Dhalgren

Lanya thought a minute. 'Wash the pants first. Give them to me and I'll run them through the machine. We have one that works in the basement of our building.'

'I only have one pair,' Kid said.

Lanya laughed, let go of their hands, and crawled to the back of the bed.

'I'll shave, though.'

'I thought you decided to grow a beard.'

Raven, from the floor called up, 'I got a razor if you want to use it. Everybody else does.'

'I probably already have,' Kid said. 'Thanks.'

'I taught all morning and afternoon,' Lanya said. 'What did you do?'

Denny shrugged. 'Nothin'. We haven't been doin' too much of anything. We don't ever do nothin' around here.' Denny got his boot out from under him and sat back very close to the edge. 'Dollar tried to break open Copperhead's skull with a plank, and Kid jumped in and broke it up—'

'— little bastard—' Kid flexed his shoulder, which still hurt—'tried to chew my arm off—'

'— and so we put him out, but Copperhead and Glass and Spitt went out and got him anyway. He's inside, pretty beat up.'

'We don't do too much here,' Kid said. 'Never guess who came to visit. She left just before you got here.'

'Who?'

'June Richards.'

'What on earth for?'

'Her brother's here.'

'I thought he fell down an elevator shaft and broke his neck.'

Denny said, 'Was that her brother?'

'Her other brother,' Kid said. Then to Denny. 'This brother's Tarzan.'

'Yeah, I was just here. Remember?'

'Oh.'

'What did she want?'

'Family problems.'

'I thought you'd had enough of that family's problems.'

'So did I.' Kid leaned forward and put his head in Lanya's lap. 'What did you think of our new nest here?'

'Shall I be brutal?'

'You don't like it, huh?' Denny moved over to sit next to her. 'I think it's pretty neat. It's a lot better than the other one.'

'On my way from the front door, to the bathroom, and then back to here, I must have wondered seven distinct times how you could stand it!'

'God damn,' Kid said, 'we roughed it for how long—?'

'That was outdoors, in the open air! And we spent most of our time by ourselves, away from other people anyway.'

'I don't think she likes it here,' Denny said, letting his shoulders drop. 'Don't you think it's nicer than the other place? We got a mattress…'

'You have fifty people in a space that won't hold—'

'Twenty,' Kid said. 'Maybe twenty-five.'

'— twenty-eight that I counted just now between the front steps, the kitchen, the living room, the service porch, the two back rooms-in a space that would be crowded with five or six! There is a pile of shit — human, I assume — by the side of the back steps, which is understandable considering you only have one bathroom. Which I was in, by the way, and that's pretty unbelievable. How do you get these people fed? I mean, I was in the kitchen!'

'We eat pretty well,' Denny said. 'I think we eat pretty well.'

'The lack of privacy would drive me up the wall!'

'You know,' Kid said, 'that's a funny thing about privacy. If there're two or three people in a room, it's really hard to be by yourself. If there're nine or ten, especially if you're all living together, if you want to be alone, all you have to do is think I want to be alone and everybody else has somebody to pay attention to, and you're alone. I had two roommates in an apartment my first year at Columbia; we had four rooms and it was really impossible. A couple of years later I spent December, January, February and March in three rooms on East Second Street in New York with about ten guys and ten chicks. Cold as a motherfucker, and we were in there all day. All we did is eat, ball, and deal dope: Nicest time of my life.'

'Really?' Then she said, 'If it was, how did it compare to this?'

'This is not the nicest time in my life. But there've been others a hell of a lot worse.'

'We got all sorts of good stuff to eat,' Denny said. 'You hungry? I bet I can fix some stuff up for you?'

'Thanks, babes. But I just finished lunch.

'We were a lot cleaner there,' Kid said, 'maybe because there were a few more girls around.'

'Male chauvinist pig,' Lanya said dryly. 'Import a lot of slave labor to wash the dishes and—'

'I'm not a male chauvinist pig,' Kid said. 'I'm a commie faggot pervert.'

'There's nothing to stop you from being both.'

'Everybody cleaned. Just like here. We made people take their shoes off when they came in the door. New York slush. It's just nicer with more girls.'

'You're preaching. That all may be, but it's not here. I can just manage to resist inviting you to come live with me and be my loves.'

'I guess with the place you got, you wouldn't want to come live here,' Denny said. 'But you could stay for a while.'.

Raven suddenly stuck his bushy top-knot over the edge. 'Hey, Lady, if they don't want to come live with you, I'd be glad to. I'm clean, I'm friendly. I do a lot of the cooking around here, too; I'm a pretty good lay—'

'Get the fuck out of here, cocksucker!' Kid said loudly, leaning forward.

'Sure.' The top-knot disappeared. 'Thought I'd make the offer.'

'And don't let anybody else up here. We're busy, huh?'

'Okay,' from below. Bolts and nuts rattled.

'Oh, there're other reasons I don't move you in.'

'I guess Madame Brown wouldn't like it,' Denny said.

'She might not,' Lanya said. 'But I wasn't thinking of that. I just feel I need a place to retreat. Where I can go lick my wounds; when I get wounded.'

'Cool,' Kid said.

'Are you afraid of us?' Denny took his hand, which had been between her thighs, away.

'Yes.' She took his hand and put it back. 'But you keep things interesting. I don't know why I should be… oh, nonsense! I can think of four hundred reasons why I should be — or reasons why other people would say I should be. My own? I suppose I'm doing it to find out what they are. Pretty defeatist, huh? Okay, I'm just doing it to find out.'

'I guess,' Denny said, 'it's pretty—'

'…he up there?' someone said.

'He's busy. You can't go up there.'

'I only want to talk with him a minute!'

'I said he's busy, man. You can't—'

'Look, lover, I can see the tops of their heads from here so he can't be doing anything that complicated.'

Kid went over to the loft edge. 'Bunny?'

'Now, you see—' Bunny came forward—'he hasn't even taken off his clothes. Hi there! It's-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta! — me.' Bunny's arms extended straight up, fell; with them fell Bunny's smile. 'You're supposed to be in charge here, Kid. Have you seen Pepper?'

'Yeah, he's been around.'