Текст книги "Dhalgren"

Автор книги: Samuel R. Delany

Соавторы: Samuel R. Delany
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 60 страниц)

“Are we going in the way you came out…?”

The smoke around the building tops was luminous with dawn.

“Don’t worry,” Tak grinned. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I remembered you being on the other side of the…” He looked across, again, at the three-foot concrete platform that stretched beneath the awning along the building opposite.

“Come on.” Tak took another step. “Oh—One thing. You’ll have to park your weapon at the door.” He pointed vaguely at the orchid. “Don’t take offense. It’s just a house rule.”

“Oh, sure. Yeah.” He followed Tak up the steps. “Here, just a second.”

“Put it behind there.” Tak indicated two thick asbestos-covered pipes inside the doorway. “It’ll be there when you come back.”

He unsnapped the wrist band, slipped his fingers from the harness, bent to lay the contraption on the floor behind the pipes.

Tak, already at the head of a dim stairwell, started down.

He stood up and hurried after.

“Fifteen steps.” Tak was already invisible below him. “It’s pretty dark so you better count.”

There was no bannister so he kept one hand on the wall. His wrist prickled where the orchid’s collar had been. Hairs, drying now, pulled, tickling, from his skin. Every other step his bare foot hit the stair edge, heel on gritty marble, ball and toes hanging. Tak’s boots thudded below…Thirteen…fourteen…The last step still surprised him.

“Back this way.”

He followed through the dark. The cement under his bare foot was very warm.

The steps ahead changed timbre. “Steps up now…”

He slowed.

“…don’t get lost.”

This time he found a rail.

He could anticipate landings from the variations in Loufer’s gait. After the third flight, faint lines near head height indicated doors.

Rhythm is the only thing secure. In this darkness, rising, I recall the Pacific stars. This ritual ascendance goes on in a city that has erased them and blurred its sun out altogether. Iron Wolf has something. I want it without the bother of definitions. The dangerous illumination, the light in the exploding eye, is not for this other city.

“Last flight—

They had come up nine landings.

“—and here we are.”

A metal door grated in its frame.

As Tak stepped before him onto the tarred roof, he turned his head away from the cloud-colored dawn. After darkness, it was still too bright. Face scrunched against the light, he stopped on the sill, one hand on the jamb, the other holding back the ribbed and riveted door.

Smoke lay waist-high on the air.

He relaxed his face, blinking a lot.

Beyond the brick balustrade, roofs and roofs checkered into the mist. The gap, there, must have been the park. Beyond it was a hill, scaly with housing. “Jesus.” He squinted in the other direction. “I didn’t realize this place was so far from the bridge. I’d just come off it when you called to me down in the street.”

Tak chuckled. “No, you’d wandered pretty far.”

“I can just get a glimpse—” he stood on tiptoe—“of the river.” And lowered himself. “I thought it was just two, three blocks away.”

Tak’s chuckle became a full laugh. “Hey, how’d you lose one sandal?”

“Huh?” He looked down. “Oh…I was being chased. By dogs.” That sounded funny, too; so he laughed. “Yeah, I really was.” He picked up his foot, rested it above his knee to examine the caked and calloused sole. The horny edge was cracked both sides. His ankle, knob and hollow, was grit-grey. Heel, ball, instep, and each dusty toe were gun-barrel black. He wiggled his toes: grit ground. “I guess it was—” He looked up frowning—“maybe a couple of days ago—” and put his foot down. “It was about three o’clock. In the morning. It was raining. No cars. So I took a nap on somebody’s porch. About five, when it was getting light, I went back out on the road to hitch. But it was still raining. So I figured, hell, I’d go back and catch another hour or two, ’cause there weren’t any cars. Only when I got back, there was this damn dog, who’d been sleeping under the porch all the time I’d been snoozing topside. He was awake now. And he started barking. Then he chased my ass down to the road. I ran. He ran. My sandal broke and went into a ditch somewhere—I just about didn’t notice. While I was running, this old blue car pulled up—big old lady driving, with her skinny husband, and the back seat full of children. I jumped in out of the rain, and we drove right across the border, into Louisiana! They were all off to spend the day with some other kid of hers who was at some army base.” He stepped from the sill. “Bought me a good breakfast, too.” The door creaked closed behind him. “But I guess that’s when I first noticed I couldn’t remember my name. She asked me for it and I couldn’t tell her…But I don’t think I’ve known it for a long, long time.” And he was almost used to the light. “I mean, you don’t go around thinking about yourself by your own name, do you? Nobody does—unless somebody calls to you by it, or asks you what it is. I haven’t been around people who know me for…for a while now. It’s just something I haven’t thought of for a long time, and somehow it’s…I guess just slipped my mind.” He looked at the tops of his feet again, both filthy, one crossed with straps, one bare. “It doesn’t bother me. Missing a sandal, I mean. I go barefoot a lot of the time.”

“Like a hippie?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, when I’m in a hippie-type town.” Again he looked around the misty horizon. “You sleep up here?”

“Come on.” Tak turned. A breeze swung one jacket flap from his belly, pressed the other against him, neck to hip. “That’s my house.”

It had probably been built as a maintenance shack, put on the roof for tool storage. Bamboo curtains backed recently puttied panes. The door—tar paper had ripped in one place from greyed pine—was ajar.

They walked around a skylight. Tak hit the door with his hand-heel. (Like he expected to surprise somebody…?) The door swung in. Tak stepped inside: click. Lights went on. “Come on, make yourself at home.”

He followed the engineer across the sill. “Hey, this is pretty nice!”

Tak stooped to peer into a crackling kerosene heater. “It’s comfortable…now I know I didn’t walk out of here and leave this thing going. Someday I’m gonna come back home and find this whole place just a pile of ashes—of course, in Bellona that could happen whether I left it on or not.” He stood up, shaking his head. “It gets a little chilly here in the morning. I might as well leave it go.”

“Christ, you’ve got a lot of books!”

Shelves covered the back wall, floor to ceiling, filled with paperbacks.

And: “Is that a short wave setup?”

“Part of one. The rest is in the next room. I could just sit in bed and CQ all over the place—if I could get anything but static. The interference around this place is something terrible. Then, it may be something’s wrong with my set. I’ve got my own power supply: a couple of dozen acid batteries in the back. And a gasoline charger.” He stepped to the desk in the corner, shrugged his jacket down the gold rug of his back, and hung it on a wall hook. (He still wore his cap.) Blurred in blond, his forearm bore a dragon, his bicep some naval insignia. On one shoulder, a swastika had been tattooed, then, not very efficiently, removed. “Have a seat.” Tak pulled a swivel chair from the desk, turned it around, and sat. Knees wide, he slid his hand under his belt to arrange himself where his genitals bagged the denim. “Take the bed…there.”

An incongruous fur throw lay on the board floor. An India print draped down over what he thought was a daybed. But when he sat on it, he realized it was just a very thin mattress on the top of some built-out cabinet: or at any rate, just plank. Still, the place looked comfortable. “You’re doing a little better than those kids in the park.”

Tak grinned, took off his cap, and dropped it on the desk blotter. “I guess I am. But then, that’s not too difficult.” The military short hair jarred with his unshaven jaw.

The desk, except for the cap, was bare.

Shelves above it held binoculars, slide rules, drafting compasses and pens, two pocket calculators, French curves and templates, colored pentels, several cut and polished geodes, a row of ornamental daggers on display stands, a pile of plastic parts boxes, a soldering gun…

“Hey…” Tak slapped one knee. “I’m gonna make some coffee. Got some canned ham, too. Real good ham. And bread.” He stood up and went to a door, hung, like the windows, with tan splints. “You just relax. Take it easy. Take your clothes off and stretch out, if you want.” By his boot, the bubbling heater picked out what still glowed in the scuffed leather. “I’ll be back in a minute. Glad you like the place. I do too.” He ducked through bamboo.

On one wall (he had only glanced till now) were three, yard-high, full color, photographic posters:

On one, some adolescent weightlifter, Germanic as Tak, wearing only boots and a denim jacket with no sleeves, leaned against a motorcycle, stubby hands flat against his naked legs.

On the second, a muscular black, in what could have been Tak’s jacket, cap, and boots, stood against some indistinct purple background, legs wide, one fist before bared thigh, one against his bare hip.

On the third, a dark youth—Mexican or Indian perhaps?—shirtless and shoeless, sat on a boulder under a stark, blue sky, his jeans pushed down to his knees.

Their bared genitals were huge.

The photographs had been taken from crotch level, too, to make them look even larger.

From the other room he heard pans clinking; a cabinet opened and closed.

By the head of the bed, on a table near a tensor lamp, books were piled irregularly:

A bunch on the Hell’s Angels: Thompson, and Reynolds/McClure; four cheaply bound, two-dollar paperbacks: Angels on Wheels, and Weekend in Hell: A True Story of the Angels as Told by Millicent Brash—he read the first paragraph of ill-lined type, shook his head, and put it down. A book called Bike Bitch was apparently the sequel to (same cover/different author) Bike Bastard. Under that was The Poems of Rimbaud, with English at the bottom of the pages; then a paperback Selected Letters of Keats; next, Dickey’s Deliverance; a green, hard-covered book of logs and trigonometric functions, place held by a white enamel, circular slide rule. There was sundry science fiction by Russ (something called The Female Man), Zelazny, and Disch. The last book he picked up had a purple and gold reproduction of a Leonor Fini for cover: Evil Companions. He opened it in the middle, read from the top of the left-hand page to the bottom of the right, closed it, frowning, went to the bamboo, and pushed it aside.

“You ever see one of these in somebody’s house before?” Tak thumped the grey cabinet with his elbow. “It’s a Micro Wave oven. They’re great. You can roast a whole rib roast in ten, twenty minutes. They cost about six hundred dollars. At least that’s what the price tag said in the store I lifted this one from. Only I don’t like to run it because it uses up so much power. Someday, though, I’m gonna give a dinner party for thirty or forty people. Hold it outside on the roof. For all my friends in the city. I’ll knock their eye out with what this thing can do.” He turned to the counter.

On two burners of a three-burner camp stove, pale flames from canned heat licked an enameled coffeepot and an iron skillet. Along the back of the counter were several gallons of wine, white and red, and a dozen bottles of whiskeys, liqueurs, and brandies. “This is sort of my work room.” Back muscles shifted under hairy flesh. “Probably spend more time here than in the front.” More bookshelves here; more shortwave components; a work bench slagged with solder, strewn with spaghetti wire, bits of pegboard in which dozens of small, colorful transistors, resistors, and capacitors had been stuck; several disassembled chassis. A single easy-chair, with stuffing pushing between worn threads across the arms, made the room cluttered. Above the tin sink, the bamboo had been pushed back from the glass. (The putty can stood open on the sill, a kitchen knife stuck in it; the panes were spotless—save a few puttied fingerprints.) Outside, two pairs of jeans and a lot of socks hung from a line. “You looking for the john, Kid? I just use the roof. There’s a coffee can upside down outside with a roll of toilet paper under it. There’s no drain. Everything goes right over the edge.”

“Naw, that’s okay.” He stepped through. Bamboo clicked and clicked behind him. “I guess here—in a place like Bellona—you can have about anything you want. I mean, you just walk in and take it out of stores and things.”

“Only—” Tak put a handful of something in the skillet—“I don’t want very much.” Steam, hissing, made the room smell, and sound, very good. “Figured while I was at it I’d make us up a full breakfast. I’m starved.”

“Yeah…” At the pungence of thyme and fennel, the space beneath his tongue flooded. “I guess if you liked you could live here about as well as you wanted.” And rosemary…

On a cutting board by the stove, a loaf of mahogany-colored bread sat among scattered crumbs. “Fresh food is hard as hell to come by. Meat especially. But there’s canned stuff in the city enough to last…” Tak frowned back over his hirsute shoulder. “Truth is, I don’t know how long it’ll last. I lucked out on a couple of pretty well-stocked places nobody else seems to have found yet. You’ll discover, by and large, people are not very practical around here—if they were, I guess they wouldn’t be here. But when somebody else eventually does stumble on one of my classified, top-secret, hush-hush food sources, in a place like Bellona you can’t very well say, ‘Go away or I’ll call the cops.’ There aren’t any cops to call. Have a piece of bread. Another thing I lucked out on: Ran into this woman who bakes loaves and loaves of stuff every week; just gives it away to anyone who comes by. For some reason I do not quite understand, she won’t use any sugar or salt, so, good as it looks, it takes a bit of getting used to. But it’s filling. She lives in the Lower Cumberland Park area—talk about nuts. She’s very nice and I’m glad I know her, but she visits all sorts of people, many of whom are simply not in.” Tak finished cutting a slice, turned and held it out. “Margarine’s over there; haven’t found any frozen butter for a while. Good plum preserves, though. Homemade in somebody’s cellar last fall.”

He took the bread, picked up a kitchen knife, and removed the top from a plastic butter dish.

“That should hold you till breakfast, which—” Tak swirled a spatula in the skillet—“is three minutes off.”

Under the jelly and the margarine, bread crumbled on his tongue, oddly flat. Still, it goaded his appetite.

Chewing, he looked through the newspapers piled to one side of the cluttered workbench.

BELLONA TIMES

Saturday, April 1, 1919

BELLONA TIMES

Wednesday, December 25, 1933

BELLONA TIMES

Thursday, December 25, 1940

BELLONA TIMES

Monday, December 25, 1879

The headline for that one:

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON QUITS MONTEREY FOR FRISCO!

“Calkins has a thing for Christmas?”

“That was last week,” Tak said. “A couple back, every other issue was 1984.”

The next half dozen papers went from July 14, 2022, to July 7, 1837 (Headline: ONLY ONE HUNDRED YEARS TILL THE DEATH OF HARLOW!)

“It’s a real event when he brings out two papers with consecutive dates. They’re never two in a row with the same year. But sometimes he slips up and Tuesday actually follows Wednesday—or do I have that backward? Well, I’m just surprised people don’t take bets; trying to pick the next date for the Times could be the Bellona equivalent to playing the numbers. Oh, he’s got real news in there—articles on evacuation problems, scorpions terrorizing remaining citizens, what’s happening in the poorer communities, pleas for outside help—even an occasional personality article on newcomers.” Tak gave him a knowing nod. “You read it; but it’s the only paper around to read. I read it up here. John, Wally, Mildred, Jommy—they read it down in the park. Still, it makes me incredibly hungry to see a real paper, you know? Just to find out how the rest of the world is getting on without us.”

Did Tak’s voice veer, once more, toward that unsettling tone? Only by suggestion, he realized, and realized too: The longer he stayed, the less of that tone he would hear. Whatever request for complicity, in whatever labyrinth of despair, it made of the listener, whatever demand for relief from situations which were by definition unrelievable, these requests, these demands could only be made of the very new to such labyrinths, such situations. And time, even as he munched flat bread, was erasing that status. “The rest of the country, it’s fine.”

Tak turned, with the knife.

He jumped, even though he knew Fire Wolf was only in the midst of some domestic slicing. “Yesterday, I think it was: I got a ride with a guy who had an L.A. paper in his car. Nothing’s wrong on the West Coast. Then later, two women picked me up; and they had a Philadelphia paper. The Eastern Seaboard’s all okay.” He looked down at the papers on the bench again, watched his thick, nail-gnawed fingers grub there, leaving crumbs, margarine tracks, jelly stains. “This is the only place where…” He shrugged, wondering if Tak took his news as good, bad; or even believed it. “…I guess.”

“Why don’t you pour some coffee?” Tak said.

“Okay.” He stepped around the armchair, lifted the enameled pot from the burner; the handle stung his knuckle as he poured.

In the cups, one after another, glistening disks rose, black without translucence.

“We’ll eat inside.” Above the plates of eggs, ham, and bread, two amber ponies rose on the tray between Tak’s gripping thumbs. As Tak turned to the bamboo, the brandies ran with light.

Inside, sitting on the bed again, he lay his plate on his clamped knees till it burned. Lifting it by one edge, then the other, he speared ham chunks from the gravy, or pushed them on his fork with his thumb.

“It’s amazing what Worcestershire will do for dehydrated eggs,” Tak said through a mouthful of food, “thank God.”

He bit a tiny die of garlic; in his stinging mouth the scrambled flavors bloomed; the confusion of tastes recalled many good things, but gave no basic flavor (his plate was half clean already) to which he could fix his tongue.

“Since this is supper as well as breakfast—” seated at the desk, Tak poured himself another glass—“I guess brandy is all right.”

He nodded, the amber bulb lost in his outsized fingers. “It’s really good.” He looked back at his plate and wished there was a vegetable; even some lettuce.

“You have any plans where you’ll go?” Tak finished his second pony, poured another, and extended the bottle.

He shook his head to the drink and shrugged at the question.

“You can catch some sleep here.”

Idly, he thought: Artichokes. Then he looked at the posters. “You’re really into the S and M thing, huh?” He hoped the food in his mouth would muddle the comment.

“Mmm?” Tak’s coffee chattered as he sipped. “It depends on who I’m with.” He put his cup on the desk, opened the side drawer, reached in: “You ever seen one like this?”

It was an orchid.

The blades, twice as long as his had been, with greater curve, were brass. On the ornate band, brass leaves, shells, and claws gripped the bases of the damasked knives.

Tak placed the points around his left nipple, pressed, winced—let the weapon drop to his lap. “Not your thing, huh?” In the yellow hair, flushed points ringed his breast. “It’s a beautiful object.” He smiled, shook his head, and put it back in the drawer.

“Can I put my brandy in my coffee?”

“You can do anything you like.”

“Oh, yeah.” He spilled the glass over the steaming black. “Uh…thanks.” He raised the cup. Brandy fumed about his face. A deep breath made his tongue stagger in his throat. “It’s a very nice breakfast.” Squinting eyes observed his from beyond the cup’s bottom.

He drank, set the cup on the floor, thumbed the last of the ham onto his fork; still chewing, he set the plate down by the cup.

“More brandy?”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on.” Tak poured himself a third glass. “Relax. Take your shirt off.”

He had known what was coming since he’d accepted the invitation in the park. Another time, he would have had some feelings about it. But feelings were muted in him; things had drifted to this without his really considering. He tried to think of something to say, couldn’t, so unbuttoned the three buttons, pulled the tails from his pants.

Tak raised his eyebrows at the optical chain. “Where’d you get that?”

“On my way here.”

“Outside the city?”

“It says ‘Made in Brazil’…I think.”

Tak shook his head. “Bellona has become a city of strange—” he burlesqued the word with a drawl—“craftsmen. Ah, the notions that are engineered here! Orchids, light-shields, that chain you’re wearing—our local folk art.”

“I’m not going to take it off!” The conviction surprised him; its articulation astounded him.

Tak laughed. “I wasn’t going to ask you to.” He looked down at his chest, ran his forefinger, in the hair, from one pink dot to the next—still visible where he’d pressed the orchid prongs. “You’ve got some nerve thinking you were ever any crazier than anybody else.”

His shirt lay beside him on the bed. He pulled his hands together into his lap, fingers and knuckles twisted around one another—scratched his dark, creased stomach with his thumb. “Look, about…being nuts.” He felt self-righteous and shy, looked at the doubled fist of flesh, hair, horn and callous pressed into his groin; it suddenly seemed weighted with the bones in it. “You’re not, and you never have been. That means what you see, and hear, and feel, and think…you think that is your mind. But the real mind is invisible: you’re less aware of it, while you think, than you are of your eye while you see…until something goes wrong with it. Then you become aware of it, with all its dislocated pieces and its rackety functioning, the same way you become aware of your eye when you get a cinder in it. Because it hurts…Sure, it distorts things. But the strange thing, the thing that you can never explain to anyone, except another nut, or, if you’re lucky, a doctor who has an unusual amount of sense—stranger than the hallucinations, or the voices, or the anxiety—is the way you begin to experience the edges of the mind itself…in a way other people just can’t.” He pushed his shirt down to the foot of the bed, pushed his sandal free of his foot with his other toes. “You see?” He was far more conscious of the texture of the floorboards with the foot that had been bare.

“All right.” Tak spoke gently and appeasingly “Why don’t you take the rest of your clothes off?”

“Look, I’m awfully dirty, man—” He raised his eye. “I probably stink like hell. If you don’t want—”

“I know just what you stink like,” Tak said. “Go on.”

He took a breath, suddenly found it funny, lay back on the hard pallet, unhooked his belt, and closed his eyes.

He heard Tak grunt. One, then another boot, thumped on the floor and fell over.

A moment later a warm hip pressed his. Palms and fingers pressed his stomach; the fingers spread. Tak slid his hands to the jeans’ waist, tugged.

Heels and shoulders pressed on the hard pad, he raised his buttocks.

Tak slid the jeans down, and—“Jesus Christ, man! What’s the matter with you—that stuff all over your dick!”

“What…huh?” He opened his eyes, propped his elbows under him, looked down at himself. “What do you…?” Then he grinned. “Nothing’s the matter. What’s the matter with you?”

“You got dandruff in your crotch?”

“That’s not dandruff. I was with a woman. Just before I met you. Only I didn’t get a chance to wash.”

“Was she sick?”

“Naw. Didn’t you ever fuck a woman?”

Tak had a strange expression. “I’ll be honest: I can count the attempts on the fingers of one hand.” He narrowed his already thin mouth.

“If my God-damn feet don’t turn you off, that’s sure not going to hurt you!” He reached to brush off his rough groin hair. “It’s just like dried…cum or something.” The chain glittered across it. “It happens with some women, when they’re very wet. It’s nothing wrong.” He stopped brushing, let himself back down on his elbows. “I bet it turns you on.”

Tak shook his head, then laughed.

“Go on,” he said.

Tak lowered his head, looked up once with bright blue eyes: “It turns you on, doesn’t it?”

He reached down for the hairy shoulder, pressed: “Go on.”

Thick arms joined under his waist. Once Tak, twice-full fist between their groins, ground his stubbed chin against his neck. He pushed Tak away; the chunky head rolled down his chest and belly. The heated ring of Tak’s mouth fell down his cock; his cock engorged; the ring rose; and fell down again. Tak’s forehead butted low on his stomach. He had to cross his ankles and strain, his mouth open, his eyes closed, the chain tightening on his chest. Think of her, it would be easy. (Tak’s face pressed glass bits into his groin hair.) The insides of his lids were moon-silvered, run with cracks like branches. A memory of blowing leaves suddenly became hair moving from her face, eyes clamped, mouth taking tiny breaths. He gasped at the welling heat, and came. A moment later Tak raised his head, grunted, “Yeah…” and moiled his wet, sensitive genitals.

He clamped his teeth.

Tak elbowed up beside him, turned on his back.

His forehead pressed Tak’s arm. From his left eye, Loufer’s chest was a heaving meadow. (His right was closed against flesh.) “You want me to do anything?” He didn’t feel like doing anything. He was tired.

Tak scooped up his head and pulled it against him.

Chest hair ran between his fingers.

“Bite my tit,” Tak said. “The right one. Hard.”

“Okay. Where is…? Oh.” He gripped the knoblet in his teeth.

Tak pushed his hand to the outsized scrotum, squeezed his fingers to the full, wrinkled flesh. “Go on. Really hard.”

Tak’s fist fell and fell on his hand heel. It took a long time.

He ground Tak’s nipple in his teeth, chin and nose rubbing in hair. He squeezed Tak’s testicles a few times, tightening his grip as much as he could; Tak’s rhythm quickened. And his own mouth was salty; he didn’t want to see if it was blood.

Something hot spattered his hip and rolled down between them. He let go, with teeth and fingers, closed his eyes, and turned over. A heavy arm slid around his chest. Tak’s chin knocked his shoulder a few times seeking a position on the thin pillow; he squeezed Tak’s forearm, once, leaned sleepily, and comfortably, into the cradle of Tak’s body.

And slept.

Now and again, he felt Tak turning and turning on the single bed. Once he awoke fully to a hand rubbing his shoulder; but slept again before the motion halted. At one point he was aware that Tak was not in the bed; at another, felt him climbing back in. Through it all, he had not moved, but lay facing the wall, lids closed, head on his forearm, one knee drawn up, one foot off the mattress bottom, surfacing and submerging in sleep.

Later, he woke with heat behind his groin. As he blinked, sexuality resolved into an urge to pee. He rolled to his back, pushed himself to his elbows.

Loufer, probably unable to get comfortable with two in so cramped a space, sat deep in the swivel chair, knees wide, head lolling forward on one matted shoulder, hands curled on snarled thighs.

Plate on the desk, books scattered on the table; plate and coffee cup on the floor, as well as Tak’s boots, his own sandal, and both their pants—the room, before fairly neat, looked disordered.

When he sat up, his foot carried the print spread to the floor. There was no sheet on the mattress pad. Rings of stain overlapped on the ticking. He kicked the cloth loose, looked at the chain fastened on his ankle, spiraling his calf, groin, stomach, and thigh…He touched, in the hollow of his collarbone, the catch fastening the chain around his neck. He extended his arm, turned it back and forth: light jumped from glass to glass at the loops there, joined around his wrist. Then he hunched to examine one of the mirrors against his belly: it was silvered on both sides. Bent over, on the bed, he felt his bladder burn.

He stood up, went out the door.

Warm.

Grey.

Smoky gauzes tore on his body as he walked toward the balustrade. He dug two horny fingers at the inner corners of his eyes for sleep grains. The retaining wall hit him mid-thigh. Without looking down, he let his water go. It arched away, perfectly silent, while he wondered if there was any traffic…

From a building a block away, astounding billows raised a lopsided tower.

Finished, he leaned across the splattered stone.

The alley was a torrent of grey in which he could see no bottom. Licking his coated teeth, he walked back to the shack, stepped sideways through the tarpapered door: “Hey, you can have your bed back; I’m gonna…”

In the shadowed room, Tak’s chest rose evenly in a subvocal growl.

“I’m going to go now…” but spoke it more softly; he took a few steps toward the naked engineer, asleep in the chair.

Tak’s long toes spread the boards. Between his knuckles, a stumpy cock with its circumcised helmet was nearly hidden in hair above a long, heavy scrotum rivaling those on the posters. The single belly crease, just above his navel, smoothed with each breath.

He looked for scab at the nipple; there was none.

“Hey, I’m gonna go…” The desk drawer was slightly open; inside, in shadow, brass glinted.

He leaned down to look at Tak’s slack lips, the broad nostrils flaring each breath—

And his teeth jarred together. He stepped back, wanted to go forward, stepped back again: his heel hit a coffee cup—cold coffee spread around his foot. He still didn’t look away.

In his lowered face, Tak’s eyes were wide.

Without white or pupil, the balls were completely crimson.

Mouth still closed, he heard himself make a muffled roar.

His left flank glittered with gooseflesh.

He did look again, leaning forward violently, almost hitting Tak’s knee.

Loufer continued his quiet breathing, scarlet-eyed.

He backed away, stepped on wet fur, tried to work his throat loose. Gooseflesh, at face, flank, and buttocks, crawled across him.

He was in his pants when he got outside. He stopped to lean on the wall while he fumbled his sandal strap closed. As he sidestepped the skylight, he punched one arm down one woolen sleeve, pulled back the metal door and went into the dark well, working his other fist down the other.