Dhalgren

He ate a spoonful: maple.

'I,' he said and swallowed, 'have to talk to Mr Richards about some money. You like it here?'

'Oh, it's a very nice apartment. You moved all the furniture for them, they told us.'

He smiled, nodded, and decided he just couldn't take grape jello with maple flavored whipped cream.

The man beside the woman leaned around again: 'I didn't really work with Arthur. I used to work for Bill over there who used to do statting for MSE — where Arthur works. So Lynn and me, we just came along.'

'Oh,' Lynn said deprecatingly while Kidd drank coffee, 'we just have to extend ourselves, you know, While all this is going on.'

'That's what I'm doing; that's what I'm doing, A bunch of us have gotten together, you see. We're living together in… well, we're living together. I mean we were just about to get chased out of our house. By son guys with those things, you know?' The man pointed the orchid. 'But today, I'd wear one if I had it.'

'No, you wouldn't!' Lynn insisted. 'You wouldn't'

'It's pretty rough,' Kidd said.

'The way we got together,' Lynn went on to explain, 'it's much better for the children. You see?'

'Yeah, sure!' He'd heard her suddenly helpless tone and he responded to it.

'What's there around here to write poems about?' That was her husband again. 'I mean, nothing ever happens. You sit around, scared to go outside. Or when you do, it's like walking into a damn swamp.'

'That's the whole thing,' Lynn acknowledged. 'Really. In Bellona, I mean, now. There's nothing to do.'

From her father's side, June said: 'Kidd writes lovely poems.' Under the candles, shadows doffed in the cream.

'Oh, yes,' Mrs Richards affirmed, setting down dishes of jelly before the large woman in corduroy and the blond man in tweeds. 'Kidd, you will read something to us, won't you?'

'Yes,' Mr Richards said. 'I think Kidd should read a poem.'

Kidd sucked his teeth with annoyance. 'I don't have any. Not with me.'

Mrs Richards beamed: 'I have one. Just a moment.' She turned and hurried out.

Kidd's annoyance grew. He took another spoonful of jello; which he hadn't wanted. So drank the rest of his coffee. He hadn't wanted that either.

'Here we are!' Mrs Richards cried, returning; she slipped the blue-edged paper before him.

'Oh,' Kidd said. 'I forgot you had this one.'

'Go on, read it.'

'Better be good,' said blond and tweedy, affably enough. 'Otherwise Ronnie will run the other way every time she sees you on the street because she thinks you're a—'

'I don't go out on the streets,' Ronnie said. 'I want to hear what kind of poems you write. Go on.'

A man who wasn't Mr Richards said, 'I don't know very much about poetry.'

'Stand up, Kidd,' Mr Richards said, waving a creamy spoon. 'So we can hear you.'

Kidd stood and said as dumbly as possible, 'Mr Richards, I just came to see you about getting my money for the work I did,' and waited for reaction.

Mr Richards moved his shoulders back and smiled.

Somewhere — outside in the hall? — a door closed.

Mrs Richards, holding the edge of the table and smiling, nodded: 'Go on, Kidd.'

Ronnie said to Mrs Richards: 'He wants his money: He's a pretty practical poet.' Though she spoke softly, everyone laughed.

He looked down at Mrs Richards' copy of his poem, and drew his tongue back from his teeth for the first word.

In the hall, a man screamed, without words or inflection; footsteps, some dull thuds — the scream changed pitch at each of them.

Kidd started reading. He paused at the third line, wanting very much to laugh, but didn't look up.

Footsteps: running voices arguing — a lot of them.

Kidd kept reading till he reached Mrs Richards' omitted comma.

Lynn, beside him, let out a little cry. From the corner of his eye, he saw her husband take her arm. Somebody banged on the wall outside with what sounded like a crowbar. And the screaming cracked to a hysterical, Mexican accent: 'Oh, come on, please, come on lemme 'lone. Don't fool 'round like that — No! C'mon, c'mon — No. Don' please—'

Kidd read the last lines of his poem and looked up.

The crashes had moved from the wall to the door, and fell with timed, deliberate thuds. Within the crash, as though it were an envelope of sound, he could hear the chain rattle, the hinges jiggle, the lock click.

As he looked around the table, the thought passed with oblique idleness: They look like I probably do when somebody's eyes go red.

Outside, above the shouting, somebody laughed.

Kidd's own fear, dogged and luminous and familiar enough to be almost unconscious, was fixed somewhere in the hall. Yet he didn't want to laugh. He still wanted to giggle.

Out there, someone began to run. Others ran after.

A muscle on the back of Kidd's thigh tensed to the crashing. He smiled, vaguely, confused. The back of his neck was tickly.

Someone's chair squeaked.

'Oh, for God's sake, why don't they—' and, where rhythm predicted the next crash, only her word fell: ' — stop!'

Footsteps lightened, tumbled off down steps, retreated behind banged doors.

Kidd sat down, looked at the guests, some of whom I looked at him, some who looked at each other; the woman in corduroy was looking at her lap; Mrs Richards was breathing hard. He wondered if anyone liked his poem.

'They do that around here too, huh?' Sam forced, jocularly.

Then a woman Kidd could not really see at the table's end spilled coffee.

'Oh, I'll get a rag!' Mrs Richards screamed, and fled the room.

Three people tried to say nothing in particular at once.

But when Mrs Richards returned with a black and white, op-art dishtowel, one voice detached itself, a hesitant baritone: 'For God's sakes, can't we do something about that? I mean, we've got to do something!'

Of several feelings, the only sharp one Kidd felt was annoyance. 'Mr Richards?' he said, still standing, 'Mr Richards? Can I talk to you now?'

Mr Richards raised his eyebrows, then pushed back his chair. June, beside him, surprisingly concerned, touched her father's arm… restrainingly? protectively? Mr Richards brushed her hand away and came down the table.

Kidd picked up his orchid and went out into the hall.

The woman in corduroy was saying, 'When you can think of something to do, will you please let me know what it is. You'll have my cooperation one hundred per cent. One hundred per cent, believe me.'

At the door Kidd turned. 'We should get this five dollars an hour business settled now, don't you think, Mr Richards, because it'll just—'

Mr Richards' slight, taut smile broke. 'What are you trying to do, huh?' he demanded in a whisper. 'What are you trying to do? I mean five dollars an hour, you must be crazy!'

Mrs Richards, still holding the dishtowel, drifted up behind her husband's shoulder, blinking, in perfect imitation of Smokey with Thirteen.

'I mean just what are you trying to do?' Mr Richards went on. 'We don't have any money to give you, and you better understand that.'

'Huh?' because it seemed absurd.

'Five dollars an hour?' Mr Richards repeated. 'You must be crazy!' His voice was insistent, tense and low. 'What does somebody like you need that kind of money for, anyway? It doesn't cost anything to live in this city— no food bills, no rent. Money doesn't mean anything here any more. What are you