Dhalgren

“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 ba

“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 fu

“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 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 gri

The desk, except for the cap, was bare.