Dhalgren

“In principle,” Milly said. “In practice, when the rumors get to a certain point, I’m willing to let the whole business alone and go off exploring in the opposite direction. Suppose the reality turns out to be worse than the rumors?”

“Oh, really…!” Lanya raised her harmonica, played. “You’re going to chicken out, again, aren’t you?” She played another snatch.

“Someday,” Milly said, pensively, “I wish you’d play that piece from one end to the other. The fragments are awfully nice.”

(Kidd looked after them.)

Lanya looked at her harmonica. “I guess that’s because I never play for anybody else.”

“You should,” Milly said. “I mean, everybody hears it anyway. Sometimes, all those little pieces, pretty as they are, practically give me a headache because they aren’t co

“I’ll try,” Lanya said. “And you should not try to avoid the subject. Are you going to chicken out?”

“Look,” Milly said, “going to meet George Harrison was your idea. I just said it might be interesting to talk to him.”

“But I’ve already met George,” Lanya said. “I’ve talked to him lots of times, I told you. Going to meet him was your idea; I just said I’d make introductions.”

“Oh, you know everyone,” Milly said; her hair shook. And then, “…” which was maddeningly beyond ear shot. Lanya’s answer was another burst of music, that went on as they disappeared around the next turn; after a few wrong notes, the tune halted.

Kidd crab-walked down the dirt, stepped from behind the last bush, and looked where the girls had been.

The mention of George Harrison left a fu

The path, apparently, wound back the other way.

Perhaps he could cut through again, overtake them once more—? Speculation became resolution. He crossed into the bushes, again climbing; he scrambled over a stretch of rock, pushed forward through leaves. Ten feet away, fifteen—a long note from Lanya’s harmonica, a flicker of Milly’s bright hair! He crouched, cheek and one palm against bark. His bare foot, over a root, rocked him unsteadily.

Through dull leaves, he could just make them out.

There was another musical sound—not her harmonica, but their two laughters.

“Okay,” he heard Lanya say, “we’ll do it that way—if you want.”

“Oh, yes,” Milly cried. “Let’s!”

“It’s silly.” Lanya laughed. “But all right. He’s there every afternoon, almost. All right, we’ll do it that way, but only because you’re my…”

They were further away, so he heard less this time—except their laughter, leaving. What, he wondered, were they going to do what way, that involved George Harrison? Were they going to see him now—? Suddenly he was convinced they were. Their interchange, like schoolgirls pla

He stood again, took three loping steps through the brush, the worried laugh to stop them with, ready in his throat. (Thinking: Hey, what kind of crazy idea have you two nuts gotten into your—)

A root caught his sandal toe and spun him out on the concrete. He almost fell. Pushing up from one knee, he turned. And was suddenly confused.

Which way had they come from?

Which way had they gone?

He’d only glimpsed them this time. In both directions the path curved the same way…His faulty left-right orientation, always worse under strain—the plague of the ambidextrous, a doctor had once explained—gave way completely. Well, he’d come from that side of the road. He darted into the other, hoping to catch the path again and head them off.

The growth—of course—was thicker. The slope here was so steep he had to scrabble with hands as well as feet. Thinking: When was the last time I saw sunlight a golden flutter in bright green? The sky, flickering through, was the color of iron. The leaves, each in a caul of ash, were like grey velvet scraps, or dead mice.

Pebbles rolled underfoot. No, he thought, they can’t be going to see George Harrison now! For all he knew, the conversation had changed subject completely between the first turn and the second.

And where the hell was the third? Trees cleared to high boulders. He skirted one and, leaning on it, vaulted down a small drop, brushed aside brush—

Across flat rock (a section had been filled with cement to level it) was a building of black stones, rounded and the size of heads, webbed in white mortar. Above the building’s several wings rose a square tower with a crenellated balcony of the same black stone. The building was not large; the tower was not quite three stories. The vaulted windows, paned with pebbled glass, deeply recessed, were so thin he would have had trouble climbing out.

A waist-high wall of stone went along two sides of a large, informal courtyard in front of the building.

On the corner, wearing black-framed glasses, work-shoe heels wedged in a deep tenon, elbows on the knees of soiled khaki coveralls, and reading the Times, sat George Harrison.

Kidd squatted.

Leaves flicked up the image.

Knuckles mashed in dirt, Kidd leaned forward.

Leaves tickled his cheek.

Kidd was afraid; Kidd was fascinated. Whatever caused both left him clammy-handed.

George took off his glasses, put them in his shirt pocket, slid from the wall and, work shoes wide and fist-heels up, stretched. Khaki creases fa

(Squatting, watching. Curiosity and alarm resolved into a sort of self-righteous, silent mumble: Okay, fun is fun, but what sort of prank were they up to?)

George’s face twisted under a metal sky so low the city’s fires had scorched and marred it like an aluminum pot-bottom.

Beyond a break in the wall (which, Kidd realized only from her gait, had steps below it), Lanya—hair, nose, chin, shoulders—emerged. “Hey, George,” she said. “You’re back here again this afternoon? City life too much for you?”

Milly (had she chickened out?) was not with her.

“Hu’?” the aspiration voiced and the vowel voiceless; George turned as she gained the top step. “Y’com’-ba’” (back or by, Kidd wasn’t sure) “heah too?” Thet was nearly a d, and the final vowel was a strangely breathy one from which the lips made no recovery, but hung heavy and open from teeth Kidd could see, even from here, were large, clean, and yellow. How, Kidd wondered, could this mauled and apocopated music be fixed to a page with roman letters and standard marks of elision? He decided: It can’t. “You taking an afternoon stroll, yeah?” George laughed and nodded. “I hear you playing before, and I think: She go

“Hello!” Lanya laughed too, and put her harmonica in her own shirt pocket. “I don’t always come by,” Lanya said. (She, he realized, had misheard go