Dhalgren

Speech, the notebook's owner had written across from the page where Kidd wrote now, is always in excess of poetry as print…

'Hello.'

He looked up from the counter (in the cage the silver dancer bowed to thin applause and flicked through the black curtain), then down as the dog gave a short bark.

'Muriel—!'

'Hello, Madame Brown. I haven't seen you in a while.'

'Odd: I haven't seen you either.' She laughed, high to low. 'God, this place is dead tonight. May I sit down? You can pretend to buy an old woman a drink.'

'Sure—'

'But I'm interrupting your work.'

He shrugged. 'I'm sort of at a stopping point.'

As Madame Brown sat, the bartender brought her usual and replaced Kidd's beer. 'What are you writing. Another poem?'

'A long one. It's in the natural rhythm of English speech.'

She raised her eyebrow, and reflexively he closed the book; then wished he hadn't. 'How are Mr and Mrs Richards, and June?'

'Oh.' She flattened her knuckles to the wood. 'Like always.'

'They like their new place?'

She nodded. 'I was over there for dinner night before last. But this evening they're having other guests, apparently. It was quite amusing to watch Mary try and make sure I didn't just accidentally drop around tonight.' She didn't laugh. 'Oh, yes, they're quite settled in now.' She sat back. 'I wish there were some more people. The city soaks them up; or maybe people are just… leaving?'

Kidd put the orchid on the cover of his book where it balanced on the three longest prongs.

'I guess you have to carry that around, don't you.' Madame Brown laughed. 'Perhaps I ought to get one. Perhaps I've just been very lucky in this dangerous city?'

From opposite sides he moved his hands together till his blunt fingertips bumped in the cage, and the blade points tugged back the skin between, burning now, about to cut. 'I've got to go back to see them.' He separated his fingers a little. 'About my money.'

'You haven't been paid?'

'Five dollars, the first day.' He looked at her. 'That morning I met you in the park, you said they'd told you they'd pay five an hour.'

She nodded and said something softly. He thought he heard '…poor kid,' but could not tell if 'poor' were preceded by 'you' or followed by comma and capital.

'How did they tell you?'

She looked at him questioningly.

'What did they say to you, exactly?'

She turned her frown to her glass. 'They told me that if I found a young man who might help them with their moving, I should tell him they would pay him five dollars an hour.'

'Mr Richards?'

'That's right.'

'It's one of the reasons I took the job. Though, Lord knows, you don't need it here. But I guess they knew what they were doing, then?'

'You should have spoken to him. He'd have given you something.'

'I want him to give me what he said he was going to — shit, I couldn't ask him that last day.'

'Yes, it would have been a little odd.'

'I'm going to have to go back and talk to him, I guess.' He opened his notebook. 'I think I'm going to write some more now, ma'am.'

'I wish there were more people here.' She pushed back from the bar.

'Well, it's early.'

But she wasn't listening.

He went through the pages till he found: …as print is in excess of words. I want to write; but can fix with words only the desire itself. I suppose I should take some small comfort in the fact that, for the few writers I have actually known, publication, in direct proportion to the talent of each, seems to have been an occurrence always connected with catastrophe. Then again, perhaps they were simply a strange group of…

'Ba-da,' he whispered and turned over the notebook to the blank page, 'ba-da, ba-da, ba-da, ba-da.'

The letter was still in the mailbox.

Among the bent and broken doors, red, white, and blue edging crossed this one, intact grille. He thought he could see the inking of a return address. I can pretend, he thought, it says Edward Richards, from a hotel in Seattle, Washington, off Freemont Avenue, on Third. He could make some things appear like that, when it was this dim… He turned and went to the elevator.

Someone, at least, had mopped the lobby.

He pressed the button.

Wind hissed from the empty shaft. He stepped into the other.

He'd come out in the pitch-dark hall before — as the door went k-chunk—he realized habit had made him push seventeen, not nineteen. He scowled in the dark and walked forward. His shoulder brushed a wall. He put out his hand and felt a door. He walked forward till he felt another.

Then he stopped — because of the smell. He scowled harder.

By the time he reached the next door (three, four doors on that side of the hall?) the odor was nauseous and sharp. 'Jesus…' he whispered; his breath echoed.

He made himself go on.

The next door, which had to be the Richards' old apartment, swung in under his hand. The stench made him reel and lose kinesthetic focus. He hurried back, twice banging walls, one with his left shoulder, one with his right.

He was wondering how long it would take him to feel for the elevator bell…

K-chunk… k-chunk… k-chunk. One of the doors had caught on something. Between k-chunks, reminiscent of his own breath, came wind.

He paused, disoriented in the putrid dark. The left elevator door? The right? Then fear, like the lightest fore- finger, tickled his shoulder. He nearly bent double, and staggered against the wall; which was not a wall, because it gave.

Inside the exit door, he caught the bannister, and stumbled down.

Faint light greyed the glass a flight below. Gulping fresh breath, he came out in the hall of sixteen. One bulb burned at the far end.

His next gulp checked explosive giggles. Kidd shook his head. Well, what the fuck were they supposed to do with it? He started down the hall, grinning and disgusted. Still, then why did I go to all that to drag it up?

When he knocked, on the door, rattlings suggested it was opened. When he pushed it in, a girl caught her breath. 'Hey, who's home?' he asked.

'Who… who is it?' She sounded afraid and exhausted. The window let in dark blue over the iron bunks, piles of clothing, an overturned stool.

'It's the Kid.' He was still grinning.

'They're all gone,' she said, from the muddle of blankets. 'There's just me. Please… they're all gone.'

'I'm not going to do anything.' He stepped in.

She pushed herself up on her elbow, brushed hair back from her face and blinked bruised eyes.

'You're… the one who was sick?'

'I'm better,' she whined. 'Really, I'm better. Just leave me alone.'