Dhalgren

Down on seventeen, he came into the apartment (unchained, unlocked) and thought: Why didn’t we take the rugs up first? That was silly, not to have taken the rugs up. Like mottled eels (the underpad, a smaller darker eel, printed with a design that, till now, he’d only seen on corrugated ceilings) the rugs lay against the living room wall. Outside the window, pale leviathans swam. Piles of books sat on the floor.

Pilgrimage was on top of one.

For the third—or was it the fourth? Or the fifth?—time he picked it up, read at random pages, waiting to be caught and driven into the work. But the receptivity he tried to bring was again and again hooked away by some pattern of shadow on the bare vinyl tile, some sound in the apartment below, some itch on his own body: and there went all his attention. Though his eye moved over the print, his place and the print’s sense were lost: At last he lay the book back on the pile, and put a book from another pile on top, as though—and wondered why he thought of it this way—the first book were his own.

He stood up—he had been squatting—and gazed around: still to be moved were bridge tables from the back storage closet, folding chairs with scrolled arms, green cushions, and black metal hinges; and toys from Bobby’s room, scattered among them. A set of four nest tables was crowded with small, bright breakables.

He wandered down the hall (there was the carton of papers from Mr. Richards’ den) and turned into Bobby’s room. Most of what was left was evidence of the older brother who’d once shared it: a handkerchief that had fallen out of a bureau drawer yesterday, showing the monogram: EGR; propping the closet door were three small cartons with Eddy written across them in magic marker; on the floor was the Bellona High School Yearbook. Kidd picked it up and paged through: Edward Garry Richards (Soccer team, G.O. Volunteer, “The Cafeteria Staff’s favorite two years ru

He lay the book down on the boxes, wandered across the hall into June’s room: On the windowsill was the tepee of an empty matchbook and a white plastic flower pot still filled with earth which, June had told him yesterday, had once grown a begonia her aunt Maria

In memory he refurnished the space with the pieces he’d taken upstairs the previous day and tried to pull back, also from memory, the image of June that had come to him in George’s overheard converse. Memory failed at a sound outside.

Kidd stepped back into the hall as Bobby came from the living room; he grunted, over an armful of books, “I’m taking these upstairs.”

“Why don’t you take about half of them?”

“Maybe—” two books fell—“I better.”

June came in: “Oh, hey, I’ll take some of those…” They divided the stack, left.

Where, he wondered as the door closed (the unlatched chain swung and swung over green paint), is my notebook? Of course; down the hall in what had been the back bedroom, from when he’d stopped in this apartment out of habit when he’d first come in the morning: He had momentarily forgotten that the Richards were living on nineteen now.

In the back bedroom another file box stood off center in the middle of the floor.

The notebook was on the windowsill. Kidd walked up to it, looked at the worn, smeared cardboard. Outside, small darknesses moved below the mist. What, he thought, should I say to Mr. Richards about my money? Suppose Mr. Richards comes back this evening and doesn’t bring up the subject? Kidd considered writing down alternative opening lines and rehearsing them for Mr. Richards’ return. No. No, that’s exactly the wrong way! It’s almost nine o’clock, he thought, and too smoky to tell people from shadows at seventeen stories.

Something thumped; a girl cried out. A second thump, and her pitch changed. A third—it sounded like toppling furniture—and her cry swooped. A fourth ended it.

That was from the apartment below.

Breaking glass, much nearer, brought his eyes from the floor.

Kidd went to the living room.

Mrs. Richards, kneeling over something shattered, looked up and shook her head. “I…”

He stopped before her restrained confusion.

“…I dropped one of the—”

He could not tell what the figurine had been.

“So thin—these walls are so very thin. Everything comes through. I was so startled…” By the nest tables, she picked faster in the bright, black shards, white matte overside.

“I hope it wasn’t anything you really—” but was halted by his own inanity.

“Oh, that’s all right. Here, I’ve got it all.” She stood, cupping chips. “I heard that awful…and I dropped it.”

“They were going on pretty loud.” He tried to laugh, but before her gaze, he let the laugh die in breath. “Mrs. Richards, it’s just noise. You shouldn’t let yourself get so upset about it.”

“What are they doing down there? Who are they?”

He thought she might crush the ceramic between her palms. “They’re just some guys, some girls, who moved into the downstairs apartment. They’re not out to bother you. They think the noises from up here are pretty strange too.”

“Just moved in? How do you mean, they just moved in?”

He watched her expression lurch at fear, and not achieve even that. “They wanted a roof, I guess. So they took it over.”

“Took it over? They can’t come in here and take it over. What happened to the couple who lived there before? Management doesn’t know things like this are going on. The front doors used to be closed at ten o’clock, every night! And locked! The first night they started making those dreadful sounds, I sent Arthur out for one of the guards: Mr. Phillips, a very nice West Indian man, he’s always in front of our building till one in the morning. Arthur couldn’t find him. He’d gone away. All the guards. And the attendants for the garage. I want you to know I put that in my letter to Management. I certainly did.” She shook her head. “How can they just come in and take over?”

“They just…Ma’am, there aren’t anymore guards, and nobody was living there; they just moved in. Just like you’re moving into nineteen.”

“We’re not just moving in!” Mrs. Richards had been looking about. Now she walked into the kitchen. “I wrote Management. Arthur went to see them. We got the key from the office. It isn’t the same thing at all.”

Kidd followed Mrs. Richards around the stripped kitchen.

“How do you know nobody was living there? There was a very nice couple downstairs. She was Japanese. Or Korean or something. He was co

“They left, just like everybody else.” He still followed.

She carried the broken things, clacking, down the rugless hall. “I think something awful happened to them. I think those people down there did something awful. Why doesn’t Management send some new guards?” She started into Bobby’s room, but changed her mind and continued to June’s. “It’s dangerous, it’s absolutely, terribly dangerous, without guards.”

“Mrs. Richards?” He stood in the doorway while she circuited the room, hands still cupped. “Ma’am? What are you looking for?”

“Someplace to throw—” she stopped—“this. But you took everything upstairs already.”

“You know you could just drop it on the floor.” He was impatient and his impatience embarrassed him. “I mean you don’t live here anymore.”

After the silence in which her expression became curious, she said, “You don’t understand the way we live at all. But then, you probably think you understand all too well. I’m going to take this out to the incinerator.”

He ducked back as she strode through.

“I don’t like to go out in the hall. I don’t feel safe—”