Dhalgren (15 page)

"Nothing."

"What did they think they were going to get?"

"I don't know. Shit. They just wanted to beat up on somebody, I guess."

Tak shook his head. "No. That doesn't sound right. Not scorpions. Everybody's too busy trying to survive around here just to go beating up on people for fun."

"I was up at the Calkins place, trying to look over the wall. Lanya said he keeps the bastards patrolling the damn walls."

"Now there." Loufer shook a finger across the table. "That's like I was telling you, Jack. It's a strange place, maybe stranger than any you've ever been. But it still has its rules. You just have to find them out."

"Shit," he repeated, indignant at everybody's questioning of the incident. "They beat hell out of me."

"Looks like they did." Tak turned across the table. "Jack, want you to meet the Kid, here. Jack just pulled into town this afternoon. The Kid got in yesterday."

Jack pushed himself forward and reached out to shake.

"Hi." He shook Jack's small, sunburned hand.

"Jack here is a deserter from the army."

At which Jack glanced at Tak with dismay, then covered it with an embarrassed smile. "Ah… hello," he said with a voice out of Arkansas. His short-sleeve sport-shirt was very pressed. Army shorn, his skull showed to the temple. "Yeah, I'm a God-damn deserter, like he says."

"That's nice," then realized how flip that sounded and was also embarrassed.

"Tak here has been trying to tell me about how to get along in this place," Jack offered: he had either not taken offense, or just not heard. "Tak's a lot smarter than I am, you know. It's pretty funny here, huh?"

He nodded.

"I was gonna go to Canada. But somebody told me about Bellona. Said it was a pretty swinging place, you know? So I thought I'd stop off here. On the way." Now he looked around the bar. The woman howled again: the purple angora had abandoned her. The howl moved predictably once more toward laughter and she sat, alone, shaking her dark red hair over her drink. "I ain't ever seen a place quite like this. Have you?" Jack offered the conversation back to him.

"Oh, I bet you ain't," Tak intercepted. "Now the Kid here, you know, he's my age? You probably would have thought he was younger than you are. Jack here is twenty. Now seriously, how old would you say the Kid here is?"

"Uh
… oh, I don't know." Jack said, and looked confused.

(He wanted to look at the engineer's shadowed face again, but not yet.)

"Where the hell did you run off to this morning, anyway?"

A dog barked, somewhere in the bar.

About to turn and answer Tak, he looked toward the noise. Claws scrabbled; then, bursting between the legs of the people next to them, the black muzzle and shoulders!

He snatched his arm up from the barking.

At the same time, Lanya arrived: "Hey, come on, girl!"

Others had turned to watch the beast bark up at their table.

"Come on. Quiet down." Lanya's hand strayed on the shaking head, played on the black snout. "Be quiet! Quiet, now." The dog tried to pull its head away. She grabbed its lower jaw and shook it gently. "What you making so much noise about? Shhhhh, you hear me? Shhhh!" The dog turned its brown eyes from the table, to Lanya, back to the table. Bright pricks from the candles slid on the black pupils. It licked her hand. "There now. Be quiet." In the other was a wad of wet paper towels. She sat down, put them on the table: they trickled on the wood.

Jack's hands were back in his lap.

Tak pushed up his cap; the shadow uncovered his large, blue eyes. He shook his head, and sucked his teeth in general disapproval.

"Come
on,
now," Lanya said once more to the dog.

It waited beside the table, panting.

He reached out toward the dark head. The panting stopped. He passed his fingers over the rough hair, the wiry brows. The dog turned to lick the ham of his thumb. "Yeah," he said. "You just be quiet."

"Is Muriel bothering you people?" Purple Angora sucked a sighing breath. "I tell her—" he gestured toward the woman at the bar—"she shouldn't bring her
in
here. Muriel is just not that well trained. She gets so excited. But she
will
bring her in here every night. I hope she hasn't annoyed you."

Lanya reached again to rough the dog's head. "She's an old dear! She didn't bother anybody."

"Well, thank you." Purple Angora bent to drag Muriel back to the bar by the collar. Once he glanced back, frowned at them—

"See if you can wipe some of that stuff off your face," Lanya said, wrinkling hers.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." He picked up a towel and held it to his temple; which stung. Water rolled down.

He rubbed the blood off his cheek. Picked up another towel (the first now purple to the rim) and wiped his face again.

"Hey," Jack said. "I think you're…" with a vague gesture.

"Lord—!" Lanya said. "I'll get some more towels."

"Huh? Am I bleeding again?"

Tak took him by the chin and turned his face. "You sure are," and pressed another towel against his head.

"Hey!" He reached across for Lanya's arm. "Look, let me just go to the men's room. I'll fix it up."

She sat again. "Are you sure…?"

"Yeah. I'll be back in a little while." With one hand he held the paper to his face; with the other, he picked up the notebook. ("What happened to him?" Tak was asking Lanya. And Lanya was leaning forward to answer.) He pushed through the people next to them toward where the men's room ought to be.

Behind him, music began, staticy as an old radio; more like somebody's wind-up victrola. He turned in front of the rest room door.

Neon lights had come on in a cage hung up behind the bar. (The redhead's face [forty-five? fifty?] was soap yellow in the glare:

("Muriel! Now, Muriel, be quiet!")

(The fugitive barking stilled and the Purple Sweater sat up once more.) Through the black curtain stepped a boy in a silver lamé G-string. He began to dance in the cage, shaking his hips, flicking his hands, kicking. His ash-pale hair was flecked with glitter; glitter had fallen down his wet brow. He grinned hugely, open mouthed, lips shaking with the dance, at customers up and down the bar. His eyebrows were pasted over with silver.

The music, he realized through the static, was a medley of Dylan played by something like the Melachrino Strings. The "boy" was anywhere between fifteen and an emaciated thirty-five. Around his neck hung glittering strands of mirrors, prisms, lenses.

He pushed into the bathroom as a big man in an army jacket came out fingering his fly.

He locked the door, put his notebook on the cracked porcelain tank (he'd left the paper on the table), looked at the mirror and said,
"Christ…!"

Tap turned full, the cold water only trickled over the tear-shaped stain. He pulled paper towels, rasping, from their container, and let them soak. Minutes later the sink was awash with blood; the battleship linoleum was speckled with it; but his face was clear of gore and leakage.

Sitting on the toilet, pants around his shins, shirt open, he turned up a quarter-sized mirror on his belly and gazed down at a fragment of his face with an eye in it. Water beaded his eyelashes.

He blinked.

His eye opened to see the drop, pink with dilute blood, strike the glass and spread to the gripping callous.

He let go, took the notebook from the toilet tank, turned it back on his thighs, and took out his pen. The coil pressed his skin:

"Murielle"

He doubted the spelling, but wrote on:

"Seen through blood, her clear eyes…" He crossed out "clear" methodically, till it was a navy bar. He frowned, re-read, rewrote "clear", and wrote on. He stopped long enough to urinate and re-read again. He shook his head, leaned forward. His penis swung against cold porcelain. So he wiggled back on the seat; rewrote the whole line.

Once he looked up: A candle by the painted-over window was guttering.

"Remembering," he wrote, "by candle what I'd seen by moon…" frowned, and substituted a completely different thought.

"Hey!" Pounding at the door made him look up. "You all right in there, Kid?"

"Tak?"

"You need some help in there? Lanya sent me to see if you'd fallen in. You all right?"

"I'm okay. I'll be out in a minute."

"Oh. Okay. All right."

He looked back at the page. Suddenly he scribbled across the bottom: "They won't let me finish this God-damn" stopped, laughed, closed the book, and put the pen back in his pocket.

He leaned forward on his knees and relaxed: The length and splash surprised him. There wasn't any toilet paper.

So he used a wet towel.

Light glittered on the dancer's hips, his shaking hair, his sweating face. But people had resumed their conversations.

He pushed through, glancing at the cage.

"Well, you certainly
look
a lot better," Lanya said.

Jack said, "Hey, I got you and your girl friend a beer. One for you too, see, because I didn't want you to think… well, you know."

"Oh," he said. "Sure. Thanks."

"I mean Tak ain't let me buy anything all evening. So I thought I'd get you and your girl friend a beer."

He nodded and sat. "Thanks."

"Yeah, thanks," Lanya said.

"She's a very nice girl."

Lanya gave him a small Well-what-can-you-do look across the table and drank.

The music growled to a stop in the middle of a phrase; people applauded.

Jack nodded toward the cage, where the dancer panted. "I swear, I never been in a place like this. It's really too much, you know? You got a lot of places like this in Bellona?"

"Teddy's
here is the one and only," Tak said. "No other place like it in the Western World. It used to be a straight bar back before. Improvement's not to be believed."

"It sure is pretty unbelievable," Jack repeated. "I've just never seen anything like it."

Lanya took another swallow from her bottle. "You're not going to die after all?" She smiled.

He saluted her with his and emptied it by a third. "Guess not."

Tak suddenly twisted in his seat. "Ain't this a bitch! Hot as it is in this God-damn place;" He shrugged out of his jacket, hung it over the bench back, then leaned one tattooed forearm on the table. "Now that's a little more comfortable." He furrowed the meadow of his chest, and looked down. "Sweating like a pig." He slid forward, stomach ridged by the plank, and folded his arms. "Yeah, that's a little better." He still wore his cap.

"Jesus," Jack said, looking around. "They let you do that in here?"

"They'd let me take my pants down and dance on the fucking table," Tak said, "if I wanted. Wouldn't they, Lanya-babes? You tell 'em."

"Tak," Lanya said, "I'd like to
see
that. I really would." She laughed.

Jack said: "Wow!"

The dancer was climbing from the cage down to the bar; he made a joke with somebody below; somebody else gave him a hand, and he leaped lightly away.

At the doorway, a group had just come in.

A couple of men in leather had gone up to a tall black with a khaki shirt: Even by candlelight, sweat stained his shirt flanks. Other black men around wore suits and ties. People were putting tables together.

The redhead's laughter carried her across the bar. She took the black's beam-broad, khaki shoulders. He embraced her; she struggled, still laughing. Muriel barked about their knees.

Sepulchral Teddy, like some leather-sheathed plant, set bottles down, held back chairs. The tall black fell into his seat; his fists cracked open like stone on the table. Others sat around him. He reared back, stretched his arms, and caught the woman in coveralls with one and the sparkling dancer with the other. Everyone laughed. The woman tried not to spill her drink and pushed at the rough, dark head. The dancer squealed: "Ooooo!" His G-string broke. He pulled the cord across his white hip, yanked the whole pouch away, and spun from the circling arm. A black hand smacked the chalky buttocks. The dancer dodged forward, threw back an evil look that ended with a wink, flipped the silver strap over his shoulder, and stalked off, cheek grinding cheek.

"Jesus!"
Jack said from the other side of the table.

The rabbity tuft above the dancer's bobbing genitals had been dusted with glitter.

Teddy moved about the joined tables, pouring. Other people were coming up to talk, leaving to drink.

Lanya explained to his puzzled look: "That's George Harrison. Do you…?"

He nodded. "Oh."

"Jesus!"
Jack repeated. "You got all sorts of people in a place like this, you know? I mean all kinds. Now that wouldn't happen where I come from. It's—" he looked around—"pretty nice, huh?" He drank more beer. "Everybody's so friendly."

Tak put his boot up on the bench and hung his arm across his knee. "Until they start to tear the place apart." He turned up his bottle to waterfall at his wide mouth. "Hey, you all want to come up to my place? Yeah, why don't you all come on back with me?" He put the beer down. "Jack, Lanya, you too, Kid."

He looked across at her to see if she wanted to go.

But she was drinking beer again.

"Yeah, come on." Tak pointed at her, so that when her bottle came down from her mouth, she looked at the engineer and frowned.
"You're
not going to sit around
this
place all night and fight off the Horse Women of Dry-gulch Canyon, are you?"

Lanya laughed. "Well, if you really want me, all right."

Tak slapped the table. "Good." Then he leaned over and stage-whispered, "You know she's a real stuckup bitch. Back when she used to hang out here, she wouldn't be caught dead with the likes of me. But after we got to know each other, she turned out not to be so bad." He grinned across the table.

"Tak, I'm
not
stuck up. I
always
spoke to you!"

"Yeah, yeah, so's your old man!" Tak pointed with a thumb. "Is
he
your old man now?" Then he laughed. "Come on. Late supper at Tak Loufer's. Tak Loufer's gonna give a party. Jack, you were saying how hungry you were."