Текст книги "Dhalgren"

Автор книги: Samuel R. Delany

Соавторы: Samuel R. Delany
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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

“Naw,” Pepper said. “Naw, she ain’t gonna be with him now. They had a fight, see. Oh, Jesus, was that one bloody garden party!” This time Pepper’s “pain” was memory.

“What was it about?” Kid asked.

Pepper’s head came forward, his hair strings swinging. “You see those scars on Nightmare’s shoulder? You seen them scars?” He tried to nod. “Oh, I guess it’s blown over now, and they almost friendly. But she got her own nest again, somewhere over in Jackson I heard. And they ain’t gonna be together too much anymore, I don’t think.” His head fell back, and he repeated: “I ain’t feeling too well.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I dunno. Maybe I ate something bad. Or I got a cold maybe.”

“Well, does it hurt in your stomach, or is your head stopped up?”

“I told you, I don’t know why.”

“What hurts?”

Pepper shook back hair and sat up again. “How can I tell you what hurts till I know what’s wrong?”

“How can anybody know what’s wrong till you say what—”

Pepper lurched upright.

Kid started to catch him.

But Pepper didn’t fall. Scrubbing at his face with his fist and snuffling, he said, “I been staying with Bunny, but I think she threw me out. Maybe we better go back there and find out, huh?” He let go of the side of the stall. “I think I’m feeling a little better. You know Bunny?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She dances over in that freak joint, Teddy’s.”

“You mean the little silver-haired guy?”

“She’s pretty together. A nut. But together.” Pepper lurched forward. “I wish I had a God-damn drink of water.”

“Come on around to the sink.”

Pepper passed unsteadily, staggered around the partition.

Kid followed.

Pepper spun one of the taps and jerked his hand back when the pipes began their complaint.“…nothing’s coming out,” he ventured.

“Give it a second.”

When the trickle had gone on half a minute, Pepper grimaced. “Shit, that ain’t big enough to drink.” He turned again and staggered for the door. “God damn I wish I had some water.”

Kid, in amused frustration, turned off the tap and went out. Pepper was wandering up the slope.

Kid watched for a few steps, then turned down toward the commune.

“Hey!”

He looked back. “What?”

“Ain’t you coming with me?”

His amusement diminished to minuscule. “No.” Minuscule, it still made him wait Pepper’s reaction.

“Hey, then.” Pepper returned, his stagger now loosened to a bow-legged jounce. “Maybe I better come on with you, huh?”

Kid started walking: Not the reaction he’d wanted.

Pepper caught up. “Look, we go where you going, then we go where I’m going, huh? That’s fair.”

“There’s a water fountain.”

“Naw, naw, man! You’re in a rush. I don’t wanna hold you up none.”

Kid sighed, came to a decision, and bellowed: “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

Pepper stopped, blinking.

Kid took a breath and walked on, shaking his head. I don’t like to yell at people, he thought. And then, smiling: That isn’t true—I just don’t get much chance.

He came to the trees at the edge of the clearing.

The cinder blocks on the near side of the fireplace had been pushed over. Smoke dribbled into the air. Ashes greyed the grass.

There were no people.

Ten feet from the picnic table lay the torn sleeping bag that nobody used because somebody had been sick in it one night and fouled it with puke and diarrhea.

Puzzled, he walked to the furnace, between tin cans and package wrappers. (On the picnic bench, someone had overturned a carton of garbage.) With his sandal, he scraped away cinders. Half a dozen coals turned up red spots, which pulsed, wavered, and went out.

“Lanya?”

He turned, waiting, for her answer, uncomfortable at any noise in this ringed, misty clearing. Even at the height of the project period, there were usually half a dozen people at the fire. A torn blanket lay under the bench—but it had been there all week. The sleeping bags and blanket rolls usually piled haphazard by trees and behind firewood were gone.

“Lanya!”

A decision to move? But she would have known about that and told him. Save for the overturned cinder blocks of the furnace wall, there were no marks of violence; only junk and disorder. He had come here with her to eat…how many times? He had been quiet and observed his own measured politeness. Momentarily he fantasized that his reserve and preoccupation had been so unbearable to them that they had all, with Lanya cooperating, schemed to abandon him, suddenly and silently. He would have pondered it more than a moment had the idea not urged him to giggle; frowning still seemed more appropriate.

“Lanya?”

He turned to squint among the trees.

When the figure hiding in the brush realized it had been seen, it—it was Pepper—stepped hesitantly forward. “You’re looking for somebody down here, hey?” Pepper craned to look left, then right. “I guess they all gone away, you know?”

Kid sucked his teeth and scanned the clearing again, while Pepper judged distances.

“I wonder why they all went away, huh?” Pepper stepped nearer.

Kid’s annoyance with Pepper’s presence was absorbed in his discomfort at Lanya’s absence. He hadn’t been that long washing. Wouldn’t she have waited—?

“Where you think they all went?” Pepper advanced another step.

“Well if you don’t know, you’re no use.”

Pepper’s laugh was hoarse, light, and infirm as his cough. “Why don’t you come on with me to Bunny’s? She lives right behind the bar. I mean, if you can’t find your friend down here. Get something to eat. She don’t mind none if I bring friends over. She says she likes them long as they’re nice, you know? You ever seen Bunny dance?”

“A couple of times.” Kid thought: She might have gone over to that bar.

“I never have. But she’s supposed to be good, huh? All sorts of weird people hang out in that place. I’m scared to go in.”

“Come on.” Kid looked once more: And she was not there. “Let’s go.”

“You coming? Good!” Pepper followed him for a dozen steps. Then he said, “Hey.”

“What?”

“It’s shorter if we go this way.”

Kid stopped. “You say Bunny lives right behind Teddy’s?”

“Uh-huh.” Pepper nodded. “This way, through here.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“It’s a lot shorter,” Pepper said. “A whole lot. It really is.” He started, still stiff-legged, into the trees.

Kid followed, doubtful.

He was surprised how soon they reached the park wall; it was just over a hill of trees. The path down to the lion gate must have been more curvy than he’d thought.

Pepper scrambled up the wall, wheezing and grimacing. “You know,” he panted from the far side as Kid crouched to vault, “Bunny is a guy. You know? But she likes to be called ‘she’.”

Kid sprang, one hand on the stone. “Yeah, yeah, I know all about it.”

Pepper stepped back as Kid landed on the pavement. “You know,” he repeated, as Kid bounced upright, “you’re like Nightmare.”

“How?”

“He yells a lot. But he don’t mean it.”

“I’m not gonna yell at you again,” Kid said. “I may break your head. But I’m not gonna yell.”

Pepper grinned. “Come on this way.”

They crossed the empty street.

“You meet a new person, you go with him,” Kid mused, “and suddenly you get a whole new city.” He’d offered it as a small and oblique compliment.

Pepper only glanced at him, curiously.

“You go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn’t know were there. Everything changes.”

“This way.” Pepper ducked between buildings not two feet apart.

They sidled between the flaking boards. The ground was a-glitter from the broken windows.

Pepper said, “Sometimes it changes even if you go the same way.”

Kid recalled conversations with Tak, but decided not to question Pepper further, who didn’t seem too good with abstractions. In the alley, Kid stopped to brush the glass off his bare foot.

“You okay?” Pepper asked.

“Callous like a rock.”

They walked between the gaping garages. A blue car—’75 Olds?—had been driven through a back wall: snapped boards and sagging beams, scattered glass, skid marks across the roadway. The car was impaled in broken wood to its dangling door. Who, Kid wondered, had been injured in the wreck, who had been injured in the house? Hanging over the sill of another smashed window was a blue telephone receiver—hurled out in fear or fury? Accidentally dropped or jarred?

“Uhn.” Pepper gestured with his chin toward an open door.

As they walked the dark corridor, Kid smelled traces of something organic and decayed, which was about to remind him of—when he remembered what, they had already come out on the porch.

Somebody in workman’s greens and orange construction boots, on a high ladder against the corner lamppost—it was a woman he had noticed his first night in the bar—was unscrewing the street sign.

Metal ground metal; HAZE ST came out of its holder. From the ladder top she picked up AVE Q, inserted it, and began to screw the bolts.

“Hey?” Kid was both amused and curious. “Which one of those is right?”

She frowned back over her shoulder. “Neither one, honey, far as I know.”

But Pepper was crossing toward the unmarked, familiar door. Kid followed, looking around the street, estranged by smoky daylight. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here this time of day before.”

Pepper just grunted.

The door they entered was two from the bar entrance.

At the top of the steps, Pepper blocked the cracks of light and thumped with the back of his hand.

“All right, all right. Just a second, dear. It isn’t the end of the world—” the door swung in—“yet.” Around Bunny’s thin neck a white silk scarf was held by a silver napkin ring. “And if it is, I certainly don’t want to hear about it at this hour of the morning. Oh, it’s you.”

“Hi!” Pepper’s voice mustered brightness and enthusiasm. “This is a friend of mine, the Kid.”

Bunny stepped back.

As Kid walked in, Bunny pointed a knuckly manicured finger at Pepper. “It’s his teeth, actually.”

Pepper gave his stained and pitted grin.

“Peking Man—do you know about Peking Man? Peking Man died of an ulcerated tooth.” Bunny brushed back bleached, silken hair. “Show me a boy with bad teeth and I just feel so sorry for him, that I—well, I’m not responsible. Pepper, darling, where have you been?”

“Jesus, I’m thirsty,” Pepper said. “You got something to drink? You couldn’t get a God-damn drink of water in the God-damn park.”

“On the sideboard, dear. It hasn’t moved.”

Pepper poured wine from a jug with an ornate label first into a handleless cup, then a jelly jar.

“Have you any idea where he was? I know he’s not going to tell me.” Bunny dodged while Pepper handed Kid the jar.

“You get the glass ’cause you’re company.”

“You could have poured one for me too, dear. But you’re famous for not thinking of things like that.”

“Jesus Christ, sweetheart, I thought you had one already working. I really did.” But Pepper made no move to pour another.

Bunny raised exasperated eyebrows and went to get a cup.

Pepper gestured with his. “You don’t tell her where I was. That’s for me to know and her to find out.” He finished his wine and went for seconds. “Go on, have a seat. Sit down. Bunny, did you throw me out of here last night?”

“The way you were carrying on, doll, I should have.” Bunny ducked under Pepper’s elbow and, cup on fingertips, returned. “But I didn’t get a chance. Have you ever noticed that about people who are dumb in a particular way? In-sen-si-tive—” Bunny’s eyes closed on the antepenultimate—” to everything. Except one second before catastrophe: Then they split. Oh, they know when that’s coming all right. I guess they have to. Otherwise they’d be dead. Or missing an arm, or a head, or something.” Bunny’s eyes narrowed at Pepper (who, on his third cup already, turned to the room, a little more relaxed). “Darling, I could have killed you last night. I could have committed murder. Did I throw you out? If I did, you wouldn’t be here now. But I’m calmer today.”

Kid decided not to ask what Pepper had done.

“Go on,” Pepper said. “Sit down. On the couch. That’s where I sleep, so it’s okay. She sleeps in there.”

“My boudoir.” Bunny gestured toward another room, where Kid could see a mirror and a dressing table with bottles and jars. “Pepper’s very eager to clear that up with all his new friends. Yes, do have a seat.”

Kid sat.

“Oh, there’ve been a few times—but you were probably too high to remember those—when you’ve turned into quite a tiger. Pepper, darling, you shouldn’t be so concerned about what other people think.”

“If I cared what he thought, I wouldn’t ’a brung him in here,” Pepper said. “You want some more wine, Kid, just take it. Bunny don’t mind.”

“Actually—” Bunny stepped back into the boudoir door—“Pepper is a part of that tragic phenomenon, the Great American Un-screwed. A lot of talk about how much he wants to, but if you want my opinion, I don’t think Pepper has gone to bed with anything in all his twenty-nine years that didn’t just roll him over in his sleep. That he rather likes. But God forbid he wake up!”

“I don’t talk about doin’ anybody I ain’t never done,” Pepper said, “which is more’n I can say for you. Why don’t you lay off?”

From the couch, Kid said: “I just came around to see if somebody was in Teddy’s. I want to—”

“Well, take a look, if you like.” Bunny unblocked the door. “But I doubt it. In here. Where you can see.”

Wondering, Kid got up and walked past Bunny into the second room. Though nothing was out of place, it gave the impression—with three chairs, a bed, a dozen pictures on the wall from magazines (but all framed)—of clutter. Oranges, reds, purples, and blues massed in the bedspread. Yellow plastic flowers hung over the back of a pink ceramic dove. Interrupting the floral wallpaper was a black curtain.

“In there.”

Kid stepped around a grubby, white vinyl hassock (everything had speckles of silver glitter on it) and pushed back black velvet.

Through cage bars, he saw upturned stools clustering the counter. Under a skylight he had never noticed before—this was the first time he had seen the place during the day—the empty booths and tables looked far more rickety: the whole room seemed larger and shabbier.

“Is the bartender there?” Bunny asked.

“No.”

“Then they aren’t even open.”

Kid dropped the curtain.

“Isn’t that convenient? I just run right out there and do my thing, then run right back in here, and am shut of you all. Come on back inside. Don’t run away.” Bunny motioned Kid into the living room. “I really think scorpions are perfectly fascinating. You’re the only really effective enforcement organization in the city. Pepper, what was the name of your friend with all the ugly muscles and that lovely, broken…?” Bunny nudged his upper lip with his forefinger. “…This one here?”

“Nightmare.”

“Fascinating boy.” Bunny glanced at Kid. “He’s old as I am, dear, but I still consider him very young. (Really, you must sit down. I’m the only one who’s allowed to wander around and make everyone nervous.) You scorpions do more to keep law and order in the city than anyone else. Only the good and the pure in heart dare go out on the street after dark. But that’s the way, I suppose, the law has always worked. The good people are the ones who live their lives so that they don’t have anything to do with whatever law there is anyway. The bad ones are the ones unfortunate enough to become involved. I rather like the way it works here, because, since you are the law, the law is far more violent, makes much more noise, and isn’t everywhere at once: so it’s easier for us good people to avoid. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some more wine—?”

“I told him to get it when he wants it.”

“I’ll get it for him, Pepper. You may not be a gentleman, but I am a lady.” Bunny plucked the jar from Kid’s hands and went to fill it and another cup. “Just an old-fashioned girl, too shy to dive into the rushing river of worldly fame, too late for the mouse-drawn pumpkin to take me to the ball, too old for Gay Lib—not to mention Radical Effeminism!” Bunny couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, Kid thought. “Not in body, mind you. Just in spirit. Ah, well…I have the consolations of philosophy—or whatever the hell you call it.”

Kid sat down on the couch beside Pepper.

Bunny returned with the brimming jelly glass. “When you let your little light shine, what great and luminous beast do you become?”

“I’m not a scorpion.”

“You mean you just like to dress up that way? And wear a shield around your neck? Mmmm?”

“Somebody gave me these clothes when I got my others messed up.” Kid took the jar and picked up his projector at the end of its chain. “This doesn’t have a battery or something. I just found it.”

“Ah, then you’re not really a scorpion yet. Like Pepper, right? Pepper used to be a scorpion. But his battery’s run down.”

“I guess that’s what it is.” Pepper rattled the links of his shield among his other chains. “I gotta get hold of another one and see.”

“Pepper used to be the most charming bird of paradise. Red, yellow, and green plumes—one could almost ignore its relation to the common parrot. Then he began to flicker, more and more, sputter, grow dim. Finally—” Bunny’s eyes closed—“he went totally out.” They opened. “He hasn’t been the same since.”

“Where could you pick up one? A battery, I mean.”

“Radio store,” Pepper said. “Only the guys have about stripped all the places around here. A department store, maybe. Or maybe somebody’s got an extra one. Nightmare’s got a lot, I bet.”

“How exciting, to anticipate your glowing aspect, to puzzle over what you’ll turn out to be.”

“Inside here—” Pepper snapped his shield apart—“they got a little thing in here that’s supposed to be what it is. But it just looks like a whole lot of colored dots to me. The battery goes in there.” He picked at the mechanism with a grey nail—“This one…”—and pried loose a red and white striped oblong with blue lettering: 26½ Volts D. C., below a colophon of gathered lightning. “This one ain’t worth shit.” He flipped it across the room.

“Not on the floor, Pepper love.” Bunny picked up the battery and put it on a shelf behind some porcelain frogs, vases of colored glass, and several alarm clocks. “Tell me, Kid, now that you’ve found me, just who were you looking for?”

“A girl. Lanya. You know her: You spoke to her one night in the bar when George Harrison was there.”

“Oh, yes: She-who-must-be-obeyed. And you were with her. Now I do remember you. That was the night they made George the new moon, wasn’t it? The way that poor man has driven all those silly dinge-queens out of their flippy little minds is just terrible!”

Kid turned his jar. “He has a pretty heavy fan club.”

“More power to him, I say.” Bunny raised the cup overhead. “But if George is the New Moon, darling, I am the Evening Star.”

Pepper loosed his consumptive giggle.

“I want to go out and look for her,” Kid said. “If she comes into Teddy’s after it opens, will you give her a message for—”

“I can’t think of any reason why I should. She has a much easier time getting hers than I do getting mine. What do you want me to tell her?”

“Huh? Just that I was around looking for her, and that I’ll be back.”

“Smile.”

“What?”

“Grin. Like this.” Bunny’s bony face became a death mask around bright, perfect teeth. “Let’s see an expression of ecstatic happiness.”

Kid twisted his lips back quickly and decided this was his last politeness.

To Kid’s leer, Bunny returned a wistful grin. “You just don’t seem to have any special points of attraction. Actually, I’d put you rather low down on my list. It’s completely personal, you understand. I suppose I can afford to tell your girlfriend you’re looking for her. I will if I see her.”

“Everybody’s somebody’s fetish,” Kid said. “Maybe I still got hope?”

“That’s what I keep telling Pepper. But he just won’t believe me.”

“I believe it.” Pepper said from his end of the couch. “You just won’t believe you ain’t mine.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’m revealing any embarrassing secrets when I say that you can be very sweet and affectionate once you relax. No, Pepper is just terribly uncomfortable at the idea that anyone could find him attractive. It’s that simple.”

“It ain’t happened that often so I’m what you’d call used to it.” Pepper squinted into the bottom of his cup, rocked up to his feet, and walked to the counter. He gave Bunny a passing nudge on the arm with his elbow. “Bunny’s a good guy, but she’s a nut.”

“Ow!” Bunny rubbed the spot, but grinned after Pepper.

Kid grinned too and tried not to shake his head.

“Why are you two here now, anyway?” Bunny asked. “What are the scorpions doing today? Shouldn’t you be out working?”

“You trying to kick me out again?” Pepper stooped to open a cabinet and took out another jug which he put on the counter beside the one now empty.

Kid saw four more gallons and decided to leave after this glass. “Where was Nightmare’s gang off to this morning?”

“You said you saw them. How many were there?”

“Twenty, twenty-five maybe,” Kid said.

“Maybe he’s gonna pull that Emboriky rip-off today. How you like that?”

“Oh, no!” Bunny put the cup down—“Oh well.”—then picked it up again, to sip pensively.

“He’s been talking about it for a month, but he wants a whole damn army.”

“Why’s he need so many people?” Kid asked. “What’s Emboriky?”

“Big downtown department store.”

“Lovely things,” Bunny said sadly. “Perfectly lovely things. I mean it isn’t just your run of the mill five-and-dime. I just wish I could have some of their stuff in here. Give some class to this place. Oh, I hate to think of you guys clomping around in all that beautiful stuff.”

“Nobody’s gotten to it before?”

“Guess not.” Pepper said.

“Maybe just a little,” Bunny explained. “But you see, now it’s ‘occupied.’ Some kid got killed back a little while ago trying to break in.”

“Killed?”

“Somebody leaned out the third-story window,” Pepper said, “and shot the motherfucker dead.” He laughed. “A couple of other people got shot at, who were just passing by. But they didn’t get hurt.”

“Perhaps it’s Mr. Emboriky, protecting his worldly goods.” Bunny contemplated the cup bottom, looked over at the fresh gallon, but thought better. “I wouldn’t blame him.”

“Naw, naw,” Pepper said. “It’s a whole bunch in there. Nightmare’s one of the people who got shot at. He said shots came from lots of places.”

Bunny laughed. “Imagine! Two dozen sales clerks valiantly holding off the barbarian hordes! I hope those poor children don’t get hurt.”

“You think it’s the sales clerks?” Pepper asked.

“No.” Bunny sighed. “It’s just whoever got to the Gun Department in Sporting Goods first.”

“Nightmare’s got this real thing about it. He really wants to get in there and see what’s going on. I guess I would too if somebody’d shot at me out the third-story window.”

“You?” Bunny exploded at the ceiling. “You’d be back here with your head under the pillow so fast! Why aren’t you out there with them now? No, no, that’s all right. I’d rather have you here safe and sound. If you got your ass full of buckshot, I just know it would be for something stupid.”

“I think getting your ass full of buckshot is pretty stupid for any reason.”

“Fine!” Bunny pointed an admonishing finger. “You just stick to that idea and keep momma happy. One honorable man!” Bunny’s hand returned to the cup. “Yea, even for the want of one honorable man. Or woman—I’m not prejudiced. That’s really what Bellona needs.” Bunny regarded Kid. “You look like a sensitive sort. Haven’t you ever thought that? Lord knows, we have everything else. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that somewhere around here was one good and upright individual—one would do, for contrast.”

“Well, we’ve got Calkins,” Kid said. “He’s a pillar of the community.”

Bunny grimaced. “Darling, he owns that den of iniquity in there where I display my pale and supple bod every evening. Teddy just runs it. No, Mr. C won’t pass, I’m afraid.”

“You got that church person,” Pepper offered.

“Reverend Amy?” Bunny grimaced again. “No, dear, she’s sweet, in her own strange way. But that’s absolutely not what I mean. That’s the wrong feeling entirely.”

“Not that church,” Pepper countered. “The other one, over on the other side of the city.”

“You mean the monastery?” Bunny was pensive as Pepper nodded. “I really don’t know that much about it. Which speaks well for it, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, someone mentioned that to me once,” Kid said, and remembered it was Lanya.

“It would be nice to think that, somewhere inside its walls, a truly good person walked and pondered. Can you imagine it? Within the city limits? Perhaps the abbot or the mother superior or whatever they call it? Meanwhile the scorpions play down at the Emboriky.”

“Maybe if you went to the monastery, somebody’d shoot at you too.”

“How sad.” Bunny looked at the jug again. “How probable. That wouldn’t make me happy at all.”

“Where is this place?” Kid asked; with the memory occurred the fantasy that Lanya, with her curiosity about it, might have gone there.

“I don’t actually know,” Bunny said. “Like everything else in town, you just hear about it until it bumps into you. You have to put yourself at the mercy of the geography, and hope that down-hills and up-hills, working propitiously with how much you feel like fighting and how much you feel like accepting, manage to get you there. You’ll find it eventually. As we are all so tired of hearing, this is a terribly small city.”

“I heard it’s on the other side of town,” Pepper said. “Only I don’t even know which side of town this is.”

Kid laughed and stood up. “Well, I’m gonna go.” He drained the wine, and tongued the bitter aftertaste. Wine first thing in the morning, he pondered. Well, he’d done worse. “Thanks for breakfast.”

“You’re going to go? But honey, I have enough in here for brunch, lunch, high tea, and dinner!”

“Come on,” Pepper said. “Take another glass. Bunny don’t mind the company.”

“Sorry.” Kid moved his jar from Bunny’s reach. “Thanks.” He smiled. “I’ll come back another time.”

“I’ll only let you go if you promise me.” Bunny suddenly reached for Kid’s chest. “No, no, don’t jump. Mother’s not going to rape you.” Bunny put a finger beneath the chain that crossed Kid’s belly. “We have something in common, you and I.” With the other hand, Bunny lifted the white silk to show the optical chain around a slim, veined neck. “Nightmare and I. Madame Brown and Nightmare. You and Madame Brown. I wonder if I betray it by mentioning it.” Bunny laughed.

Kid, unsure why, felt his cheeks heat and the rest of his body cool. I can’t have absorbed the custom of reticence so completely in so little time, he thought. And still wanted anxiously and urgently to leave.

Bunny was saying, “I’ll tell your girlfriend what you said if I see her. You know even if you did have one of those…ahem, smiles I find just too irresistible, I’d still deliver your message. Because then, you see, I’d want you to like me, and to come back. Doing something you wanted me to do would be one way to get that. Just because I’m not a good person—” Bunny winked—“you mustn’t think I’m a bad one.”

“Yeah. Sure. Thanks.” Kid tugged away from Bunny’s finger. “I’ll see you.”

“Good-bye!” Pepper called from the counter where he’d gone for more wine.

Now the street sign said RUBY and PEARL.

The ladder and the lady in greens were gone.

He pondered and compared directions, dismissed the park, looked where the mist was thickest (down “Pearl”), and walked. Lanya? remembered his calling, an echo in the dim, an afterimage on the ear. Here? In this city? He smiled, and thought about holding her. He sorted his dubious recollections, wondering where he was going. It’s only, he thought, when we’re stripped of purpose that we know who we are.

His missing name was a sudden ache and, suddenly, he wanted it, wanted it with the same urge that had made him finally accept the one Tak had given. Without it he could search, survive, make word convections in somebody else’s notebook, commit fanciful murder, strive for someone else’s survival. With it, just walking, just being might be easier. A name, he thought, is what other people call you. And that’s exactly where it’s important and where it’s not. The Kid? He thought: I’m going to be thirty in a mouthful of winter and sun. How unimportant then that I can’t remember it. How important what my not being able to remember it means. Maybe I’m somebody famous? No, I do remember too well what I’ve done. I wish I felt cut off, alone, an isolate society of one, like everybody else. Alienation? That isn’t what it’s about. I’m too used to being liked.

Damn! He wished he had his notebook; but before the feeling, as he listened, no word rose to begin the complex fixing. Fingering the blades at his waist, hearing, not feeling, an edge rasp his callused thumb, he turned another corner.

Car motors were so unfamiliar that he was frightened, until he actually saw the bus. It hauled itself around the corner and into the whitewashed stop-markings. Clap-clap, the doors. He looked at the balding driver squinting out the windshield as if for traffic.

Why not, he thought, and climbed the worn rubber steps.

“You got a transfer?”

“Hey, I’m sorry. If you need fare or something—” He stepped back.

But the driver motioned him on. “This is a transfer point. I thought you had a transfer, maybe. Come on.” Clap-clap: the bus rocked forward.

An old man slept in the back seat, hat down, collar up.

A woman in the front sat with her hands crossed on the top of her pocketbook. A younger woman with a large natural stared out the window. A boy with a smaller one sat nervously just behind the back door, toeing one sneaker with the other.

A couple—he with knees wide, sunk in the seat with his arms folded, his face set belligerently, she with legs together, her face registering something between fear and boredom—were making a point of not looking at him.

Simultaneously he realized that there was no seat from which he could watch everybody and that he was the only non-black on the bus. He decided to give up the old man and took the next to the last seat.

Where am I—but wouldn’t think: going? He looked over the bars on the seat backs to the blunt nose and lips, the sharp chin, profiled below the brillowy ball.

He watched the buildings she watched go headlong in goalless motion.

She blinked.

He was only nervous at the turnings, and had to quell the absurd impulse to go ask the driver where the bus was headed. The headlong, with its implication of easy return, was safe. The bus turned again, and he tried to enjoy being lost: but they were going parallel to their first route.