Dhalgren (44 page)

Light shield?

The thing linked to the bottom was spherical, the diameter of a silver dollar, black, and set with lenses. The heavy links crossed the brass chain and glass bits. He ran his thumb around the back of his vest, shrugged the lapels closed, and walked up the hall.

The elevator opened.

Rising in the dark, "19" suspended orange at eye level, he thought about batteries and rubbed his naked stomach.

At the Richards' new apartment door he heard voices. A woman, neither Mrs Richards nor June, laughed.

He rang.

Carpet-muffled heels approached.

"Yes?" Mrs Richards asked. "Who is it?" The peek-hole clicked. "It's Kidd!"

The chain rattled, the door swung back.

"Why, come in! Bill, Ronnie, Lynn; this is the young man we were telling you about!" Air from the opened balcony doors beat the candle flames: light flapped through the foyer. "Come in, come in. Kidd, some friends of Arthur's… from work. Arthur? They came over for dinner. Would you like some coffee with us? And dessert?"

"Look, if you're busy, just let me talk to Mr Richards a minute?"

"Kidd?" Mr Richards called from the dining room, "come on in, will you?"

Kidd sought for an expression, but finding nothing adequate for his impatience, came, patiently, inside; he settled on a frown.

Mrs Richards' smile was perfect.

Kidd went into the dining room.

The woman sitting next to Mr Richards was doing something with her earring. "You write poems, Mary told us. Are you going to read us some?"

"Huh? Oh. No, I didn't bring any."

The man across from her took his leather-patched elbows from the tablecloth. "That's a rather dangerous looking thing you did bring."

"Oh." Kidd looked at the orchid. "Well, it's almost dark out." He snapped the band open, shucked the finger harness, while the people up and down the table chuckled.

From where he stood, the flame at the white wax taper tip covered June's left eye. She smiled.

"Here," Mrs Richards said behind him. "Here's a chair. Move down a little bit, Sam. Pour him a cup of coffee, Arthur."

"What do you think I'm doing, honey," Mr Richards said with total affability.

A large woman in brown corduroy began to talk again with the man on her left. The cup passed from hand to hand to hand.

The woman in the green dress smiled, but couldn't keep her eyes (pale grey) from flicking at the steel cage he had set on the corner of the tablecloth. She put the cup beside it. Mrs Richards held the back of her chair, about to sit. "Really, just like I was telling you, Kidd absolutely saved our lives. He was such a help. We were beginning to think of him as part of the family."

At the other end of the table, a large man rubbed lone finger against his nose and said, "Mary, you've been about to bring in that dessert for fifteen minutes now, and I'm on my second cup of coffee."

Mrs Richards laughed. "I
have
been talking on. Here, I'll bring it in right now."

"June," Mr Richards said from his end of the table, "go help your mother."

June, her small fists whispering in white taffeta, rounded the table for the kitchen.

The man beside the woman in green leaned around her and said, "Mary's just been going on all about you and your poems. You just live downtown, near the park?"

"Yeah," he said. "Where do you live?"

"Ah-ha." Still leaning forward he fingered the collar of his sports shirt. "Now, that's a very good question." His nails were not clean and the side of the collar was frayed. "That's a very good question indeed." He sat back, still laughing.

Still plucking at her earring, the woman at Mr Richards' right said, "You don't look like a poet. You look more like one of those people they're always writing about in the
Times."

"Scorpions?" said the very blond man (tweed and leather elbow patches) over his clasped hands. "His hair isn't long enough."

"His hair
is
long," insisted the earring plucker.

"Long
enough,"
explained the blond man and turned to look for a napkin fallen by June's vacated chair.

Kidd grinned at the woman. "Where do you live?"

She stopped plucking, looked surprised. "Ralph and I used to be out on Temple. But now we've been staying—" and stopped because somebody said something on her other side, or may have even elbowed her.

"You like it better there?" Kidd asked, vaguely curious as to where Temple was.

"If you can like anything in Bellona, right now!"

Mrs Richards entered with a large glass bowl.

"What is that?" the man on Madame Brown's left asked, "jello?"

"No, it
isn't
jello!" Mrs Richards set the bowl before Mr Richards. "It's wine jelly." She frowned at the purple sea. "Port. The recipe didn't mention any sugar. But I think that was probably a mistake, so I put some in, anyway."

Beside Mrs Richards, June held a bowl heaped with whipped cream, glossy as the taffeta. Wrapped around one wrist, glittering in the candlelight… No, Kidd thought, she
wouldn't
have taken them off the… But the idea made him grin.

"Do you want to serve that, Arthur?"

At his corner Kidd contemplated being belligerently nice to the woman with the earring. But she was too far away. He turned to the woman beside him in green. "You work with Mr Richards?"

"My husband used to," she said and passed him a white-capped dessert dish.

He ate a spoonful: maple.

"I," he said and swallowed, "have to talk to Mr Richards about some money. You like it here?"

"Oh, it's a very nice apartment. You moved all the furniture for them, they told us."

He smiled, nodded, and decided he just couldn't take grape jello with maple flavored whipped cream.

The man beside the woman leaned around again: "I didn't really work with Arthur. I used to work for Bill over there who used to do statting for MSE—where Arthur works. So Lynn and me, we just came along."

"Oh," Lynn said deprecatingly while Kidd drank coffee, "we just have to extend ourselves, you know, While all this is going on."

"That's what I'm doing; that's what I'm doing, A bunch of us have gotten together, you see. We're living together in… well, we're living together. I mean we were just about to get chased out of our house. By son guys with those things, you know?" The man pointed the orchid. "But today, I'd wear one if I had it."

"No, you wouldn't!" Lynn insisted. "You wouldn't"

"It's pretty rough," Kidd said.

"The way we got together," Lynn went on to explain, "it's much better for the children. You see?"

"Yeah, sure!" He'd heard her suddenly helpless tone and he responded to it.

"What's there around here to write poems about?" That was her husband again. "I mean, nothing ever happens. You sit around, scared to go outside. Or when you do, it's like walking into a damn swamp."

"That's the whole thing," Lynn acknowledged. "Really. In Bellona, I mean, now. There's nothing to do."

From her father's side, June said: "Kidd writes lovely poems." Under the candles, shadows doffed in the cream.

"Oh, yes," Mrs Richards affirmed, setting down dishes of jelly before the large woman in corduroy and the blond man in tweeds. "Kidd, you will read something to us, won't you?"

"Yes," Mr Richards said. "I think Kidd should read a poem."

Kidd sucked his teeth with annoyance. "I don't have any. Not with me."

Mrs Richards beamed: "I have one. Just a moment." She turned and hurried out.

Kidd's annoyance grew. He took another spoonful of jello; which he hadn't wanted. So drank the rest of his coffee. He hadn't wanted that either.

"Here we are!" Mrs Richards cried, returning; she slipped the blue-edged paper before him.

"Oh," Kidd said. "I forgot you had this one."

"Go on, read it."

"Better be good," said blond and tweedy, affably enough. "Otherwise Ronnie will run the other way every time she sees you on the street because she thinks you're a—"

"I don't
go
out on the streets," Ronnie said. "I want to hear what kind of poems you write. Go on."

A man who wasn't Mr Richards said, "I don't know very much about poetry."

"Stand up, Kidd," Mr Richards said, waving a creamy spoon. "So we can hear you."

Kidd stood and said as dumbly as possible, "Mr Richards, I just came to see you about getting my money for the work I did," and waited for reaction.

Mr Richards moved his shoulders back and smiled.

Somewhere—outside in the hall?—a door closed.

Mrs Richards, holding the edge of the table and smiling, nodded: "Go on, Kidd."

Ronnie said to Mrs Richards: "He wants his money: He's a pretty practical poet." Though she spoke softly, everyone laughed.

He looked down at Mrs Richards' copy of his poem, and drew his tongue back from his teeth for the first word.

In the hall, a man screamed, without words or inflection; footsteps, some dull thuds—the scream changed pitch at each of them.

Kidd started reading. He paused at the third line, wanting very much to laugh, but didn't look up.

Footsteps: running voices arguing—a lot of them.

Kidd kept reading till he reached Mrs Richards' omitted comma.

Lynn, beside him, let out a little cry. From the corner of his eye, he saw her husband take her arm. Somebody banged on the wall outside with what sounded like a crowbar. And the screaming cracked to a hysterical, Mexican accent: "Oh, come on, please, come on lemme 'lone. Don't fool 'round like that—No! C'mon, c'mon—No. Don' please—"

Kidd read the last lines of his poem and looked up.

The crashes had moved from the wall to the door, and fell with timed, deliberate thuds. Within the crash, as though it were an envelope of sound, he could hear the chain rattle, the hinges jiggle, the lock click.

As he looked around the table, the thought passed with oblique idleness: They look like I probably do when somebody's eyes go red.

Outside, above the shouting, somebody laughed.

Kidd's own fear, dogged and luminous and familiar enough to be almost unconscious, was fixed somewhere in the hall. Yet he didn't want to laugh. He still wanted to giggle.

Out there, someone began to run. Others ran after.

A muscle on the back of Kidd's thigh tensed to the crashing. He smiled, vaguely, confused. The back of his neck was tickly.

Someone's chair squeaked.

"Oh, for God's sake, why don't they—" and, where rhythm predicted the next crash, only her word fell: "—stop!"

Footsteps lightened, tumbled off down steps, retreated behind banged doors.

Kidd sat down, looked at the guests, some of whom I looked at him, some who looked at each other; the woman in corduroy was looking at her lap; Mrs Richards was breathing hard. He wondered if anyone liked his poem.

"They do that around here too, huh?" Sam forced, jocularly.

Then a woman Kidd could not really see at the table's end spilled coffee.

"Oh, I'll get a rag!" Mrs Richards screamed, and fled the room.

Three people tried to say nothing in particular at once.

But when Mrs Richards returned with a black and white, op-art dishtowel, one voice detached itself, a hesitant baritone: "For God's sakes, can't we do something about that? I mean, we've got to do something!"

Of several feelings, the only sharp one Kidd felt was annoyance. "Mr Richards?" he said, still standing, "Mr Richards? Can I talk to you now?"

Mr Richards raised his eyebrows, then pushed back his chair. June, beside him, surprisingly concerned, touched her father's arm… restrainingly? protectively? Mr Richards brushed her hand away and came down the table.

Kidd picked up his orchid and went out into the hall.

The woman in corduroy was saying, "When you can
think of
something to do, will you
please
let me know what it is. You'll have my cooperation one hundred per cent. One hundred per cent, believe me."

At the door Kidd turned. "We should get this five dollars an hour business settled now, don't you think, Mr Richards, because it'll just—"

Mr Richards' slight, taut smile broke. "What are you trying to do, huh?" he demanded in a whisper. "What are you trying to do? I mean five dollars an hour, you must be crazy!"

Mrs Richards, still holding the dishtowel, drifted up behind her husband's shoulder, blinking, in perfect imitation of Smokey with Thirteen.

"I mean just what are you trying to do?" Mr Richards went on. "We don't have any money to give you, and you better understand that."

"Huh?" because it seemed absurd.

"Five dollars an hour?" Mr Richards repeated. "You
must
be crazy!" His voice was insistent, tense and low. "What does somebody like you need that kind of money for, anyway? It doesn't cost anything to live in this city— no food bills, no rent. Money doesn't mean anything here any more. What are you trying to do… ? I've got a wife. I've got a family. MSE hasn't had a payroll for months. There hasn't even been anyone in the damn office! I've got to hold on to what I have. I can't spend that kind of money now, with everything like this. I can't—"

"Well, isn't that what you told—?" He was angry. "Oh shit. Look, then why don't you…" Then he reached around to his pocket.

Mr Richards' eyes widened as the orchid Kidd held flicked by him.

But Kidd only dug at his pocket. "Then why don't you keep this too?" Mr Richards swayed when the moist, green knot, bounced off his shirt and fell to the floor, unfolding like paper on fire.

Kidd turned the lock and pulled the door open. The chain stopped it—
ratch!—
at two inches.

Mrs Richards, immediately beside him, fumbled with the catch. A step into the hall, he looked back to show them his disgust.

The astonishment Mr Richards returned him, as Mrs Richards with varied bitternesses at her eyes, closed the door on it, was unexpected, was satisfying, was severed with the door's clash.

He counted the fifteen, paint-chipped dents before he decided (someone was laughing inside again) to go.

In the elevator, he dropped, ruminating. Once he looked up to wrinkle his nose at a faint putrescence. But dropped on. Echoing in the shaft, with the wind, were footsteps from some stairwell, were voices.