Dhalgren

silly dinge-queens out of their flippy little minds is just terrible!'

Kid turned his jar. 'He has a pretty heavy fan club.'

'More power to him, I say.' Bunny raised the cup overhead. 'But if George is the New Moon, darling, I am the Evening Star.'

Pepper loosed his consumptive giggle.

'I want to go out and look for her,' Kid said. 'If she comes into Teddy's after it opens, will you give her a message for—'

'I can't think of any reason why I should. She has a much easier time getting hers than I do getting mine. What do you want me to tell her?'

'Huh? Just that I was around looking for her, and that I'll be back.'

'Smile.'

'What?'

'Grin. Like this.' Bunny's bony face became a death mask around bright, perfect teeth. 'Let's see an expression of ecstatic happiness.'

Kid twisted his lips back quickly and decided this was his last politeness.

To Kid's leer, Bunny returned a wistful grin. 'You just don't seem to have any special points of attraction. Actually, I'd put you rather low down on my list. It's completely personal, you understand. I suppose I can afford to tell your girl friend you're looking for her. I will if I see her.'

'Everybody's somebody's fetish,' Kid said. 'Maybe I still got hope?'

'That's what I keep telling Pepper. But he just won't believe me.'

'I believe it.' Pepper said from his end of the couch. 'You just won't believe you ain't mine.'

'Oh, I don't think I'm revealing any embarrassing secrets when I say that you can be very sweet and affectionate once you relax. No, Pepper is just terribly uncomfortable at the idea that anyone could find him attractive. It's that simple.'

'It ain't happened that often so I'm what you'd call used to it.' Pepper squinted into the bottom of his cup, rocked up to his feet, and walked to the counter. He gave Bunny a passing nudge on the arm with his elbow. 'Bunny's a good guy, but she's a nut.'

'Ow!' Bunny rubbed the spot, but grinned after Pepper.

Kid grinned too and tried not to shake his head.

'Why are you two here now, anyway?' Bunny asked. 'What are the scorpions doing today? Shouldn't you be out working?'

'You trying to kick me out again?' Pepper stooped to open a cabinet and took out another jug which he put on the counter beside the one now empty.

Kid saw four more gallons and decided to leave after this glass. 'Where was Nightmare's gang off to this morning?'

'You said you saw them. How many were there?'

'Twenty, twenty-five maybe,' Kid said.

'Maybe he's gonna pull that Emboriky rip-off today. How you like that?'

'Oh, no!' Bunny put the cup down— 'Oh well.' — then picked it up again, to sip pensively.

'He's been talking about it for a month, but he wants a whole damn army.'

'Why's he need so many people?' Kid asked. 'What's Emboriky?'

'Big downtown department store.'

'Lovely things,' Bunny said sadly. 'Perfectly lovely things. I mean it isn't just your run of the mill five-and- dime. I just wish I could have some of their stuff in here. Give some class to this place. Oh, I hate to think of you guys clomping around in all that beautiful stuff.'

'Nobody's gotten to it before?'

'Guess not.' Pepper said.

'Maybe just a little,' Bunny explained. 'But you see, now it's 'occupied.' Some kid got killed back a little while ago trying to break in.'

'Killed?'

'Somebody leaned out the third-story window,' Pepper said, 'and shot the motherfucker dead.' He laughed. 'A couple of other people got shot at, who were just passing by. But they didn't get hurt.'

'Perhaps it's Mr Emboriky, protecting his worldly goods.' Bunny contemplated the cup bottom, looked over at the fresh gallon, but thought better. 'I wouldn't blame him.'

'Naw, naw,' Pepper said. 'It's a whole bunch in there. Nightmare's one of the people who got shot at. He said shots came from lots of places.'

Bunny laughed. 'Imagine! Two dozen sales clerks valiantly holding off the barbarian hordes! I hope those poor children don't get hurt.'

'You think it's the sales clerks?' Pepper asked.

'No.' Bunny sighed. 'It's just whoever got to the Gun Department in Sporting Goods first.'

'Nightmare's got this real thing about it. He really wants to get in there and see what's going on. I guess I would too if somebody'd shot at me out the third-story window.'

'You?' Bunny exploded at the ceiling. 'You'd be back here with your head under the pillow so fast! Why aren't you out there with them now? No, no, that's all right. I'd rather have you here safe and sound. If you got your ass full of buckshot, I just know it would be for something stupid.'

'I think getting your ass full of buckshot is pretty stupid for any reason.'

'Fine!' Bunny pointed an admonishing finger. 'You just stick to that idea and keep momma happy. One honorable man!' Bunny's hand returned to the cup. 'Yea, even for the want of one honorable man. Or woman— I'm not prejudiced. That's really what Bellona needs.' Bunny regarded Kid. 'You look like a sensitive sort. Haven't you ever thought that? Lord knows, we have everything else. Wouldn't it be nice to know that somewhere around there was one good and upright individual — one would do, for contrast.'

'Well, we've got Calkins,' Kid said. 'He's a pillar of the community.'

Bunny grimaced. 'Darling, he owns that den of iniquity in there where I display my pale and supple body every evening. Teddy just runs it. No, Mr C won't pass, I'm afraid.'

'You got that church person,' Pepper offered.

'Reverend Amy?' Bunny grimaced again. 'No, dear, she's sweet, in her own strange way. But that's absolutely not what I mean. That's the wrong feeling entirely.'

'Not that church,' Pepper countered. 'The other one, over on the other side of the city.'

'You mean the monastery?' Bunny was pensive as Pepper nodded. 'I really don't know that much about it. Which speaks well for it, I'm sure.'

'Yeah, someone mentioned that to me once,' Kid said, and remembered it was Lanya.

'It would be nice to think that, somewhere inside its walls, a truly good person walked and pondered. Can you imagine it? Within the city limits? Perhaps the abbot or the mother superior or whatever they call it? Meanwhile the scorpions play down at the Emboriky.'

'Maybe if you went to the monastery, somebody'd shoot at you too.'

'How sad,' Bunny looked at the jug again. 'How probable. That wouldn't make me happy at all.'

'Where is this place?' Kid asked; with the memory occurred the fantasy that Lanya, with her curiosity about it, might have gone there.

'I don't actually know,' Bunny said. 'Like everything else in town, you just hear about it until it bumps into you. You have to put yourself at the mercy of the geography, and hope that down-hills and up-hills, working propitiously with how much you feel like fighting and how much you feel like accepting, manage to get you there. You'll find it eventually. As we are all so tired of hearing, this is a terribly small city.'

'I heard it's on the other side of town,' Pepper said. 'Only I don't even know which side of town this is.'

Kid laughed and stood up. 'Well, I'm gonna go.' He drained the wine, and tongued the bitter aftertaste. Wine first thing in the morning, he pondered. Well, he'd done worse. 'Thanks for breakfast.'

'You're going to go? But honey, I have enough in here for brunch, lunch, high tea, and dinner!'