Текст книги "Dhalgren"

Автор книги: Samuel R. Delany

Соавторы: Samuel R. Delany
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

His eyes stung; he sniffed for the detergent smell.

Or was the smoke thicker? He wiped his face on his cuff.

In the hall, people laughed: footsteps. A door closed.

Gooseflesh enveloped him. His next heartbeat shocked loose his breath; he breathed. Perhaps ten seconds later he realized how tightly he was holding the handle. He laid the mop on the floor, went to the open door, and looked into the…empty hall. For at least a minute.

Then he got the mop and began to work again.

They’re cheating me! he thought to replay the familiar. The tone was wrong. To think words set off pricklings.

More water.

His hands, soaked and soaked again, were translucent, the yellow all out of the horn, flesh white and ragged around the fragment nails and swollen crowns. Yeah, leprosy. He recalled Lanya sucking his middle finger with something like relief. What she liked was funny. Especially what she liked in him. Her absence mystified.

Slopping suds over recollected sands, he tried to hallucinate her face. It dissolved in water. He scrubbed the balcony sill, and backed into the room, swinging cords from side to side.

Confront them about his salary? Yes! Images of gifts for her. But he had not seen one store open; not one! Do they talk salary, he pondered, and I talk wages just to keep up?

But we haven’t talked!

The inside of his mouth held much more room than the room. As he mopped, he seemed to stagger, shin-deep in tongue, bumping his knees on teeth, and his head against wet, palatal rugae, grasping for an uvula to steady himself. He flopped the mop in the water again, eyes a-sting, and passed his arm across his face; the blunted chain raked his cheek. Energies searched though the mechanics of his body for points to wreak changes. The rhythm and slosh lopped talk out of the brain. “I live in the mouth…” he had been mumbling over and over, he realized as he stopped it. Stopping, he mopped harder at the swirling floor.

“You…?”

He blinked at June in the doorway.

“…didn’t get…?”

He grunted interrogatively.

“You said you were going to get me a…picture of…” Her knuckle made its habitual strike at her chin.

“Huh? But I thought you didn’t—”

Her eyes beat, banal and wild. Then she ran from the door.

“Hey, look, I’m sorry! I didn’t think you…” thought about running after her, sucked his teeth, shook his head, didn’t, and sighed.

In the kitchen, he changed the dirty water in his pail for clear, then dry-mopped as much as possible of the flood.

He worked methodically. Every once in a while he made a sound of disgust, or shook his head. Finally he got to swiping after his own footprints. Which was futile; you just made more.

Balancing on one foot in the doorway, he fumbled at his sandal. Leather and wet flesh: he might as well throw it away. But the tab slipped into the buckle. He picked up his notebook and clacked to the elevator.

Half a minute later, the door opened (from the door beside it, where he did not want to look, came hissing wind); he stepped in. The thought, when he recalled it later, seemed to have no genesis:

He did not press seventeen.

“16” glowed before his falling finger in the falling car.

4

No bell-box was on the door.

Cloth or paper covered the hole inside.

Jaw clamped, he knocked; clamped tighter when something inside moved.

The door swung back. “Yeah?” Hot grease clattered.

Behind the man in the undershirt, the girl came forward, her features disappearing to silhouette before the hurricane lamp on the wall.

“What’cha want?” the man asked. “You want something to eat? Come on in. What’cha want?”

“No, I just was…well.” He made himself grin and stepped inside. “I just wanted to know who was here.”

“You wanna eat, you can.” The girl behind the man’s shoulder floated back far enough to take light on a cheek bone.

Against the wall people slept in iron bunks. Men sat on the mattresses on the floor. The lantern-light cast down hard blacks to their left.

The door swung behind Kidd. When it slammed, only one looked up.

Against the wall leaned a motorcycle with a day-glow gas tank. In one corner stood a dressmaker’s mannequin, splashed with red paint, head twisted to the side, and looped with rounds of greasy chain (but none of the kind Kidd wore under his shirt and pants).

“I been doing work for the people upstairs. I was just wondering who was down here.” The room smelled stale, and the cooking odor brought him momentarily back to a filthy fried-food stand where he had not been able to finish eating in waterfront Caracas. “That’s why I came down.”

Somewhere the sound of water ceased. Wet, blond hair dripping down his shoulders, a boy walked, naked, into the room, picked up a pair of black jeans. Glistening, he balanced on one leg. He glanced at Kidd, grinned: then his foot, bunioned, hammer-toed, and mostly ankle (with a dog’s choke chain wrapped three times around it), went into the denim.

“The people upstairs?” The man shook his head, chuckling. “They must be somethin’, all the shit that comes down here. What they do to each other all the time? Hey, you want to smoke some dope? Smokey, get our friend here some dope. Get me some too.” The girl moved away. “You like dope, man, don’t’cha?”

Kidd shrugged. “Sure.”

“Hey, yeah. I thought you looked like you did.” He grinned and hooked his thumbs over his beltless jeans; his first finger joints were tattooed love and hate. Between thumb and forefinger on the left was a large, red 13. “The noise that comes down here out of that place; was he beatin’ her up last night?”

“Huh?” Kidd asked. “I thought you made all the damn noise.”

Someone else said: “Oh, man, there was all sorts of crying and stuff comin’ down.”

And someone else: “Look, Thirteen; what come up from this place must be pretty weird too sometimes.”

The second voice was familiar. Kidd looked for it.

Sitting on the bottom bunk, out of the light, was the newspaper carrier, Joaquim Faust—who now raised a finger in greeting. “How you doing, kid?”

Kidd gave back a bewildered smile.

There was someone in the bed Faust sat on.

Smokey returned with a glass jar, a plastic hose and brass bowl in the rubber stopper.

Thirteen took it from her. “God-damn water pipe, and you think somebody would fill it up with water—or wine or something. That’s nice too, you know? Creme de Menthe or like that.” He shook his head. “Nobody’s got time.” On the wall he struck a wooden match. “Some good hash, man.” He pursed his lips on the rubber tube. The flame suddenly inverted over the brass. The bottle swirled with grey. “Here you go!” he mouthed, with tucked chin.

Kidd took the warm glass and sucked sweet, chalky smoke.

The arch of air grew solid beneath his sternum: breath held, palate tight, somewhere after ten seconds he felt sweat on the small of his back. “Thanks…!” Smoke exploded from his nose.

The pipe had gone to others.

“What kind of work you doing?”

“Hey, Thirteen, he gonna eat?” somebody called from the kitchen.

Through the doorway Kidd saw an enamel stove licked with burn marks.

The boy from the shower stooped to buckle his boots. “Give you a hand in a second.” He tucked his cuffs into the boot tops, and stood. Scratching his wet belly, he ambled inside and asked, “What is that shit, anyway?”

“I’ve been moving furniture around for them, upstairs,” Kidd said. “Thirteen—that’s you?”

Thirteen raised his tattooed hand, then snapped his fingers. “Sure. Come on in, come on inside and sit.” The girl passed Thirteen the water pipe and he extended it toward Kidd. “And have another toke.”

Kidd drew in another chest full, and passed the pipe to someone else who wandered by.

Holding in the hash, Kidd noticed the mirror on the side wall, the end table with the crumpled antimacassar lingering from previous occupancy. He coughed: “How—” plosive with smoke—“long have you guys been down here?” What covered the door hole was the framed photograph of mother, father, and three children in their dated sailor suits, with the cracked coverglass.

“Too—” Thirteen exploded smoke of his own—“much. Somebody left that in the hallway, you know?”

He nodded.

Thirteen went on: “I just been here a couple of weeks. I mean in this place. Guys in and out here all the time. I don’t even know how long I been in the city. Months, maybe. Cool. You?”

“Days.” He looked again to Faust.

Faust was looking intently at the shape in the blanket.

Thirteen looked too, shook his head. “She got messed up, you know? I think she’s got an infection or something. Course, it could be bubonic plague for all I know.” He jabbed Kidd with his elbow. “Long as you’re healthy, Bellona is great. But there’s no doctors or nothing, you know?”

“Yeah. That must be bad.”

From the kitchen: “What did you put in this shit, huh?”

“Will you stop bitching? Half of it’s from last night.”

“Then I know half of it won’t kill me.”

“Here, do something, huh! Scrape that.” A kitchen knife growled over metal.

“This place used to be all scorpions.” Thirteen nodded toward the bed. “That’s when she came here; she decided to be a member. Which is fine if you can do it. Guys get messed up like that too. But now she got an infection…If that’s what it is.”

Smokey returned with the waterless pipe, waiting at Thirteen’s shoulder.

Kidd took it, sucked; Thirteen nodded approval.

“You…guys…are…?” Kidd loosed smoke-spurts between his words.

“—Scorpions? Shit, no…Well, you know.” Thirteen scrunched his face, with an appropriate hand joggle. “I don’t intend to be, again, ever; and Denny in there,” he thumbed at the boy from the shower who passed by the kitchen door, “ain’t exactly on active duty anymore.”

And that one’s Denny, Kidd thought.

Thirteen took the pipe, sucked, and went off into a coughing fit.

“Hey, will she be all right?” Kidd asked, coming to the bed.

Faust made some noncommittal lip movement, lost in beard. “Somebody ought to take care of this girl.” He kneaded his maroon and raveled knee.

She she she “She asleep?” sleep sleep. The hash was coming on. Sleep.

The olive landscape, mountains of shoulder and hip, was immobile.

Nobody there. Pillows?

Faust moved over for him.

Kidd sat on the bed’s edge, warm from Faust.

“Isn’t there a doctor any place in the city?” all over the city, city?

Faust’s wrinkles shifted around on his face. “These sons of bitches wouldn’t know if there was. I can’t figure out whether to let her sleep or make her eat.”

“She must be pretty tired if she can sleep through all the noise,” Thirteen said. Coming up, Smokey handed the pipe to Faust, who closed his wrinkled eyelids when he sucked. When he. When.

“Maybe,” Kidd suggested, “you better let her sleep. Save some food for when she wakes up,” akes, akes.

“That—” Thirteen shook a tattooed finger—“is brains at work, Joaquim. Which are in short supply around here…Man!” He shook his head, turned away.

“Maybe,” Faust nodded.

Kidd wondered whether it was Faust or the hash that muddled the meaning.

“Here.”

He looked up for the pipe. Pipe. Plate? A plate of. Denny, face and chest still wet, stood in front of him, holding out a plate in a white, bath-wrinkled hand.

“Oh, thanks.”

Faust took the other one.

“You ain’t got no fork?” Denny asked.

“No.” It was rice, it was onions, it had string beans in it, and corn. “Thanks.” He looked up and took the fork. Water tracked on the white arm, shimmered in adolescent chest-hair, broken with acne.

Thirteen said, “You gotta give people food, you know? I mean, to be peaceable.” Behind him, Smokey, plate just under her chin, ate eagerly.

It had meat in it too. Hash brought edges out from the grease that transformed the odor. He ate. And those were…nuts? No. Crisp potatoes. As the tastes staggered in his mouth, a muffled man’s voice said something? Something like, “Stop it! Now, stop it!” and a woman’s wail rose toward the metallic.

He looked around, wondering which other room they were in.

Faust glanced at the ceiling.

So did Thirteen. “See what I’m talking about?” He sucked his teeth and shook his head. “They really go on up there.”

The wail, which began to balk now toward sobbing, could have been either June or Mrs. Richards. He had not realized before four for how alike their voices were.

Frowning, he ate more of the greasy rice (Bacon grease? Well, at any rate, bacon) and listened to forks tick tin.

Denny ate on one of the mattresses on the floor, back to Kidd: The marble knobs of vertebrae disappeared under the corn-colored hair which dried, lightened, curled.

Thirteen came from the kitchen at the rap on the door. “Hey, it’s Nightmare!” Thirteen stepped back on his sudden shadow. “Sweetheart, you just made hash time! And have something to eat for dessert.”

It and the blazing apparition in the doorway went out.

“Come on in.” Thirteen stepped back again. “What can we do for you?”

The tickings had stopped.

“I’m looking—” Nightmare stepped forward, jingling—“for motherfuckers who want to run.” He pushed away the tangled braid from his shoulder; his hand stayed to massage the heavy muscle below the scratches, favoring that arm. “I’m not even gonna ask you, Thirteen. You’re chicken shit.” He nodded toward Faust. “Ain’t she got out of the fuckin’ bed yet?” Faust jammed another fork of rice somewhere into his beard and shook his head.

Thirteen stepped back to one side of the door, Smokey to the other.

Nightmare walked forward between them. His lips pulled from his broken tooth and his face creased with something like concern. Then he shook his head.

Kidd thought how many different meanings could reside in one gesture. The thought prickled through his stuttering ering ing mind. Nightmare—his eyes were the grey-green of wet, wet clay—looked at him. And blinked.

“You staring like you got toothpicks propping up your eyelids again,” Nightmare said, grimacing. “Every time I seen you. Which is twice. I don’t like that.”

Confused, Kidd looked at his plate.

“I ain’t gonna do anything about it,” Nightmare went on. “I’m just telling you I don’t like it, understand? I mean I like to make things clear.”

He looked up again.

Nightmare laughed, a short, rough thing happening in his nose. “Okay, now. Which of you cocksuckers wants to run? Hey, Denny, wrap something around your neck and come on.”

“I ain’t finished eatin’,” Denny said from the floor.

Nightmare grunted and stepped over him. Denny ducked.

“Hey, is that shit any good?”

Kidd hesitated in glistening sheets of clarity. Then he held out his plate and fork, and watched Nightmare warily decide to take the dare.

The scorpion took the fork in his fist, swept through the mixture, spilling some, and, fork still in his mouth, chewed, with grains about his lips. Still chewing, he grinned. “Hey, that’s okay.” As he handed Kidd back the fork, Thirteen broke the tensions that, with the hash, had almost grown visible about the room.

“Well, have a God-damn plate, will you? Here, Nightmare, I’ll get you some. Hey—” he turned to Smokey—“take him some hash, while I get him something to eat.”

Nightmare sat down on the bed, between Faust and Kidd, leg against Kidd’s leg, arm against Kidd’s arm. The figure under the blanket behind them didn’t move. Nightmare sucked the pipe. He let out, with his smoke, “Now you want to tell me what you lookin’ for, kid, all the time?”

“Man, he’s higher than the World Trade Center’s flagpole.” Thirteen handed Nightmare a tin plate and spoon. “I been pumping hash in him all evening. What you wanna do all this heavy shit to his head for?”

Nightmare took the plate but waved Thirteen away with the spoon. “No, this is friendly. The kid and me, we know each—”

Faust, finished with the last of his rice, suddenly put his plate on the floor, stood, picked up his papers, and marched toward the door.

“Hey, where you going?” Nightmare said.

“Thanks for the meal,” Faust mumbled to Thirteen without stopping.

“Hey, motherfucker, so long!” Nightmare bellowed into the wake of ice.

The door swung open for Faust.

“Good bye!” Nightmare flipped his arm: the door slammed; the flung spoon clattered the picture frame.

The picture swung.

Nightmare laughed. Ice flushed away in the blowtorch of his hilarity.

Thirteen, first dubiously, then in full-throated hoarseness, laughed with him.

“Toss me back my fuckin’ spoon!” Nightmare howled between landslides of laughter.

It came back underhand from Thirteen. “Now what’s the old man all upset about, huh Smokey? He’s crazy, ain’t he?” and looked over his shoulder as Smokey nodded corroboration.

Nightmare had caught his spoon and now leaned toward Kidd. “He’s all fucked up in the head, you know? Cause he thinks I messed up the bitch.” He pointed the spoon at the form under the blanket. “I didn’t mess her up. She got caught fightin’ fair. I wasn’t even around. Shit.” He swiped food into his mouth. “You know—” grains fell: to his wrist, to his jeans, to the scarred parquet—“some of these sons of bitches didn’t want no bitches whatsoever in the business.” He down-stabbed the air with his spoon. “Keep ’em away! Keep ’em out of here! They just gonna mess up the works!” With a malicious grin he looked around the room at the people leaning on the walls, sitting on the mattresses, or on the other bunks. Three among the dozen of them were girls, Kidd saw: but the lamplight was harsh and full of shadow. Nightmare’s clay-colored eyes came back and caught his. “Then some of the bitches got together and beat the shit out of a couple of brothers…!” He reared back, heavy arms shaking. More food spilled from his plate. “Well, since I was boss-man, I said come right on in, ladies, and do your thing! Shit, I been livin’ off bitches since I was ten, so it ain’t no news to me what they can do.” He came forward again, his weightlifter’s shoulder flattened to Kidd’s, and whispered conspiratorially: “When you knee ’em in the nuts, a bitch don’t go down quite so fast, either.” Which he thought was very funny and laughed again. “Good people to have on your side.” He took another mouthful, and made another large gesture with his spoon; grains scattered. “Magnificent shit!” he said with his mouth full. “Magnificent! Which of you fine young ladies is responsible?” He swung his lowered head around, mimicking an exaggerated politeness.

A heavy girl, in a blue sweatshirt, standing by the mannequin said, “It was one of the guys…Denny helped.”

“Hey, Denny!” Nightmare’s small, boomerang chin jounced.

Denny looked up, still eating.

“I should throw this motherfucker at you!” Nightmare jerked the plate back to his shoulder. Kidd jerked aside. But Nightmare returned the plate to his lap, and laughed loudly and wetly.

Denny hadn’t even flinched.

“People are very funny,” Nightmare pronounced, recovering, nodding over another mouthful. “The ladies had their problems.” He thumped his thumb against his sternum among rattling links. “I had mine too—some of the brothers just weren’t interested in having no white people involved no-how.”

Kidd glanced around the room again; everyone in the room looked white.

Nightmare saw him glance and lifted a finger: “Now don’t get your idea from this. Thirteen here runs the Lily White Rest Home for Depraved and Indigent A-heads; but the true brotherhood is of a much deeper hue.”

“God damn, Nightmare,” Thirteen said from the door. “Why are you always going on like that? We get spades here. There was—” he began to snap his tattooed fingers—“what’s-his-name…?”

Nightmare waved in the air. “Tokens! Mere tokens.” The nails on his beefy fingers were overlong and crested black as an auto mechanic’s. “’Cause I’m white,” he said out of the side of his mouth to Kidd, “these racist bastards here will let me come around to look for replacement troops. Well, motherfuckers, I’d come around here even if I was black as George! And I’ll keep coming around till both moons fall out of the sky and the sun comes up backwards!” He looked at Kidd directly. “But we’re getting a few, too—though these shitheads would give up a nut before they’d admit that just a few of them even like it better living over there and being scorpions than hanging around this behavioral sink!” His hand, which was still up before him, returned to hold the edge of his plate, about to slide off. “Yes, the ladies had to beat some heads.” He glanced back at the figure behind them in the blankets: “And some of the ladies, indeed, got their heads beat. Well, I had to beat some heads too, to attain my present status—and though I am now quite satisfied with my current position in the community, I would not be surprised if my head eventually took some beating too.” He turned back, dark hair falling in tangles from his shoulder, and made a face. “Sisterhood…Brotherhood very powerful stuff, man!” Grimacing, he shook his head. “Very powerful. Hey—?” once again at Denny. “Denny, you gonna run? We need you tonight. You run it good, boy.”

“I dunno.” Denny didn’t turn. “Lemme finish my dinner, huh?”

Nightmare laughed again, looked around the room. “He’s gonna come. How you like that, the little bastard’s gonna come! I don’t think I’d even take any of the rest of you cocksuckers. Denny? It’s a good run with us, ain’t it? Go on, tell ’em.”

“Yeah,” Denny said with his mouth full, then swallowed: “It’s a good run, okay?”

“Now you see; these motherfuckers all think I want to be the daisy in a field of black orchids—” (lower:) “though we have two or three of those; and no problems with ’em. But since I been boss-man, I take whoever wants in and knows their business.” He nodded to Kidd. “I’d even take you, and you ain’t no nigger…what?” He leaned back, narrowed his eyes, and raised a hand like an artist at a picture: “A half-blood American Indian on your…father’s side? ’Course, the light’s a little dim…”

Kidd grinned. “On my mother’s.”

Nightmare grinned back, shrugged. “Well, you still got more meat on you than most of these sad-assed A-heads.”

A frustrated laugh came from across the room. Thirteen said: “Nightmare, why are you always down on us like that? You got us out as racists, and chauvinist pigs, and speed freaks to boot. We ain’t had no speed around here for I don’t know how long.”

Nightmare bounced on the bed with delight, the back of his wrist against his forehead, miming a distressed belle. “Me!” in falsetto. “Me?” even higher. “Me, down on speed? I’m just waiting for you racist, chauvinist pigs to get some more!”

Smokey said: “That blond Spanish guy hasn’t been around with any for a long time…I sort of wonder where he went.”

Somebody else said: “He probably burned the whole city.”

Thirteen began laughing again, moved across the room, laughing. Others moved too.

Nightmare turned back to Kidd. “How’d you like that idea, goin’ on a scorpion run?” It must have struck him as funny; he guffawed, snorting, shook his head, and brushed rice grains from his chin with his fist. “You’d picked yourself a nice shiny orchid last time I saw you. What would you do in a real garden party, huh, kid?” Two more spoonfuls and Nightmare’s plate was empty. Holding it between both thumbs and forefingers, he opened his knees and dropped it. “You think about that, running. Maybe that’s what you’re looking for, huh? Let me tell you something.” He fingered among the chains around his neck, held up the thin brass one with its round and triangular glasses, and shook it. “You’re a fool to wear yours where anybody can see it, kid.” Glass glittered, harsh in white lantern light.

Why why “Why? You got yours on around your neck,” nd your neck our eck ck. He hadn’t been aware that his shirt was half open.

“Just shut up and listen now. Smokey over there. I know she’s got one. But you don’t see her with it out and waving it, now?”

“You know,” Kidd said, “I figured two people who saw each other with…these: well, they’d sort of trust each other, you know? Because they’d…know something about each other,” and wondered if Madame Brown had arrived upstairs for dinner.

Nightmare frowned. “Say, he’s got a brain, you know?” He glanced at Thirteen. “The kid ain’t that stupid. But I’ll tell you: You look at this and you know something about me. I look at that and I know something about you. Well, what are we gonna do with what we know, huh? I’ll tell you what you’ll do with it. You’ll use it to put the longest, sharpest blade on that orchid of yours, soon as I ain’t lookin’, between that rib, and that rib.” His finger suddenly ger suddenly turned to enly his ly jab Kidd’s his side. “And don’t think for one second I wouldn’t do the same thing to you. So I don’t trust anybody I see with one at all.” He pressed his lips to make a little pig’s snout and nodded, mocking sagesse. “Hey, just look at Denny!”

Finished with his food, Denny had walked over to the mannequin. He took up a heavy chain loop from it, draped dark links around his own neck.

“I told you Denny’d run with me. Okay, man. You know when, you know where. Lemme get out of this freak hole. I gotta hunt some more.” He stood and lumbered over the mattresses. “I knew you’d come through, Denny. Hey?” He frowned at Thirteen. “Do something with her,” and gestured back toward the bed.

“Yeah, sure, Nightmare.” Thirteen opened the door for him. When he closed it, he looked back at Denny. Smokey at his shoulder blinked in anticipation.

“Hey, man,” Thirteen said slowly after seconds of silence, “are you still into that shit?”

Denny put another chain around his neck. It rattled on the one already there.

Thirteen swung up his hands and grunted. “Come on, Denny, I thought you were gonna stay out of all that. All right, all right. It’s your ass.”

Upstairs a woman was laughing, and the laughter grew, ghter grew, laughter: “Stop it! Stop it will you?” in Mr. Richards’ harsh voice. “Just stop it.” op it, ghter grew ew.

“Look, I’m gonna have to get back to work.” Kidd stood up. “Thanks for the food, you know? And the dope. It’s good stuff.”

Denny put on another loop, and Thirteen said, “Oh, yeah, sure.” He seemed as disappointed at Kidd’s leaving as Mrs. Richards always was. “Come on down again and smoke some more dope. Don’t mind Nightmare. He’s crazy, that’s all.”

“Sure.” Kidd went to the door, opened it.

The moan stopped him: hesitant, without vocal color, it came on behind. He started to turn, but his eyes stalled on the mirror. In it he could see practically the whole room:

On the bed where he had been sitting, she had pushed herself up to her elbow. The blanket slipped down, and she turned a face, wet as Denny’s from the bath. It was puffed, bruised. Though her temples trickled with fever, the sound, as she swayed, came from the driest tissue.

She blinked on balls of scarlet glass.

The door clapped behind him. After ten steps, he released his breath. Then he dragged back air, rasping with something like sobbing, something like laught er aughter sobb ter bing er.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

“Reverend Taylor?”

“What can I do for you?”

On the shelf behind the desk, tape-spools turned. Organ music gentled in the shadowed office. “I…well, somebody told me I could get those pictures—posters here. Of George,” he explained, “Harrison.”

“Oh yes, certainly.” Her benign smile as she pushed herself away from the desk, made him, holding his notebook in the church foyer, absolutely uncomfortable. “Just reach over for the latch there and it’ll open.”

He pushed through the waist high door. His bare foot left tile and hit carpet. He looked around the walls; but they were covered with shelves. The bulletin board was a shale of notices and pamphlets.

The poster was down.

“Now which picture would you like?” She opened the wide top drawer.

He stepped up: It was filled with eight-by-ten photographs of the rough-featured black man. Reverend Taylor stood up and spread a disordered pile of pictures across more pictures. “We have six of these. They’re very nice. I’m afraid I haven’t got them arranged though. I just had to dump them in here. Let’s see if I can pull out a complete set—”

“Oh. I think maybe—”

She paused, still smiling.

The pictures in the drawer were all full-head photos.

“No.” His embarrassment hove home. “You probably don’t have the ones I was looking for, ma’am. Somebody told me he’d gotten one from you, and I guess…well, I’m sorry—”

“But you said posters, didn’t you?” She closed the drawer and her eyes, a comment on her own misunderstanding. “Of course, the posters!” She stepped around the desk and the toes of her shoes beat at the hem of her robe. “We have two, here. There’s a third in preparation, since that article in Mr. Calkins’ paper about the moon.”

Beside the desk were portfolio-sized cardboard boxes. Reverend Taylor pulled one open. “Is this what you want?”

“Really, I’m pretty sure you don’t have—”

Naked and half-erect, one hand cupping his testicles, Harrison leaned against some thick tree. The lowest branches were heavy with leaves. Behind him, a black dog—it could have been Muriel—sat in the dead leaves, lolling an out-of-focus tongue. Sunset flung bronzes down through the browns and greens. “It was done with a backdrop, right down in the church basement,” she said. “But I think it’s rather good. Is that the one you want?”

“No…” he said, too softly and too quickly.

“Then it must be this one.”

She flipped over a handful to let him see.

“Yeah—yes. That’s it,” and was still astounded with the memory.

She peeled the poster from its identical twin and began to roll it up. “It had to be. Until the new one comes in—” as jacket, genitals, knees, boots and background purple rose into the white roll turning in dark fingers—“these are all we have. Here you go. I’ll get you a rubber band.” She stepped to the desk.

“Hey,” he said, putting belligerent stupidity in front of his disconcerted astonishment, “why do you—” He stopped because the idea came, interrupting his question, clearly and without ambiguity, to request the other poster as well.“—why do you have stuff like this here? I mean to give away.”

Only later did it occur to him that her ingenuous surprise must have been as calculated to disarm as his naiveté. When she recovered from it, she said, “They’re very popular. We like to be up to date, and posters are being used a lot…they were done for us free, and I suppose that’s the main reason. We’ve given out lots of the first one you saw. That one,” she pointed to the one he held, “isn’t in quite as much demand.”