Dhalgren

'Have you any idea where he was? I know he's not going to tell me.' Bunny dodged while Pepper handed Kidd the jar.

'You get the glass 'cause you're company.'

'You could have poured one for me too, dear. But you're famous for not thinking of things like that.'

'Jesus Christ, sweetheart, I thought you had one already working. I really did.' But Pepper made no move to pour another.

Bunny raised exasperated eyebrows and went to get a cup.

Pepper doffed his. 'You don't tell her where I was. That's for me to know and her to find out.' He finished his wine and went for seconds, 'Go on, have a seat. Sit down. Bunny, did you throw me out of here last night?'

'The way you were carrying on, doll, I should have.' Bunny ducked under Pepper's elbow and, cup on finger tips, returned. 'But I didn't get a chance. Have you ever noticed that about people who are dumb in a particular way? In-sen-si-tive—' Bunny's eyes closed on the antepenultimate— 'to everything. Except one second before catastrophe: Then they split. Oh, they know when that's coming all right. I guess they have to. Otherwise they'd be dead. Or missing an arm, or a head, or something.' Bunny's eyes narrowed at Pepper (who, on his third cup already, turned to the room, a little more relaxed). 'Darling, I could have killed you last night. I could have committed murder. Did I throw you out? If I did, you wouldn't be here now. But I'm calmer today.'

Kid decided not to ask what Pepper had done.

'Go on,' Pepper said. 'Sit down. On the couch. That's where I sleep, so it's okay. She sleeps in there.'

'My boudoir.' Bunny gestured toward another room, where Kid could see a mirror and a dressing table with bottles and jars. 'Pepper's very eager to clear that up with all his new friends. Yes, do have a seat.' Kid sat.

'Oh, there've been a few times — but you were probably too high to remember those — when you've turned into quite a tiger. Pepper, darling, you shouldn't be so concerned about what other people think.'

'If I cared what he thought, I wouldn't 'a brung him in here,' Pepper said. 'You want some more wine, Kid, just take it. Bunny don't mind.'

'Actually—' Bunny stepped back into the boudoir door—'Pepper is a part of that tragic phenomenon, the Great American Un-screwed. A lot of talk about how much he wants to, but if you want my opinion, I don't think Pepper has gone to bed with anything in all his twenty-nine years that didn't just roll him over in his sleep. And God forbid he wake up!'

'I don't talk about doin' anybody I ain't never done,' Pepper said, 'which is more'n I can say for you. Why don't you lay off?'

From the couch, Kid said: 'I just came around to see if somebody was in Teddy's. I want to—'

'Well, take a look, if you like.' Bunny unblocked the door. 'But I doubt it. In here. Where you can see.'

Wondering, Kid got up and walked past Bunny into the second room. Though nothing was out of place, it gave the impression — with three chairs, a bed, a dozen pictures on the wall, from magazines (but all framed) — of clutter. Oranges, reds, purples, and blues massed in the bedspread. Yellow plastic flowers hung over the back of a pink ceramic dove. Interrupting the floral wallpaper was a black curtain.

'In there.'

Kid stepped around a grubby, white vinyl hassock (everything had speckles of silver glitter on it) and pushed back black velvet.

Through cage bars, he saw upturned stools clustering the counter. Under a skylight he had never noticed before — this was the first time he had seen the place during the day — the empty booths and tables looked far more rickety: the whole room seemed larger and shabbier.

'Is the bartender there?' Bunny asked.

'No.'

'Then they aren't even open.'

Kid dropped the curtain.

'Isn't that convenient? I just run right out there and do my thing, then run right back in here, and am shut of you all. Come on back inside. Don't run away.' Bunny motioned Kid into the living room. 'I really think scorpions are perfectly fascinating. You're the only really effective enforcement organization in the city. Pepper, what was the name of your friend with all the ugly muscles and that lovely, broken…?' Bunny nudged his upper lip with his forefinger '…This one here?'

'Nightmare.'

'Fascinating boy.' Bunny glanced at Kid. 'He's old as I am, dear, but I still consider him very young. (Really, you must sit down. I'm the only one who's allowed to wander around and make everyone nervous.) You scorpions do more to keep law and order in the city than anyone else. Only the good and the pure in heart dare go out on the street after dark. But that's the way, I suppose, the law has always worked. The good people are the ones who live their lives so that they don't have anything to do with whatever law there is anyway. The bad ones are the ones unfortunate enough to become involved. I rather like the way it works here, because, since you are the law, the law is far more violent, makes much more noise, and isn't everywhere at once: so it's easier for us good people to avoid. Are you sure you wouldn't like some more wine—?'

'I told him to get it when he wants it.'

'I'll get it for him, Pepper. You may not be a gentleman, but I am a lady.' Bunny plucked the jar from Kid's hands and went to fill it and another cup. 'Just an old-fashioned girl, too shy to dive into the rushing river of worldly fame, too late for the mouse-drawn pumpkin to take me to the ball, too old for Gay Lib — not to mention Radical Effeminism!' Bunny couldn't have been more than thirty-five, Kid thought. 'Not in body, mind you. Just in spirit. Ah, well… I have the consolations of philosophy — or whatever the hell you call it.'

Kid sat down on the couch beside Pepper.

Bunny returned with the brimming jelly glass. 'When you let your little light shine, what great and luminous beast do you become?'

'I'm not a scorpion.'

'You mean you just like to dress up that way? And wear a shield around your neck? Mmmm?'

'Somebody gave me these clothes when I got my others messed up.' Kid took the jar and picked up his projector at the end of its chain. 'This doesn't have a battery or something. I just found it.'

'Ah, then you're not really a scorpion yet. Like Pepper, right? Pepper used to be a scorpion. But his battery's run down.'

'I guess that's what it is.' Pepper rattled the links of his shield among his other chains. 'I gotta get hold of another one and see.'

'Pepper used to be the most charming bird of paradise. Red, yellow, and green plumes — one could almost ignore its relation to the common parrot. Then he began to flicker, more and more, splutter, grow dim. Finally—' Bunny's eyes closed—'he went totally out.' They opened. 'He hasn't been the same since,'

'Where could you pick up one? A battery, I mean.'

'Radio store,' Pepper said. 'Only the guys have about stripped all the places around here. A department store, maybe. Or maybe somebody's got an extra one. Nightmare's got a lot, I bet.'

'How exciting, to anticipate your glowing aspect, to puzzle over what you'll turn out to be.'

'Inside here—' Pepper snapped his shield apart— 'they got a little thing in here that's supposed to be what it is. But it just looks like a whole lot of colored dots to me. The battery goes in there.' He picked at the mechanism with a grey nail—'This one…' — and pried loose a red and white striped oblong with blue lettering: 26? Volts D.C., below a colophon of gathered lightning. 'This one ain't worth shit.' He flipped it across the room.

'Not on the floor, Pepper love.' Bunny picked up the battery and put it on a shelf behind some porcelain frogs, vases of colored glass, and several alarm clocks. 'Tell me, Kid, now that you've found me, just who were you looking for?'

'A girl. Lanya. You know her: You spoke to her one night in the bar when George Harrison was there.'

'Oh, yes: She-who-must-be-obeyed. And you were with her. Now I do remember you. That was the night they made George the new moon, wasn't it? The way that poor man has driven all those