Dhalgren

Flame blued the copper bottoms of a half-dozen chafing dishes.

There were paper plates. There were plastic forks. The napkins were linen.

Most of the guests, before on the terrace, had. now drifted with them to the patio.

'You just help yourselves to anything you'd like to eat.' Ernestine's arms rose like a conductor's. 'That's the bar over there. Either of these gentlemen—' one young black bartender, one elderly white one, both in double- breasted blue—'will get you a drink. Those two kegs over there are beer. If you want it in the can, the cooler, here—' she thumbed at it; two people laughed—'is chock-full.' In more modulated tones to whoever happened to be beside her: 'Would you like something to eat?'

'Sure.' Revelation said.

'Yes, ma'am,' from Spider.

No full meal had been cooked in the nest that day.

'Captain Kamp,' Lanya was saying, 'this is Glass. Glass, this is Captain Kamp.'

'Oh, yes. We've met, now.'

'You have?' Lanya's surprise sounded perfectly delighted and perfectly sincere. (If I wrote her words down, Kid thought, what she's saying would vanish into something meaningless as the literal record of the sounds June or George makes.) 'Then I can leave the two of you alone and get something to eat,' and turned away.

('Now,' Kamp said. 'Well. What have you been doing since I saw you last?')

(Glass said: 'Nothing. You been doing anything?')

(Kamp said: 'No, not really.')

Lanya shouldered through Tarzan-and-the apes. 'Hey, come on with me, I want you to meet someone. No, really, come on,' and emerged with Jack the Ripper and Raven, herding before them the diminutive black Angel. 'Dr Wellman, you're from Chicago! I'd like you to meet Angel, the Ripper, and Raven.' She stayed a little longer with them. Kid listened to the conversation start, halt, and finally settle into even exchanges (between Angel and Dr Wellman at any rate) about community centers in Chicago, which Angel seemed to think were 'all right, man. Yeah I really liked that,' while Dr Wellman held out, affably, that 'they weren't very well organized. At least not the ones we did our reports on.'

'Hey, Kid.'

Kid turned.

Paul Fenster doffed a paper plate at him.

'Oh, hi…!' Kid grinned, astonished how happy he was to see someone he knew.

'Get yourself something to eat, why don't you?' Fenster said and stepped away between two others, while Kid held the words he'd been about to say clumsily in his mouth.

He wished that Tak had come. And that Fenster had not.

Lanya passed close enough to smile at him. And he was close enough to hear her coax Madame Brown: 'Work, work, work!' in a whisper.

Wrapping herself in her leash, Madame Brown turned and said: 'Siam, this is a terribly good friend of mine, Everett Forest. Siam was my patient, Everett.'

Everett was the man Kid usually saw at Teddy's in purple angora. He now wore a navy blazer and grey knitted pants.

Somewhere across the patio, Lanya was holding paper plates in both hands, about to give them away. Turquoise billowed about her silver hem, trying and failing to rise like a lazy lava lamp. He started to go take a plate, but suddenly thought of Denny, looked around for him—

'I asked Roger if I could be on—'

Kid turned.

'— on your welcoming committee—' (unhappy Thelma of the floor-length brocade)—'because I didn't think I could possibly get to speak to you otherwise. I wanted to tell you how much pleasure Brass Orchids gave me. Only now I — find that it's—' her dark eyes, still unhappy, fell and rose—'just very difficult to do.'

'Um… thank you,' Kid offered.

'It's hard to compliment a poet. If you say his work seems skillful, he turns around and explains that all he's interested in is vigor and spontaneity. If you say the work has life and immediacy, it turns out he was basically concerned with overcoming some technical problem.' She sighed. 'I really enjoyed them. And outside a few polite phrases, there just isn't the vocabulary to describe that sort of enjoyment in a way that sounds real.' She paused. 'And your poems are one of the realest things that's happened to me in a long time.'

'Damn!' Kid said. 'Thank you!'

'Would you like something to drink?' she suggested in the silence.

'Yeah. Sure. Let's get something to drink.'

They walked to the table.

'I've written — and published — two novels.' Thelma went on. 'Nothing you're likely to have heard of. But the effect of your poems on me, especially the first four, the Elegy, and the last two before the long conversational one in meter, is rather the effect I'd always hoped my books would have on people.' She actually laughed. 'In a way, your book was discouraging, because watching your poems gain that effect showed me some of the reasons why my prose often doesn't. That condensed and clear descriptive insight is something I envy you. And you wield it as naturally as speech, turning it on this and that and the other…' She shook her head, she smiled. 'All I can do is find a lot of adjectives that you've got to fill up with meaning for yourself: Beautiful, perhaps mar-velous, or wonderful…'

Kid decided they all applied, to her anyway; His delight was awesome. But holding it (the black bartender poured him a bourbon) was an entrancing irritation as pleasurable in building as a sneeze in relief.

Denny stepped up to the table, fingering inside his shirt pocket. 'Hey, you wanna see something?'

Kid and Thelma watched.

And across the patio, Lanya's dress splashed around with orange and gold. The people she was talking with stepped back in surprise. She looked down at herself, laughed, searched about till she saw Kid and Denny, and blew them a kiss.

Thelma smiled and did not seem to understand.

Kid introduced Thelma to Denny. She introduced them to someone else. Bill, the reporter, joined them. Thelma left. Kid watched laddering relational torques and tensions, already interpreting them as likes, dislikes, ease and unease. Lanya brought Budgie Goldstein to meet him. Budgie, immense in green chiffon, explained how frightened she'd always been of scorpions but now how nice they all seemed, punctuating her explanation with sharp, short laughs. They had wandered from the terrace onto the-

'These? I believe there are… Toby, what are these?'

'The September Gardens, Roxanne. September, remember… And who is this young man? You wouldn't be the Kid?'

And he was handed on.

He liked it.

It took half an hour to realize he had been kept entirely away from the other scorpions.

Besides what he estimated at two dozen house guests, there were another thirty-odd invited from town, including Paul Fenster, Everett (Angora) Forest, and (Kid was surprised to see him leaning over against the stone wall, talking with Revelation) Frank.

There was a bridge between January and June.

Kid looked over the rail at wet rock; floodlights glistened on a vein of clotted leaves — there was no clear water. Lanya and Ernestine passed on the little path underneath.

Ernestine said into her drink: 'The only thing I could think of to do was to physically push them at one another…'

Kid thought Lanya had not seen him, but a moment after she vanished she said, 'Hello,' behind him.

He turned from the rail. 'You've been very busy.'

Wrist against forehead, she mimed distress. 'Phase one, at any rate, is over. Just about everyone knows now it's possible to talk to everyone else. Are you having a good time?'

'Yeah. They're all here for me.' Then he grinned. 'But they're all talking about you.'

'Huh?'