Dhalgren

“You got electricity here?” Kid asked.

“In two rooms,” Madame Brown explained. “Oh, the candles? Well, we’re so near Jackson, we thought we better have them around, in case.”

Two rooms away, unlit: a wall of books, a desk, an easy chair.

“That’s my office in there,” Madame Brown commented on Kid’s stare.

Which brought his eyes to more candleholders in the next room. “Um…this is really a nice place.”

“There’re some marvelous houses all through this area, if you just look. They’re not hard to find at all. Though I suppose we were lucky with this one. Most of the furniture was already here.”

“The rent must be a steal,” Kid said, “if you don’t mind the neighborhood.”

“Oh, we don’t pay any—” After an emotionless moment (Kid stopped and De

“Yeah?” He’d intended the smile to be cynical; but pleasure pushed him into joyous, goofy sincerity. “She does?”

“She reads people passages out loud after di

“Maybe from her,” Kid said. “Not from him. Don’t you think those people…?” and, watching her, decided to let it drop.

But she took it on:

“What is it that writer all you youngsters were reading here a few years ago was saying: ‘The problem isn’t to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.’”

Collected Poems 1930-1950, Stones, Pilgrimage, Rictus, The Dynamic Moment, A Sense of Commencement and The Charterhouse of Ballarat, all by Ernest Newboy, were book-ended at the back of the desk with two African statuettes. The last three volumes together were twice as thick as the first four.

“Well, they’re not at my hand. I mean, I don’t hold your friends against you. I got some pretty strange ones myself.”

“I didn’t think you did, which is one of the reasons I like you. And they haven’t done anything to me…yet.”

The “yet” challenged him to possibilities. It also tested his reticence. So he asked, “How’d you and Lanya get…together here?”

“Oh, she’s a fine roommate! Energetic, lively…It’s nice to have someone so sharp around. When I had to leave my other place—but you weren’t here for that. You could have helped us move. I was being terrorized to death. Nothing had happened, definitively, but I had to move. Lanya helped me find this place. I’ve always liked her and…well, I suggested that we share. It’s worked out very nicely, I think. The school is only a couple of blocks from here. The few patients I’ve taken on—”

The bell rang.

“One now. You know—” as she moved around them toward the hall—“I really thought that’s what you were. When I came down to let you in.” She waved toward another hallway. “Lanya’s room is down there. Go in and wake her up. I know she wants to see you.” They heard her gait go from the hallway’s measured rush to the stairwell’s hurried canter.

De

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” De

There were no bulbs in the elaborate ceiling fixture. An immense painting (De

“That door,” De

It was ajar.

“Go in, go on in,” Kid said. De

Warm air puffed at his face. The burning here had a hint of gas—in front of a tile fireplace a heater flickered and hissed through its lower grille.

She slept on a daybed, under a pink blanket. Before a huge canvas with violent colors and no frame, arms of vegetation, white and purple, bent over her from a dozen pots, spidered in the bay window, or hung from the mantle.

“Christ, it’s hot!” De

“Go on,” Kid said. “Wake her up.”

De

“I want to watch,” Kid said.

De

Her cheek was flat on the pillow, and both bare shoulders touched the sheet. Her hand near her face bent sharply at the wrist. One heel, greyed at the rim, stuck out, toes turned in.

—put one knee on the mattress (she went Uhhhh, turned her face down, and her heel pulled under the cover), swung the other over to straddle her and grabbed her head.

“Hey…” One arm shot out and waved. “God damn, let go of my…” She got over on her back. “What are you doing, huh…Oh, hey…” The arm came back and locked around De

De

“Oh, come on…”

—and laughed. “Kid said I should wake you up.”

“Huh?”

“He wanted to watch.”

“With binoculars from the roof across the street?”

“He’s right here.”

“Where?” She pushed herself up and looked around De

“I brought you something,” Kid said.

“Him?” She laid her head on De

“Not that.” Kid pulled out the books. “These.” He sat down on the bed.

Her T-shirt was torn at the side and he could see the place her breast started, and then the nipple under cloth. (He contemplated the difference in the two colors for which even he could only think of the word white.)

“What are—?” Then she let go of De

“What are those, anyway?” De

“Kid’s poems!” Lanya said.

“I guess one of those can be for you.”

“Yeah?” De

Lanya gave De

“You’re not mad at me now?” Kid asked.

“Was I ever?”

“Sometimes I think you’re stranger than I am.”

“Women’s Liberation has really lost us the prerogative of changing our minds, hum?” She sighed. “Enough people will be glad to see it go.”

“Hey,” Kid asked, “are you balling Madame Brown?”

“No!” Lanya looked up from the book, surprised. “What gave you that idea?”

“I don’t know.” Kid shrugged. “She likes chicks, and, well, you’re here—”

Lanya frowned. The book slapped the blanket. “Can’t two people just be friends in this city?”

“You should be balling her.” De

“Why?” Lanya demanded.

“’Cause she’s your friend,” De

Lanya’s frown lingered a moment. Then she laughed. “What are you, the Counter-Culture Dale Carnegie? Hey, move off my foot, huh?”

De

“Sure is.” Lanya turned another page too. “Oh, you’re a doll to bring me this.” She glanced at him, looked back. “I…I’m afraid I have a confession, though.”

“What…?”

“I’ve already given away about twelve copies each to practically everybody I know. And I think I have about half the poems down by heart—I knew them before they were published, really.”

“That’s all right.” Kid tried to discover whether that made him feel bad or good.

“I was going to ask you to write something in the copy I’ve been holding onto for myself. But this one’s mine now.” She held it up to her nose. “It smells like you. That’s much better than an autograph, I think.”