Страница 150 из 226
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-Strauss, 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 as 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:
Preston Smith
Thomas Sask
Linda Evers
A
Peter Weldon
George Newman
William Dhalgren
Priscilla Meyer
Susan Morgan…
Madeleine Terry…
3
“Why’d she kick us out?”
“She didn’t kick us out. She had things to do. She’ll be down to see us. Don’t worry.”
“I ain’t worrying.” De
“How’d you manage to eat?”
“Present company excepted—” De
“Yeah.”
“Okay…you really think she’s go
“If she doesn’t, we’ll go up and see her. She’ll come.”
“She’s a nice person!” De
Kid nodded.
“I hope she comes down. I mean I know she likes you, ’cause you wrote a book and everything, and you know her a long time. But I’m just a fuck-up. She ain’t got no reason to like me.”
“She does anyway.”
De
The street light above them pulsed…at half strength; then died. The sky sheeted over with one more film of darkness. The only other light to come on was two blocks away; it pulsed, pulsed, pulsed again.
Someone moved into it and shouted, “Hey! Hey, Kid! De
“What the hell are they doing here?”
De
In the middle of the next block, Dollar, lugging the brass lion on its broken base, pushed between Copperhead and Jack the Ripper. “Hey, we gotta move, you know? We’re movin’ again!” Dollar was gri
Copperhead was not. “The fuckin’ house burnt up on us! How you like that? The fuckin’ house burnt up!” A knapsack, one green with his fatigues, swung about his shins. He hefted the strap to the other hand.
“Jesus,” De
“What happened?”
“Nothin’,” Copperhead shrugged. “You know…it just, well….”
“The whole damn block,” Siam said. “About an hour ago. Shit, it was something!”
Kid felt his heart thump once (like it always did when he found out somebody he knew had died); in the hollow remains, he thought: That isn’t so much a reaction as it is a fear of what the reaction might be. The house burnt down? The…house burnt down? But that seems so easy. The house…
He asked: “Was Nightmare there?”
“Fuck,” Copperhead said. “Fuck. He and the Lady was off somewhere. Thirteen was gone somewhere too. Fuck.”
Glass chuckled. “I could smell Thirteen’s stash burning right up. Sure wished I knew where he kept it, and I would have got it out for him. But when it was burning—” he swung a pillowcase down from his shoulder into his arms—“you sure could smell it. You know I been in seven God-damn fires. Seven times I had my house burn out from under me. Lost my mother in a God-damn fire.”
“In Bellona?” Siam asked.
Glass looked at Siam, realization in his face that he had been misunderstood. “No…” He hugged up the pillowcase. “I ain’t been in no fire in Bellona, except this one.”
“Where are we going to move?”
De
“Not on your fucking life,” Kid said.
“I mean,” De
“You got some place for us to move?” Copperhead asked.
“Nope,” Kid said. “Come on. We’ll find one.”
“Now we don’t want no place that’s go
Scorpions mumbled outside the circle of the lamp. Some carried mattresses, some cartons, some shovels and tools.
“Come on down this street,” and the cavalcade practically filled the alley. Trees had been planted and ringed with ornamental fences. But each trunk was charred to a black fork with twisted tines. “That wooden house must have gone up like a matchbook.”
“Naw,” Copperhead told him. “And nobody got hurt. Nobody didn’t really lose nothing they didn’t want to lose. We all got out in time.”
“I got the lion!”
Kid turned on Dollar’s pocked and stubbled grin.
“Man, I wouldn’t’ve left my lion behind for nothing. It’s the only fuckin’ thing I own. You got that for me, Kid, remember? You got that for me and I wouldn’t leave behind nothing like that for anything in the world, you know?”
“De
Behind Dollar, she pushed her way forward. Her arms were full, her hair was tangled, and one heavy cheek was smudged.
“De
Her eyes, sweeping among them, caught Kid’s and swept away.
“De
“Oh, wow!” De
“Here: I got your shirts.” She caught up with them. “And—” she glanced up blankly at Kid; the heavy breasts in her blue sweatshirt pressed out against bags and packages. Her small, full fingers had left the brown paper sweaty so that it bellied between them—“and the posters down from your wall. And the picture books. I didn’t bring the blankets…I didn’t bring the blankets because I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to get some more blankets—”
“You got my radio?”
“Of course I got your radio. I think I got everything—there wasn’t very much—except the blankets.”
“I don’t care about the God-damn blankets,” De
“Oh, watch out…!”
—pulled Brass Orchids from his back pocket and dropped it inside.
“What’s that?”
“Nothin’. What you so curious about? Oh, hey! You got my game in there.”