Dhalgren

leave my other place-but you weren't here for that. You could have helped us move. I was being terrorized to death. Nothing had happened, definitively, but I had to move. Lanya helped me find this place. I've always liked her and… well, I suggested that we share. It's worked out very nicely, I think. The school is only a couple of blocks from here. The few patients I've taken on—'

The bell rang.

'One now. You know—' as she moved around them toward the hall—'I really thought that's what you were. When I came down to let you in.' She waved toward another hallway. 'Lanya's room is down there. Go in and wake her up. I know she wants to see you.' They heard her gait go from the hallway's measured rush to the stairwell's hurried canter.

Denny said, 'Nice, huh?' softly, then sucked at his upper lip where pale hairs stabbed about in reddened flesh. 'You want to … go to her room?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay.' Denny went into the corridor.

There were no bulbs in the elaborate ceiling fixture. An immense painting (Denny-tall by Kid-long), bordered in gilt, looked, as they passed in shadow, completely black.

'That door,' Denny said.

It was ajar.

'Go in, go on in,' Kid said. Denny didn't; so Kid did.

Warm air puffed at his face. The burning here had a hint of gas — in front of a tile fireplace a heater flickered and hissed through its lower grille.

She slept on a daybed, under a pink blanket. Before a huge canvas with violent colors and no frame, arms of vegetation, white and purple, bent over her from a dozen pots, spidered in the bay window, or bung from the mantle.

'Christ, it's hot!' Denny said. 'How she sleep in here?'

'Go on,' Kid said. 'Wake her up.'

Denny frowned at him.

'I want to watch,' Kid said.

Denny's tongue pushed out his lower lip a moment. He stepped forward—

Her cheek was flat on the pillow, and both bare shoulders touched the sheet. Her hand near her face bent sharply at the wrist. One heel, greyed at the rim, stuck out, toes turned in.

— put one knee on the mattress (she went Uhhhh, turned her face down, and her heel pulled under the cover), swung the other over to straddle her and grabbed her head.

'Hey…' One arm shot out and waved. 'God damn, let go of my…' She got over on her back. 'What are you doing, huh… Oh, hey…' The arm came back and locked around Denny's thigh. 'Look, babes, I'm sound asleep, huh?…'

Denny shook her head again—

'Oh, come on…'

— and laughed. 'Kid said I should wake you up.'

'Huh?'

'He wanted to watch.'

'With binoculars from the roof across the street?'

'He's right here.'

'Where?' She pushed herself up and looked around Denny's leg. 'Hey!' Then a smile poured into her face, mixing with the sleep like milk poured into water, while her eyes cleared like jade.

'I brought you something,' Kid said.

'Him?' She laid her head on Denny's hip. 'I like him. He's great and it's very sweet of you. But I'm awfully sleepy.'

'Not that.' Kid pulled out the books. 'These.' He sat down on the bed.

Her T-shirt was torn at the side and he could see the place her breast started, and then the nipple under cloth. (He contemplated the difference in the two colors for which even he could only think of the word white.)

'What are—?' Then she let go of Denny who sat down, shaking the bed. 'Oh!' She took them from him, grinning.

'What are those, anyway?' Denny asked.

'Kid's poems!' Lanya said.

'I guess one of those can be for you.'

'Yeah?' Denny asked. 'Why didn't you give it to me before, then?'

Lanya gave Denny his book and opened hers. 'It really looks nice… I think you sat on this one a while, though.'

'You're not mad at me now?' Kid asked.

'Was I ever?'

'Sometimes I think you're stranger than I am.'

'Women's Liberation has really lost us the prerogative of changing our minds, huh?' She sighed. 'Enough people will be glad to see it go.'

'Hey,' Kid asked, 'are you balling Madame Brown?'

'No!' Lanya looked up from the book, surprised. 'What gave you that idea?'

'I don't know.' Kid shrugged. 'She likes chicks, and, well, you're here—'

Lanya frowned. The book slapped the blanket. 'Can't two people just be friends in this city?'

'You should be balling her.' Denny didn't look up from his.

'Why?' Lanya demanded.

'Cause she's your friend.' Denny said.

Lanya's frown lingered a moment. Then she laughed. 'What are you, the Counter-Culture Dale Carnegie? Hey, move off my foot, huh?'

Denny moved. 'You write all this stuff?' He turned another page, turned back to the cover, opened it again. He turned another page, closed it, opened it. 'Hey, this is the thing they keep on advertising in the God-damn newspaper, huh?'

'Sure is.' Lanya turned another page too. 'Oh, you're a doll to bring me this.' She glanced at him, looked back. 'I… I'm afraid I have a confession, though.'

'What…?'

'I've already given away about twelve copies each to practically everybody I know. And I think I have about half the poems down by heart — I knew them before they were published, really.'

'That's all right.' Kid tried to discover whether that made him feel bad or good.

'I was going to ask you to write something in the copy I've been holding onto for myself. But this one's mine now.' She held it up to her nose. 'It smells like you. That's much better than an autograph, I think.'

Denny closed his book for the sixth time and sniffed it. 'You like the way Kid smells?'

'Mmmmmm.' Lanya put her arm around Kid's chest and tugged him backward. 'Don't you?'

'It gives me a hard-on,' Denny said, 'sometimes. But I don't know whether I like it.'

Kid lay back. 'I guess that's nice you've been giving them out. I didn't know you could get hold of it that long. No, you're going to tell me about some more days I missed. How do you get this jungle to grow in here?'

'It's all coleus,' she said. 'They'll grow any place.'

'Creepy.' Kid said. 'You've got it like a fucking jungle.'

'Plants are relaxing.'

'Long as they don't take a bite out your hand when you're trying to water them.' Through the variegated purple, he focused on the plaster ceiling (another white than either cloth or flesh). 'Do I know Wally Efrin?'

'Wally? Of course you do. He was in the park commune. Why?'

'We murdered him yesterday.'

He thought she might move suddenly; she didn't. 'What?'

'Yesterday, one of our more retarded honkeys beat in his head with a pipe: to death. You were there. It was