Dhalgren (110 page)

"These bitches come running in here yelling and shouting!
Somebody's
got to tell 'em to keep—"

"Now
you
look," Filament said. She had about as much use for Tarzan as he had for the other Caucasians in the nest. "You may be Tarzan. But I am
not
Jane!"

"I'd fuck him," Lady of Spain said. Black, and an occasional partaker in long, intense conversations with Jack the Ripper, for Tarzan she had acquired something of the apes' aura. (Because of this was she more tolerant of him?) "I really would. But Tarzan don't fuck nothin'." Only one of the twelve could make that come out right. She chose it with such ease, I hope he took a lesson.

"Aw, hey, now: I was just asking you to keep it a little—"

D-t, naked and half asleep, loomed in the back doorway, forearms high on the jambs, boney hips cocked askew, big hands (with their funny thumbs) and head hanging. The head came up and he blinked. "Tarzan, when

I went to sleep, you was complaining about something. Here it is with the sky all light, and you
still
at it?"

"I was just telling them to be quiet so they wouldn't wake
you
up!"

"Time for me to get up anyway, boy. And
they
did not wake me."

"You
see!"
Dollar said. "You see, all your yellin' and carryin' on makes more noise than—"

Filament put her hand on Dollar's chest and lowered her head. "Now you just wait too." She looked up again. "Tarzan, you like living here, right?"

"What you mean?" Tarzan's chin jerked belligerently.

"She asked you," Lady of Spain said, "if you like living here. Or not."

"Yeah," Tarzan said. "Yeah. I like living here. What are you gonna do about it?"

"I'm not gonna do anything," Filament said. "But
you
better. You better do the same thing Dollar is doing."

"Huh?" Dollar said. "What am I—?"

"And that is: Since you like livin" here, you better make a real effort to stay."

D-t broke the silence with laughter. He shook in the doorway like a windy scarecrow.

"Man," Tarzan said, "now what are
you
laughin' at?"

D-t threw one arm around Tarzan's neck—

"…
Hey,
man!…"

—and, still laughing, dragged him down the hall, occasionally rubbing his knuckles on Tarzan's head, hard.

"…Hey, cut it out… hey,
stop
it; that hurts… damn it, nigger! Cut it out… hey, what are you… stop…!"

In the living room, D-t let Tarzan up.

"…what the fuck you
doin'?"
Tarzan rubbed both hands in his yellow hair.

"I'm just trying to see if your head is as hard as you keep on makin' out like it is, motherfucker! We got any coffee?"

Tarzan dropped one hand, rubbed harder with the other. "Yeah, I… I think so. Somebody made up a pail about an hour ago." He was still confused.

In the hall, Filament and Lady of Spain walked on. Behind them Dollar said: "He don't got no right to talk to you like that."

"He's got a right to talk any way he wants," Filament said. "He's just got to be set to listen afterward, that's all."

"That's what I mean," Dollar said; and so rarely do I agree with him about anything, I write this exception down so

idea around with me like a cyst on the tailbone for (how long is that?) and today (the known part of that) walking in the grey (grey, a grey I'm tired of noticing and noting; I'm exhausted with that grey; which is what that grey means to me) street, this memory: I was passing the table where somebody had left one of those transparent plastic glasses, three quarters full of white wine (in the back closet Raven found the saran tube full of them) with the window open behind it; the glare on the interface between plastic and wine suddenly diffracted like an oil-slick and the glass was full of color. If I moved one way or the other more than three inches, it became just greasy plastic full of urine-colored liquid. First I thought the prismatic movement would be lost as soon as I went. But for the next hour, whenever I walked through the kitchen, I could find the spot from which it looked like that again easily.

The idea stayed in my mind the same way, and I could find it just by passing near.

I thought it would be good to try on Temple Avenue, but I couldn't find any street with that name on the sign. So I walked down a street as wide and as clean, with gates and doors and window-glass so intact that only the pewter sky told our catastrophe. I saw a lady in a black coat and blue scarf cross at the corner; but she went into a side street; when I looked after her, she was stepping into a doorway. I walked, excited and hollow and knowing my shape-how my body moved, my head-a-jog on my neck, the stagger in my one-boot walk-from the inside. Lamp posts and doorways and fire hydrants came at me from the smoke—

I guess he was almost a block ahead, but for maybe a minute I wasn't sure he was there, in the smoke. So I hurried.

He had short, black hair and wore a brown corduroy

Writing this while taking a crap: small consolations-expected a really unhealthy turd, baloney yellow and spinach black after a node of mucus. Mercifully what came was mostly liquid and left the water too murky to examine.

coat with a woolly collar; it was cooler than usual, but because there was no wind, I was still in my vest. His hands were in his pockets. The coat's belt hung down on either side.

The belt was all I was staring at.

Just as I started to overtake him, I scraped my leg on some piece of crating or junk lying on the sidewalk—I never did look back at what it was. But it surprised hell out of me. I wonder now if I would have done it if that hadn't happened: I mean, trying to ignore the surprising sting across my calf, maybe I also ignored that part of my head that would have made me just hurry on past him, reflecting on how close I had come. (Does the City's topology control us completely?)

When I'd halved the distance, he glanced back. But kept walking. I guess he thought I was just going to walk past.

I grabbed his shoulder and spun him back against the fence bars.

"Hey… I" he said. "What's
your
problem!"

I put the orchid blades right up against his throat. He flinched and looked surprised.

"Give me everything in your pockets," I told him.

He took a breath. "You got it." He wore glasses.

I dug into his pants pocket while he held his hands up. I brought out three dollar bills. (I think an orchid point accidentally knicked his neck and he flinched again ) "Turn around and let me check your back pockets." He turned and I felt around under the flap of his coat until I realized his pants didn't
have
back pockets. I thought I might hit him or cut him then; but I didn't.

I backed away and he turned to look at me. His mouth was pressed together. As I stepped away, I realized his side pockets were much deeper than I'd thought: I could see the clustered circles of change outlined low in the black denim.

He glanced past one raised hand to the left.

A guy was crossing the street, watching us. But when I looked, the guy looked away.

The man made a disgusted sound, dropped his hands, and turned to go.

I gestured with the orchid and said, "Hey!"

He looked back.

"You wait here ten minutes before you move," I said, and took another step backward. "If you call for anybody, or try to come after me, I'll cut your throat!" I turned and sprinted up the block; glanced back once.

He was walking away.

I made it around the corner, went into a doorway to take off the orchid and put the three bills in my pocket. Then I stooped down and rolled up my cuff to look at my leg. It was just the tiniest scratch, down the side of my calf and back toward my ankle, like a swipe past a nail or a broken board or a

out on the front steps, met Dragon Lady: Denim vest laced tight, arms folded (making the laces above them look a little loose), looking pensive.

Haven't seen her in a while.

Back now.

What's she been doing?

Nothing.

Where's she been?

Around.

I put my arm around her but she obviously didn't feel like being mauled. So I dropped it and just walked with her.

As we circled the house, she relaxed a little, dark arms still folded.

Baby and Adam with you?

Yeah, they'll be here.

Reached the yard (telling her, "It's good to see you back," and she smiled her stained-tooth smile) and delivered her up to the apes and Tarzan who were goofing around there. The atmosphere cedes us a day featureless as night. I didn't know what time it was; the noise and raillery surrounded her as she went to sit under the tree, fists between her knees, with a troubled look that did not stay on anything. Wondering how (late? early?) it was, I decided I would fix the sink in the service porch (because I'd gone into the cabinet under the kitchen sink for something else and seen some tools; again, topology preordinates) and after I'd turned off the water and wrenched off the first

I have to keep mentioning this timelessness because the phenomenon irritates the part of the mind over which time's passage registers, so that instants, seconds, minutes are painfully real; but hours-much less days and weeks-are left-over noises from a dead tongue.

nut, I decided I'd take the whole thing apart and then see if I felt like putting it back together.

I took the cap off the bottom of the elbow drain and lots of hair and purple gunk fludged out on the floor. Took the taps off. Should have done that before I took the cap off, because there was a little surge of rusty water out of each-that went down the drain and onto the floor. Then I unscrewed the collars from inside the taps.

D-t came out, squatted, and watched a while, sometimes handed me tools; finally asked, whimsically, "What the fuck are you doing?" and helped me whobble the sink from the wall (standing suddenly when it almost fell) on its enameled claw and ball.

I've lost a name. So? If the inhabitants of this city have one thing in common, it is that such accidents don't interest them; that is neither lauded here as freedom nor wailed as injury; It is taken as a fact of landscape, not personality.

"I'm putting the sink back together," I told him because I'd just decided to.

D-t grunted and shoved at the bowl-back. The fore-joints of his thumbs are both crooked; which I'd never noticed before.

There was some string on the window sill, and I brought in a can of putty from the kitchen. But when I'd pried up the lid with the screwdriver, the surface was cracked like Arizona. And I didn't know where any oil was. D-t came back with a bottle of Wesson, and I couldn't think of any reason why not. D-t settled back to watch.

"Now we could of got a place without no leaky sink," D-t said. "But then I guess there wouldn't be nothing to do."

I laughed as much as I could holding the cold-water pipe up while trying to screw the fitting back down over it.

I asked him something or other.

Don't recall his exact answer, but somewhere in it, he said; "…like when I first got here, I used to walk along the street and know I could break into just about any house I wanted, and I was just scared to death…"

We talked about that. I remembered my first walks in these streets (D-t said: "But I broke in, anyway.") While we talked I recall thinking: It is not that I have no future. Rather it continually fragments on the insubstantial and indistinct ephemera of then. In the summer country, stitched with lightning, somehow, there is no way to conclude; but here, conclusion itself is superfluous. I said something to D-t about: "What this place needs is a good wind, or a lightning-storm. To clean it out. Or thunder."

"Oh, man," D-t said. "Oh, man—
No!
No, I don't think I could take that. Not here," and chuckled (like, I suspect, someone under sentence). We really got into some talk. In that quiet way where you're into the feeling, if not the information. Once he asked me how long I thought I could keep it up, here, and I said: "I don't know. How long can you?" and he laughed too. I was wrapping string around the joint and the fastening on the other end of the cold-water pipe when someone in the doorway said: "Hi, Kid."

I looked up.

Frank stood there looking like he didn't know whether or not to put his hands in his pockets.