Dhalgren

'We were all standing outside the bar, and in the sky we saw…'

But she laughed and, laughing, dropped her face to his hand again. When she looked up, she halted the sound to question. 'Hey?' And then, 'Hey, I'm kidding you…?'

'Oh,' he said.

But she saw an answer that confused. 'No, really, I'm just kidding. What were you going to say about it?'

'Huh?'

'You were about to say something?'

'Naw, it's nothing.'

'But…?'

'Don't do that again. Don't kid like that. Not… here.'

She looked around too when he said that. Then pushed her face against his hand again. He moved his fingers between her lips. 'I won't,' she said, 'if you'll let me do this,' and slid her mouth around his wrecked thumb.

As expression releases the indicated emotion, as surface defines the space enclosed, he felt a strange warmth. It grew behind his face and made his breath shush out. 'All right,' he said, and, 'Okay,' and then, '…Yes,' each more definite in meaning, each more tentatively spoken.

Tak pushed the door back hard enough to make the hinges howl. He walked up to the balustrade, fingering his fly and mumbling, 'Shit!' saw Lanya and stopped. 'Sorry. I gotta take a leak.'

'What's the matter with you?' she asked the swaying Loufer.

'What's the matter? Tonight's trick isn't going to put out. Last night's is all caught up the biggest fag-hag in the city.' His zipper hissed open. 'Come on, I want to take a leak.' He nodded to Lanya. 'You can stay here, sweetheart. But he's gotta go away. I got this hangup. I'm piss-shy in front of men.'

'Fuck off, Tak,' he said, and started across the roof.

She caught up, her head down, making a sound he thought was crying. He touched her shoulder, and she looked up at him in the midst of a stifled giggle.

He sucked his teeth. 'Let's go.'

'What about Jack?' she asked.

'Huh? Fuck Jack. We're not going to take him with us.'

'Oh, sure; I didn't mean…' And followed him toward the stairwell.

'Hey, good night, Tak,' he called. 'I'll see you around.'

'Yeah,' Loufer said from the cabin door, going in: the hair on his shoulder and the side of his head blazed with back-light.

'Good night,' Lanya echoed.

The metal door grated.

A flight into the dark, she asked, 'Are you mad at Tak… about something?' Then she said: 'I mean, he's a sort of funny guy, sometimes. But he's—'

'I'm not mad at him.'

'Oh.' Their footsteps perforated the silence.

'I like him.' His tone spoke decision. 'Yeah, he's a good guy.' The newspaper and the notebook were up under his arm.

She slipped her fingers through his in the dark; to keep from dropping the notebook, he had to hold her near.

At the bottom of the next flight, she asked, suddenly: 'Do you care if you don't know who you are?'

At the bottom of the next, he said, 'No.' Then he wondered, from the way her footsteps quickened (his quickened to keep up) if that, like his hands, excited her.

She led him quickly and surely through the basement corridor — now the concrete was cold — and up. 'Here's the door,' she said, releasing him; she stepped away.

He couldn't see at all.

'Just a few stairs.' She moved ahead.

He held the jamb unsteadily, slid his bare foot forward… onto board. With his other hand, he raised notebook and newspaper before his face, thrust his forearm out.

Ahead and below, she said, 'Come on.'

'Watch out for the edge,' he said. His toes and the ball of his foot went over the board side and dangled. 'And those damn meat hooks.'

'Huh…?' Then she laughed. 'No — that's across the street!'

'The hell it is,' he said. 'When I came running out of here this morning, I nearly skewered myself.'

'You must have gotten lost—' she was still laughing—'in the basement! Come on, it's just a couple of steps down.'

He frowned in the dark (thinking: There was a lamp on this street corner. I saw it from the roof. Why can't I see anything…) let go the jamb, stepped… down: to another board, that squeaked. He still held his arm up before his face, feeling for the swaying prongs.

'One of the corridors in the basement,' she explained, 'goes under the street and comes up behind a door to the loading porch across from here. The first few times I came to visit Tak, that happened to me too. The first time, you think you're losing your mind.'

'Huh?' he said. 'Under the… street?' He lowered his arm.

Maybe (the possibility came, as relieving as fresh air in these smoke-stifled alleys) he'd simply looked down from the roof on the wrong side; and that was why there was no street-light. His semiambidextrousness was always making him confuse left and right. He came down two more board steps, reached pavement.

He felt her take his wrist. 'This way…'

She led him quickly through the dark, up and down curbs, from complete to near-complete darkness and back. It was more confusing than the basement corridors. 'We're in the park, now, aren't we…?' he asked, minutes on. Not only had he missed the entrance, but, at the moment he raised from his reveries to speak, he realized he did not know how many minutes on it was. Three? Thirteen? Thirty?

'Yes…' she said, wondering why he wondered.

They walked over soft, ashy earth.

'Here,' she told him. 'We've reached my place.'

The trees rustled.

'Help me spread the blanket.'

He thought: How can she see? A corner of blanket fell across his foot. He dropped to his knees and pulled the edge straight; felt her pull; felt her pull go slack.

'Take all your clothes off…' she said, softly.

He nodded, unbuttoned his shirt. He had known this was coming, too. Since when? This morning? New moons come, he thought, and all of heaven changes; still we silently machinate toward the joint of flesh and flesh, while the ground stays still enough to walk, no matter what above it. He unbuckled his pants, slipped out of them, and looked up to notice that he could see her a little, across the blanket, a blot moving furiously, rustling laces, jeans — a sneaker fell in grass.

He pushed off his sandal and lay down, naked, on his back, at the blanket's edge.

'Where are you…?' she said.

'Here,' but it sounded, shaking the mask of his face, more like a grunt.

She fell against him, her flesh as warm as sunlight in the dark, slipped on top of him. Her knees slid between his. Happily, his arms enclosed her; he laughed, and rocked her to the side, while she tried to find his mouth with hers, found it, pushed her tongue into it.

A heat, whose center was just behind his groin, built, layer around layer, till it seemed to fill him, knees to nipples. The bone behind her crotch hair moved on his hip while she clutched his shoulders — but he did not get an erection.

They rocked, kissed; he touched, then rubbed her breasts; she touched, then rubbed his hands rubbing her; they kissed and hugged, five? ten minutes? He grew apologetic. 'I guess this isn't… well, I mean for you…'

Her head pulled back. 'If you're worried about it,' she said, 'you've got toes, a tongue… fingers …'