Dhalgren

She pressed her lips a moment. “All right. Then it probably will provide us with at least thirty-six hours’ solid conversation.” She opened the door for me. “So long. I’ll see…Oh, hello…I’ll be with you in a few moments.”

“Sure.” The guy sitting on the desk corner, smiling up from the Newboy volumes, was the long-haired kid I’d seen cross-legged the night in the book-store basement, doing Om.

Madame Brown went back in her office and closed the door.

I went to the desk and picked up three of the books beside him. “I’m stealing these. Tell Madame Brown Lanya’ll bring them back if she really wants them…” I was going to say more, but even that sounded silly.

“Sure. I’ll tell Dr. Brown as soon as I go in.” Which made me wonder what he thought about me calling her “Madame.” I went into the hall. As I passed Muriel, sitting on the top step, watching me with gentled eyes, I heard the office door open.

I wrote all this down because today the page with the list of names on it is missing from the notebook. When I got back to the nest from the session, I started browsing through and I couldn’t find it. How many times have I read it over? I was pla

in their hands; the optic chain (a hundred feet? two hundred feet of it?), stretched among a dozen as they danced, glittered in beast light, sending flaked reflections along the undersides of leaves. Around us, they howled into the night, delighted, some going near the brazier, some going away.

Copperhead scrubbed at his mouth with his wrist. His eyes looked very red, his whole face burnished and flickering. “Hey, how do you like that?” he said. “Protection! That bastard Calkins wanted God-damn protection!” He turned from me to Glass. I laughed. Clapping perforated it. Copperhead looked up, suddenly; began to bellow and clap too, his palms hollowed. He was off rhythm so it carried a long way. He kept on bobbing his head to Glass’s bobbing head, till finally he got it, though he was laughing, now. Dragon Lady, beyond the toppled furnace, one boot propped on a fallen cinderblock, kneaded her shoulder, pensive and intent, watching the dance, her jade beast momentarily out.

Lanya turned and jumped, her blue shirt mapped with sweat; she held a chain high with one hand. She moved her harmonica across her mouth with the other, blowing discord after discord. Her forehead was glazed, her hair wet down her brow.

Jommy, I guess it was, broke out between Mildred and some bird of paradise (Cathedral shouting, “Hey, watch it—”), staggering into the dazzling web, and grabbed a strand for balance. De

I stopped shouting soon because my throat hurt; and heard, between the claps: “Bu

“Don’t be silly, dear! We’ll just watch.”

“Naw, come on! I ain’t never really seen you dance.”

“Smile when you say that. Why don’t you?”

“Aw, come on. I wa

Something in the fire exploded; sparks shot above the flame tips, showering. The myriad narrow parabolas extinguished.

Dollar, his pimply back bright with sweat, stood centered in the clearing, feet wide, knees and head bent. Each clap detonated something in his belly that flung his hands, hips, and shoulders about.

Some of the commune kids were naked.

John danced with his brown beard up, his blond hair back, and his brass orchid waving on his hand overhead. A girl had gotten her legs caught in the chain going around, and fallen; she sat a long time, head forward, hair the color of dry leaves down across one breast. A few times she tried to stand. But another length of chain fell on her shoulder when someone dropped another end; she seemed too weighted to rise.

A griffin flickered twice: Adam bobbed and jerked. Chains and shocked hair swung and clattered and went out behind the reeling beast.

Bu

An elderly black woman who’d brought some of the supper-boxes, stonily silent till now, cackled, begi

And I stopped, landing on both heels, jarred to the scalp.

I turned in the furor, looking for someone (Thinking: Where did it come from…? Why now…? What…? then throwing that away and just trying to hold on to it); Lanya, shirt open and flapping, breasts shaking, eyes closed under quivering lids, turned to me behind at least five chains. I reached through them and caught her shoulders.

Her eyes snapped wide.

“Michael…” I said.

“What?”

A chain pulled down across my arm; a prism nipped my wrist. Lady of Spain was at one end, hauling.

“Mike Henry…” I looked down between my elbows at the trampled grass. “Michael Henry…?”

One of her bare feet moved. “What’s that?”

Very slowly, I said: “My first name is Mike…Michael. My middle name is Henry.” I looked up. “My last name—Fl…? Fr…?”

Lanya narrowed her eyes. Then she grabbed my forearm with the same hand her harmonica was in.

The edge bit; which brought me back: “What did I say?”

But she was looking around us, among the others. “De

“Lanya, what did I say?”

Her eyes snapped back to mine. She had a fu

My jaw clamped so hard my head shook. “I…I had it for a second! but then I…”

“It begins with ‘F’” She called again: “De

“Wait a minute! Wait, I…no, I can’t remember! But the first name—”

“—Michael Henry…” she prompted.

De

“Tell him, Kid!”

I dropped Lanya’s elbows and took both of De

He was breathing very hard. “My name is Michael—” another clap—“Henry…something. I don’t remember the last one now.” I took a deep breath (clap!). “But two out of three is pretty good!” I must have been gri

“Wow!” De