Dhalgren

He reared back, heavy arms shaking. More food spilled from his plate. 'Well, since I was boss-man, I said come right on in, ladies, and do your thing! Shit, I been livin' off bitches since I was ten, so it ain't no news to me what they can do.' He came forward again, his weight-lifter's shoulder flattened to Kidd's, and whispered conspiratorially: 'When you knee 'em in the nuts, a bitch don't go down quite so fast, either.' Which he thought was very funny and laughed again. 'Good people to have on your side.' He took another mouthful, and made another large gesture with his spoon; grains scattered. 'Magnificent shit!' he said with his mouth full. 'Magnificent! Which of you fine young ladies is responsible?' He swung his lowered head around, mimicking an exaggerated politeness.

A heavy girl, in a blue sweatshirt, standing by the mannequin said, 'It was one of the guys… Denny helped.'

'Hey, Denny!' Nightmare's small, boomerang chin jounced.

Denny looked up, still eating.

'I should throw this motherfucker at you!' Nightmare jerked the plate back to his shoulder. Kidd jerked aside. But Nightmare returned the plate to his lap, and laughed loudly and wetly.

Denny hadn't even flinched.

'People are very funny,' Nightmare pronounced, recovering, nodding over another mouthful. 'The ladies had their problems.' He thumped his thumb against his sternum among rattling links. 'I had mine too — some of the brothers just weren't interested in having no white people involved no how.'

Kidd glanced around the room again; everyone in the room looked white.

Nightmare saw him glance and lifted a finger: 'Now don't get your idea from this. Thirteen here runs the Lily White Rest Home for Depraved and Indigent A-heads; but the true brotherhood is of a much deeper hue.'

'God damn, Nightmare,' Thirteen said from the door. 'Why are you always going on like that? We get spades here. There was—' he began to snap his tattooed fingers—'what's-his-name…?'

Nightmare waved in the air. 'Tokens! Mere tokens.' The nails on his beefy fingers were overlong and crested black as an auto mechanic's. ' 'Cause I'm white,' he said out of the side of his mouth to Kidd, 'these racist bastards here will let me come around to look for replacement troops. Well, motherfuckers, I'd come around here even if I was black as George! And I'll keep coming around till both moons fall out of the sky and the sun comes up backwards!' He looked at Kidd directly. 'And we're getting a few, too — though these shitheads would give up a nut before they'd admit that just a few of them even like it better living over there and being scorpions than hanging around this behavioral sink!' His hand, which was still up before him, returned to hold the edge of his plate, about to slide off. 'Yes, the ladies had to beat some heads.' He glanced back at the figure behind them in the blankets: 'And some of the ladies, indeed, got their heads beat. Well, I had to beat some heads too, to attain my present status — and though I am now quite satisfied with my current position in the community, I would not be surprised if my head eventually took some beating too.' He turned back, dark hair falling in tangles from his shoulder, and made a face. 'Sisterhood… Brotherhood… very powerful stuff, man!' Grimacing, he shook his head. 'Very powerful. Hey—?' once again at Denny. 'Denny, you gonna run? We need you tonight. You run it good, boy.'

'I dunno.' Denny didn't turn. 'Lemme finish my dinner, huh?'

Nightmare laughed again, looked around the room. 'He's gonna come. How you like that, the little bastard's gonna come! I don't think I'd even take any of the rest of you cocksuckers. Denny? It's a good run with us, ain't it? Go on, tell 'em.'

'Yeah,' Denny said with his mouth full, then swallowed: 'It's a good run, okay?'

'Now you see; these motherfuckers all think I want to be the daisy in a field of black orchids—' (lower:) 'though we have two or three of those; and no problems with 'em. But since I been boss- man, I take whoever wants in and knows their business.' He nodded to Kidd. 'I'd even take you, and you ain't no nigger… what?' He leaned back, narrowed his eyes, and raised a hand like an artist at a picture: 'A half-blood American Indian on your… father's side? 'Course, the light's a little dim…'

Kidd grinned. 'On my mother's.'

Nightmare grinned back, shrugged. 'Well, you still got more meat on you than most of these sad-assed A- heads.'

A frustrated laugh came from across the room. Thirteen said: 'Nightmare, why are you always down on us like that? You got us out as racists, and chauvinist pigs, and speed freaks to boot. We ain't had no speed around here for I don't know how long.'

Nightmare bounced on the bed with delight, the back of his wrist against his forehead, miming a distressed belle. 'Me!' in falsetto. 'Me?' even higher. 'Me, down on speed? I'm just waiting for you racist, chauvinist pigs to get some more!'

Smokey said: 'That blond Spanish guy hasn't been around with any for a long time… I sort of wonder where he went.'

Somebody else said: 'He probably burned the whole city.'

Thirteen began laughing again, moved across the room, laughing. Others moved too.

Nightmare turned back to Kidd. 'How'd you like that idea, goin' on a scorpion run?' It must have suddenly struck him as funny; he guffawed, snorting, shook his head, and brushed rice grains from his chin with his fist. 'You'd picked yourself a nice shiny orchid last time I saw you. What would you do in a real garden party, huh, kid?' Two more spoonfuls and Nightmare's plate was empty. Holding it between both thumbs and forefingers, he opened his knees and dropped it. 'You think about that, running. Maybe that's what you're looking for, huh? Let me tell you something.' He fingered among the chains around his neck, held up the thin brass one with its round and triangular glasses, and shook it. 'You're a fool to wear yours where anybody can see it, kid.' Glass glittered, harsh in white lantern light.

Why why 'Why? You got yours on around your neck,' nd your neck our eck ck. He hadn't been aware that his shirt was half open.

'Just shut up and listen now. Smokey over there. I know she's got one. But you don't see her with it out and waving it, now?'

'You know,' Kidd said, 'I figured two people who saw each other with… these: well, they'd sort of trust each other, you know? Because they'd… know something about each other,' and wondered if Madame Brown had arrived upstairs for dinner.

Nightmare frowned. 'Say, he's got a brain, you know?' He glanced at Thirteen. 'The kid ain't that stupid. But I'll tell you: You look at this and you know something about me. I look at that and I know something about you. Well, what are we gonna do with what we know, huh? I'll tell you what you'll do with it. You'll use it to put the longest, sharpest blade on that orchid of yours, soon as I ain't lookin, between that rib, and that rib.' His finger suddenly ger suddenly turned to enly his ly jab Kidd's his side. 'And don't think for one second I wouldn't do the same thing to you. So I don't trust anybody I see with one at all.' He pressed his lips to make a little pig's snout and nodded, mocking sagesse. 'Hey, just look at Denny!'

Finished with his food, Denny had walked over to the mannequin. He took up a heavy chain loop from it, draped dark links around his own neck.

'I told you Denny'd run with me. Okay, man. You know when, you know where. Lemme get out of this freak hole. I gotta hunt some more.' He stood and lumbered over the mattresses. 'I knew you'd come through, Denny. Hey?' He frowned at Thirteen. 'Do something with her,' and gestured back toward the bed.

'Yeah, sure, Nightmare.' Thirteen opened the door for him. When he closed it, he looked back at Denny. Smokey at his shoulder blinked in anticipation.

'Hey, man,' Thirteen said slowly after seconds of silence, 'are you still into that shit?'

Denny put another chain around his neck. It rattled on the one already there.

Thirteen swung up his hands and grunted. 'Come on, Denny, I thought you were gonna stay out of all that. All right, all right. It's your ass.'

Upstairs a woman was laughing, and the laughter grew, ghter grew, laughter: 'Stop it! Stop it will you?' in Mr Richards' harsh voice. 'Just stop it.' op it, ghter grew ew.

'Look, I'm gonna have to get back to work.' Kidd stood up. 'Thanks for the food, you know? And the dope. It's good stuff.'

Denny put on another loop, and Thirteen said, 'Oh, yeah, sure.' He seemed as disappointed at Kidd's leaving