Dhalgren

'In another… store.' (Kid idly wondered at the hesitation but didn't look up.) 'In somebody's house,' Denny corrected himself. 'We broke in. This was there, so I took it. You seen 'em before, ain't you.'

'Um-hm.' Lanya nodded.

Kid turned another page of etched perspective imploded on itself and put back together inside out. Lanya bent to look now.

'This!' Denny said.

They both looked. And Kid took the book from Lanya and handed it back to Denny. ('That's all right,' Denny said. 'She can look at it,' ignoring Kid's gesture.) He showed them a silver box. 'Ain't this a neat radio? It's got AM and FM and it even says Short Wave.' It was the size of a box of kitchen matches. 'And all sorts of other dials.'

'I wonder if they do anything,' Lanya said.

'That one says the 'volume',' Denny explained. 'The button's there, that one is the AFC thing so it doesn't slide around. But you can't tell around here because radios don't work here any more.'

'Like the shirts,' she said. 'When you go someplace else, you'll have something nice.'

'If we go someplace else,' Denny considered, 'I'll probably leave all this stuff here. You can get lots of nice things anywhere around. You just pick it up.'

'I meant somewhere outside the…', Kid watched her realize that Denny had not.

Suddenly she touched the radio. 'It isn't square!' she announced. The black and metal box was trapezoidal. She flattened her hands to the sides of it. 'It is beautiful,' she said in the voice of someone admitting that a puzzle was still insoluble. (What was the name of his roommate in Delaware who had had so much trouble with the paper on mathematical induction? Another thing he couldn't remember… and was sad at his ruined memory and happy for Lanya.) 'It really is… just lovely.'

Kid leaned close to her and kneaded the inside of his thighs. He'd laid the Escher against his calf. The corner of the book nicked; he didn't move it.

'You seen these pictures too?' Denny brought out another paper-covered book.

Lanya said: 'Let me see.'

She turned over the first page and frowned.

'…Um, did Boucher ever paint religious pictures?' Kid ventured.

'Not,' Lanya said, 'for three-dimensional, laminated-plastic dioramas.'

'I think 3-D pictures are great,' Denny said, while Kid felt vaguely embarrassed.

'These are strange.' Lanya turned another page.

A crowned woman in blue stood one foot on a crescent moon while below her two naked men cowered in a rowboat. Ghosts of the same picture at other angles haunted the striated plastic.

'What's the next…' Lanya asked.

A man who looked like a classical Jesus, in a loincloth, limped on a single crutch, one hand, with stigma, extended.

'Spanish…?' she mused.

'Puerto Rican,' Kid suggested.

Lanya glanced at him. 'It doesn't have any writing anywhere.'

A woman, perhaps the virgin, as likely an empress, rode on a tiger. 'The rocks and moss and water in the background, that's lifted from Da Vinci.' Lanya turned to the next. 'These are really…' She closed the book to a white cover on which was a crowned and bleeding heart behind a cross. 'You can't tell me those are Christian. Did you find this in somebody's house too?'

'In a store,' Denny said. He was hunting at the edge of the blanket again. 'And these.'

In his cupped hands were three glass cubes set with glittering stones.

'Dice?' Kid asked.

'I had four of them,' Denny said. 'One broke.' He rolled them against Lanya's leg.

Three, two, and six: counting the top numbers was difficult because of pips on other faces.

'You're really into collecting pretty things.' Lanya picked up a cube.

Denny sat back against the wall and hugged his knees.

'Um-hum.'

'Me too.' She watched him. 'Only I leave them where I find them. Like buildings. Or trees. Or paintings in museums.'

'You just—' Denny let his knees fall open—'notice where they are; and go back and look at them?'

She nodded.

Denny tangled his fists in the blanket between his feet.

'But you don't have to do it that way here. You can just take what you want. Well, maybe not the trees and the buildings. But the paintings, if you find one you like, you just carry it with you. Shit, you can go live in a fuckin' building if you like it! In front of the fuckin' tree!'

'No.' Lanya let her thin back bend. 'I'm into collecting pretty, useful objects. Yours are just pretty.'

'Huh?'

'But if they're supposed to stay useful, I have to leave them where they are.'

'You think there's something wrong with taking that stuff?'

'No … of course not. As long as you didn't take it from somebody:'

'Well it must have belonged to somebody once.'

'Do you think there's something wrong with taking it?'

'Shit.' Denny grinned. 'Nobody's gonna catch me. You like taking stuff?'

'It's not—'

'Say,' Denny came to his knees. 'You ever hustle?'

'Huh?' Lanya recovered from her surprise with an unsteady grin. 'I beg your pardon.'

'I mean take money for going to bed with somebody.'

'No, I certainly haven't.'

'Denny has, I bet,' Kid said.

'Yeah, sure,' Denny said. 'But I just wanted to know. About you.'

Her amusement faltered toward curiosity. 'Why?'

'Would you?'

'I don't know… perhaps.' She laughed again and took his knee in her hands. 'Are you planning to set me up in business now? There isn't any business here.'

Denny giggled. 'That's not what I meant.' Suddenly he picked up the plastic box, opened the lid, tossed.

'Hey!' Lanya shrieked, and scrambled back under the cubes of colored wood.

Denny picked up a fallen cube and threw it at her.

'Oh, cut that out—'

He threw another one and laughed.

'Damn it—'

Scowling, she picked up a handful and flung them back, hard. He ducked: they clicked the wall.

She hurled another that hit his head.

'Ahh…!' He flung one back.

She laughed, and threw two more, one with the left hand and one with the right. Both hit. Denny rolled away in hysterics, and scrambled after more gaming pieces.

'You're gonna lose the…' Kid started. Then he stretched across the front edge of the loft to keep the pieces from rolling over. Denny's laughter bobbed between octaves. Kid thought, His voice hasn't even finished changing.

Lanya was laughing too, almost so hard she couldn't throw.

A cube hit Kid's hip. He knocked if back onto the blanket. Another went over his shoulder, clattering to the floor. He watched them turn and duck and toss and wished they would throw pieces at him. After a while they did.

He threw them back, tried to guard the edge, gave up, by now laughing himself, till it hurt beneath his sternum, and couldn't stop laughing, so hurled the bright cubes with gold p's, q's, K's, and r's.

'It's not fair!' Lanya cried against Kid's arm, then laughed again, when they had made him abandon the loft