He was exhausted, with an exhaustion that annihilated want. And all he could conceive of wanting was to try again; to make more poems, to put them in a book, to have that book made real by reproduction, and give that hallucination another chance!
He had nothing to write. He could not imagine what another poem of his would be, how it might lilt, or even look. Is that, he wondered, why they call it "creation?" The texture on the eye, the corrugation on the air around him had absorbed all. There was nothing left (…about what you see about you, what's happening to you, what you feel. No.) No. Something had to be… created. As these had been.
A muscle in his shoulder tensed.
He'd once been scared of things like that: (…a blood-clot breaking loose from the vein wall to race toward the heart, jamming a valve!) Habit commenced a shiver.
He caught up his breath, and his pants, and the books from where he'd dropped them. The leering mannequin, chained and bloody, leaned against the tank and smiled benignly up at Kid's left nipple. Kid scratched it, put the books back under his belt, and went out.
In Denny's room he took two rungs of the ladder at once. His chin gained the loft. "Hey, wake up!" Denny didn't, so he climbed up the rest of the way, kneeled astraddle, and took hold of the boy's head. "Hey!"
"God damn—!" Denny tried to roll to his back. One arm shot out and waved. "What the fuck are you…"
"Come on, get up!" Kid's hands clamped, and Denny's came back to grasp his wrist.
"Okay!" Denny said, his cheeks pushed together, distorting his voice. "Shit, man. I'm getting up, all right…?"
"You got to take me to Lanya's place." Kid raised his leg and sat back. "You know where it is, huh? You took her there. You know!"
Denny grunted and pushed himself up on his elbows. Boots and chains by his head lay on a crumple of green. His vest's leather edge fell back from a pinkened line across one waxy pectoral. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Get the fuck up, cocksucker." Kid gestured. "I want to go see her."
"Okay, okay." Denny reached back for his boots and started to put them on. Once he glanced up and said, "Shit!"
Kid grinned at him. "Move your ass."
"Fuck you," Denny said dryly and ducked his head through rattling links. "Come on." He swung his feet over the edge and jumped.
Kid swung over the ladder while Denny bobbed erect in the doorway.
"What's all the rush for?" Denny asked. "Hey, stop pushing me, will you?" as Kid shoved him into the hall.
"I'm not hurting you," Kid said. "Did you know Dollar beat some kid to death with a pipe?"
"Huh? When?"
"Yesterday."
Denny tried to whistle. It squeaked at the beginning and was all air. "Dollar's a crazy motherfucker, you know that? I mean he always was crazy. Hell, all the white guys in the nest are nuts."
"Sure." Kid herded Denny toward the hall door.
"Why'd he do it?"
Kid shrugged. "I dunno."
The hall door opened. Thirteen (Smokey behind) stepped inside, looking around as though he expected something… different, "Hey, Kid! Oh, hey man, I got to talk to you! You know Dollar? Well, we just got here, but… somebody told me yesterday he got a bar, from a police lock, and beat some kid to—"
"GET OFF MY ASS!" Kid said very loudly in Thirteen's face, hefting his fist. If I keep this up, he thought, I'm going to hit somebody. "Now just get off my ass, will you?"
Thirteen, one hand against his green tank top (the "13" tattoo stretched wide), had backed against one wall, and Smokey, wide-eyed, against the other.
Kid put his hand on Denny's shoulder. "Come on. Let's go!"
They stalked between them and out the door; it swung to behind.
VI: Palimpsest
"… just watch out. Oh, yeah, you just better watch out. I know. I know." He wagged his finger, backed away, talked Spanish. Then: "They gonna get you—"
"Look, man," Kid said. "Will you—"
"It's all right. It's all right. You just watch out, now. Please? I'm sorry. I'm sorry." His thick neck sweated. He tugged at the wool. "I'm sorry. You just lemme 'lone, huh? They gonna…" Suddenly he looked around, turned, and lumbered into the alley.
"Jesus Christ." A smile hovered about Denny's face. "What… was that about?"
"I don't know." One book had fallen on the sidewalk. The other leaned against the curb.
"I mean this guy just comes up and starts to push you like that. I thought you were gonna hit him." Denny nodded heavily. "You should've hit him. Why'd he just want to come up and start messing on us like that?"
"He didn't mess on you any." Kid picked up the books and put them back under his belt.
"He's just crazy or something, huh?"
"Come on," Kid said. "Yeah, he's… crazy."
"Jesus Christ. That's really funny. You ever see him before?"
"Yeah."
They walked.
"What was he doing then?"
"Just about the same thing… one time. The others? He was pretty normal."
"A nut," Denny pronounced, and scratched his groin inside both pants pockets. "She lives over there. I thought you knew already. She didn't tell you?"
"No."
Denny wrinkled his nose. "All this shit in the air. I don't think it's very healthy, you know? What's the matter?"
Kid had stopped, to hook up a section of the chain across his stomach. A glass circle distorted the pad of his thumb into a zebra's flank: dirty troughs whorled the flesh.
"She lives right over there," Denny reiterated, warily.
"All right."
In step, they angled into the street.
"She got a nice place."
A tension held, suspended: Kid wished he could examine it more closely: defract, reflect, magnify…
They turned the corner and went down the empty street. "Looks like rain, doesn't it?" Denny said.
"It always looks like rain."
"It doesn't feel like rain."
"It never feels like rain."
"Yeah, you know, that's right?" Denny hopped up the concrete steps, holding the aluminum rail. "It never does!"
Kid followed, surveying the three-story facade. Denny thumbed the bell.
"They live on the top floor. The first two floors are empty so people won't think anyone's in the building."
"It's a good idea not to attract attention, I guess." Kid contemplated asking who was the rest of "they" when footsteps clacked on a stairway.
"Who is it?" asked a woman. Voice familiar? He wondered from where.
"I'm a friend of Lanya's. I'd like to see her."
The peephole darkened. "Just a second."
The door opened. "You know, I didn't recognize your voice at first," Madame Brown said. "How have you been, Kid?" She took in Denny: "Hello. It's nice to see you again… Denny, isn't it?" Her neck glittered.
"Lanya's living with you?" Kid, shocked, was unsure why.
"Um-hm. Why don't you come inside?"
Somewhere above the first landing, Muriel barked.
"Hush!" Madame Brown commanded the air. "Hush, I say!"
The dog barked three times more.
"Come in, come in. Pull the door behind you. It locks itself."