Dhalgren

to overhear Lanya and Milly discussing him; the prospect of a discussion of him with George left him vaguely uncomfortable.) Fingers hooked over her pocket rim, Lanya was toying with her harmonica. 'Yeah. I don't know if I'd say I got him; how about getting?'

'Well, you sure get yourself some winners! That last one…' George shook his head.

'What did you think of Phil, George?' The subject, almost as uncomfortably, had changed.

'I thought he was crazy!' George said. 'I thought he was a stuckup, up-tight, tight-assed asshole— Smart? Oh, he was smart as a whip. But I'm still glad to see you shut of him.' George paused; his brows wrinkled. 'Though I guess maybe you ain't…?'

'I don't know.' Lanya's lowered eyes suddenly rose. 'But that's easier to say if you got a new one, isn't it?'

'Well—' George's laugh came out surprising and immense—'I guess it is. Say, when you gonna bring your old man on down to Jackson and say hello?'

'Well, thanks,' Lanya said. 'Maybe we'll come down… if we don't see you in the bar, first.'

'Gotta check your new old man out,' George said. 'First, see, I thought maybe you'd got involved with one of them faggot fellas up at Teddy's. God damn, sometimes I think there ain't nobody in the city no more ain't a faggot but me.'

'Is that a standard male, 'heterosexual fantasy?' Lanya asked. 'I mean, to be the only straight man around when all the others are gay?'

'I ain't got nothing against faggots,' George said. 'You seen them pictures them boys made of me? Something, huh? Some of my best friends is—'

'George!' Lanya held up her hand, her face in mock pain. 'Come on, don't say it!'

'Look—' George's gestures became sweepingly gallant—'I just like to make sure all my friends is taken care of. If you wasn't getting none, see, I was gonna volunteer to make an exception in my standard methods of procedure and fit you in my list. We got to watch out for our friends? Now, don't we?'

'That's sweet of you,' Lanya said. 'But I'm royally taken care of in that department.'

And Kidd, gloriously happy, put his other knee on the ground and sat back. A thought, circling below articulation, suddenly surfaced, dripping words: They know each other… were the first that fell off it; more followed, obscuring clear thought with lapped, resonant rings. He remembered the poster. It was the same man, with the same, dark, rough face (the face was laughing now), the same body (the khaki coverall was mostly too loose but now and again, when a leg moved so or a shoulder turned, it seemed about to tear at arm or thigh), that he'd seen reproduced, bared, black, and bronze-lit.

'Well, then—' George made a slate-wiping motion—'everything's fine! You two come on down. I'd like to meet this guy. You pick 'em pretty interesting.'

'Okay.' Lanya said: 'Well, I guess I'm gonna be on my way. Just stopped in to say hello.'

Now, Kidd thought, now Milly is going to jump out and…?

'Okay. I see you,' George said. 'Maybe later in the bar.'

Now…?

'So long.' Lanya turned around and started down the steps.

George shook his head, went back to the wall — glanced after her once — picked up the newspaper and while he shook it out, speared two fingers at his breast pocket for his glasses. He got them on the third try.

Harmonica notes twisted up like silver wires in the haze.

Kidd waited half a dozen breaths, realizing finally he had misjudged Lanya's and Milly's intentions. Milly had, apparently, chickened out. Again he wondered from what. Backing into thicker brush, he stood with cramping thighs and, ignoring them, circled the court. The ground sloped, sharply. This time, if he could overtake her on the path, he would not hide—

The music wound in the smoke toward some exotic cadence that, when achieved, slid it into a new key where the melody defined itself along burbling triplets till another cadence, in six measures, took it home.

He came out on the side of the steps. Small branches tugged his hips and shoulders, swished away.

Lanya, at the bottom of the flight, ambled onto the path, dragging her music after like a silver cape.

And she had almost completed the song. (He had never heard her play it through.) Its coda hauled up the end in one of those folk suspensions that juxtapose two un-related chords to hold a note from one above the other and make chaos of it. Starting down the steps behind her, he got chills, not from fear or confusion, but from the music's moment which sheered through mouse-grey mist glimmering in the leafy corridor.

He tried to walk silently, twice stopped entirely, not to break the melody before its end.

He was on the bottom step. She was fifteen feet ahead.

The melody ended.

He hurried.

She turned, lips together for some word that began with 'm.' Then her eyes widened: 'Kidd—?' and she smiled. 'What are you doing here—?' and took his hand.

'I was spying on you,' he said, 'and George.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'You were?'

'Yeah.' They walked together. 'I liked your song.'

'Oh…'

He glanced over.

She was more embarrassed, he realized, by his overhearing the music than the conversation. While he was wondering what to offer her to atone, she managed to say:

'Thank you,' softly, 'though.'

He squeezed her hand.

She squeezed his.

Shoulder to shoulder, they walked up the path, while Kidd's mind turned and sorted and wondered what hers turned and sorted. He asked, suddenly: 'The person you were telling George about, who got raped — was that Milly?'

Lanya looked up, surprised. 'No… or let's say that I'd rather not say.'

'Huh? What does that mean, no or you'd rather not say?'

Lanya shrugged. 'I just mean Milly probably wouldn't want me to say, one way or the other.'

Kidd frowned. 'That doesn't make sense.'

Lanya laughed, without letting it out, so that it was only an expression, a breath through her nose, her head shaking. She shrugged again.

'Look, just give me a simple answer, was she or—?'

'Now you look,' Lanya said: 'You're a very sweet man, and I know you're not doing it on purpose, it's just the habit men get into of trying to undermine anything that goes on between two women. But stop it.'

He was confused.

She asked: 'Okay…?'

Confused, he agreed. 'Okay.'

They wandered on. The song, etched on memory, filigreed, in memory, the silent, present trees. The sky had deepened to a color that could be called blue, in leaf-shaped flakes among them.

Confused, he was still happy.

At the commune clearing, Milly, with Jommy at the furnace, turned, saw them, and ran over. 'Lanya, Kidd—' and to Lanya: 'Did you tell him?'

Lanya said: 'No. I didn't, yet…'

'Oh, Kidd, I'm afraid—' Milly took another breath; she had been running more than just from the furnace. 'I'm afraid I was spying on the two of you most of the way back here.' She laughed. 'You see, we decided I was going to hide in the bushes and overhear Lanya and George—'

'Huh?' Kidd said.

Lanya said: 'He's not so bad after all—'

'Kidd?' Milly said. 'Oh — you mean George! No, of course he isn't…' Back to Kidd: ' was going to come out and join Lanya again on the path back from the Weather Tower—' then it wasn't the monastery; but he'd pretty well decided it couldn't have been—'when I saw you pop out on the steps, thirty seconds before I was going to!'