"She's really a head-shrinker?" Denny asked. "She got some crazy man in there?"
"Yes," Lanya said. "Now will you please move your ass off my foot?"
"You just don't want to ball," Kid said.
"Not true. I just do want to get some air."
Kid rocked up, stood. "Okay. Fine. Who can ball with all these venus fly traps leering at you anyway?" And realized they made him feel far more uncomfortable than he could, comfortably, admit. On the desk in the bay window lay his notebook.
"Fine reason to get out of here," Lanya said.
"I dropped my book behind the bed," Denny said. "Just a… eh… there, I got it."
Kid went to the desk and opened the grimy cover. Folded inside was the sheet from the telephone pad, grilled with his handwriting.
"And the galleys with your corrections are in the top drawer on the right." The last of her sentence was muffled by the T-shirt coming off. "Mr Newboy gave me everything just before he left, when we didn't know where you were."
Kid sat down on the chair's torn caning.
Quickly he flipped through till he found a three-quarter-blank page. He pulled loose his pen. The raddled pages chattered at the pressure of his ballpoint He wrote very quickly, with his face screwed; his lips parted across his teeth, then pressed together again. Where his spine settled in the sacrum's socket, a suspended tension began to release. Neither he nor it had finished when Denny, behind him, said: "Kid?"
But he closed the notebook cover over the page. Then he turned around. Lanya, sitting on the bed in her jeans and sneakers, but no shirt, looked up from the book of poems.
Denny stood in the middle of the room, one hand flat on his thigh. "I… mmm… you said… I wanted to tell you, Kid, that, well, when you go on like that with me and call me names and stuff and push me around, I guess I don't mind it." He looked down and swallowed. "But I don't like it that much." The inflection of the sentence didn't resolve, so he added… "you know?"
Kid nodded. "Okay."
Denny swayed a little, uncomfortably. Lanya suddenly put the book on the floor, and walked up behind him. She put her chin on his shoulder, her arms around his stomach. Denny put his forearm along hers, rubbed the back of her wrist, and waited.
Kid went and put his arms around both of them; Lanya's bare back under his hands was very warm. One of them held on to his waist. After a moment Denny said: "You're both in the wrong position. Him in front and you on my ass, I don't get a chance at nothing — Hey…" And pulled Kid close again when he started to back off. Lanya, head bent, hair brushing Kid's nose over Denny's shoulder, looked up with wide, wide eyes- brighter than any leaf about them. Kid blew at her nose. Denny wriggled. "I don't think three people can kiss each other at the same time…" he said.
"Yes we can," Lanya said. "Here, see…"
A minute later, heads together, arms locked around one another's backs, Kid said, "This is comfortable."
"I think," Denny said, moving his head down between their chins, "I smell more than either of you."
"Mmm…" Lanya nodded.
"Didn't you say something about wanting to go out?" Kid asked.
She nodded again. "Mmmm? Let's go."
First cold air under his left arm, then his right Her fingers on his chest were the last to leave him.
He looked at the desk and wondered whether he should take the notebook.
"You sure keep it hot in here," Denny said.
"Oh, would you turn that off for me?"
"How?"
"Never mind. I'll do it."
Kid looked up: Lanya squatted before the heater, grunting and twisting at something inside.
"There." She stood. "Let's go."
"You ain't gonna put no shirt on or nothing?" Denny asked.
The sides of the heater, cooling, clanged.
"Be a doll and let me wear your vest?"
"Sure," Denny shrugged out of his. "But it won't cover your tits."
"If I wanted them covered, I'd put on a shirt." She took the vest from him. "There're some advantages to living in this city."
"You're a funny lady."
"You're a funny boy."
Denny bit on his lip a moment, then nodded deeply. "I guess I sure as fuck am."
"What are you grinning about?" Lanya asked Kid.
"Nothing," and ended up grinning harder. "You gonna take up chains too and be a member…"
She considered a moment, sucking her underlip. "Nope." One nipple was just visible inside the leather lapel. The other was covered. "Just curious." And picked up her harmonica from the floor by the bed.
They play me into violent postures. Adrift in the violent city, I do not know what stickum tacks words and tongue. Hold them there, cradled on the muscular floor. Nothing will happen. What is the simplest way to say to someone like Kamp or Denny or Lanya that all their days have rendered ludicrous their judgment of the night? I can write at it. Why loose it on the half-day? Holding it in the mouth distills an anger dribbling bitter back of the throat, a substance for the hand. This is not what I am thinking. This is merely (he thought) what thinking feels like.
They were quiet through the living room. At the head of the steps Denny began giggling. Lanya hurried them down. They reached the porch, hysterical.
"What's so funny?" she asked three times; three times her face recovered from the contortions of mirth.
Kid thought: There's a moment in her laughter when she's very ugly. He watched for it, saw it pass again, and found himself laughing the harder. She took his hand, and he was very glad she did. The stridence smoothed in his own voice.
Denny's leveled, too, from some relief Kid did not understand.
"Where's your school?" Kid asked.
"Huh?"
"Denny told me you were teaching in a school. And Madame Brown said something about classes."
"You told me about the school," Denny said,
"It's right down there. That's where we're going now."
"Fine."
She bit both lips and nodded; then slid her arm up to link Kid's elbow, held out her other hand to Denny… who pretended not to see and tightroped along the curb. So she dropped Kid's hand too.
The green jacket was new. The shirt between the brass zippers looked old. He came from the corner, unsteadily, head slightly down. His varying steps took him indiscriminately left or right. Twenty-five? Thirty? His black hair was almost shoulder length. In the bony face there was nothing like eyes. He… staggered closer. Tiny lids were pursed at the back of fleshed-over sockets otherwise smooth as the insides of teacups. One leaked a thread of mucus down his nose. He came on, missing the lamppost by a lucky detour. On twine around his neck hung a cardboard sign, lettered in ballpoint:
"Please help me. I am deaf and dumb."
Denny stepped closer to Lanya and took her arm. The blind-mute passed. "Wow—" Denny started, softly. Then breath stopped.
The heavy blond Mexican in the collarless blanket-shirt hurried from a doorway. The irregular tap of the blind-mute's cowboy boots stopped when the Mexican seized his shoulder; his head came way up and swung in the air like sniffing as the Mexican took the blind-mute's hand. He pressed his fist against the mute's palm, and pressed again, and pressed again, making different shapes. The blind-mute nodded. Then they hurried to the corner, holding one another's arm.
"Shit…" Denny said, wonderingly and lingeringly. He looked at Lanya. "We seen him before, you know? The big spic. He pushed Kid, you know? Just came up to him in the street and pushed him."
"Why?" Lanya asked. She reached across to hold the right lapel of Denny's vest with her left hand.
"Don't tell me everything in this fucking city happens for a reason," Kid said. "I don't know."