Dhalgren

mansard things along the side. A long time.

Filament has a blue scorpion tattooed on her shoulder she said she got before she came to Bellona. She has probably volenteered more information about her previous life than anyone around the nest (most of her life sounds very dull); but, high on tact, she also manages to remain one of the most invisible. If one were writing about the place, she'd probably be among the half dozen people most likely left out, or whose one or two outstanding traits you'd fix for decoration on another character. A girl, and white, she still has the most typical scorpion personality, almost unbelievably so. In fact, I wonder if I believe that; so this note.

Then Fireball got on his pants and chains—

'So long,' Lanya said.

Fireball grinned. 'So long.'

— and went down.

We came closer together at the far corner and talked about him a while, me and Lanya mostly, mostly Denny listening. Then I told them for the first time about mugging that guy last week.

Sort of awed, Denny said: 'Wow!'

Lanya said: 'You are kidding, aren't you…? Jesus, you're not!' She was sitting cross-legged with her back on the low wall. When she lifted her harmonica, there were two parallel dashes on her thigh.

'No, I'm not kidding. It was interesting.'

'The awful thing is, I'm sure you did it to find out what it felt like, or for some other half-assedly commendable reason.'

'The main thing,' I explained, 'isn't that I was so scared, but if you get off this very thin line, you get angrier than a motherfucker—'

'Look,' she said, 'you wouldn't kill somebody just to find out what it felt like.'

'It would be easier here than any place else.'

'Christ!' She looked up at the sky.

'Okay,' I said. 'So you don't approve. Why are you angry?'

'Because,' and her eyes came down to mine, 'in some funny way I think it's my fault. And don't ask me to explain that; or you'll get angry.'

While I tried to figure out some way to get her to explain, practical Denny asked: 'What'd you get?'

'Three bucks. For the work, it pays better than the Richards's.' I reached over for my pants, took the bills out of my pocket, and gave them to him. 'Here.' I glanced at Lanya with a little smile. 'I'd split it between you, but she wouldn't take one.'

She got a tightish expression that let me know she certainly would.

Denny looked at the bills and repeated: 'Wow!' Thinking: He would use the same inflection if he discovered something had been stolen from him. 'Here.' Denny handed one bill to Lanya and—'Here, you keep one. That way we can split it up right.' — one back to me. 'I gotta take a piss.' He stood and walked away, palms facing back, the bill wrapped on the middle finger of his left hand.

Lanya watched me. 'I suppose I'd find you dull if you didn't keep dropping stuff like that into my head. No, don't say anything. I'm still thinking.' She pushed herself to her knees. 'I've got to take a piss too.' Her buttocks and one thigh were printed from the roofing paper.

At the corner drain, Denny looked back over his shoulder. 'You going downstairs to the bathroom?'

'No,' she said in a considered tone that, when the rest of their exchange was finished, should have made me realize she knew what it was going to be.

'Oh, yeah. I guess you can squat here.' Denny finished and shook himself.

'What makes you think I have to squat to piss?'

'You're a girl. You can't do it st… I mean I thought girls had to sit down or something.'

'Jesus God!' Lanya said.

'Well, how do you guide it then?' Denny asked.

'Same way you do.'

'But you don't have a—?'

She held up two fingers in a peace sign, turned them down against her cunt and sort of pulled. 'Like that, if you must know. Now would you please stop staring and let me pee?'

'Oh… yeah.' Denny frowned. 'Sometimes I can't piss in a john if somebody's staring right at my dick.' He turned away, glanced back, away again. 'Wow.'

Like something had been given back to him.

He went to the wall. 'Now I never knew that,' he said.

When she came up, he was looking at the harmonica; turned and handed it to her across my shoulder.

'You know how to play it?' she asked.

'Naw.'

'The scale starts here,' she said. 'See, at the fourth hole.'

We went down (putting on clothes half here, half there), and in the living room got into the discussion with some of the people mentioned (Fireball, Filament, et al) that I wanted to write down some of the things Lanya said in it in the first place. (When I started this, I'd thought that the business about Lanya being turned on by all those funny thing about me, and what had happened on the roof would make a good prologue, because in the discussion she referred to them) but again I'm tired of writing it down, now that I've gotten to the substance.

It had to do with the differences (and similarities) between the girls who were scorpions and the girls who just hung around with us. With reference to the guys who were members and the guys who just hung. It was a good discussion to have and a dull one to reconstruct. And I guess it was mainly for Mike's benefit anyway (Mike is one of said guys who hangs, a long-haired friend of Devastation's; sleeps here most of the time but also doesn't want to join) and I guess/think/ suspect one difference between members and non- members

One of the things that also went down in the discussion was an arguement about getting food, which I guess was really what started the whole thing, and this other part just came up; but my mind follows funny tracks.

anyway is that members know the difference already and don't have to talk about them (that politeness again) though from some of the things Tarzan says, I wonder.

works them?' I asked.

But Faust was walking ahead between the shadowed presses. 'Here,' he said. 'This is what you want to see, isn't it?'

I stepped up to the work table. Battleship linoleum glittered with lead shavings.

'There.' He pointed at a full-page tray of type with a yellow index nail.

Raised grey-on-grey proclaimed:

'But…?'

'That's you, ain't it?' His cackle echoed among the ceiling pipes.

'But I haven't given Calkins the second collection! He doesn't even

an intercallory jamb between Wednesday and the twenty-second, bless. Grain, blabbed on slip-time, told its troubles to the tree (all runny in the oozey gyre's incarnadine). She won't run Thursdays. The underside of the little hand is tarnished; why is muk-amuk cononized so easy? Truck-tracks crow-foot crators drooling half-and half. She didn't remember how or when, last time. Pavement sausages split; the cabbage remembers. Lions with prehensile eyes pick up their paws, apocopate, and go to town. Get with-it, mauve-peanut! Make it, thing-a-ma- boob! You won't catch me slipping my sticktoitiveness under your smorgasborg. Fondle my nodule, love my dog. Lilting is all is easy. Knitting needles receed around the vision, baring his curviture, clearing her underwear. So