I started to cough.
"Look," she said, "I know half of them by heart anyway. You could reconstruct—" "No," I said.
"— and Everett Forest made that…" "No. It's good they're gone."
"Kid," she said, "what about Paul…? Up on the Second City Bank building. Were you…? Oh, please try to remember!" Then she started as though she'd seen something (behind me? above me? were my lights still on? I don't remember!), and turned. And ran, blazing gold a moment before shadow took her and I ran after, into the brush, feet crashing in leaves and ash. Her bright hem whipped back till she became some darker color. (Thinking: Who is in control of her? Who, less than fifty yards off, is following through the undergrowth, twisting the nobs, pushing the switches that change her from scarlet to ultramarine?) My bare foot passed
This morning Filament brought around a woman who I first thought was Italian and who became Black Widow this evening. Overheard her in a discussion in the back yard just now — one of the few here that has even veered near any politics outside the city: "It's not that men and women are identical, it's just that they are so near identical in all but the political abuses and privileges that are that are lavished on the one and visited on the other that to talk of 'inate' differences as significant, even to childbirth, is to hold up the color of the hair, the strangth of a limb, a predilection for history over mathematics or vice versa, as a pre-determining factor in who shall be treated how, with no appeal; while to ignore those abuses and privileges is to ignore oppression, exploitation, even genocide, even while these are shaping conscience, consciousness, and rage." I was impressed. But I have heard similar from Nightmare, Dragon Lady, Madame Brown, Tak, D-t, Bunny, even Tarzan. Is Bellona, then, that unbelievable field where awarenesses, of such an order, are the only real strangth? That they can occur here is what makes possible the idea of leaving for another city.
from concrete to grass. The night billowed and sagged. Did habit guide us through the maze of mists?
I saw the quivering fires.
The brass dish, big across as a car tire, had been dragged twenty feet over the ashy grass. I felt very high. Thought swayed through my mind, shattered, sizzled like water on coals. Something in the smoke—? I raised my arm.
Brass leaves, shells, claws — from the ornamented wrist band, over-long blades curved up around my hand. In the dish, small blue flames hung quivering over the red. Fire light dripped down the blades.
I took another step, flexing just the scarred fingertips.
Something tickled my shoulder.
I whirled, crouching. The leaf rolled down my vest, fluttered against the chains, brushed the worn place at my knee, spun on to the ground. Gasping, I looked up the leaning trunk. Above, shadow coiled in the bole of some major branch, struck away by lightning.
The air was still. But suddenly dead leaves I could not see thundered above, loud as jets. Holding my mouth wide as I could, I leaned forward. The side of my foot pressed a root. Thigh, belly, chest, cheek lay up against the bark. I breathed deep for the woody smell and pushed my body into the trunk.
With my bladed hand I stroked the bark till I felt the trunk move. Sweat rolled under my vest. Chains bit my belly; glass
About a third the nest say "must of," distict and clear. They think it, too. They aren't saying "must've," or must'a'," either. I notice it specifically in D-t, Filament, Raven, Spider, Angel, Cathedral, Oevestation, Priest. So: they are going through a different word to word process than the rest of us (Tarzan, for instance, who says "must'a' ")-I don't think we feel any verb in that at all, while the people who say "must of" do feel something prepositional, or at least genative. A word hits my ears and inside my head a sensory recall forms — a memory of an object, dim and out of focus, the recollection of a sound, a smell, or even a kinesthetic expectation. The recalls are unclear — there is always margin for correction. As word arrives after word, the recalls join and correct each other, grow brighter, clearer, become percise: a … huge… pink… mouse! What do I mean when I say a word means something? Probably the neuro/chemical
bits pressed about me; bark gnawed my cheek. Above, in the roaring, I heard a crack; not the sound wood makes broken against the grain, but when it splits longways. And there was a smell, stronger than the smoke: vegetative, spicey, and fetid.
Another crack: but that was gun or backfire, louder than leaves and across the park. I pushed back from the trunk, blinking away the water in my eyes. Something fell, rocked on the grass among the roots; and something else-shards of bark, twelve or twenty inches across. Bark split in front of me, sagging out a few inches. What was behind it, I could see by the light from the dish, was red; and moist; and moved. Something crashed down through the
process by which one word sounded against the ear generates one inner recall. Human speech has so little varience to it, so little creativity: I sit on the steps and scan an hour's conversation around me (my own included) and find once two words in new juxtaposition. Every couple of days such a juxtaposition will evoke something particularly apt about what the speaker (usually Lady of Spain or D-t; seldom me) is talking about. But when it happens, everyone notices:
"Yeah, yeah! That's right!" and laughter.
"I like that!" and someone grins.
"Yeah, that's pretty good."
In college I would scan and find one such language node in ten hours of speech, sometimes in two or three days. Though, there, people were much more ready to approve the hackneyed, the cliched, the inapt and im-percise.
Is that why I write here?
Is that why I don't write here much?
In the middle of this, Lanya says: "Guess who I had dinner with last night."
Me: "Who?"
She: "Madame Brown took me to the Richards'."
Me: "Have a good time?" I admit, I am surprised.
She: "It was … educational. Like your party. I think they're people I'd rather see on my terratory than on theirs. Madame Brown feels the opposite. Which probably means I won't see much of them."
Me: "What did you think of June?"
She: "I liked her. She was the only one I could really talk to … the hallway down stairs still stinks; weird going past it in the elevator and knowing what it was. I told her all about the House. She was fascinated. A few times Arthur and Mary overheard us and were scandalized. But not many." She rubs the lion's back (where bright metal scars the brown patina), looks out the window. "I think she's going to find George, soon. When she does, we all better watch out."
Me: "Why? What'll happen?"
She smiled: "Who knows? The sky may crack, and giant lightning run the noon's black nylon; and the oddest portents yet infect the
branches, but caught in them. I heard more wood split, and something like a moan. "Lanya!" I shouted loud as I could. "Lanya!" Leaves swelled to a roar again.
I took another step back — a sudden pain along my calf. I whirled, staggering. My bare heel had scraped the high, raised rim of hot metal. I danced away from spilled coals; rocking, the edge had scraped halfway to my knee. There were more gunshots. I began to run.
Very far ahead was a working nightlight. (Thinking: There's going to be a riot! With Fenster shot, the blacks are going to be out all over Jackson and there's going to be a debacle from Cumberland Park too…) I tried to remember which way the park exit was.