Dhalgren

2

At the head of the stairs, Kid bent to scratch Muriel, who licked furiously at the ham of his thumb.

Madame Brown came into the hall and said, "Now I didn't even know you'd gone outside! I could have sworn I'd heard you back in Lanya's room just now. Would you like wine, or coffee?"

"Could I have both?" Denny asked.

"Certainly."

"Just wine for me," Lanya said. "That's probably what you want, too, right?"

"Yeah," Kid said. "Thanks."

They followed Madame Brown into the kitchen.

"You want to come to my party?" Kid asked. "Up at Mr Calkins'."

"The one he's giving for your book, that everybody's been talking about?" Madame Brown smiled. Her necklace glittered.

"Huh? Yeah. I guess that's it."

"I'd be delighted."

Lanya, legs crossed, raised the front feet of her chair. "He hasn't invited me, yet." Above her, in the grey window, an asparagus fern turned on a string.

"Oh, you know you two are invited." Kid sat on the kitchen stool.

"You got a party? Up at Calkins'?" Denny, hands in his pockets, leaned on the stove. He moved to let Madame Brown get the enameled coffee pot.

She said: "That should be quite something."

"He said bring about twenty or thirty friends. I'm going to bring the whole nest up."

"Marvelous!" Lanya clapped her hands. "I'm sure that's what he wants."

"Yeah? You think so?"

Madame Brown, dubious, set out glasses and picked the gallon jug up from the floor. "Well, it will be interesting." She twisted at the cap, her face lining with effort. "It's in three Sundays, isn't it?" The cap seemed stuck. "Mary will never forgive me if I go. She's invited me for dinner. But I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Here. I'll do it." Kid opened the bottle and poured out yellow wine. "You got lots of patients here?"

Madame Brown, seated in what looked like a lawn chair, observed her glass. "A few. Would you like to come and have a session with me some afternoon?"

Kid looked up. And thought: I'm embarrassed. Why?

"Lanya's told me about some of the things you were feeling, and how upset you'd been. And about your memory problems. If you'd like to talk about them with someone, I'd be very happy to."

"Now?"

Lanya rocked in her chair.

Denny, sitting at the table now, looked back and forth between his wine glass and coffee cup.

"Goodness, no. Perhaps some afternoon next week. That would be best for me. I'm terminating sessions with two patients then, and if we want to work out something further, it would be a little easier to make arrangements."

"Oh," Kid said. "Yeah. You give therapy to people now?"

"Yes, I have been for quite a while now."

Lanya said, "I told Madame Brown you'd been in therapy before."

"You told her I'd been in a mental hospital?"

"You mentioned that to me once yourself," Madame Brown said.

Kid drank some wine. "Yeah. I'd like to come and talk to you. Thanks. That's nice of you."

"You think he's crazy?" Denny asked. He'd only drunk from the coffee. "He acts pretty funny sometimes. But I don't think he's crazy. Not like Dollar." He looked over his cup at Madame Brown and explained: "Dollar's killed somebody already. Beat his head in with a pipe. Now Dollar's a real nut. You wanna talk to him?"

"You shut up, huh?" Kid said.

Madame Brown said: "I'm afraid I don't have facilities for handling… real nuts. 'Crazy' and 'nuts' are terms doctors don't use — or shouldn't. But, no, I don't think Kid's crazy at all."

Denny's bead had gone to the side and his tongue into his cheek, listening for patronization. His mouth changed shape over the cup. He'd apparently found it.

"I don't want to start any long-term thing," Kid said, "where I come back and back — yeah, I know that's how it works. But I just don't want to get into that"

"Whether or not you needed something long term would more or less depend on what we found out in the first sessions, wouldn't it? So we'll do first things first."

"Okay…" Kid felt wary.

"You know—" Lanya's chair legs came down—"that whole thing about Dollar killing Wally has really got me upset."

"What is this," Madame Brown asked, "about someone killing somebody?"

So they told her.

"Now he sounds nuts." Madame Brown nodded.

"Oh, he ain't that nuts," Denny answered.

Madame Brown sighed: "Well, I suppose that afternoon did provide some extenuating circumstances." But she sounded more worried than convinced.

The bell rang.

"My patient. Well, my break is over." Madame Brown left the room.

As soon as she'd gone, Denny said: "Did you know that while you was asleep last night, the guys had two girls in the back they were shagging? Man, them niggers really went to town! I used to watch a lot, but I never took no turn before. One of them, the little white one, she was freaky, man! Really. Freaky. Glass said I could take a turn, if I wanted." He revolved the cup to align the handle with a crack between the table boards. "So I did. To come, though I had to pretend—" Denny glanced at Kid—"stuff with you."

"You been busy, huh?" Kid hadn't known; he was surprised.

Denny looked at Lanya. "I pretended about you too."

"I don't know whether I should be flattered or not." She rocked her chair again. "I've always pictured myself as a pretty worldly young lady, but you guys have a way of making me feel like I just got out of a convent. Not—" she let the chair legs down—"that I'm trying to keep up… well, maybe I am, just a little." She stood, stepped around the table corner, and put a hand on either side of Denny's face, which rotated between her palms, mouth opened. She dropped her mouth on his. He held the edge of the table and strained his neck to kiss her. Finally, he let go with one hand and put it around her waist. "Hey—" he pulled his face away from hers—"that's nice," giggled, and kissed her again.

Kid's laughter made them look.

"What would you do," Kid said, "if I brought the whole nest around and had them all lined up, taking turns?" *,

Leaning against Denny's shoulder, Lanya frowned. "I wouldn't put it past you, you bastard… Naw, that's not true. You wouldn't." She glanced down and sat on Denny's knee. Denny immediately settled one hand over her breast and frowned at her. "Gang bangs, chains, leather — it isn't my scene."

"I've got a hard-on," Denny said.

"You've had a hard-on ever since I met you," Lanya told him. "Look, you two: two guys making it together turns me on. That's all. Most of my friends have always been gay. That's what I dig."

"I know a lot of guys who dig dikes," Denny said.

Lanya bit his ear.

"Owww…!"

"Anyway," she said, "that's the turn-on for me. Not getting gang-shagged."

"Glib." Kid rocked his stool legs now. "But logical."

"I think you look cute in my vest," Denny said. "You think I look cute without it?"

"As a bug, babes," Lanya told him.

"Hey," Denny said. "Are you mad at me?"

"No," she said. "Just a little confused." She looked at Kid. "I can never figure out if you're the person I keep thinking you are."

Kid stood up, walked over, and stopped with his hands on Lanya's shoulders, his legs astraddle Denny's knee. "If I talk about you screwing Denny or me, it's for real. If I talk about you screwing anybody else, I'm joking. See? And you can do or talk about whatever you want."

"And I think you misunderstand me entirely—" she nodded with a look both wary and wry—"sometimes."

He kissed her (face turning between his palms) and had to bend his legs. She turned her head gently back and forth, rubbing his tongue with hers, and meshed her fingers behind his neck, pulling his down, harder. Finally he had to settle his weight on Denny's thigh. Denny took Kid's shoulder with one hand. The knuckles of the other moved against Kid's breast, fondling hers. Kid's hands slid between Lanya's back and Denny's belly.

"Both of you," Denny said, "weigh more than I do. Either me or the chair is gonna go, one."

Lanya laughed into Kid's mouth.

"Let's go back into your room and ball." Kid said.

He had actually thought one or the other of them would protest.

At her desk, he read the list for the sixth time. The sky beyond the bay window, dense and low, darkened toward evening. Roberts or Rudolph, Rivers or Evers: Fantasize a persona for any. Which, he pondered, would I pick myself? Some permutation… Gary Morgan, Terry Rivers, Thomas Weldon? None was his. Was one perhaps nearer than the other? No… if they are all. real people, he reflected, then each is just as important. Hey, Kamp, isn't this what that democracy's about that put you up on… a moon? (But I don't want one. I need one about as much as I need a handful of dollars.) Lips tight, he picked up the papers: Three sheets from the phone pad, two pieces of newsprint, the back, blank pages of a paperback, some sheets of Lanya's paper — all he had written since Brass Orchids. I promised not to write any more; Newboy promised I would. Kid smiled, putting one paper behind the other. He slipped Brass Orchids from beneath the notebook, opened it, closed it, opened it again. Holding it on his palm too long made his stomach ache. Such a strange, marvelous, and marvelously inadequate object! He was still unable to read it through. He still tried. And tried again, and tried till his throat was constricted, his forearms wet, and his heart hammered down where he'd always thought his liver was. Neither dislike nor discomfort with the work explained that. Rather the book itself was lodged in some equatioa where it did not belong, setting off hyperradicals and differentials through all the chambers of his consciousness. He looked over at the notebook, read what was on the page behind the list:

In an age glutted with information, this "storage method" is, necessarily, popular. But these primitive

was the end of the page. He did not turn to the next Wittgenstein, Lévi-Straus, Chomsky: He mulled their sounds. A year, a year and a half ago, he had read everything he could find by one.

He had never heard of the other two.

"Lingual synthesis…" That was nice on the tongue. "…particularly parametric works…" He picked up Brass Orchids, balanced it on blunt fingers. "…careful, crystalline catalysts…" He nodded. A particularly parametric work of careful, crystalline catalysts in lingual synthesis. That, at any rate, was the type of object it ought to be. Well, it was short.

One of them turned in the bed.

One of them turned again.

He looked across the room:

The tent of a knee. An arm over an arm.

The chair back was cool against his. Caning prickled the bottom of one thigh. The plants leaned from their pots.

He pinched the bright chain across his belly.

Dark ones coiled the clothing on the floor.

Suppose, he thought, she wants me to stay and him to go. Well, I get rid of the bastard. Suppose she wants me to go? I get rid of all the bastards.

But she won't. She likes privacy too much. Why else would she go along with this? Along? Something in me would like to have it that she is doing this for me. But all joy in it comes from those moments when it is obviously real as her music, and personally otherwise.

I am restless.

She turns restlessly.

His arm, limp, moves with her moving shoulder.

Lanya blinked, raised her head. Kid watched her eyes close and her head lay down. He was smiling. He turned Brass Orchids in his hands, turned the loose pages, as though he might heft, through some quality other than weight, the difference.

The notebook was open again at the list. Puzzling, he read the names once more (it was almost too dark), this time right to left, bottom to top: