'Take it off,' Lanya said. 'I don't want it.'
'Why?'
'I just want to stick to my guns. I don't that often.' Then she gave a funny laugh. 'Beside, your costume designer's cruddy.'
Nightmare snorted. A few people in the circle laughed too. 'What about yours?' somebody else said. But Nightmare lifted the chain. Scraps of her hair fell from the links.
Then the scorpion swiveled, boot toes tearing grass. 'Here.' The chain went over Kidd's head. Nightmare's eyes were traced with coral. His vest had apparently come apart at one scarred shoulder and was laced now with rawhide.
Nightmare began to pull the chain.
Cold links slid down Kidd's right nipple. Nightmare's fist came up against his left breast, warm and rough. 'Okay?' Nightmare squinted. There was something wrong with his eyes' focus, Kidd realized, irrelevantly.
'What am I supposed to do with it?' Kidd said. 'What is all this supposed to mean?'
'Don't mean nothin'.' Nightmare let go. 'You can take it and throw it in Holland Lake if you want.' Then he rocked back and stood. 'I'd keep it if I were you.'
The circle broke.
Nightmare at their head, big shoulders rocking, big arms swinging, the scorpions filed away. A few glanced back. Ten feet off, a girl who could have been white or black, and a tall black boy began to laugh loudly. Then, as though inflated too fast to follow, an iguana ballooned luminously, translucent in the grey-light. Then a peacock. Then a spider. The scorpions wandered into the trees.
'What the fuck,' Kidd asked, 'was that about?' He felt his neck where there were three chains now: the optic, the projector, and this new one — the heaviest.
'Nightmare gets it in his head sometimes that he wants certain people…'
The timbre of her voice made him look.
'…get certain people into his nest.' Scrabbling in the blanket, she came up with her harmonica, put it down and scrabbled some more.
'He wanted you before, huh? What's with Phil?'
'I told you, he was my boy friend for a while before I met you.'
'What was he like?'
'He was a black guy, sort of bright; sort of nice, sort of square. He was here checking out scenes, about like you are…' Her voice muffled for the last words. He looked again: her head was coming out the top of her shirt while she tugged the bottom down over her shaking breasts. 'He couldn't really make Calkins' thing that well. He couldn't make Nightmare's either.'
The edge of the blanket was tented with the orchid beneath. Reaching for it, Kidd noticed nearly an acre of charred grass across the meadow. Smoke wisped along the edges. That hadn't been there. He frowned. It hadn't.
'People liked him down at the commune, I guess. But he was one of those people you get tired of pretty quick.' He heard the fly of her jeans rasp. 'Nightmare's funny. It's sweet of him to ask, I suppose, but I'm just not the joining kind. With anyone.'
Kidd slid his hand into the orchid's harness, clicked it closed. The burning smell was very strong. He spread his chewed and enlarged knuckles, flexed his scarred and blunted fingers — tickling his shoulder.
He sprang up, whirling, and crouched.
The leaf rolled down his shoulder fluttered against his knee, spun on to the ground. Gasping, and with thudding heart, he looked up the leaning trunk, over the great bole at the stump of some thick, major branch, at bare branches and branches hung with ragged tan, at crossed twigs like shatter lines on the sky.
Moisture sprung on his body and he grew cold.
'Lanya…?'
He looked around at the clearing, and then back at the blanket. She hadn't had time to put her sneakers on!
But her sneakers were gone.
He circled the tree, frowning, looking out at the charred grass and the other trees, looking back at this one.
With orchid and chains, he was suddenly far more aware of his nakedness than when he had awakened with Lanya at the center of the scorpion ring.
She's gone back down to the commune, he thought. But why off just like that? He tried to recall the funny quality that had been in her voice. Anger? But that's silly. He touched the chain Nightmare had placed around his neck. That's silly.
But he stood there a long time.
Then — and his whole body moved with a different rhythm now — he stepped toward the tree, stepped again; stepped a third time, and the side of his foot pressed a root. He leaned forward, his knee against the bark, his thigh, his belly, his chest, his cheek. He closed his eyes and stretched his chained arm high as he could and pressed his fingers on the trunk. He breathed deep for the woody smell and pushed his body into the leaning curve: Bark was rough against the juncture at penis and scrotum, rough on the bone of his ankle, the back of his jaw.
Water was running out the corners of both his eyes. He opened them slightly, but closed them quickly against distortions.
With his weaponed hand — the urge came and went, like a flash bulb's pulsing after-image, to jam the orchid phloem deep — gently he moved his blades across the bark. Turning his hand this way and that; listening to the variated raspings, again and again he stroked the tree.
When he pushed away, the bark clung to his chest hair, his crotch hair. His ankle stung. So did his jaw. He rubbed his palm across his face to feel the mottled imprint; could see it along the flesh of his inner arm, stopping at the loops of chain to continue on the other side.
He went back to the blanket and pulled his vest from the folds. His feelings sat oddly between embarrassment and the greatest relief. Unused to either, the juxtaposition confused him. Still wondering where she'd gone, he pulled up his pants, then sat to strap on (wondering why he still bothered) his one sandal.
He began to search the blanket. He looked under the folds, lifted it to see beneath, frowned and finally searched the whole area.
After fifteen frustrating minutes, he gave up and started down the slope. It was only when he reached the door of the park rest rooms (it had been locked before but someone had broken it open so that the hasp still dangled by one screw) he remembered he had already given the notebook, last night, to Newboy.
3
The pipes yowled, started to knock.
A trickle spilled the porcelain, crawled like a glass worm through the light lozenges from the window high in the concrete. He put his orchid in the next sink and scrubbed hard at his hands, wrists, and forearms, then bent to drink. He washed some more till his bladder warmed.
He urinated into the drain in the middle of the floor. Under his stream the loose grate chattered.
At the sink he wet his fists and ground them in his armpits. Again and again he wiped his neck. He filled his cupped hands, sloshed his face, and cupped them to fill again. Bark crumbs flecked him, neck to knee. He brushed them, rubbed them, washed them away. (Pants and vest were across another sink.) He put his foot in the bowl. Water ran between the ligaments. He rubbed; the porcelain streaked black and grey. Laboriously, fingers tingling, he washed away all the dirt except what callous had taken permanently. He wet and rubbed his legs to the thigh, then began the other foot. With dripping hands he kneaded his genitals; they shriveled at cold water.
Once the trickle gave out.
A minute later, the pipes recommenced yowling. The stream, slightly stronger, started once more.
Water gathered in the hair behind his testicles, dribbled his legs. He ran his hands over his head. His hair was greasy. With his hand's edge, he squeegeed as much as possible from arms, legs, and sides. The muddy puddle
