Текст книги "Dhalgren"

Автор книги: Samuel R. Delany

Соавторы: Samuel R. Delany
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Текущая страница: 31 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

On the couch, Denny’s girl and Copperhead were going through some sort of toasting game, clicking brims and laughing.

Nightmare was saying, “I can’t hang around this place all day! Hey, Dragon Lady, you gonna come with me? I mean I can’t hang around—”

A woman stuck two brown arms from under a blanket, with quivering fists, waking.

Dragon Lady and Adam were whispering about something, dark brown and light brown heads together. Adam rubbed his chains.

Suddenly Baby came up. Among the faint fuzz of a new mustache, his nose had run all over his upper lip. Clutched in scrawny, filthy-nailed fingers was a cut-glass bowl, caked at the edges with sugar. “You want some?” He gestured with his chin toward the tablespoon handle.

“No thanks,” Lanya said.

Kid shook his head too. Baby said, “Oh,” and went away.

Lanya held up the cup for Kid to sip. His hands came up to guide hers. A blade ticked the crock, so he took that one away, felt the ligaments in the back of her hand with the other.

Coffee slapped bitter back across his tongue; he swallowed. Steam tickled his nostrils.

She blew; she sipped; she said, “It’s strong!”

“Hey, Baby! Wait—come on back here, Adam!” Dragon Lady bawled, turning, jangling. “Come on, now!”

Through some door, not the kitchen’s, a lot of people came into the house.

Lanya frowned, blinked.

A lot of people came into the room. Coffee, chocolate, and tamarindo faces, hands, and shoulders swung by, turning, as chains from long or stocky necks swung under several hairdos of beach ball dimensions. Two of the men were arguing, while a third, his arm supple as a black-snake, waved and shouted to quell them: “Com’on, man! Come on, now, man! Come on—” A minimal half-dozen white faces were occluded or eclipsed before Kid could fix them. Most, blacks and others, Kid recognized from the Emboriky run. A dark mahogany guy in a black vinyl vest stopped by the couch to regale Copperhead, while a diffident white, vestless and a scorpion only from the chains (his belly and chest were scarred with a single, long pucker, still-scabbed and pink), stood by, waiting to speak. In trio, they seemed oddly familiar. The black in the vinyl was the one who’d been friendly to him in Denny’s group in the department store.

A hand the color of an old tire suddenly landed on Lanya’s shoulder, another on Kid’s; the close-cropped head bobbed between them; the long black body, under the swinging vest flaps and hanging chain loops, was sour with sweat, the breath, over small teeth and a heavy, hanging lip, sour with wine. “Shit…” drawled in two syllables.

“Hey, Ripper,” Lanya said, “get off!” Kid was surprised she knew his name.

But Ripper—yes, it was Jack the Ripper—got off.

A stocky white girl with a tattooed arm was talking to Nightmare when two more blacks joined the colloquy, loudly. Nightmare, louder, cut over: “Man, I can’t hang around—”

“Come on,” Kid said to Lanya. “I want to talk to you.”

Lanya’s eyes flicked from the room to Kid’s face. “All right.”

He gestured with his head for her to follow.

Stepping around one person and over another, they went into the hall.

The noise erupted and trundled and careered.

Looking for the room with Denny’s loft, Kid pushed open the second door he saw. But there was too much light—

Siam, on a crate by the green sink, said, “Hey!” and put the newspaper over his lap. He looked at Kid with a smile that fell apart into awed confusion. “I was…was reading the paper.” At the edge of the bandage over his hand, the flesh was scaling. Siam offered his brown smile again, thought better, took it back. “Just reading the paper.” He stood; the paper fell on the floor. The boards had once been painted maroon.

There was neither glass nor screening in the wide porch window. The city sloped away down the hill.

“You can see…so far,” Lanya said at Kid’s shoulder. She took another sip of coffee. “I didn’t realize you could see so far from here.”

But Kid was frowning. “What’s that?”

Beyond the last houses, beyond the moiled grey itself, at a place that might have marked the horizon, a low, luminous arc burned.

“It looks like the sun coming up,” Lanya said.

“Naw,” Siam said. “It’s the middle of the afternoon. Maybe it’s…” He looked at Kid again, stopped.

“Maybe it’s a fire,” Kid said. “It’s too wide for the sun.”

Siam squinted. The arc was reddish. Beyond the gash of the park, a few houses were touched here and there with a copper that, in the haze, paled almost to white gold. “Sometimes,” Siam said, “when you see the moon real close to the horizon, like that, it looks much bigger. Maybe the same thing happens to the sun, sometimes?”

“But you just said it was the middle of the afternoon.” Kid squinted too. “Besides, it’s still ten times too wide.” He looked back at Lanya. “Let’s go.”

“Okay.” Lanya took his hand, the bladed one, slipping her fingers between the metal, to hold two of his.

They went back into the hall.

The room with Denny’s loft didn’t have a door.

“If there’s nobody in here,” Kid said, “we can talk.”

“Want anymore coffee?”

“No.”

She finished half the cup (while he thought how hot it must be) and put it down on a cluttered ironing board behind the motorcycle.

“Get up in the loft.”

She climbed, looked back. “Nobody’s up here.”

“Go on.”

She crawled over, first one tennis shoe, then the other disappearing.

He came up after her.

“Look,” she said, as he got his other knee over, “I came by because I wanted to apologize for being so—well, you know. Running off like that. And acting so angry.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s okay. You were angry. I’m just glad you came.” One fist balled on the blankets, he settled to his haunches, watching her silhouette against the window shade. “How did you know I was here?” He wanted to put his head in her lap; he wanted to nuzzle between her legs. “How did you find me, this time? Who saw me wander up here this morning and came running back to tell you?”

“But this is where they said you’d been for—”

“I know!” He sat back, laughed sharply. “I’ve been gone another five days! Right?”

Her silhouette frowned.

“Or six. Or ten…people have been talking about me again, saying how I’ve been living it up here, running with the scorpions, making my rep.” He wanted to cup her warm cheeks in his rough, ugly hands. He said, and his voice suddenly became rough, ugly: “I’ve seen you every day since I met you…” He dragged his hands, bladed and unbladed, into his lap, where bone and muscle and chain and leather and nerve and metal, all mixed up, lay, heavy and confused and gripping. “I have!” he said, swallowed. “That’s what it feels like. To me…”

She said: “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about. I mean, after I left you asleep, in the church, I thought maybe you’d want to know some of what happened while you…were away. You told me you went looking for me at the park commune. I thought you’d want to know what happened there after that guy with the gun—”

“I—” fingers and metal and harness moved in his lap—“I don’t…I mean, I live in one city.” He moved but couldn’t lift. “Maybe you live in another. In mine, time…leaks; sloshes backwards and forwards, turns up and shows what’s on its…underside. Things shift. Yeah, maybe you could explain. In your city. In your city, you’re sane and I’m crazy. But in mine, you’re the one who’s nuts! Because you keep telling me things are happening that don’t fit with what I see! Maybe that’s the only city I can live in. Some guy with a gun? In the park?” He laughed, harshly. “I don’t know if I want to live in yours!”

She was silent; once he saw her head jerk at some idea; but she decided not to say that one, seconds later decided to say another: “You say you saw me…last night, at the church? And then before that, yesterday…morning? In the park? All right. I’ll accept that’s what it looks like to you, if you’ll accept that it doesn’t seem that way to me. All right.” She gestured toward his knee, did not quite touch it. “I’m curious about your…city. But sometime soon, ask me about what goes on in mine. Maybe something’s there that can help you.”

“You have my notebook?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “I figured you were so out of it, you just might leave it behind on the floor. You’ve written some strange stuff in there.”

“My poems?”

“Those too,” she said.

Which made him frown because some of this warmth, still unresolved, was connected with wanting to write.

“I’m glad you have it. And I’m glad you came to see me. Because I—”

Footsteps below.

And Denny’s head came up over the loft edge. “Hey, look. This is—oh. You.” Denny crawled up over while someone else climbed.

She stopped with her head just visible, and recognized Kid with a frown that faded to resignation, then climbed the rest of the way, breasts swinging in blue jersey.

“Um…this loft is theirs,” Kid said to Lanya.

“It’s his,” the girl said. “It isn’t mine. All the junk up here is his. We just came to get away from the mob.”

“You see,” Kid said, “instead of telling me what’s been going on while I wasn’t there, you should be finding out what’s been going on here.”

“Sure,” Lanya said. “What?”

“I’ve been balling these two, for one thing. That seemed like days…”

Denny’s chin jerked.

The girl sighed a little.

“Denny’s a good fuck,” Kid said. “She is too. But sometimes it gets a little hectic.”

“Denny…?” the girl said.

Denny, sitting back on his heels, darted his eyes from Lanya to Kid.

“Maybe,” Kid said, and suddenly his hands came apart, “we all could ball again. I mean the four of us. That might work out better—”

The girl said, “Denny, I’m supposed to be going some place with Copperhead and his friends. I told you that before. Look I gotta…”

“Oh,” Denny said. “Well, okay.”

“You sure?” Kid asked the girl. “I mean, the whole idea was because I thought maybe it would make you feel better if…”

The girl poised at the edge of the loft. “Look,” she said. “You’re probably trying to be very nice. But you just don’t understand. It isn’t my thing. Maybe it’s his.” She nodded toward Denny. “I don’t know…is it yours?” That was to Lanya.

“I don’t know,” Lanya said. “I’ve never tried.”

“I don’t mind somebody watching,” the girl said, “if it’s a friend. But what we were doing—” she shrugged—“it isn’t me.” She got down from the platform, paused again, just a head showing. “Denny, I’ll see you later. Good-bye,” with the same tone Kid remembered from the sixteenth-floor apartment in the Labrys. A second later she tripped on something, gave a startled, stifled, “Shit…” and was gone.

Kid looked from Denny to Lanya, back to Denny. “We…” he started. “We were just…we figured we’d use your loft because, well, there were so many other people around. Like she said; the mob.”

“That’s okay,” Denny said. He crossed his arms. “Is it okay if I watch?”

Lanya laughed and sat back against the window edge. A scar of light from beside the shade lay on her hair.

Denny looked at her. “That’s what I like to do. Sometimes, I mean, since it’s my place. He knows.”

“Sure,” Lanya said. “That’s reasonable.” She nodded, laughed again.

“We were just using it to talk,” Kid said.

“Oh,” Denny said. “I just thought because you were saying we should all…you know. All of us.”

“You do live in a strange city,” Lanya said. “Maybe I do too.” She looked at Denny. “Where do you live?”

“Right here.” Denny frowned. “Most of the time.”

“Oh.” After a moment, Lanya said: “You two’ve been at it? Why don’t you two make it then—” she moved her tennis shoes from beneath her, raised her knees, dropped her meshed fists between—“and I’ll watch. I’ve been in the other room when two guys were balling. But I’ve never been in the same bed. The idea sort of turns me on.”

Kid said: “I just meant—”

“I know,” Lanya said. “You want Denny and me to ball, and you want to watch. Well—” she shrugged, tossed her hair and grinned—“I think you’re cute—” at Denny. “I wouldn’t mind that.”

“Gee,” Denny said, “I don’t know if…” and shifted into some other emotional gear: “because you see that’s what we were…” and into another: “before. It was okay. But…” He went forward on his fists, lowered his haunches. “It’s just that it wasn’t her…” He glanced over the edge. “Like she said. And I’d never done it that way either.”

“Oh.” Lanya said, pushing her elbows together.

Kid thought: I still don’t know her name. “Hey,” he said to Lanya. “Come here.”

Lanya pursed her lips, hesitated with stiffened arms; then they un-stiffened. She came forward.

“You too, motherfucker.” Denny practically fell against his side. Kid caught the boy’s neck in the crook of his arm. The blades swung beyond Denny’s face, dim in half light. Kid pulled his arm tight around Lanya’s shoulder, his hand an epaulet over blouse, collar bone, muscle.

“If you don’t play, you don’t watch.”

He had been planning to squeeze them affectionately, maybe say something else funny, and let go. But, for a moment, he was aware they were two entirely different temperatures; and something in his own heat was defined, resolved, released. And Denny (his shoulder hot and still powdery dry) reached across Kid’s chest, put two fingers against Lanya’s cheek (her neck against Kid’s arm cooler and softer, as though it had been recently dried after rain) and said, “You’re…” and stopped when she reached out and put her palm on Denny’s neck. Kid said: “Yeah…” She watched, something happening in her face, which became quiet laughter, her eyes going back and forth between Kid’s and Denny’s, pulling herself closer.

Denny’s head suddenly moved. His laugh back was sharp, shrill. Still, whatever tensions were in it eased in it.

“You open your mouth after this morning, cocksucker,” Kid said, “and it won’t be my dick you get in it—”

“Kid…!” Lanya’s protest was real.

But Denny caught Lanya’s forearm, turned his face into her palm.

Something in the machinery between Kid’s belly and loin tightened. Denny was trying to climb over him. Kid moved a leg between them—something scraped. Lanya got one elbow under her. Kid’s hand dragged her back. It’s clumsy, Kid thought. It is clumsy! and a despair that he had been trying to hold in suspension for—how long? broke. He thought he was going to cry. What came out was a great, voiceless gasp.

Denny lay his head down on Lanya’s hand that was on Kid’s chest. Then he said, softly, “Aren’t we gonna take our clothes off…this time?”

Lanya moved her other hand down Denny’s head till she was holding his ear.

“Don’t pull,” Denny said.

“I’m not pulling,” she said. “I’m tickling.”

“Oh,” Denny said. And then: “That’s nice.” And then, raising his head, “I think you better take that thing off—at least.”

(Kid looked at his hand still in the air. It was quieter in the other room.)

Lanya suddenly sat. “Oh wow. Sure.” She wore one of her stranger expressions. “I didn’t even see!”

Kneeling over him, she took Kid’s wrist, got the clasp. Kid was completely astonished when Denny’s hands joined hers and, with no clumsiness, the blades opened, fell away: the harness was lifted from his tingling wrist.

Lanya put it on the window ledge by the blind, where it stood, upright, a long, bright crown.

Kid turned his freed hand in the air, looking at the hirsute joints and ruined tips flex, horny palms and knuckles folding, opening, till, tired, it began to waver, fall. Someone tugged at his belt. Someone pulled at his vest shoulder. He laughed, turning, while through some door in another room a lot of people left.

They made love.

It was energetic. It was graceful. It was intense. He was a warmth that moved around and between them. They were warmths that moved around him, between him and each other. Once, eyes closed against the damp blanket, he moved his hand across her rib cage, brushing beneath her breasts with the knuckle of his thumb (she caught her breath…) till he reached her arm (…then let it out) and followed her arm to where her elbow bent on Denny’s belly, and on to where her hand held Denny’s penis.

After moments, his hand came away, against the embankment of her hip, crossed it. He pressed his fingertips in the hair over her pubic bone, slid them down to cup, to press in. First one, then the other, he touched their genitals. Finally he pushed himself to his knees, put one knee across them, watched them watch him, blinked. Sweat dribbled his cheek. A drop caught in his eyelash and shook. He bent his head.

Is it only an hour, he wondered, that encompassed three people’s four orgasms? Now I know why, though foreplay can be delineated in all its fascinating and psychotropic detail, a poet must use asterisks or blank paper for orgasmic mechanics that satisfying: they open to something so wide you can now understand why, when sex is that good, you may say, “The sex is not the most important part,” and feel these words analog some shadow of truth.

Then he remembered, amidst his auto-pontifications, there were two other people who would have to agree with him before he could even suspect such meanderings correct. Grinning, he pushed up on his hands, climbed over one of them (stopped to stare at the sleeping face, full up, lips momentarily pressing, nostrils flaring, two fingers coming to scratch the nose and fall away, still in sleep), looked over at the other (this one on the side, lips parted, lower eyelid mashed slightly open revealing an albumen line, breath whispering against curled knuckles) and, after taking the pen from Lanya’s pocket and putting it in a buttonhole of his vest, climbed down, dragging his clothes on top of him.

He wondered, if they woke, would they think he had gone to the bathroom.

In the doorway, he pulled on his pants, put on his vest. There was a cold line against his chest…The pen. The chain around him was hot. He ran his fingertips along it, concerned and trying to recall why.

In the strangely quiet hall, he went to the porch door, opened it. And squinted. Gold trapezoids lay high up the lapped-plank wall. His moist skin was slathered with bronze. Each hair on his forearm glowed amber.

He heard his own loud breath; he closed his mouth.

Looking down at his chest, before his vision blurred with tears, he saw that one prism had laid out on his skin a tiny chain of color.

The house was perfectly silent behind him.

He rubbed his eyes, shook his head.

The tearing stopped, anyway.

He raised his eyes again, looked out the porch window at the horizon again—

When he’d first moved to New York City to go to Columbia, he had brought with him an absolute panic of the Bomb. It had been October; he had no Thursday morning classes, was still half-asleep in the sweaty sheets of a persistent, Indian summer. Sirens woke him—he remembered no scheduled test. A jet snarled somewhere on the sky. He got chills and immediately tried to logic them away. This is the sort of coincidence, he thought, blinking at the dull window, that can ruin a good day.

Then the window filled with blinding yellow light.

He’d leaped from the bed, taking the sheets with him. His throat cramped and his heart exploded while he watched gold fire spill window to window down the tenement across the street.

The fireball! he thought, beyond the pain in his terrified body. The light’s here now. The shock and the sound will arrive in four seconds, five seconds and I will be dead…

Four seconds, five seconds, seven seconds, ten seconds later, he was still standing there, shaking, panting, trying to think of someplace to hide.

The clouds, in coincidence compounded, had pulled away from the sun. The plane was gone. The clock radio in the bookshelf said noon. The siren lowered its pitch, softened its whine, and ceased.

What he’d felt then had been active terror.

What he felt now was its passive equivalent.

It couldn’t be a fireball, he thought. That was impossible.

Beyond the mist, it shone through as moon or sun shone through an even veil of clouds. It was the color of the sunrise: Perhaps a sixth of the circle had risen, secanted by the horizon. But already it was, what? A hundred? Three hundred? Six hundred times the area of the platinum poker chip he remembered as the sun.

…If the sun went nova! he thought. Between his loudening heart he ferreted this information: If that’s what it was, then the earth would boil away in seconds! His heart stilled. What a silly fact to base one’s confidence on before this light!

The clouds over half the sky were a holocaust of pewter and pale gold.

Was the light warm?

He rubbed his bronzed forearm.

The verdigrised spigot on the wall dropped molten splashes on the muddy drain. Torn paper tacked to the frame of the window filigreed a shadow on the wall beside him.

When he had thought the bomb had fallen, back in New York, he had been left with a tremendous energy, had paced and pondered and searched for something to do with it, had ended up just walking it away.

I may be dead, he thought, in…seconds, minutes, hours? He squinted at the brilliant arc, already perhaps thirty houses wide. The thought came with absurd coolness, I’m going to write something.

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

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

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

And it was not blank space.

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

BRASS

ORCHIDS

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

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

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

What was the purpose of it?

(What had he wanted to write?)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hallucination?

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

He had wanted to write something?

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

After-images deviled the walls.

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

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

Lanya shifted, made some slow, sleepy sound.

Kid took his hand from his mouth, curled his fingertips tight against his palm. “Hey,” he said. “Are you asleep…?”

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

Kid laughed.

Denny’s hand uncurled on Kid’s thigh. Then the blond head came up. “…huh?”

“What’s your name?” She pushed back cords of his hair.

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

Kid held his laughter in this time.

Lanya shook her head, her hand at Kid’s forehead pushing at his coarser hair.

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

“Mmmm?”

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

She turned back. A smile and a frown mixed themselves on her face. “Now which one of you was that—” She laughed when he shook her ear. “Very sweet and very energetic.” She glanced down again. “Sort of…up and down, you know? He’s got quite a sense of humor.”

“That’s one name for it.”

Her eyes came up again; even in the shadow their green was bright between his fingers barring her face.

“Terribly, terribly sweet, mainly.”

“And how are you?”

“Mmmmm.” She closed her eyes and smiled.

“You know what he did this morning?”

“What?”

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

She opened her eyes. “Oh, is that how it happened.” He felt her eyebrows lift. “Well, I guess turnabout is fair play.”

“I dig that scene—”

“So I noticed. You’re sweet too.”

“—but she was sort of funny about the whole thing. I didn’t like it, I mean with her.”

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

“He’s fifteen. She’s seventeen. I think.”

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

“Fine.” Kid grinned. “I’m really fine.”

And laughing, she pushed her face toward his.

Hands scrabbled on Kid’s belly; Denny grunted.

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

“Hey, watch it,” Lanya said.

“I’m sorry,” Denny said, and fell on top of them.

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

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

“Denny,” Denny said loudly in Kid’s ear. “What’s yours?”

“Lanya Colson.”

“You’re the Kid’s old lady, huh?”

“When he remembers who I am.” Her hand on Kid’s wrist squeezed.

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

“You like this?”

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

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

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

“You can’t stand up,” Lanya said. “But it must be good for sitting and thinking.”

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

“What is it?” Lanya asked and leaned forward.

“It’s a shirt.” Denny said. “It’s a real pretty shirt.”

Kid looked too.

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

“I found it in a store.” Denny reached behind him. “And this one.”

Silver thread elaborately embossed the black.

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

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

Lanya had leaned closer. “They are pretty!”

“What is that one made of?” Kid asked.

Lanya pressed the plastic covering with her palm. “It’s crepe.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Put it back,” Kid said, quietly.

She did, quickly.

“And this.” Denny pulled out an oversized paperback book. “You got to look at those close. They’re very funny pictures—”

“Escher!” Lanya exclaimed. “They certainly are.”

Kid reached over her arm to turn the page.

“Where did you get those?” Lanya asked.

“In another…store.” (Kid wondered idly at the hesitation but didn’t look up.) “In somebody’s house,” Denny corrected himself. “We broke in. This was there, so I took it. You seen ’em before, ain’t you.”