Dhalgren (108 page)

When I got up and went into the living room, most of them were still asleep. Fireball sat on the edge of the couch eating something out of a cup with a spoon. He stood up when I came in (Filament with, oddly, Devastation were tucked together on the couch behind him; the pale Black Widow, with the dark Lady of Spain curled against her, slept on the floor among Tarzan-and-most-of-the-apes) as though he wanted to speak to me. I nodded.

He nodded back. He didn't seem to be able to start, though, so he ate another spoonful.

"Come here," I told him.

Still shoeless, he stepped over a confusion of feet—the Widow's dull black Wellingtons: Cathedral's floppy brown suedes. I put my hand on his shoulder. "You like Dollar, don't you?"

Fireball said: "He's a pretty funny little guy. But he's really okay, huh?" The scrawny, rusty-haired coon had a sleepy half-smile. His eyes looked like circles cut from our sky, tossed into the evenly milky coffee of his face.

"Good," I told him. "You look out for him. You make sure he doesn't get into any trouble around here, you hear?"

The smile wavered—

"Somebody's got to. And I'm tired of it. So you do it now. You hear me?"

—and fell.

He nodded.

"Good." With both hands I took off one of my chains, put it over his head, and hung my fists on his chest. I pulled one down, while the other raised, my knuckles sliding on his skin. Then I ran it the other way. "This'll go with the one you already took for yourself, right?"

Fireball blinked at me.

"It's yours." I let go.

"That mean I'm a member…?"

Raven, on the floor, propped his head on his elbow. "That's the way we play, sweetheart." He laughed, rolled over (into Cathedral who just grunted), and closed his eyes.

Fireball looked back at me. The sleepy smile returned. "Okay," he said. "Hey, thanks, Kid. Okay…"

"You look out for that crazy, pimple-faced white bastard."

"Okay," he repeated. "I will." Then he ate another spoonful out of his cup.

I went onto the porch.

Risa was sitting outside on a crate under a tree, reading.
(Brass Orchids?
I craned to see. Yeah.) Rubbing two fingers in the dusty corner of the screenless frame, I watched her, wondering if I should go down and ask her about what I was thinking, finally decided: Fuck it, if you're gonna do it, do it.

I went down the steps—the door clacked behind me—and crossed the yard. "Hey…" I squatted beside her, elbows and hands (wondering how can they get
that
dirty in just a day) a double bridge, knee to knee. "I wanted to know, I mean, about last night."

She looked up.

"You enjoyed that, huh? I mean, you were into it. Because some of the—one of the women seemed a little upset by it. So I wanted to… know."

She'd slapped her hand over the page like she didn't want me to see it. Which was odd. Her heavy legs shifted. She looked uncomfortable. I waited, thinking: Well, she's probably just not a very verbal person, or maybe she just can't get answers to questions like that together, just like that; or maybe it's a stupid question, or just an embarrassing one. I mean she could have always said: Look, asshole, why do you think I was
doing
it if I didn't like it? Also, I felt silly pretending, even to myself, I was speaking for Lady of Spain when, of course, I was speaking for me.

"I mean," I said, "I was curious: if you felt any one had… well, forced you?"

The top two buttons of her blue shirt were open. Her brown skin was creased between her neck and shoulder.

Last night, her eyes, half closed, had seemed so large. Now, wide, they looked small. What she said (a lot more together than I'd expected) was: "That was
mine,"
and opened and closed her mouth to say something else, but ended up repeating: "That was all mine. You just can't have any part of that. That's all. It was… mine!"

"I mean—" I was surprised—but I just shrugged: "I just wanted to know if you… enjoyed it?"

She said: "You go find out yourself, if you want it!" Then, like she was jerking from an anticipated blow, her eyes slipped back to the page. Her fist slipped back to her lap.

I stood up, my mind jutting off on:
Do
I want to get gang-banged myself? Well, all right, consider. Considering, I walked across the yard. One: I don't like to take it up the ass because when I've tried, it's almost always hurt like hell. Maybe half a dozen times, it turned out not to be painful, just indifferent (one of these was two days ago with Denny and Lanya, and the emotional thing there, anyway, was nice). But, Two: I've had my own dick up the asses of enough guys who were obviously feeling no pain, and a lot of pleasure. And I've been in line and taken my turn in a guy's ass like with Risa's cunt last night. So (Three:) if Risa's right, maybe there's something wrong with
me
that every—well
almost
every—time a cat has tried to shove his dick into me, it fucking stings…? Anyway, if nothing else, she had said something that had made me think, which is one way I decided if people are intelligent.

As I went up the steps, Copperhead's head came out of the door; passed by me, went over, squatted by her (like he'd seen me do? Presumably not.) and put his freckled hand on the knee of her jeans. They bent close, conferring. She said something that made him laugh. (She didn't look too happy though.) I stepped through the screen door onto the porch, glanced out the window again.

As Copperhead stood, Lady of Spain (with Filament, just behind her), passed now on the other side of the fence, stopped with three fingers hooked over the chipped boards and asked—I could hear her chains click the wood but not really what she said—Risa something like, How was she feeling?

Risa twisted a little, frowned, and said: "My back is sore."

Spitt was on the porch, standing by the sink, his arms folded. "She's something, huh?" He looked resentful as hell.

I glanced out at Risa, looked back at Spitt." He was shaking his head. "How many times she get fucked? Sixty? Seventy-five times?"

"Aw, man," I told him. "You crazy? Would you believe sixteen, seventeen?
Maybe
twenty?"

"Huh?"

"There were only seven, eight of us
doing
anything. And half of us only went once."

Spitt thought a few seconds. "But, Jesus Christ…
Look
at her! She's just
sitting
there, reading your damn book like that!"

"Spitt," I said, "balling a couple of dozen people in one night is merely a prerequisite for understanding anything worth knowing." I mean I
have
done that. "That's just the way it is."

Spitt didn't seem to think that was funny, so I went back into the kitchen and left him looking. Somebody (Spitt?) had washed a lot of the dishes.

This is the last full balnk [blank?] page left.

Re-reading, I note the entries only ghost chronological order. Not only have I filled up all the free pages, but all the half and quarter pages left around the poems or at the ends of other entries. A few places where my handwriting is fairly large, I can write between lines. I'll have to do a lot more writing in the margins. Maybe I'll try writing cross-ways over pages filled up already.

Sometimes I cannot tell who wrote what. That is upsetting. With some sections, I can remember the place and time I wrote them, but have no memory of the incidents described. Similarly, other sections refur to things I recall happening to me, but kne/o/w just as well I never wrote out. Then there are pages that, today, I interpret one way with the clear recollection of having interpretted them another at the last re-reading.

Most annoying is when I recall an entry, go hunting through, and
not find it
find it or half of it not there: I've read some pages so many tunes they've pulled loose from the wire spiral. Some of these I've caught before they ripped completely free, folded
some or
them up and put them inside the front cover. Carrying the book around, though, I must have let them slip out. The first pages—poems and journal notes—are all gone, as well as pages here and there through the rest.

More will go, too.

I work the paper strips, edged with torn perforations, out of the [s]piral with my pencil point. And write more. Looking at the last page, I can't tell if it's the same one that was there a month ago or not.

was nearly too bizarre for comment:

Stopped into
Teddy's.
It was so early I wondered why it was open. Maybe five people there, among them—Jack. He sat on the last stool, hands (skin grey, cuticles wedged with black, crowns scimitared with it, half moons shadowed under cracked skin) flat on the counter. His hair feathered the rim of his ear (in the twisted cartilage: white flakes. On the trumpet's floor: dry amber) and went without change into sideburns that join around his chin in scrubby beard. His neck was grey—with one clean smear (where he'd been rubbing himself?). His lids were thickened, coral rimmed, and lashless. The short sleave of his shirt: torn on the seam over white flesh. Above the backs of his shoes, his socks, both heels torn, curled from ridged, black callous. The fly flap on his slacks was broken. The brass teeth roller-coastered over his lap and under his belt—the buckle tongue had snapped: he'd tied the belt-ends together. "You wanna buy me a beer?" he asked. "First night I got to town, I brought you and your girl friend a beer."

"Just ask for what you want," I said.

The bartender glanced over, pushed a rolled sleeve higher; from under his thick fingers the tattoed leopard stalked the jungle of his arm.

"I'd buy it myself," Jack said. "But, you know, I've been pretty down and out. You buy me a beer, man, and I'll do the same for you, soon as I get myself back on my feet."

I said to the bartender: "How come you won't serve him?"

The bartender put his knuckles on the counter and swayed. "All he gotta do is ask for what he wants." He looked around at the other customers.

"Give us a couple of beers," I said.

"Right up." The open bottles clacked the boards in front of us.

"There you go." I took a swallow from mine.

Jack's bottle sat between his thumbs. He looked at it, then moved his fingers a little to the left.

What he'd done was adjust the spaces so that the bottle was centered between his hands.

The bartender glanced again, pursed his lips—about as close as he would let himself get to shaking his head—and moved away, fist over fist.

"You don't have to pay here," I said.

"If I could pay," Jack said, "I really would; I mean, if I had it, I'd buy it myself. I'm not a skinflint, man. I'm really generous when I got it."

I considered a moment. Then I said: "Just a second." I reached in my pants pocket.

The dollar bill, in a moist knot, came up between my third and fourth finger. It was so crumpled, at first I thought I'd just found some dirty paper I'd stuck there (a discarded poem?). I spread it on the counter. One corner, from sweat and rubbing, was worn away down to the frame of the "1".

While Jack looked at it, I wondered what Lanya would do with hers; or Denny with his.

Jack raised his head, slowly. The corner of his mouth was cracked and sore. "You can have a pretty rough time in this city, you know?" His hands were still flat. Foam bubbled up his bottle neck and over, puddling at the base. "I just don't understand it, man. I don't. I mean, I've done everything I could think of, you know? But it just don't look like I can make it here no how. Since I been here—?" He turned to me. Bubbles banked and broke against his fingers. "I been
nice
to people! They got all different kinds of people here, too. I mean I ain't never
seen
all kinds of different people like this here before. I've been nice and tried to listen, and learn how to do, you know? Learn my way around. 'Cause it
is
different here… But I just don't know." His eyes went above and behind me.