesus!" Jack said from the other side of the table.

The rabbity tuft above the dancer's bobbing genitals had been dusted with glitter.

Teddy moved about the joined tables, pouring. Other people were coming up to talk, leaving to drink.

Lanya explained to his puzzled look: "That's George Harrison. Do you…?"

He nodded. "Oh."

"Jesus!" Jack repeated. "You got all sorts of people in a place like this, you know? I mean all kinds. Now that wouldn't happen where I come from. It's—" he looked around—"pretty nice, huh?" He drank more beer. "Everybody's so friendly."

Tak put his boot up on the bench and hung his arm across his knee. "Until they start to tear the place apart." He turned up his bottle to waterfall at his wide mouth. "Hey, you all want to come up to my place? Yeah, why don't you all come on back with me?" He put the beer down. "Jack, Lanya, you too, Kid."

He looked across at her to see if she wanted to go.

But she was drinking beer again.

"Yeah, come on." Tak pointed at her, so that when her bottle came down from her mouth, she looked at the engineer and frowned. "You're not going to sit around this place all night and fight off the Horse Women of Dry-gulch Canyon, are you?"

Lanya laughed. "Well, if you really want me, all right."

Tak slapped the table. "Good." Then he leaned over and stage-whispered, "You know she's a real stuckup bitch. Back when she used to hang out here, she wouldn't be caught dead with the likes of me. But after we got to know each other, she turned out not to be so bad." He grinned across the table.

"Tak, I'm not stuck up. I always spoke to you!"

"Yeah, yeah, so's your old man!" Tak pointed with a thumb. "Is he your old man now?" Then he laughed. "Come on. Late supper at Tak Loufer's. Tak Loufer's gonna give a party. Jack, you were saying how hungry you were."

"Gee," Jack said. "I don't know if…"

Lanya suddenly turned to him. "Oh, come on! Now, you have to come with us. You've just gotten here. Tak wants to show you around." She positively beamed.

"Well…" Jack grinned at the table, at Tak, at the candelabra.

"I'll give you something to eat," Tak said.

"Hell, I'm not that—"

"Oh, come on!" Lanya insisted.

(He moved his hands over the notebook, stained with blood and charcoal, to where the newspaper stuck out from the sides…) Lanya reached across and laid one fingertip on his gnawed thumb. He looked up. Tak was standing to leave. Jack: "Well, all right," finishing up his beer; Tak pulled his coat from the bench back. Lanya rose.

He picked up the paper and the notebook and stood beside her. Jack and Tak (he remarked again the juxtaposition of sounds) went ahead. She pressed his arm and whispered, "I'd say I just earned my supper, wouldn't you?"

They skirted the Harrison party. "Hey, look a-dere go' ol' I'n' Wo'f!" Harrison grinned up from a hand of cards.

"Go drown yourself, ape," Tak jibed back, "or I'll tell everybody you're holding—"

Harrison pulled his cards away and rumbled into laughter — when suddenly the silver-haired dancer bounced into their midst, G-string mended; he grabbed Lanya's arm. "Darling, how do you always manage to leave here with all the beautiful men? Come on, everyone! A big smile for your mother… Fabulous! Can I come too?"

Tak swung his jacket, and the silver head ducked. "Get outa here."

"Oh, now, with that big old hairy chest of hers, she thinks she's just too too!"

But they pushed toward the door.

The red-headed woman and Purple Angora were talking quietly by the wall. Muriel, panting, lay between their feet. The flickering candles kept gouging lines in the woman's yellow face. She was not that made up, he realized as they passed, nor that old. But the roughness of her skin under the unsteady light suggested misplaced artifice. Over her jacket (he had not seen it before and wondered how he had missed it; unless simple profusion had misled him to think it was something else) were loops and loops and loops of the strange chain Faust, Nightmare, the dancer, indeed, he himself, as well, wore.

Muriel barked.

He pushed into the hall, behind Lanya, in front of Jack.

Teddy smiled at them, like a mechanical skull beneath his cap, and held the door.

The very blonde girl at the sidewalk's edge bit at her knuckle and watched them intently.

The cool was surprising.

He had reached down to make sure that the orchid still hung in his belt loop when she said: "Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but was—" her face held its expression unsteadily—"George Harrison… in there?" then lost it completely. Her grey eyes were very bright.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. He's inside."

Her fist flew back against her chin and she blinked.

Behind him Jack was saying, "Jesus, will you look at that!"

"Now that is something!" Tak said.

"You say he is in there? George Harrison, the big colored man?"

"Yeah, he's inside." At which point Lanya tugged his arm: "Kid, look at that! Will you?"

"Huh? What?" He looked up.

The sky—

He heard footsteps, lowered his eyes: the blonde girl was hurrying down the street. Frowning, he looked up again.

— streamed with black and silver. The smoke, so low and limitless before, had raddled into billows, torn and flung by some high wind that did not reach down to the street.

Hints of a moon struck webs of silver on the raveling mist.

He moved against Lanya's shoulder (she too had glanced after the girl), all warm down his side. Her short hair brushed his arm. "I've never seen it like that before!" And then, louder: "Tak, has it ever been like that before?"

(Someday I'm going to die, he thought irrelevantly, but shook the thought away.)

"Damn!" Loufer took off his cap. "Not since I been here." He was holding his jacket over his shoulder by one finger. "How do you like that, Jack? Maybe it's finally breaking up."

They started to the corner, still staring.

"That's the first time here I've seen the—" Then Lanya stopped.

They all stopped. He swallowed, hard: with his head back, it tugged uncomfortably at his Adam's apple.

Through one rent, the lunar disk had appeared; then as the aperture moved with the wind, he saw a second moon!

Lower in the sky, smaller, it was in some crescent phase.

"Jesus!" Jack said.

The smoke came together again, tore away.

"Now wait just a God-damn minute!" Tak said.

Once more the night was lit by the smaller, but distinctly lunar crescent. A few stars glittered near it. The smoke closed here, opened there: The gibbous moon shone above it.

Before the bar door another group had gathered craning at the violated night. Two, pulling a bottle back and forth, came loose, came close.

"What the hell—" The sky cleared again under two lights, crescent and near-full—"is that?" Tak demanded

Someone else said: "What do you think it is, a sun?"

"The moon!" One gestured with his foaming bottle

"Then what's that?"

One pulled the bottle from the other's hand. "That's another… that one's George!"

They reeled off, spilling liquor.

In the gathered group, people laughed;

"You hear that, George? You got a God-damn moon named after you!" and out of the laughter and chatter, a louder laugh rose.

Lanya shrugged closer beneath his arm.

"Jesus…" Jack whispered again.

"Not according to them," Tak said. "Come on."

"What is it?" Lanya asked again.

"Maybe it's some kind of reflection." He flexed his fingers around on her small shoulder. "Or one of those weather balloons. Like they used to think were flying saucers."

"Reflected from what, on to what?" Tak asked.

Flakes of smoke spun over. One or the other, and occasionally both moons showed. There was a breeze now. The sky was healing. Over half the sky clouds had already coalesced. Voices came from in the bar doorway:

"Hey, we got a moon! And we got a George!"

"Shine on, shine on harvest George—"

"Oh man, June and George don't rhyme!"

("Tak and Jack do," Lanya whispered, giggled, and pulled her harmonica from her pocket.)

"But you remember what he do to that little white girl—"

"Oh, shit, was that her name!"

Lanya blew harmonica notes in his ear. He pulled away, "Hey…!" and came back to her, perturbed. She reached up and held his forefinger. Something tickled his blunt knuckle. She was brushing her lips across the ruin of his thumb's first joint. The shoutings died behind them. Overhead, the lights blurred in returning clouds. She played lazy music by his chest, following the ex-soldier and the ex-engineer. Her motion pulled him. She paused to tell him, "You smell good."

"Huh? Yeah, I guess I stink," and cringed.

"I mean it. Good. Like a pear somebody's soaked in brandy."

"That's what happens when you bum around for three weeks and can't get a bath." She nuzzled the forking of his arm.

He thought she was funny. And liked her funniness. And realized that it was because she made it easier to like… whoever he was; and came out of the thoughts trying not to smile. She played randomly.

He beat the paper and notebook on his thigh, till he remembered John whom he did not like, and stopped.

5

Look for shadow in this double-lit mist. A dark communion in the burning streets between the landscape and the smarting senses suggests more sterile agonies. Clouds out of control decoct anticipation. What use can any of us have for two moons? The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen. I don't need more intimations of disorder. It has to be more than that! Search the smoke for the fire's base. Read from the coals neither success nor despair. This edge of boredom is as bright. I pass it, into the dark rim. There is the deceiving warmth that asks nothing. There are objects lost in double-light.

With the jollity of their progress through the night streets, the repeated exclamations and speculations at the twinned satellites, moments into Tak's dark stairway — footsteps pummeling around him, down, across, then pummeling up — he realized he had no memory of the doorway through which they'd just entered out of the night, save the memory of his exit that lingered from the morning.

"A great idea!" Lanya, behind, was breathing heavily. "A Full George party!"

"If George was the full one," Tak said. "Excuse me; gibbous."

"How far up do you live?" Jack asked, ahead.

The orchid jogged on his hip. Notebook and newspaper — he'd read none of the paper yet — were still clamped in clammy fingers.

"We'll be there in one more — Nope. I mis-counted," Tak called down. "We're here already! Come on! It's party time!"

Metal creaked on metal.

Both Lanya, behind, and Jack, ahead, were laughing.

Above is light. What else does this city cast up on its cloudy cover, from ill-functioning streetlights, from what leaks tentatively out of badly shaded doors and windows, from flame? Is it enough to illuminate another bright, brief, careening, but less-than-standard body?

6

He put the wine bottle on the roof's thigh-high wall. Below, the street lamp was a blurred pearl. He searched the dense and foggy distances, was lost in them.

"What are you looking at?" She came up, surprising, behind.

"Oh." The night was thick with burnt odors. "I don't know."

She picked up the bottle and drank, "All right," and put it down; then said, "You're looking for something. You've got your eyes all squinched up. You were craning way out and… oh, you can't see anything down there for the smoke!"

"The river," he said.

"Hm?" She looked again.

"I can't see the river."

"What river?"

"When I came off the waterfront, across the bridge. This place, it was like two blocks away, maybe. And then, when I first came up here, you could just see the water, as though suddenly the river was a half a mile off. It was right through there. But now I can't see…" craning again.

She said: "You couldn't see the river from here. It's nearly… I don't know exactly; but it's quite a way."

"I could this morning."

"Maybe, but I doubt it." Then she said: "You were here this morning?"

He said: "There isn't any smoke over there. I can't even make out the lights from the bridge, or anything; even the reflections from the places on the waterfront that're burning. Unless they've gone out."

"If they've gone out, the electricity's gone on somewhere else." Suddenly she pulled her shoulders together, gave a little shiver; sighed, and looked up. And said, eventually: "The moon."

"What?"

"Do you remember," she asked, "when they got the first astronauts to the moon?"

"Yeah," he said. "I saw it on TV. A whole bunch of us were over at my friend's house."

"I missed it, until the next morning," she said. "But it was… funny."

"What?"

She pulled her lips in between her teeth, then let them pop. "Do you remember the next time you were outside and you looked up and saw the moon in the sky instead of on television?"

He frowned.

"It was different, remember. I realized that for the last fifty thousand science-fiction novels it had still been just a light hanging up there. And now it was… a place."

"I just figured somebody had taken a shit up there, and why weren't they telling." He stopped laughing. "But it was different; yeah."

"Then tonight." She looked at the featureless smoke. "Because there was another one, that you don't know if anybody's walked on, suddenly both of them were…"

"Just lights again."

"Or…" she nodded. "Something else." Leaning, her elbow touched his arm.

"Hey," Jack said from the doorway, "I think I better go now. I mean… maybe I better go." He looked around the roof. The mist had wrapped them in. "I mean," he said, "Tak's awful drunk, you know? He's sort of…"

"He isn't going to hurt you."

Lanya poised her quick laugh at the rim of amusement, started back, and entered the cabin.

He picked up the wine and followed.

"Now here," Tak announced, coming from the bamboo curtain. "I knew I had some caviar. Got it on the first day up here." He grimaced. "Too much, huh? But I like caviar. Imported." He held up the black jar in his left hand. "Domestic." He raised the orange one in his right. His cap was on the desk with his jacket. His head seemed very small on his thick torso. "I got more stuff in there than you can twitch the proverbial stick at." He set the jars down among a dozen others.

"Isn't it sort of late…" Jack's voice trailed off in the doorway.

"Christ," Lanya said, "what are you going to do with all this junk, Tak?"

"Late supper. Don't worry, nobody goes hungry up at the Fire Wolfs."

He picked up a small jar (cut glass in scarred, horny flesh): "… Spiced Honey Spread …?"

"Oh, yeah." Tak arranged the breadboard on the edge of the desk. "I've even tried some of that before. It's good." He swayed above pickled artichoke hearts and caponata, deviled ham, herring, pimento, rolled anchovies, guava paste, pate. "And another glass of—" He raised the bottle and splashed the liquid around inside. "Jack, some for you?"

"Aw, no. It's getting pretty late."

"Here you go!" He pushed the glass into the boy's hand. Jack took it because it would have dropped otherwise:

"Eh… thanks."

"…for me." Tak finished his and poured another. "Come on, everybody, now you help yourselves. You like pimento?"

"Not just by its lonesome," Lanya protested.

"With bread, or… cheese, here. Anchovies?"

"Look," Lanya said, "I'll do it."

Loufer gestured toward Jack. "Now come on, boy. You said you were hungry. I got all this damn caviar and stuff."

"It's sort of…" Behind Jack, smoke filtered across the doorway. "… well, late."

"Tak?"

"Hey, Kid, here's a glass for you."

"Thanks. Tak?"

"Yeah, Kid? What can I do for you?"

"That poster."

From the center picture, the tall black glared out into the room, oiled teak belly gleaming under scuffed leather, his fist, a dark and gouged interruption on a dark thigh. The light source had been yellow: that made brass hints in the nappy pubis. The scrotal skin was the color and texture of rotten avocado rind. Between the thighs, a cock, thick as a flashlight haft, hung dusty, black and wormy with veins. The skin of the right knee intimated a marvelous machine beneath. The left ear was a coil of serpents. The brass light barred his leg, his neck, slurred the oil on his nostrils.

"That's the spade who came into the bar, the one they named the moon after."

"Yeah, that's George — George Harrison." Tak took the top off another jar, smelled it, scowled. "Some of the boys at Teddy's got him to pose for that. He's a real ham. That ape likes to get his picture taken more than just about anything, you know? Long as he doesn't get too drunk, he's a great guy. Ain't he beautiful? Strong as a couple of horses, too."

"Wasn't there something about some pictures in the paper of him… raping some girl? That's what the newspaper man told me this morning."

"Oh yeah." Tak put down another jar, drank more of his brandy. "Yeah, that business with the white girl, in the paper, during the riot. Well, like I said: George just likes to get his picture taken. He's a big nigger now. Might as well enjoy it. I would if I was him."

"What is this, Tak… octopus!" Lanya, with a wrinkled nose, bit. "Sort of tough… it tastes all right."

"Jesus!" Jack exclaimed. "That's salty!"

"Have some brandy," Tak reiterated. "Spicy food is good with booze. Go ahead. Drink some more."

"You know—" he still considered the poster—"I saw that thing hung up in a church this morning?"

"Ah!" Tak gestured with his glass. "Then you were down at Reverend Amy's. Didn't you know? She's the chief distributor. Where do you think I got my copy?"

He frowned at the poster, frowned at Tak (who wasn't looking), frowned at the poster again.

Eyes of ivory, velvet lips, a handsome face poised between an expression disdainful and embarrassing. Was it… theatrical? Perhaps theatrical disdain. The background was a horizonless purple. He tried to put this rough face with his memory of the astounding second moon.

"Try this!" Lanya exclaimed. "It's good."

It was. But mumbling through the tasteless crumbs under it, he stepped outside and breathed deep in the thick smoke. He couldn't smell it, but he felt his heart in his ears in a moment, very quick and steady. He searched for either blotted light. A rapist? he thought. An exhibitionist? He is approaching the numinous: gossip; the printed word; portents. Thrilled, he narrowed his eyes to search the clouds for George once more.

"Hey," Lanya said. "How you feeling?"

"Tired."

"I left my blankets and stuff in the park. Let's go back."

"Okay." He started to put his arm around her — she took his hand in both of hers. She cupped his from the wrist, her fingers like orchid blades. Blades closed, and she held his little finger, his forefinger, kissed the horny palm, and would not look at his confusion. She kissed his knuckles, opening her lips, and lay her tongue there. Her breath warmed in the hair on his hand's back.

Her face was an inch away; he could feel the warmth of that too. In his reiterate curiosity, and his embarrassment, he offered, obliquely, "You know… the moon?"

She looked at him, still holding his fingers. "What moon?"

"I mean… when we saw the two moons. And what you were talking about. Their being different."

"Two moons?"

"Oh, come on now." He lowered his hand; hers lowered with it. "Remember when we came out of the bar?"

"Yes."

"And the night was all messed up and streaked?" He glanced at the enveloping sky, fused and blurred.

"Yes."

"What did you see?"

She looked puzzled. "The moon."

"How—" something awful at the base of his spine— "many?" — clawed to his neck.

Her head went to the side. "How many?"

"We were all standing outside the bar, and in the sky we saw…"

But she laughed and, laughing, dropped her face to his hand again. When she looked up, she halted the sound to question. "Hey?" And then, "Hey, I'm kidding you…?"

"Oh," he said.

But she saw an answer that confused. "No, really, I'm just kidding. What were you going to say about it?"

"Huh?"

"You were about to say something?"

"Naw, it's nothing."

"But…?"

"Don't do that again. Don't kid like that. Not… here."

She looked around too when he said that. Then pushed her face against his hand again. He moved his fingers between her lips. "I won't," she said, "if you'll let me do this," and slid her mouth around his wrecked thumb.

As expression releases the indicated emotion, as surface defines the space enclosed, he felt a strange warmth. It grew behind his face and made his breath shush out. "All right," he said, and, "Okay," and then, "…Yes," each more definite in meaning, each more tentatively spoken.

Tak pushed the door back hard enough to make the hinges howl. He walked up to the balustrade, fingering his fly and mumbling, "Shit!" saw Lanya and stopped. "Sorry. I gotta take a leak."

"What's the matter with you?" she asked the swaying Loufer.

"What's the matter? Tonight's trick isn't going to put out. Last night's is all caught up the biggest fag-hag in the city." His zipper hissed open. "Come on, I want to take a leak." He nodded to Lanya. "You can stay here, sweetheart. But he's gotta go away. I got this hangup. I'm piss-shy in front of men."

"Fuck off, Tak," he said, and started across the roof.

She caught up, her head down, making a sound he thought was crying. He touched her shoulder, and she looked up at him in the midst of a stifled giggle.

He sucked his teeth. "Let's go."

"What about Jack?" she asked.

"Huh? Fuck Jack. We're not going to take him with us."

"Oh, sure; I didn't mean…" And followed him toward the stairwell.

"Hey, good night, Tak," he called. "I'll see you around."

"Yeah," Loufer said from the cabin door, going in: the hair on his shoulder and the side of his head blazed with back-light.

"Good night," Lanya echoed.

The metal door grated.

A flight into the dark, she asked, "Are you mad at Tak… about something?" Then she said: "I mean, he's a sort of funny guy, sometimes. But he's—"

"I'm not mad at him."

"Oh." Their footsteps perforated the silence.

"I like him." His tone spoke decision. "Yeah, he's a good guy." The newspaper and the notebook were up under his arm.

She slipped her fingers through his in the dark; to keep from dropping the notebook, he had to hold her near.

At the bottom of the next flight, she asked, suddenly: "Do you care if you don't know who you are?"

At the bottom of the next, he said, "No." Then he wondered, from the way her footsteps quickened (his quickened to keep up) if that, like his hands, excited her.

She led him quickly and surely through the basement corridor — now the concrete was cold — and up. "Here's the door," she said, releasing him; she stepped away.

He couldn't see at all.

"Just a few stairs." She moved ahead.

He held the jamb unsteadily, slid his bare foot forward… onto board. With his other hand, he raised notebook and newspaper before his face, thrust his forearm out.

Ahead and below, she said, "Come on."

"Watch out for the edge," he said. His toes and the ball of his foot went over the board side and dangled. "And those damn meat hooks."

"Huh…?" Then she laughed. "No — that's across the street!"

"The hell it is," he said. "When I came running out of here this morning, I nearly skewered myself."

"You must have gotten lost—" she was still laughing—"in the basement! Come on, it's just a couple of steps down."

He frowned in the dark (thinking: There was a lamp on this street corner. I saw it from the roof. Why can't I see anything…) let go the jamb, stepped… down: to another board, that squeaked. He still held his arm up before his face, feeling for the swaying prongs.

"One of the corridors in the basement," she explained, "goes under the street and comes up behind a door to the loading porch across from here. The first few times I came to visit Tak, that happened to me too. The first time, you think you're losing your mind."

"Huh?" he said. "Under the… street?" He lowered his arm.

Maybe (the possibility came, as relieving as fresh air in these smoke-stifled alleys) he'd simply looked down from the roof on the wrong side; and that was why there was no street-light. His semiambidextrousness was always making him confuse left and right. He came down two more board steps, reached pavement.

He felt her take his wrist. "This way…"

She led him quickly through the dark, up and down curbs, from complete to near-complete darkness and back. It was more confusing than the basement corridors. "We're in the park, now, aren't we…?" he asked, minutes on. Not only had he missed the entrance, but, at the moment he raised from his reveries to speak, he realized he did not know how many minutes on it was. Three? Thirteen? Thirty?

"Yes…" she said, wondering why he wondered.

They walked over soft, ashy earth.

"Here," she told him. "We've reached my place."

The trees rustled.

"Help me spread the blanket."

He thought: How can she see? A corner of blanket fell across his foot. He dropped to his knees and pulled the edge straight; felt her pull; felt her pull go slack.

"Take all your clothes off…" she said, softly.

He nodded, unbuttoned his shirt. He had known this was coming, too. Since when? This morning? New moons come, he thought, and all of heaven changes; still we silently machinate toward the joint of flesh and flesh, while the ground stays still enough to walk, no matter what above it. He unbuckled his pants, slipped out of them, and looked up to notice that he could see her a little, across the blanket, a blot moving furiously, rustling laces, jeans — a sneaker fell in grass.

He pushed off his sandal and lay down, naked, on his back, at the blanket's edge.

"Where are you…?" she said.

"Here," but it sounded, shaking the mask of his face, more like a grunt.

She fell against him, her flesh as warm as sunlight in the dark, slipped on top of him. Her knees slid between his. Happily, his arms enclosed her; he laughed, and rocked her to the side, while she tried to find his mouth with hers, found it, pushed her tongue into it.

A heat, whose center was just behind his groin, built, layer around layer, till it seemed to fill him, knees to nipples. The bone behind her crotch hair moved on his hip while she clutched his shoulders — but he did not get an erection.

They rocked, kissed; he touched, then rubbed her breasts; she touched, then rubbed his hands rubbing her; they kissed and hugged, five? ten minutes? He grew apologetic. "I guess this isn't… well, I mean for you…"

Her head pulled back. "If you're worried about it," she said, "you've got toes, a tongue… fingers …"

He laughed—"Yeah." — and moved down: his feet, then his knees, went off the blanket into grass.

With two fingers, he touched her cunt. She reached down to press his hand against her. He dropped his mouth; she spread her fingers, her hair pressed out between them.

The odor, like a blow against his face, brought back — was it from Oregon? — an axe blade's first hack in some wet pine log. He thrust out his tongue.

And his cock dragged against the blanketing; the tenderer oval pushed forward in the loose hood.

She held his head, hard, with one hand; held his two fingers, hard against her hip, with her other.

He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft, granular trough behind it. She moved, and held her breath for half a minute, gasped, held it again; gasped. He let himself rub against the blanket, just a little, the way he used to masturbate when he was nine. Then he crawled up onto her; both her hands, thrust between her thighs, caught his cock: he pushed into her. Her arms fought from beneath him, to lock suddenly and tightly, on his neck. Holding her shoulders, he pushed, and retreated, and pushed again, slowly; pushed again. Her hips rolled under his. Her heels walked up the blanket, ankles against his thighs.

Finally, she clutched his fist, like a rock or a root-knob, too big for her fingers, first out from them— hunching and hunching, he pressed the back of her hand into grass; between her spread fingers, grass blades tickled, his knuckles — then, as he panted and fell, and panted, she dragged it by jerks, to the blanket; dragged up the blanket; and finally held it against her cheek, her mouth, her chin.

His chin, wet and unshaven, slipped against her throat. He remembered how she had sucked his thumb before and, taking a curious dare, opened his fingers and thrust three into her mouth.

The realization, from her movement (her breaths were loud, long, and wet beside him, the underside of her tongue between his knuckles hot), that it was what she had wanted, made him, perhaps forty seconds after her, come.

He lay on her, shuddered; she squeezed his shoulders.

After a while, she practically woke him with: "Get off. You're heavy."

He lifted his chin, "Don't you… like to be held afterward?"

"Yes." She laughed. "You're still heavy."

"Oh," and he rolled — taking her with him.

She squealed; the squeal became laughter as she ended up on top of him. Her face shook against his, still laughing. It was like something she was chewing very fast. He smiled.

"You're not heavy," he said, and remembered her saying she was four or eight pounds overweight; it certainly wasn't with fat.

In the circle of his arms, she snuggled down; one hand stayed loose at his neck.

The contours of the ground were clear beneath his buttocks, back, and legs. And there was a pebble (or something, (under the blanket?) under his shoulder (or was it a prism on his chain)… there…

"You all right?"

"Mmm-hm." He got it into a depression in the ground; so it didn't bother him. "I'm fine."

He was drifting off, when she slid to his side, knees lapped with his shins, head sliding to his shoulder. She moved one hand on his belly beneath the chain. Her breath tickled the hair at the top of his chest. She said: "It's the kind of question you lose friends for… But I'm curious: Who do you like better in bed, Tak or me?"

He opened his eyes, looked down at what would be the top of her head; her hair brushed his face. He laughed into it, shortly and sharply: "Tak's been telling tales?"

"Back at the bar," she said, "while you were in the john." Actually, she sounded sleepy. "I thought he was joking. Then you said you'd been there in the morning."

"Mmmm." He nodded. "What did he say?"

"That you were cooperative. But basically a cold fish."

"Oh." He was surprised and felt his eyebrows, and his lower lip, raise. "What do you think?"

She snuggled, a movement that went from her cheek in his armpit (he moved his arm around her), down through her chest (he could feel one breast slide on his chest; one was pressed between them so tightly he wondered if it wasn't uncomfortable for her), to her hips (his cock rose from between his thighs and fell against his belly), to her knees (he clamped his together around hers) to her feet (he pushed his big toe between two of hers: and she held it). "Intense…" she said, pensively. "But I like that."

He put his other arm around her. "I like you better," and decided that he did. Suddenly he raised his head from the blanket, looked down at her again: "Hey… Do you have any birth-control stuff?"

She began to laugh, softly at first, her face turned into his shoulder, then out full, rolling away from him to her back, laughing in the dark.

"What's so funny?" He felt the length where she'd been as cold now as it had been warm.

"Yes. I have taken care of the birth-control… 'stuff,' as you. put it." Her laughter went on, as light as leaf tipping leaf. "It's just your asking," she told him at last, "sounds so gallant. Like manners from another age and epoch. I'm not used to it."

"Oh," he said, still not quite sure he understood. And, anyway, he felt himself drifting again.

He wasn't sure if he actually slept, but came awake later with her arm moving sleepily against his; aroused, he turned to her, and at his movement, she pulled herself half on top of him: she had been lying there, already excited.

They made love again; and fell into sleep like stone — till one or the other of them moved; and once more they woke, clinging.

So they made love once more; then talked — about love, about moons ("You can't see them at all now," she whispered. "Isn't that strange?"), about madness — and then made love again.

And slept again.

And woke.

And made love.

And slept.