Dhalgren

Cathedral said: 'Scorpions don't protect nothing.'

Copperhead said: 'They shot out practically every God-damn window in the God-damn fucking building. Man, it was something!'

Raven asked: 'They shot up Calkins's place? The sniper…?'

Copperhead said: 'Not Calkins' place! And it weren't no fuckin' sniper! It was them people back at that big store. You remember that big fuckin' apartment house Thirteen used to be in, up on the sixteenth floor? God damn, man, they shot the whole fuckin' place up, practically every God-damn window in the building!'

'Shit, man!' Cathedral shook his head. 'The honkeys is bad as the niggers.'

Copperhead humphed: 'Protection!'

Raven laughed.

They walked away in the dark.

I watched the fire. One pants leg was still around my ankle. The optic chain, as I swayed, swayed against my calf. 'I want to… to dance.'

'Then get your foot out your pants cuff,' Denny said. 'You'll trip yourself.' He sounded like he didn't want me to go, though.

Each Clap! struck something inside my skull that made a flash all its own. My ears thundered as though only inches from the drum. Each explosion left some crazy echo stuttering in the tattered noise. I stepped forward, moiling my genitals in my hand. They felt sensitive. I stepped again,

'Watch it—'

Lanya must have held my pants leg down with her foot, because they came off. I stumbled, but kept going. Toward the dance.

In a black turtleneck sweater he stood, with folded arms, among the spectators. He didn't see me looking at him. But Lady of Spain and D-t and a couple of others did and stopped dancing. Prisms and lenses hung down from my neck. Mirrors and prisms swung from my wrist. Lenses and mirrors dragged from my ankle behind me in the grass.

He shifted a little. Firelight shook its patina across his brown hair.

'Hey…!' I said loudly. 'I know who I… who I am now. Who are you?'

He looked at me, frowning.

'Who are you?' I repeated. 'Tell me. I know who I am!' A few more dancers stopped to listen. But the clapping was still awfully loud. I shook my head. 'Almost…'

'Kid?' he asked; it had taken him until then to recognize me, naked. 'Hey, Kid! How're you doing?'

It was the man who'd interviewed me at Calkins' party.

'No,' I said. 'I know who I am. You say who you are.'

'William…' he began. 'Bill…?' And then: 'You don't remember me?'

'I remember you. I just want to know who you are!'

'Bill,' he repeated. And nodded, smiling.

Two people who'd stopped to listen began to clap again.

'I know that,' I said. 'I remember that. What's your last name?'

He raised his head a little. His smile — a dragon, bobbing by, stained his face a momentary green — tightened: 'You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine.' His mouth stayed a little open, waiting for a laugh to come out.

But the laugh came from me. William…? I shouted: 'I know who you are!' and doubled with hysteria. 'I know…!'

'Hey, Kid? Come on now…' Lanya — she and Denny had followed me — took my arm again. I tried to pull away, stumbled into the dancers' chains, and turned, flailing my own. But she held on; Denny had me too. I yanked once more and fell against a guy I didn't know who cried, 'Owwww!' and hugged me, laughing. I turned in a shield's glare, bright blind a moment, and moments after images pulsed everywhere.

'Come on, man,' Denny kept saying, pulling at my forearm. 'Watch out—' and held up a strand of chain so I could get under.

'That's right,' Lanya said. 'This way…'

I got dizzy and nearly fell. Fire and branches wheeled on a black sky. I came up against bark and turned my back to it:

'But I know what his name is! It has to be. He couldn't be anybody else!' I kept telling them, then breaking off into a giggle which, when I let it go, twisted my face in a grin so huge my jaw muscles hurt and I had to rub them with the heels of my palms. 'That's got to be who he is! You understand why, don't you? I mean you do understand?'

They didn't.

But, for a while, I did.

And, bursting with my new knowledge, I danced.

I've never had more fun.

Then I came back and sat with them.

Denny's hand was on my knee; Lanya's shoulder was against my shoulder, her arm along my arm. We sat on the roots, ten feet from the high, forking fire, watching the men and women jog and jump to the sounds of their own bodies, one arched and beating the backs of his thighs, one spinning slowly, and shouting loudly, each time her short hair brushed by the sagging branch. Somebody danced with his belt loose and swinging. And somebody else was taking off her jeans.

Bill, arms folded across his black sweater, among the other watchers, watched.

I sat and panted and smiled (sweat dribbling the small of my back) with contentment over the absolute fact of his revealed identity, till even that, as all absolutes must, began its dissolve.

'What—?' Denny moved his hand on my leg.

Lanya glanced at me, shifted her shoulder against mine.

But I sat back again, silent, marveling the dissolve's completion, both elated and numbed by the jarring claps that measured and metronomed each differential in the change — till I had no more certainty of Bill's last name than I had of my own. With only the memory of knowledge, and bewilderment at whatever mechanic had, for minutes, made that knowledge as certain to me as my own existence, I sat, trying to sort that mechanic's failure, which had let it slip away.

Dragon Lady, with her boot, shoved in another part of the furnace's cinderblock wall, then turned to add her raucous contention to the argument behind her.

'You know,' Lanya said, as somebody flung a burning brand that landed on the edge of the dish, flame end on the grass, 'this place isn't going to be here tomorrow.'

'That's all right,' Denny said.

' Lanya pushed back against me harder, drew up her knees to hug.

The dance was all around us. The battered grass was tangled with chains, plain and jeweled. Most of the scorpions blazed up, incendiar-

up to bring the brandy, that afternoon, to Tak's place — I apologized about opening one of the bottles — he really looked surprised.

He came out of the shed doorway onto the roof, scratching his chest and his chin and still half asleep. But saying he was glad to see us.

Denny climbed onto the balustrade to walk, hands out for balance, along the roofs edge. Lanya kept running up and going, 'Boo!' at him as though she were trying to make him fall off. I thought it was funny, but Tak said please stop it because it was eight stories down and scaring him into a stomach ache.

So they came back to the shack.

Denny went inside: 'Look what Tak's got on the wall!'

Thought he meant George, but it was the interview with me from Calkins's party in the Times. Tak had stapled it to the wall just inside the door. The edges were yellow.