Dhalgren

limit. He took a breath, and a clause from the first three lines, to close the passage; and, writing it, saw only one word in it was necessary, so crossed out the others.

Mrs Richards came into the room, circled it, searching, saw him: 'You're writing. I didn't mean to disturb your… writing.'

'Oh, no.' He closed the book. 'I'm finished.' He was tired. But he was finished.

'I thought perhaps you were writing some sort of… elegy. For…' and dropped her head.

'Oh. No…' he said, and decided 'Elegy' was the title. 'Look, you've got everything up here. Maybe I should just go on and leave.'

'No.' Mrs Richards' hand left her neck to reach for him. 'Oh, you mustn't go! I mean you haven't talked to Arthur about your pay, have you?'

'Well, okay.' He sat back.

Mrs Richards, all exhausted nervousness, sat across the coffee table from him.

He asked: 'Where's June?'

'She's in her…' ended by vague gesture. She said, 'It must be awful for you.'

'It's worse for you.' He was thinking: Her son's clothes? She couldn't have meant Bobby, we weren't anywhere near the same size. Edward's? 'Mrs Richards, I can't even say how sorry I—'

She nodded again, chin striking her knuckles. 'Oh, yes. You don't have to. I understand. You went down there and brought him—' in the pause he thought she was going to cry—'back. How can I say thank you for that? You went down there. I saw you when you brought him up. How can I say—'

'It's all right, Mrs Richards. Really.' He wanted to ask her about the structure of light that had been in the elevator car with him; and could think of no way. Momentarily he wondered, maybe she hadn't seen it. But moved his jaws on one another to dispel those implications. 'I don't have to wait here, for Mr Richards. I can catch him another time. You might want to be alone with him when…'

The disorganized movements of her face stopped. 'Oh no, I want someone here! Please stay, stay for me! That would be—' she began to look around in the seat of her chair—'the kindest thing. You could do.'

'All right.'

What she looked for, she did not find. 'I want somebody with me. I need somebody.' She stood. 'With me here.' Again, she circled the room. 'It's so strange, I haven't the faintest idea what I'll say. I wish I could phone him; on the phone it would be so much easier. But I just have to wait. He'll come in the door. And I'll say, Arthur, this afternoon, June backed Bobby into the elevator shaft and he fell down seventeen flights and killed himself…' She looked into the kitchen, crossed the room, looked down the hall.

'Are you sure you wouldn't feel better if I went?' He wanted to go, could not conceive her wanting him to remain, even though she waved her hand at him, even though she said:

'Please. You have to stay.'

'Yes, ma'am. I will.'

She came back to her chair. 'It doesn't feel like we live here. The walls are blue. Before they were green. But all our furniture, it's all in the proper place.'

'The rugs aren't down yet,' he suggested. Well, it filled the silence.

'Oh, no. No, I don't think it's the rugs. It's the feeling. It's the feeling of trying to make a home. A home for my husband and my…' Then she pressed her lips together and dropped her head.

'Look, Mrs Richards, why don't you go in and lie down or something till Mr Richards gets back? I'll put the rugs down,' and thought abruptly: That's what she wanted me to say; so I'll have to tell him!

Who told the damn kids to take the rugs up anyway? And couldn't remember whether it was him or her.

But she shook her head. 'I couldn't sleep now. No. When Arthur comes back… no.' The last was calm. She put — pushed her hands into her lap. Bobby's pile of books still sat in the corner… Kidd wished he had put them away.

She stood.

She walked the room once more.

Her motions began definitively but lost focus in a glance — first out the balcony doors, next into the dining room, now toward the hall.

She stopped behind her chair.

'Arthur,' she said, followed by what sounded more like a comma of address than of apposition, 'he's outside.'

'Ma'am?'

'Arthur is outside, in that.' She sat. 'He goes out every day. I can watch him from the window turn down Forty-Fourth there and disappear. Into the smoke. Like that.' Outside the balcony door, buildings were blurred. 'We've moved.' She watched the fog for the length of five breaths. 'This building, it's like a chessboard. Now we occupy a different square. We had to move. We had to. Our position before was terrible.' Smoke pulled from the window, uncovering more smoke—'But I didn't know the move would cost so much.' — and more. 'I am not prepared for this. I'm really not. Arthur goes out there, every day, and works in Systems. Maitland Systems Engineering. Then he comes home.' She leaned forward. 'Do you know, I don't believe all that out there is real. Once the smoke covers him, I don't believe he goes anywhere. I don't believe there's anyplace to go.' She sat back. 'I don't think I believe there ever was. I'm very much in love with that man. And I'm very much in awe of him. It frightens me how much I don't understand him. I often suspect that he isn't happy, that going out to work everyday in that—' she shook her head slightly—'that it doesn't give him anything real, the inner things he needs. Whatever it is he does out there, it frightens me. I picture him going to a great empty building, filled with offices, and desks, and work benches, and technician shops, and drafting tables, and filing cabinets, and equipment closets — no people. He walks up and down, and looks into the open office doors. I don't think he opens the closed ones. Sometimes he straightens a pile of papers on somebody's desk. Sometimes he looks through a pile of circuit plans, but he puts them back, neatly. That's all. All day. With no one else there. Do you think any of the windows are broken? Do you think he sometimes turns on a light switch and only one of those long fluorescent tubes flickers, faintly orange at one end? There's something wonderful about engineering, you know. I mean, you go in and you solve problems, you make things, with your hands, with your mind. You go in, and you have a problem to work with, and when you've finished solving it, you've… well, done something with real, tangible results. Like a farmer who raises a crop; you can see that it's there. You don't just push a button, again and again, or put endless piles of paper in the proper drawers. Engineers are very wise. Like farmers. They can also be very dense and stubborn. Oh, I don't know what's out there, where he goes to do every day. He won't talk about it. He used to. But not now I don't know where he goes, every morning. If he walked around the streets all day, I could tell that. That's not it. But whatever it is, it isn't good for him. He's a good man. He's more than a good man; he's an intelligent man. Do you know he was hired right out of his class in college? Oh, they were doing that a lot a few years ago. But it wasn't as common as all that when we were in school. He needs… something — I'd seem like a silly woman if I said 'worthy of him.' But that's what I mean. I've never understood what was out there.' She looked again through the balcony doors. 'I've suspected, oh, I've suspected that whatever was there wasn't really what he needed, what would make him — happy? Oh, I learned a long time ago you don't look for that. But the thing you do try for — excellence? Contentment? Oh no, oh no: not in a great empty office building, where the lights don't work, where the windows are broken, where there aren't any people.'

'There're probably people there,' Kidd said, uncomfortably. 'Probably a skeleton staff. Madame Brown and I were talking about that. It's probably like at… the Management office.'

'Ah.' Her hands met in her lap. 'Yes.' She sat back. 'But I'm only telling you how it feels. To me. When the smoke thins, I can look across at the other buildings. So many of the windows are broken. Maybe the maintenance men in Arthur's office have already started putting in new panes. The maintenance is always better in a place of business. Well, there's more money involved. I just wonder when we can expect some sort of reasonable return to normal here. There's a certain minimum standard that must be kept up. They should send somebody around, if only to let us know what the situation is. Not knowing, that's the worst. If I did know something, something for sure about plans for repairing the damages, for restoring service, lights, and things, when we could expect them to start…' She looked oddly annoyed.

'Maybe they will,' he suggested, 'send somebody around.'