Dhalgren

Puzzled, he walked to the furnace, between tin cans and package wrappers. (On the picnic bench, someone had overturned a carton of garbage.) With his sandal, he scraped away cinders. Half a dozen coals turned up red spots, which pulsed, wavered and went out.

'Lanya?'

He turned, waiting, for her answer, uncomfortable at any noise in this ringed, misty clearing. Even at the height of the project period, there were usually half a dozen people at the fire. A torn blanket lay under the bench — but it had been there all week. The sleeping bags and blanket rolls usually piled haphazard by trees and behind the firewood were gone.

'Lanya!'

A decision to move? But she would have known about that and told him. Save for the overturned cinderblocks of the furnace wall, there were no marks of violence; only junk and disorder. He had come here with her to eat … how many times? He had been quiet and observed his own measured politeness. Momentarily he fantasized that his reserve and preoccupation had been so unbearable to them that they had all, with Lanya cooperating, schemed to abandon him, suddenly and silently. He would have pondered it more than a moment had the idea not urged him to giggle; frowning still seemed more appropriate.

'Lanya?'

He turned to squint among the trees.

When the figure hiding in the brush realized it had been seen, it — it was Pepper — stepped hesitantly forward. 'You're looking for somebody down here, hey?' Pepper craned to look left, then right. 'I guess they all gone away, you know?'

Kid sucked his teeth and scanned the clearing again, while Pepper judged distances.

'I wonder why they all went away, huh?' Pepper stepped nearer.

Kid's annoyance with Pepper's presence was absorbed in his discomfort at Lanya's absence. He hadn't been that long washing. Wouldn't she have waited—?

'Where you think they all went?' Pepper advanced another step.

'Well if you don't know, you're no use.'

Pepper's laugh was hoarse, light, and infirm as his cough. 'Why don't you come on with me to Bunny's? She lives right behind the bar. I mean, if you can't find your friend down here. Get something to eat. She don't mind none if I bring friends over. She says she likes them long as they're nice, you know? You ever seen Bunny dance?'

'A couple of times.' Kid thought: She might have gone over to the bar.

'I never have. But she's supposed to be good, huh? All sorts of weird people hang out in that place. I'm scared to go in.'

'Come on.' Kid looked once more: And she was not there. 'Let's go.'

'You coming? Good!' Pepper followed him for a dozen steps. Then he said, 'Hey.'

'What?'

'It's shorter if we go this way.'

Kid stopped. 'You say Bunny lives right behind Teddy's?'

'Uh-huh.' Pepper nodded. 'This way, through here.'

'Okay. If you say so.'

'It's a lot shorter,' Pepper said. 'A whole lot. It really is.' He started, still stiff-legged, into the trees.

Kid followed, doubtful.

He was surprised how soon they reached the park wall; it was just over a hill of trees. The path down to the lion gate must have been more curvy than he'd thought.

Pepper scrambled up the wall, wheezing and grimacing. 'You know,' he panted from the far side as Kid crouched to vault, 'Bunny is a guy, you know? But she likes to be called 'she'.'

Kid sprang, one hand on the stone. 'Yeah, yeah, I know all about it.'

Pepper stepped back as Kid landed on the pavement. 'You know,' he said, as Kid bounced up right, 'you're like Nightmare.'

'How?'

'He yells a lot. But he don't mean it.'

'I'm not gonna yell at you again,' Kid said. 'I may break your head. But I'm not gonna yell.'

Pepper grinned. 'Come on this way.'

They crossed the empty street.

'You meet a new person, you go with him,' Kid mused, 'and suddenly you get a whole new city.' He'd offered it as a small and oblique compliment.

Pepper only glanced at him, curiously.

'You go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't know were there. Everything changes.'

'This way.' Pepper ducked between buildings not two feet apart.

They sidled between the flaking boards. The ground was a-glitter from the broken windows.

Pepper said, 'Sometimes it changes even if you go the same way.'

Kid recalled conversations with Tak, but decided not to question Pepper further, who didn't seem too good with abstractions. In the alley, Kid stopped to brush the glass off his bare foot.

'You okay?' Pepper asked.

'Callous like a rock.'

They walked between the gaping garages. A blue car—'75 Olds? — had been driven through a back wall: snapped boards and sagging beams, scattered glass, skid marks across the roadway. The car was impaled in broken wood to its dangling door. Who, Kid wondered, had been injured in the wreck, who had been injured in the house? Hanging over the sill of another smashed window was a blue telephone receiver — hurled out in fear or fury? Accidentally dropped or jarred?

'Uhn.' Pepper gestured with his chin toward an open door.

As they walked the dark corridor, Kid smelled traces of something organic and decayed, which was about to remind him of — when he remembered what, they had already come out on the porch.

Somebody in workman's greens and orange construction boots, on a high ladder against the corner lamp post — it was a woman he had noticed his first night in the bar — was unscrewing the street sign.

Metal ground metal; HAZE ST came out of its holder. From the ladder top she picked up AVE Q, inserted it, and began to screw the bolts.

'Hey?' Kid was both amused and curious. 'Which one of those is right?'

She frowned back over her shoulder. 'Neither one, honey, far as I know.'

But Pepper was crossing toward the unmarked, familiar door. Kid followed, looking around the street, estranged by smoky daylight. 'I don't think I've ever been here this time of day before.'

Pepper just grunted.

The door they entered was two from the bar entrance.

At the top of the steps, Pepper blocked the cracks of light and thumped with the back of his hand.

'All right, all right. Just a second, dear. It isn't the end of the world—' the door swung in—'yet.' Around Bunny's thin neck a white silk scarf was held by a silver napkin ring. 'And if it is, I certainly don't want to hear about it at this hour of the morning. Oh, it's you.'

'Hi!' Pepper's voice mustered brightness and enthusiasm. 'This is a friend of mine, the Kid.'

Bunny stepped back.

As Kid walked in, Bunny pointed a knuckly, manicured finger at Pepper. 'It's his teeth, actually.'

Pepper gave his stained and pitted grin.

'Peking Man — do you know about Peking Man? Peking Man died of an ulcerated tooth.' Bunny brushed back bleached, silken hair. 'Show me a boy with bad teeth and I just feel so sorry for him, that I — well, I'm not responsible. Pepper, darling, where have you been?'

'Jesus, I'm thirsty,' Pepper said. 'You got something to drink? You couldn't get a God-damn drink of water in the God-damn park.'

'On the sideboard, dear. It hasn't moved.'

Pepper poured wine from a jug with an ornate label first into a handle-less cup, then a jelly jar.