'And that's not what you said at all, huh?'
'What I said was: What are you going to do about them? What arrangements were you going to make about getting them over to the school, if any; getting a couple of changes of clothes for them; maybe a permanent mattress that was theirs — things like that.'
'You really think they'd be better off here?'
'Where you found them, somebody was trying to burn them alive. I could always pack them off with the Richards—'
'What about some of the black families of the kids you've got?'
'You have a very funny picture of this city,' she said. 'There aren't any black families here. Some of my kids hang around the—
'It was a good idea.'
She said, sweetly: 'I was fucking pissed, you know, when Madame Brown told me you'd split. But when I got here and everybody said you were writing, it was okay.' She picked up the sheaf of blue paper. 'I'm going to steal these away to read. I'll bring them back in twenty minutes. All right?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'You know I feel better about these than any I've written before. Not that that means anything.'
'Good enough to have a second collection?'
I grinned at her. 'I think I'm even more anxious not to have one.'
She shook her head, kissed me, went away with them,
Wrote till I
— George Harrison circus. Or whoever will put up with them. Some, as far as I can tell, are completely on their own.'
'Where did you park them?'
'With the commune, mostly.'
I lay back down. 'They would have been better off here.'
I rolled over on my back.
Her hand dragged around my stomach.
'I didn't want them.'
'Maybe somebody else
'You don't live here,' I said. 'Except five days out of a week. And you've got them: in school.'
'Yeah,' she said. 'Five days out of a week. But you have a point.' She took her hand away. 'Tell me, how do you do it?'
I asked: 'What?'
'How do you — well, I was Just thinking about the article.'
'Have you heard people talking about my article?'.
'…yours?' That her smile held less mocking than it might was how I knew she mocked.
'About me. You know what I mean.'
'Funny…' She drew her feet up cross-legged / wrinkling/
I thought about that
She explained: 'It isn't two-sided enough for you. It's just straight heroics.'
I heard Denny come inot [into?] the room, move things under the loft looking for something and not find[ing?] it — Lanya glanced down — and leave[ing?].
'All the good gossip about you usually has that dualistic two-sided thing of being bad
was finished; found her reading in the front room, dragged her off to the
Copied them out (and it was full day) but found I still [wanted?] to go on writing. So turned back to one of the pages with space left near the end. of the notebook (there are very few of them, and I have just started putting entries — like the beginning of this one — in quarter-sized, near illegible scrawl all over the margins) and wrote, this, continuing it on a page I found free here near the beginning.
I recall /and want/ this
Swinging up into the cab of a truck, miles north of Florida, and the driver asking how long you've been hitching, and the sunlight fills his lime-splattered lap and your rank jeans and he lets the radio play pop music for a while, for a while country; then twists the dial; your forearm burns on
The City suffers from the lack of it.
But most of us /have/ come here by way of it.
and good at once — do you worry about your image?' she asked, suddenly.
'Sure.'
'I'm surprised,' she said. 'You never seem to purposely do anything about it.'
'That's because it never has any relation to what I actually do do. My Image is in other peoples' heads. Keeping it interesting is there [their?] problem. I worry about it in the way I could worry about the reputation of my favorite baseball team. I don't for one minute think of myself as a player.'
'Maybe so.' She picked up my hand and touched the / thickened thumb-knuckle I'd gnawed / raw /
Which made me laugh. 'I just it [?] the article had mentioned George. I don't think