Dhalgren (28 page)

He looked in the lightening sky for shapes. Mist bellied and folded and coiled and never broke. He lay back beside her, began to rub her under the blanket. She turned to him and hid in his neck when he tried to kiss her. "I don't think I taste very good," she murmured. "I'm all sleepy—" He licked her teeth. When he put his thumb in her cunt, she began to laugh through the kiss, till she caught her breath at his cock and another finger. His knees outside of hers, he swung his hips. His wet hand held her shoulder, his dry one her hair.

Later, he woke again with his arms tight around her, the blanket wound around them from rolling. The sky was lighter. "You know, I shouldn't go back to that God-damn job," he said. "What do I need a job for, here?"

"Shhh," she said. "Shhhhhh," and rubbed his shaven cheek. "Now shhhhhh."

He closed his eyes.

"Yes, who is it?" with a timbre of complaint.

"It's Kidd. Look, if it's too early, I'll come back—"

The chain rattled.

"No. No. It's all right." Mrs Richards, in a green bathrobe, opened the door.

"Isn't anybody up yet? I didn't know how early it was."

"It's all right," Mrs Richards repeated. "It's probably about eight." She yawned. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Thanks, yes. Can I use your bathroom." He stepped by before she finished her sleepy nod. "You know you got a letter in your mailbox, airmail?"

"I thought the boxes were broken."

"Your box is okay." He paused with his hand on the bathroom door jamb. "And there's a letter in it."

"Oh dear!"

He had already lathered for shaving before he registered her voice's despair.

June, in blue slacks and a pink sweater, a daisy embroidered near the collar, brought full coffee cups to the table as he sat. "Good morning."

"Were you up?"

"In my room. I'm always the early riser in this family. What have you been doing since yesterday?"

"Nothing. This morning, before I came here, I copied out a poem I wrote last night."

"Read it to me?"

"No."

She looked disappointed. "I guess I wouldn't want to read anything I wrote to other people either."

He held his cup in both hands, sipping.

"Is that strong enough for you?" Mrs Richards asked from the kitchen doorway. "I've got the jar of instant right here."

"It's fine." Black coffee hung in his mouth's emptied center, losing heat.

"Is Bobby up yet?" Mrs Richards asked from the kitchen.

"I heard him moving. What about Daddy?"

"Let your father sleep, dear. He had a hard day yesterday."

June asked: "Do you want some more coffee?"

He shook his head, and with his movement the bitter taste spread over her yellow hair, the plants in their brass pots, the plastic handles on the green drapes' pull. He smiled and swallowed it all.

Apartment 19-B was open, abandoned and perfectly ordinary:

Appliances in the kitchen, bathmat over the tub edge, the beds unmade. And there was not one book. Well, it would hold furniture.

The legs of the easy chair roared in the hall. Silly, he mulled in the echo. Why don't I ask them where they want it. Fuck—! Tilt the chair to get it in.

The chair roared; the daybed mattress on its side
Ssssssssed.
He left it leaning against the flowered couch, and went back out into the hall for the chifferobe.

Two elevator doors opened. From one came wind, from the other, Mr Richards. "Hi, there. Thought I'd stop up before I went out." His tie dropped, severe and indigo, between worsted lapels. "What are you doing with all the junk?"

Kidd worked his feet on sandal sole and vinyl tile. "I… well, I was putting it in the apartment down the hall."

Mr Richards walked past him, looked into 19-B. "It doesn't matter too much." He looked back. "Does it?"

They went together into 19-A.

"I figure I can get all this stuff out by tonight, Mr Richards." Kidd was relieved there was no protest. "Then I'll get the floors and everything mopped. I'll have it really nice. She'll like it. I'll do a good job."

Mr Richards frowned up at the dead bulbs.

"If you'd rather, I could take the stuff into the cellar." Relaxed enough to offer, he knew the offer would be refused.

"Only if you want." Mr Richards took a breath, and came in. His cordovan ground on the piled glass. He looked down. "Don't see any need. To take it all the way to the cellar. I don't know what's in that cellar, anyway." Not moving his foot, he looked at the remaining furniture. "She'll like it. Yes." He took his hand from his pocket. "Why don't you get your other shoe on, boy? You'll cut your foot all to hell."

"Yes, sir."

Mr Richards stepped away from the sweepings, shook his head.

"Mr Richards—?"

"You know, I've been thinking—" Mr Richards fingered his collar at his heavy neck; he might once have been a heavy man—"I mean if it's a good idea for us to move. For Mary. What do you think? She takes to you, you know. That's good. I was wondering what Edna was going to send us. She has some funny friends. Wondered about you too, until I saw you out from under all that dirt. But you seem like a nice kid. What do you think?"

"Your downstairs neighbors are pretty rough."

"Do you think it'll do any good, coming up here?"

It occurred to him to accuse:
You don't.
But he shrugged.

"What do you think? Go on. You can tell me. The situation we're all in now, we have to
make
ourselves be honest. I'll admit, it's hard for me. But you try."

"Why do you stay in the city?"

"Do you think she'd go? No, we live here: she wouldn't be able to do it." Then a breath that had been held in him broke away painfully. Mr Richards raised his thumbs to his belt. "Do you know, in here, in this house, I almost have the feeling that none of it's real? Or just a very thin shell."

Kidd wanted to frown. But didn't.
Honest,
he thought.

"Mary lives in her world of cooking and cleaning and the children. I come home. And nothing looks… I can't describe it. A man's home is supposed to be—well, a place where everything is real, solid, and he can grab hold. In our home, I just don't know. I come in from that terrible world, and I'm in some neverland I just don't believe in. And the less I believe in it, the more it slips. I think it's me, sometimes. Mary's always been a strange woman; she hasn't had it that easy. She tries so hard to be… well, civilized. We
both
do. But what with this…" He nodded toward the open balcony doors. Outside, layers of mist pulled from mist. "She's got imagination. Oh, that she's got, all right. It was the thing I first saw in her. My work, well, it's interesting. But it doesn't require that much what you'd call creativity. At least you probably wouldn't think so. But we get things done. Still, I
like
to come home to somebody who's got all sorts of ideas, reads books and things. But—" Mr Richards' hands rubbed at his hips, searching for pockets—"suddenly you begin to feel she's changing the world into her own ideas. She doesn't go out, now; but who could blame her. And once you get inside the door, it's all hers."

"She keeps a nice house," Kidd offered.

"Oh, she does much more than that. She keeps us too. We all say things for her, you notice? Everybody who comes in there. She projects this… well, nervousness. And then you start to try and figure out what she wants you to say; and you say it. At first so you won't get her upset. Then, out of habit. You don't think so?"

"I don't… well, not much."

"You do, unless you just fit into it naturally. She used to always like musicians. And suddenly everybody who came to see us was a musician, or remembered that they used to play in the high school band, or something. And that was fine until she had some people over to play some chamber music stuff—" He raised his head and laughed. "That was funny. They were terrible. Mary and I laughed about it for weeks." He lowered his chin. "But that was the end of the music. Now—well, she's been reading that fellow you were talking about—"

"Ernest Newboy?" Kidd resolved not to mention meeting him again.

"Yeah. And you're here. Once she tried to get interested in engineering. I brought home a few of our younger men. And their wives. I brought the ones who had the ideas—like she said. That didn't last too long." He shook his head. "But she makes it all go her way. Which would be fine if I thought… thought that it was real. That if I touched anything, it wouldn't just crumble, like eggshell, like plaster. You think I should talk to Edna?" He smiled: his hands found his pockets, finally, and sank in them. "Maybe it is just me." He looked around the room again. "I hope moving does some good."

"Is Mrs Richards happy?"

"Not as happy as I'd like to see her. You know we used to have another—well, that's none of your affair. I won't put it on you. I've gone on too long already."

"That's okay."

"Better go. Have to be in the office by ten and the warehouse by eleven thirty."

"Hey, Mr Richards?"

Mr Richards turned in the doorway.

"You've got a letter in your mailbox. Airmail."

"Ah!" Mr Richards nodded. "Thanks." He went out.

"—and Mr Richards?" When there was no answer, he went to the hall. Both elevators were closed.

He put his hand in his pocket and felt the moist, crushed bill. He shook his head and started to work a dresser toward the door. Three feet, and he decided to take the drawers out.

After he'd moved furniture for a long time, he went out on the balcony. On the building across, smoke coiled. The mist to his right was bright as ivory. When he looked down, the top of a tree was just visible in pooling haze.

He moved the final large pieces of furniture; then, two at a time, he lugged off the cane-bottom chairs. On the last lay the notebook.

He rubbed his shirt pocket, wondering if he should take a break. The pen slipped under the cloth. He looked at the emptied room. In the doorway was the pail, the mop, the soap box. He moved his teeth on one another, took up the book and sat.

He wrote slowly. Every little while he looked sharply up, toward the door, and even toward the window. Eight lines later he put the pen in his pocket. The already enlarged front knuckle of his left middle finger was sore and dented from the pen. He yawned, closed the book, and sat for a while watching the fog stretch and constrict. Then he tossed the book on the floor, stood up, and carried his chair into 19-B.

He used a piece of cardboard for a dustpan, and carried the sweepings into the other apartment. Finding no can, he dumped them into a bureau drawer. Back in the kitchen, he clanked the pail into the sink. The water crashed on the zinc, swirled up in suds; crashing diminished to roaring, muffled more and more in foam.

"I just don't know what I was thinking of!"

"It's all right, ma'am. Really—"

"I just don't know what's the matter with me. Here they are—"

"That's all right, Mrs Richards."

"Right in the icebox." She swung the door back. "See. I made them. I really did."

Three sandwiches, each with corner hole, lay on a plate.

He laughed. "Look, I believe you."

"I made them. Then I thought I'd send June and Bobby up. Then I thought again, Oh no, it must be too early for lunch; so I put them in the icebox. And then—" She closed the icebox door halfway—"I forgot about them. You could eat them now."

"Thank you. That's fine. All I wanted to tell you is I got the furniture all out, and the back two rooms mopped, and the back bathroom."

"Take them." She opened the door again. "Go ahead. Go inside and eat. Oh!" The icebox door slammed and just missed knocking the plate from his hand. "Coffee! You'll want coffee. There, I'll start the water. Go on. I'll be in in a minute."

Maybe she is mad (he thought and went into the living room), too.

He sat on the L-shaped couch, put the plate on the coffee table, and peeled up the bread corners, one after the other: peanut butter and jelly, spam and mustard, and—? He stuck his finger in it, licked: Liver pâté.

He ate that one first.

"Here you are!" She put down his cup and sat on the other leg of the L, to sip her own.

"It's very good," he mumbled with a full mouth, joggled the sandwich demonstratively.

She sipped a while more. Then she said: "You know what I want?"

"Mmm?"

She looked down at the notebook lying on the couch and nodded. "I want you to read me one of your poems."

He swallowed. "Naw, I should go upstairs and finish mopping. Then clean up the kitchen. You can start getting your stuff together, and I'll take some of it up this evening."

"Tomorrow!" she cried, "Oh, tomorrow! You've been working terribly hard. Read me a poem. Besides, we don't have a thing ready."

He smiled and contemplated murder.

And here, he thought, it would be so much easier to get away with… "I don't think you'd like them."

Hands together in her lap, she leaned forward: "Please."

He dragged the book into his lap (like I was covering myself, he thought. I could kill her). "All right." Something tickled the underside of his thigh. It was sweat catching on the chain that bound him. "I'll read…" He opened the book, coughed: "This one." He took a breath, and looked at the paper. He was very hot. The chains across his back pulled: he was hunching his shoulders. When he opened his mouth, for a moment he was sure no voice would come.

But he read.

He dropped word after word into the room's silence.

Meaning peeled away from his voice and raveled.

Sounds he had placed together to evoke a tone of voice mis-sounded. The mouth's machinery was too clumsy to follow what his eye knew. He read each word, terribly aware how the last
should
have fallen.

Once he coughed.

For one phrase he grew quieter, easier. Then, frantically, at a place where his voice closed out a comma, he wondered, Why did I choose this one! I should have chosen
any
one except this!

Hoarsely he whispered the last line, and put one hand on his stomach to press away the small pain. He took some more deep breaths and sat back. The back of his shirt was sopping.