Lanya turned on Kid's shoulder, glanced across at Denny, and turned back.
Kid tried to loosen the tension in his abdomen. There was a sudden, unsettling feeling: All his organs, gut, liver, belly, lungs and heart, seemed to have shifted inches down. He didn't break step, but the feeling passed through a moment of nausea that ended with his breaking wind.
Which felt better.
He pulled Lanya closer; the leg against his leg and the shoulder's tugging eased into Kid's and Lanya's rhythm. Translated through Kid's body, Denny's motion firmed and, to the tension, Kid's firmed too. She sighed with her mouth just slightly open, corner to corner, then stroked his arm with the back of her neck. Denny's hand slipped its knuckly padding between Kid's hip and hers.
Another stone lion crouched on the wall, staring.
By it, with leafless branches like shatter lines on the night's smoked glass, was a tree. Beneath Kid's foot the ground was bare, crumbly and — ashy? Recognizing the texture, he stepped from the charred grass to fresh.
They circled the garden.
It was too dark to tell if the small pool were full or empty. Lanya put her hand out and touched a tree trunk. She no longer watched the small burnings worm down in the night city. She walked more closely in step with Kid than Denny did. (Kid thinking: It frees her to think of things further away.) He felt protective of her meditations, and frightened by them.
A memory of rustling italicized the silence. Kid listened for converse in another garden. Their own footsteps were so quiet.
Beyond the wall, (miles away?) things smoked and flickered.
A whisper: 'Someone's coming—!'
And another: 'Oh, wait a minute. Watch out—!'
Kid recognized one girl's voice but not the other.
One branch among the bushes beat at the rest.
The guy who stepped out, zipping his fly, belt loose down both hips, and grinning… it was Glass. 'Oh,' he said. 'It's you all,' and pulled his belt through the buckle.
One of the girls said: 'Just a second. Here it is…'
'Can you see anything?' the other asked, then giggled — the girl in maroon jeans who had come with them from the nest: She pushed out between the brush.
Somebody behind her was looking all around: that was Spitt.
The other girl Kid first recognized as one of Roger's guests. Even in the three-quarter dark she looked rumpled. The second recognition was that it was Milly: her red hair fell over a dark, velvet jumper: She wore something metallic beneath it, unbuttoned now. Copperhead, a hand on each of her shoulders, guided her out.
Lanya said, 'Lord!' and laughed.
'Oh!' Milly said. 'It's
She and Lanya clutched one another in a fit of giggles.
Copperhead frowned at Kid and shook his head.
Kid shrugged.
'I can't find my comb!' Milly finally got out. 'Isn't it amazing! I can't find my comb.'
Lanya looked back at Kid: 'Here, I'll see you in a little while.'
Then, her arm around Milly's shoulder, they fled the garden.
'Man,' Glass said. 'This is a pretty good party.'
Copperhead, deprived of Milly, settled beside the first girl. He bent to whisper to her. She whispered back.
'God damn, nigger!' Spitt said. 'You don't do nothin' but fuck, do you?'
'Shit,' Glass said. 'I watched your pink ass poppin' up and down there a pretty good long while.'
'Yeah, sure.' Spitt said. 'But, man, you were in this one, then that one, then this one again — God
Glass just chuckled.
Then both of them saw that Copperhead and the girl were moving off.
'Hey!' Spitt called and started after them.
Glass loped to their other side.
Phalanxed by black and white, the girl and Copperhead left.
'Come on.' Denny pulled away from Kid, who followed, wondering what of all that interchange had interested Denny most. But as soon as Denny got between the hedges — one shoulder feathered with shadow, the other bright under the lights of June — he stopped to adjust the control box. 'There.'
Nowhere, Kid was sure, had he seen John. But then he hadn't recognized Mildred before.
Guests surging Novemberwards cut them off from Copperhead and the others.
After he'd left Denny, Kid thought: But the whole point was to spend some time with him. Kid sucked his teeth, annoyed with himself, and stepped onto another bridge.
The lights on Kid's end worked.
Frank came toward him, grinning hugely, squinting slightly, face full of floodlight.
I must be in silhouette, Kid thought.
'Hey!' Frank said. 'It is a really good party they're having for you. Congratulations on everything. I'm having a great time.'
'Yeah,' Kid said. 'Me too.'
Beyond Frank, beyond the bridge, Kid saw a flash of metallic kelly. Lanya was still with Milly, whose complicated hair was now in place. They were still laughing. They were still going away.
'You see my book?'
'Sure.'
'What'd you think of my poems? I was sort of interested in what you'd think of them. I mean because you're a real poet.'
Frank raised his eyebrows. 'That's really — Well…' He lowered them. 'Would you like me to be honest? I make the offer, because I guess you've been getting a lot of compliments, especially here at your party. And real honesty is going to be a little rare — maybe this evening isn't the place for it and we should save it for some night at Teddy's.'
'No, go on,' Kid said. 'I guess you didn't think they were all that great?'
'You know…' Frank grasped the rail with one stiffened arm and leaned. 'I was wondering what I was going to say to you about them if you ever really asked. I've been thinking about you a lot. A lot more, I guess, than you've been thinking about me. But I keep hearing about you all the time, people always talking about you. And it occurs to me that I don't know you at all. But youVe always seemed like a good person. And I thought it would be good if somebody was just straightforward with you, you know?' He laughed. 'And there I was, starting to say, 'They're great,' like everyone else. That's really not my character. I think it's better to be honest.'
'What did you think?' Kid heard the coldness in his own voice, and was astonished; listening to himself, he felt suddenly trapped.
'I didn't like them.'
It's his smile, Kid thought and thought after that: No, you're just trying to tell yourself it's the smile you don't like. He said, He didn't like them, that's all. 'What's wrong with them?'
Frank snorted a laugh and looked down at the rocks. 'You really want to know?'
'Yeah,' Kid said. 'I want to know what you think.'
'Well.' Frank looked up. 'The language is extremely artificial. There's no relation, or even tension, between it and any sort of real speech. Most of the poems are pompous and over-emotional — I'm sure you were sincere about every one of them. But sincerity by itself, without skill, usually just results in mawkishness. The lack of emotional focus makes subjects that could have been interesting into Grand Guignol melodrama. They end up coming off pretty banal. The method's cliche, and often, so is the diction. And they're dull.' After a silence in which Kid tried to figure the varieties of unpleasantness he was experiencing, Frank continued: 'Look, you once told me you'd only been writing poetry a couple of weeks. Didn't it ever strike you as a little improbable that you could just jump into it and the first batch you produced would be worth reading? I guess the thing that's really got me upset over the
