Dhalgren

'You'd think they would. We have had trouble with them before; there was a huge crack, it opened up in June's ceiling. It wasn't our fault. Something upstairs leaked. It took them three months to send somebody. But they answered my letter right away. Meanwhile, I just have to muddle, muddle on. And every morning I send Arthur out of here, out into that.' She nodded. 'That's the crime. Of course I couldn't keep him back; he wouldn't stay. I'd tell him how dangerous I thought it was out there, all the awful things I'm afraid might happen, and he'd — Oh, I wish he'd laugh. But he wouldn't. He'd scowl. And go. He goes away, every morning, just disappears, down Forty- Fourth. The only thing I can do for him is try and keep a good home, where nothing can hurt him, at least here, a happy, safe and—'

He thought she'd seen something behind him, and was about to turn around. But her expression went on to something more violent than recognition.

She bent her head. 'I guess I haven't done that very well. I haven't done that at all.'

He wished she would let him leave.

'Mrs Richards, I'm going to see about that stuff in the back.' He thought there was some stuff in the back still to be put in place. 'You just try and take it easy now.' He got up, thinking: When I come back I can put down the living-room rug.

There's nothing I can do, he justified, to sponge up her grief. And I can't do nothing.

He opened the door to Bobby's room where the furniture had still not been put against the walls.

And June's fists crashed the edges of the poster together.

'Hey, I'm sorry… I didn't realize this was your—' But it was Bobby's room. Kidd's apologetic smile dropped before her astounded despair. 'Look, I'll leave you alone…'

'He was going to tell!' she whispered, wide-eyed, shaking her head. 'He said so! But I swear,' and she crushed the poster altogether now. 'I swear I didn't do it on purpose…!'

After a few moments, he said, 'I suppose that's the first thing that would have occurred to anybody else in his right mind. But I didn't even think of it till just now.' Then — and was afraid — he backed out of the room and closed the door, unable to determine what had formed in her face. I'm just an observer, he thought, and, thinking it, felt the thought crumple like George's poster between June's fists.

Walking toward the living room, he envisioned her leaping from the door, to bite and rake his back. The doors stayed closed. There was no sound. And he didn't want to go back to the living room.

Just as he came in, the lock ratched, and the hall door pushed open. 'Hello, guess who I found on the way up here?'

'Hi, Mary.' Madame Brown followed Mr Richards in.

'Honey, what in the world is that mess down in the lobby? It looks as though somebody—'

Mrs Richards turned around on the couch.

Mr Richards frowned.

Madame Brown, behind him, suddenly touched her hand to her bright, jeweled chains.

Mrs Richards squeezed the fabric of her skirt. 'Arthur, this afternoon Bobby… June—Bobby —!'

His eyelids, snapped wide enough to pain the sockets. He rolled, scrabbling on snarled blankets and crushed leaves, flung his hands at her naked back. Had he nails, he would have torn.

'Unnnh,' Lanya said and turned to him. Then, 'Hey—' because he dragged her against him. 'I know,' she mumbled beside his ear, moving her arms inside his to get them free, 'you want to be a great and famous—'

His arms shook.

'Oh, hey—!' Her hands came up across his back, tightened. 'You were having bad dreams! About that boy!'

He shook his head beside hers.

'It's all right,' she whispered. She got one hand high enough to rub the back of his shoulder. 'It's all right now. You're awake.' He took three rough breaths, with stomach-clenched silences between, then let go and rolled to his back. The red veil, between him and the darkness, here, then there, fell away.

She touched his arm; she kneaded his shoulder. 'It was a really bad dream, wasn't it?'

He said, 'I don't… know,' and stopped gasping. Foliage hung over them. Near the horizon, blurred in fog, he saw a tiny moon; and further away, another! His head came up from the blanket — went slowly back:

They were two parklights which, through smoke, looked like diffuse pearls. 'I can't remember if I was dreaming or not.'

'You were dreaming about Bobby,' she said. 'That's all. And you scared yourself awake.'

He shook his head. 'I shouldn't have given her that damned poster—'

Her head fell against his shoulder. 'You didn't have any way to know…' Her hand dropped over his chest; her thigh crossed his thigh.

'But—' he took her hand in his—'the funny lack of expression Mr Richards got when she was trying to tell him how it happened. And in the middle of it, June came in, and sort of edged into the wall, and kept on brushing at her chin with her fist and blinking. And Mrs Richards kept on saying, 'It was an accident! It was a terrible accident!' and Madame Brown just said 'Oh, Lord!' a couple of times, and Mr Richards didn't say anything. He just kept looking back and forth between Mrs Richards and June as though he couldn't quite figure out what they were saying, what they'd done, what had happened, until June started to cry and ran out of the room —'

'It sounds awful,' she said. 'But try to think about something else—'

'I am.' He glanced at the parklights again; now there was only one. Had the other gone out? Or had some tree branch, lifted away by wind, settled back before it. 'About what George and you were saying yesterday — about everybody being afraid of female sexuality, and trying to make it into something that wreaks death and destruction all about it. I mean, I don't know what Mr Richards would do if he found out his sunshine girl was running around the streets like a bitch in heat, lusting to be brutalized by some hulking, sadistic, buck nigger. Let's see, he's already driven one child out of the house with threats of murder—'

'Oh, Kidd, no…'

'— and the sounds that come out of that apartment when they don't think anybody's listening are just as strange as the ones that come up from Thirteen's, believe me. Maybe she's got good reason not to want her old man to know, and if Bobby was threatening, in that vicious way younger brothers can have, to show the poster to her parents, well maybe just for an instant, when she was backing him down the hall, and the door rolled open, from some sort of half-conscious impulse, it was easier to shove — or not even to shove, but just not say anything when he stepped back toward the wrong—'

'Kidd,' Lanya said, 'now come on!'

'It would be just like the myth: her lust for George, death and destruction! Only — only suppose it was an accident?' He took another breath. 'That's what frightens me. Suppose it was, like she said, just an accident. She didn't see at all. Bobby just backed into the wrong shaft door. That's what terrifies me. That's the thing I'm scared of most.'

'Why?' Lanya asked.

'Because…' He breathed, felt her head shift on his shoulder, her hand rock with his on his chest; 'Because that means it's the city. That means it's the landscape: the bricks, and the girders, and the faulty wiring and the shot elevator machinery, all conspiring together to make these myths true. And that's crazy.' He shook his head. 'I shouldn't have give her that poster. I shouldn't. I really shouldn't—'. His head stopped shaking. 'Motherfucker still hasn't paid me my money. I was going to talk to him about it this evening. But I couldn't, then.'

'No, it doesn't sound like the most propitious time to bring up financial matters.'

'I just wanted to get out of there.'

She nodded.

'I don't want the money. I really don't.'

'Good.' She hugged. 'Then just forget about the whole thing. Don't go back there. Let them alone. If people