There was neither glass nor screening in the wide porch window. The city sloped away down the hill.
“You can see…so far,” Lanya said at Kid’s shoulder. She took another sip of coffee. “I didn’t realize you could see so far from here.”
But Kid was frowning. “What’s that?”
Beyond the last houses, beyond the moiled grey itself, at a place that might have marked the horizon, a low, luminous arc burned.
“It looks like the sun coming up,” Lanya said.
“Naw,” Siam said. “It’s the middle of the afternoon. Maybe it’s…” He looked at Kid again, stopped.
“Maybe it’s a fire,” Kid said. “It’s too wide for the sun.”
Siam squinted. The arc was reddish. Beyond the gash of the park, a few houses were touched here and there with a copper that, in the haze, paled almost to white gold. “Sometimes,” Siam said, “when you see the moon real close to the horizon, like that, it looks much bigger. Maybe the same thing happens to the sun, sometimes?”
“But you just said it was the middle of the afternoon.” Kid squinted too. “Besides, it’s still ten times too wide.” He looked back at Lanya. “Let’s go.”
“Okay.” Lanya took his hand, the bladed one, slipping her fingers between the metal, to hold two of his.
They went back into the hall.
The room with Denny’s loft didn’t have a door.
“If there’s nobody in here,” Kid said, “we can talk.”
“Want anymore coffee?”
“No.”
She finished half the cup (while he thought how hot it must be) and put it down on a cluttered ironing board behind the motorcycle.
“Get up in the loft.”
She climbed, looked back. “Nobody’s up here.”
“Go on.”
She crawled over, first one tennis shoe, then the other disappearing.
He came up after her.
“Look,” she said, as he got his other knee over, “I came by because I wanted to apologize for being so—well, you know. Running off like that. And acting so angry.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s okay. You were angry. I’m just glad you came.” One fist balled on the blankets, he settled to his haunches, watching her silhouette against the window shade. “How did you know I was here?” He wanted to put his head in her lap; he wanted to nuzzle between her legs. “How did you find me, this time? Who saw me wander up here this morning and came running back to tell you?”
“But this is where they said you’d been for—”
“I know!” He sat back, laughed sharply. “I’ve been gone another five days! Right?”
Her silhouette frowned.
“Or six. Or ten…people have been talking about me again, saying how I’ve been living it up here, running with the scorpions, making my rep.” He wanted to cup her warm cheeks in his rough, ugly hands. He said, and his voice suddenly became rough, ugly: “I’ve seen you every day since I met you…” He dragged his hands, bladed and unbladed, into his lap, where bone and muscle and chain and leather and nerve and metal, all mixed up, lay, heavy and confused and gripping. “I have!” he said, swallowed. “That’s what it feels like. To me…”
She said: “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about. I mean, after I left you asleep, in the church, I thought maybe you’d want to know some of what happened while you…were away. You told me you went looking for me at the park commune. I thought you’d want to know what happened there after that guy with the gun—”
“I—” fingers and metal and harness moved in his lap—“I don’t…I mean, I live in one city.” He moved but couldn’t lift. “Maybe you live in another. In mine, time…leaks; sloshes backwards and forwards, turns up and shows what’s on its…underside. Things shift. Yeah, maybe you could explain. In your city. In your city, you’re sane and I’m crazy. But in mine, you’re the one who’s nuts! Because you keep telling me things are happening that don’t fit with what I see! Maybe that’s the only city I can live in. Some guy with a gun? In the park?” He laughed, harshly. “I don’t know if I want to live in yours!”
She was silent; once he saw her head jerk at some idea; but she decided not to say that one, seconds later decided to say another: “You say you saw me…last night, at the church? And then before that, yesterday…morning? In the park? All right. I’ll accept that’s what it looks like to you, if you’ll accept that it doesn’t seem that way to me. All right.” She gestured toward his knee, did not quite touch it. “I’m curious about your…city. But sometime soon, ask me about what goes on in mine. Maybe something’s there that can help you.”
“You have my notebook?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I figured you were so out of it, you just might leave it behind on the floor. You’ve written some strange stuff in there.”
“My poems?”
“Those too,” she said.
Which made him frown because some of this warmth, still unresolved, was connected with wanting to write.
“I’m glad you have it. And I’m glad you came to see me. Because I—”
Footsteps below.
And Denny’s head came up over the loft edge. “Hey, look. This is—oh. You.” Denny crawled up over while someone else climbed.
She stopped with her head just visible, and recognized Kid with a frown that faded to resignation, then climbed the rest of the way, breasts swinging in blue jersey.
“Um…this loft is theirs,” Kid said to Lanya.
“It’s his,” the girl said. “It isn’t mine. All the junk up here is his. We just came to get away from the mob.”
“You see,” Kid said, “instead of telling me what’s been going on while I wasn’t there, you should be finding out what’s been going on here.”
“Sure,” Lanya said. “What?”
“I’ve been balling these two, for one thing. That seemed like days…”
Denny’s chin jerked.
The girl sighed a little.
“Denny’s a good fuck,” Kid said. “She is too. But sometimes it gets a little hectic.”
“Denny…?” the girl said.
Denny, sitting back on his heels, darted his eyes from Lanya to Kid.
“Maybe,” Kid said, and suddenly his hands came apart, “we all could ball again. I mean the four of us. That might work out better—”
The girl said, “Denny, I’m supposed to be going some place with Copperhead and his friends. I told you that before. Look I gotta…”
“Oh,” Denny said. “Well, okay.”
“You sure?” Kid asked the girl. “I mean, the whole idea was because I thought maybe it would make you feel better if…”
The girl poised at the edge of the loft. “Look,” she said. “You’re probably trying to be very nice. But you just don’t understand. It isn’t my thing. Maybe it’s his.” She nodded toward Denny. “I don’t know…is it yours?” That was to Lanya.
“I don’t know,” Lanya said. “I’ve never tried.”
“I don’t mind somebody watching,” the girl said, “if it’s a friend. But what we were doing—” she shrugged—“it isn’t me.” She got down from the platform, paused again, just a head showing. “Denny, I’ll see you later. Good-bye,” with the same tone Kid remembered from the sixteenth-floor apartment in the Labrys. A second later she tripped on something, gave a startled, stifled, “Shit…” and was gone.
Kid looked from Denny to Lanya, back to Denny. “We…” he started. “We were just…we figured we’d use your loft because, well, there were so many other people around. Like she said; the mob.”
“That’s okay,” Denny said. He crossed his arms. “Is it okay if I watch?”
Lanya laughed and sat back against the window edge. A scar of light from beside the shade lay on her hair.
Denny looked at her. “That’s what I like to do. Sometimes, I mean, since it’s my place. He knows.”
“Sure,” Lanya said. “That’s reasonable.” She nodded, laughed again.
“We were just using it to talk,” Kid said.
“Oh,” Denny said. “I just thought because you were saying we should all…you know. All of us.”