Dhalgren

“Calkins’ place can soak up a lot of people.” The high trees—like small cypresses—were carbon dark against the muzzy night. Kid tried to see down into Bellona. One tall…building? It had perhaps a dozen windows lit.

“How odd,” Lanya said. “All the limits go, and you can’t believe there’s really anymore to it. We’re used to objects like icebergs or oil wells where you know most of it is under ground or water. But something like a city at night, with great stretches of it blotted or obscured, that’s a very different—”

“You guys,” De

Lanya nodded. “I do.”

De

They stood apart and felt very close.

Kid watched her dress catch what light there was and glitter dim crimson, with waves of navy, or a green of the evening ocean.

“What’s that?” De

Kid looked beyond them. “A fire.”

“Where do you think it is?” Lanya asked.

“I can’t tell. I don’t really know where we are.” He stepped up and put his hand on her shoulder: The metallic cloth prickled. Her skin was cool.

De

Kid wanted to walk.

So they walked with him, a hip on either hip, hitting to different rhythms. He’d slipped his hands across their backs to their outer shoulders. The hand on Lanya’s shoulder was still.

De

Lanya’s arms were folded, her vision distanced while she walked and watched the charred city.

Then she put her head on his shoulder (still watching), her arm around him, her shoulder more firmly in the place beneath his arm, brought her thigh against his thigh.

And was still watching.

They walked beside the waist-high wall. This is the largest garden, Kid thought. De

“What?” Kid asked.

“One of the spotlights that ain’t working…” De

They crossed cool flags.

Leaves rasped away the silence. A breeze? While he walked beneath the loud, black fleece of some high elm or oak, he waited for the warm or cool gust. Silence returned; he’d felt neither.

“Why don’t it ever burn up here?” De

De

Lanya turned on Kid’s shoulder, glanced across at De

Kid tried to loosen the tension in his abdomen. There was a sudden, unsettling feel: All his organs, gut, liver, belly, lungs and heart, seemed to have shifted inches down. He didn’t break step, but the feeling passed through a moment of nausea that ended with his breaking wind.

Which felt better.

He pulled Lanya closer; the leg against his leg and the shoulder’s tugging eased into Kid’s and Lanya’s rhythm. Translated through Kid’s body, De

Another stone lion crouched on the wall, staring.

By it, with leafless branches like shatter lines on the night’s smoked glass, was a tree. Beneath Kid’s foot the ground was bare, crumbly and—ashy? Recognizing the texture, he stepped from the charred grass to fresh.

They circled the garden.

It was too dark to tell if the small pool were full or empty. Lanya put her hand out and touched a tree trunk. She no longer watched the small burnings worm down in the night city. She walked more closely in step with Kid than De

A memory of rustling italicized the silence.

Kid listened for converse in another garden. Their own footsteps were so quiet.

Beyond the wall (miles away?) things smoked and flickered.

A whisper: “Someone’s coming—!”

And another: “Oh, wait a minute. Watch out—!”

Kid recognized one girl’s voice but not the other.

One branch among the bushes beat at the rest.

The guy who stepped out, zipping his fly, belt loose down both hips, and gri

One of the girls said: “Just a second. Here it is…”

“Can you see anything?” the other asked, then giggled—the girl in maroon jeans who had come with them from the nest: She pushed out between the brush.

Somebody behind her was looking all around: that was Spitt.

The other girl Kid first recognized as one of Roger’s guests. Even in the three-quarter dark she looked rumpled. The second recognition was that it was Milly: Her red hair fell over a dark, velvet jumper. She wore something metallic beneath it, unbuttoned now. Copperhead, a hand on each of her shoulders, guided her out.

Lanya said, “Lord!” and laughed.

“Oh!” Milly said. “It’s you all!” in dissimilar accent, but identical inflection, as Glass. She pulled from Copperhead.

She and Lanya clutched one another in a fit of giggles.

Copperhead frowned at Kid and shook his head.

Kid shrugged.

“I can’t find my comb!” Milly finally got out. “Isn’t it amazing! I can’t find my comb.”

Lanya looked back at Kid: “Here, I’ll see you in a little while.”

Then, her arm around Milly’s shoulder, they fled the garden.

“Man,” Glass said. “This is a pretty good party.”

Copperhead, deprived of Milly, settled beside the first girl. He bent to whisper to her. She whispered back.

“God damn, nigger!” Spitt said. “You don’t do nothin’ but fuck, do you?”

“Shit,” Glass said. “I watched your pink ass poppin’ up and down there a pretty good long while.”

“Yeah, sure.” Spitt said. “But, man, you were in this one, then that one, then this one again—God damn!”

Glass just chuckled.

Then both of them saw that Copperhead and the girl were moving off.

“Hey!” Spitt called and started after them.

Glass loped to their other side.

Phalanxed by black and white, the girl and Copperhead left.

“Come on.” De

Nowhere, Kid was sure, had he seen John. But then he hadn’t recognized Mildred before.

Guests surging Novemberwards cut them off from Copperhead and the others.

After he’d left De

The lights on Kid’s end worked.

Frank came toward him, gri

I must be in silhouette, Kid thought.

“Hey!” Frank said. “It is a really good party they’re having for you. Congratulations on everything. I’m having a great time.”

“Yeah,” Kid said. “Me too.”

Beyond Frank, beyond the bridge, Kid saw a flash of metallic kelly. Lanya was still with Milly, whose complicated hair was now in place. They were still laughing. They were still going away.

“You see my book?”

“Sure.”

“What’d you think of my poems? I was sort of interested in what you’d think of them. I mean because you’re a real poet.”