Dhalgren

with roman letters and standard marks of elision? He decided: It can't. 'You taking an afternoon stroll, yeah?' George laughed and nodded. 'I hear you playing before, and I think: She gonna come by' (or was it 'back'?) 'here maybe say hello.'

'Hello!' Lanya laughed too, and put her harmonica in her own shirt pocket. 'I don't always come by,' Lanya said. (She, he realized, had mis-heard gonna, with its almost unstopped g and n's loose as l's, as always.) 'I saw you here a couple of days ago, but the last time we said hello was in the bar. Why do you come out here in the park every afternoon?'

'To look at the sky…' George shrugged. 'To read the paper.'

(Kidd's ankle stung from squatting. He slid his foot over — twigs crackled. But George and Lanya didn't hear.)

'Last time I was at the bar—' (Kidd listened to the melodious inflection that catapulted the broad bass into the tenor at I and bar: Irony? yes. But italics, he thought, would brutalize it to mere sarcasm.)—'I didn't even get a chance to say hello. You just running out of there with your friends.' George looked up at the sky again. 'Can't see nothing in all that mess. Can't see nothing at all.'

'George,' Lanya said, leaning back against the wall, finger tips in her jean pockets and tennis shoes crossed, 'this is the sort of question you lose friends over, but—' Kidd remembered when she'd used the same phrase with him—'I was curious, so I figured I'd just ask. What did happen with you and that girl there was suppose to be all the pictures of in the papers?'

'You know—' George paused to stick his tongue way down inside his cheek, and turned half around with his hands in his pockets—'the first time somebody asked me that, I was mad as shit! But you ain't gonna lose you no friends 'cause too many other people done asked me now.'

Lanya said quickly: 'I was asking because my old man knows her and he's been—'

George's face took a strange expression.

'— been telling me something about her… That's all.' Lanya's face, after a moment, mirrored it as if in attempt to understand it. (Kidd felt his own face twitch.)

After a few seconds, George said: 'Well, I got me an answer.'

'What is it?'

In the khaki pockets, George's knuckles became a row of rounded points.

'Well, now I done raped this little white gal, right? I told the papers, right out, that's what I done.' He nodded, like a man agreeing with the obvious — then glanced at Lanya, as though considering the new fact she brought. 'Now there's rape and there's rape.' George's hands came free. 'You walking along one night and some guy jump—' George lunged, crouching—'out and grab you—' (Kidd, in the leaves, pulled back.) Lanya blinked—'and pull you into some alley and tie you up and other than that he don't touch you, but he pull his thing out and Wank! Wank! Wank! — 'crouching, Harrison swung his fist up and down at his groin. (Kidd's jaw and buttocks clamped; Lanya, still leaning back on the wall, hands in her pockets, watched George's mime.)—'and Oh it's so good and Wow-wee that's gooood shit and Ohhhh—!' George stood, threw up his head, then let it fall slowly to the side with the end of the exhalation. His head came back up: 'if he get one drop—one —' The fist rose with forefinger toward veiled heaven—'one drop on your handbag… that is lying there three feet away—' the fist fell—'in this state, that's rape! Even though his pecker ain't touched you… just dribbled on your handbag, like I say, see?' George nodded and considered: 'And suppose some little girl who is seventeen years, three hundred and sixty-four days and twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes old, she come up and say, 'Oh, honey, I want it so bad! Give it to me, give it to me, baby! Oh, please!'' George's long head went back again, wobbling side to side. 'And she throw herself on the ground and pull down her panties and rubbing herself all up and down—' in a jogging crouch, he dragged his forearms up and down between his legs, pale nails on black fingers clawing toward the ground— 'and moaning Oh, baby, do it to me, do it to me, I want it so bad! and you damn fool enough not to wait five minutes before you say —' George stood, punched the air—'Yeah, baby!' Both hands went slowly back to his pockets. 'Well, that's rape too—'

'Wait a minute, George.' Lanya said. 'If you're walking home at nine o'clock and somebody behind you grabs you by the throat and bangs your head into a wall and hisses he'll knife you if you scream or don't do what he says — No, wait a minute; listen! And you're pissing in your pants in little squirts while he cuts you once on the arm and twice on the leg just so you see he's serious and then tells you to spread your legs and gives you a black eye when you shake your head, because you're so scared you don't think you can, so you bunch up your skirts, while he's got your ear between the blade and his thumb and he keeps twisting and it's bleeding down your neck already and he tries to pull you open with his hand and pokes and prods you with a half-hard dick and slaps you a few times because you're not doing it right — no, don't stop me; we're talking about rape, now — and when he's got it about a half inch in you, he shoots, and while he's panting and it's dripping down your leg, you finally get a chance to run, and when he lunges after you, he trips and drops the knife, shouting he's gonna kill you now, he's gonna kill you, and for the next four days you can't walk right because of what he did inside you with his fingers, and in court — because they do catch him — a lawyer spends six hours trying to prove that you gave him some come-hither look or your hem was too high or your tits were too big, but they put him away anyway: only next week, they ask you to change schools because you're not a good influence any more… Now while you're telling me all this, don't forget, that's also rape!' Lanya's forefinger speared the air; she leaned back once more.

'Well,' George said, 'it is. Yes… that ever happen to you?'

'A friend of mine.' Lanya put her hands back in her pockets.

'Here in Bellona?'

'There aren't any schools in Bellona you can be asked to change. No, it was before. But you men have a strange idea of the way the world works.'

'Now you,' George said, 'are trying to make me think about something, right?'

'You think enough to bounce up and down here like a damn monkey and tell me a lot of bullshit. I asked you what happened. Tell me it's none of my business, if you want. But don't give me that.'

'Well just maybe,' George said, 'you got a funny idea too if you think this is something I didn't think about.' He looked at Lanya; a smile lurked behind his face. 'You ask me a question, see, and you don't wanna hear my answer? The whole point, see, is rape is one pot with a lot of different kinds of stew in it. Some of them is tastier than others.' George narrowed his eyes: 'How you like it?'

'What?' Lanya asked.

'You like it rough, with fighting and beating and scratching and crying—' George leaned toward her, looking out of one eye, one hand between them, one fingertip wagging faster and faster—'and moaning No, no, don't do it, please, don't do it, but crawling back for more between trying to get away and a few yesses slipping out every once in a while between the scratching and the biting?'

'That's the way you like it?'

'Yeah!' George stood back. His fist closed. (In the dirt, Kidd's opened.) 'You know what I tell my women? 'Hit me! Go on, fight me! I'm gonna take it, now. I'm gonna take it, see. And you see if you can keep me from takin' it.' Then we do it — anywhere. In an alley, in a stairway, on a roof, in a bed…' George's brows lowered. 'That the way you like it?'

'No,' Lanya said. 'That's not me. I'd rather do some of the taking myself.'

The black hand turned up its lighter palm. One shoulder shrugged. 'Then you and me—' George began to chuckle—'we just gonna have to stay like we is; friends. 'Cause any other way, we just wouldn't get along. Now I been liking it like that a long time, honey. And when you like it that way, when you do it that way, then you think about it; and you learn about it. And one of the things you learn is which women likes it that way too. Now you can't tell all the time, without askin'; and some like it more than others. But you learn.' George's eyes narrowed again. 'Now you really want to know what it was like, with her and me?'

Lanya nodded. (Kidd's chin tapped a leaf that swung down and up to tap it back.) 'I asked.'

'There it was, you see—' George's shoulders hunched—'all dark in the middle of the day and lightning rolling easy and slow overhead and the flames licking up and the smoke licking down and people screaming, running, rioting, bricks falling in the street and glass breaking behind me — I turned to see: And there she was, just staring. At me. People going past her every which way, and her the only still one on the street, looking like she was about to