“No…of course not. As long as you didn’t take it from somebody.”
“Well it must have belonged to somebody once.”
“Do you think there’s something wrong with taking it?”
“Shit.” Denny grinned. “Nobody’s gonna catch me. You like taking stuff?”
“It’s not—”
“Say,” Denny came to his knees. “You ever hustle?”
“Huh?” Lanya recovered from her surprise with an unsteady grin. “I beg your pardon.”
“I mean take money for going to bed with somebody.”
“No, I certainly haven’t.”
“Denny has, I bet,” Kid said.
“Yeah, sure,” Denny said. “But I just wanted to know. About you.”
Her amusement faltered toward curiosity. “Why?”
“Would you?”
“I don’t know…perhaps.” She laughed again and took his knee in her hands. “Are you planning to set me up in business now? There isn’t any business here.”
Denny giggled. “That’s not what I meant.” Suddenly he picked up the plastic box, opened the lid, tossed.
“Hey!” Lanya shrieked, and scrambled back under the cubes of colored wood.
Denny picked up a fallen cube and threw it at her.
“Oh, cut that out—”
He threw another one and laughed.
“Damn it—”
Scowling, she picked up a handful and flung them back, hard. He ducked: they clicked the wall.
She hurled another that hit his head.
“Ahh…!” He flung one back.
She laughed and threw two more, one with the left hand and one with the right. Both hit. Denny rolled away in hysterics and scrambled after more gaming pieces.
“You’re gonna lose the…” Kid started. Then he stretched across the front edge of the loft to keep the pieces from rolling over. Denny’s laughter bobbed between octaves. Kid thought, His voice hasn’t even finished changing.
Lanya was laughing too, almost so hard she couldn’t throw.
A cube hit Kid’s hip. He knocked it back onto the blanket. Another went over his shoulder, clattering to the floor. He watched them turn and duck and toss and wished they would throw pieces at him. After a while they did.
He threw them back, tried to guard the edge, gave up, by now laughing himself, till it hurt beneath his sternum, and couldn’t stop laughing, so hurled the bright cubes with gold p’s, q’s, k’s, and r’s.
“It’s not fair!” Lanya cried against Kid’s arm, then laughed again, when they had made him abandon the loft edge.
“Just ’cause you throw so hard!” Cube in hand, Denny ducked first left, then right.
“Come on…now…” Kid panted, and couldn’t laugh anymore.
Denny looked over the edge. “There’re a lot of them on the floor.”
Lanya pulled back, threw another. It deflected from Denny’s thigh. She ducked behind Kid.
Denny glanced back. “There goes another one.”
Lanya looked out tentatively. “Maybe we better go down and pick them up.”
Frowning, Denny turned back for the box. “Yeah…” He stopped to place the shirts and books and the glass dice in the corner. Koth regarded the hoard from his day-glo poster.
A shirt casing had gotten torn.
“Let’s go down,” Kid said.
Lanya followed him on the ladder.
They picked up cubes. When Denny came down, she threw one at him as he stepped to the floor.
“Hey, don’t—” Denny said, because the cube went off into the junk beneath the platform.
“I’m sorry!” Lanya snickered again. “Here, let me help.” She followed him into the leaning tools, piled chairs, cartons. She held back an ironing board while Denny dropped down. “Got it…”
She came over with the box, and held it for Kid to put in his handful. While he fingered them clumsily into place, she asked, “Have you ever taken money for having sex with somebody?”
“Yes.”
“Men and women?”
One cube stuck against another; Kid pressed, and another jumped out of the matrix. “Just men.”
“Maybe I should try it,” she said after a moment. “Everybody thinks about it.”
“Why?” Kid stopped for another cube by his foot.
“And maybe you’ve just made a good point.”
When Kid stood to place the cube, she added:
“But that wouldn’t stop me.”
She snapped the lid and turned toward Denny.
Kid grinned, watching her backbone like an arrow into her buttocks’ heart. I do not know, he thought, what goes on inside her. All I’m sure is it’s very different from what it looks like is going on.
“There’re still some up top.” She started up the ladder.
“I don’t see anymore here.” Kid started behind her.
“Hey—!” Denny said.
Then something locked around Kid’s neck, scraped his sides, and hung on.
“Fuck, what the—”
“Carry me!” Denny shouted, clinging. “Go ahead, carry me on up.”
“Fuck you!” Kid shouted, sagging on his grip. He tried to shake the boy loose. “Don’t choke me to death, you stupid…bastard!” He hauled up another rung.
Lanya crouched on the ledge. “You’ll drop him—”
Kid hauled up one more. “Get on up there, cocksucker!”
Lanya was tugging at Denny’s arm.
Kid tried to heave Denny up.
“Hey—!”
Kid felt Denny slipping. Bare feet pawed his hip. Then something scrambled over his head. “Hey,” Denny repeated in a different voice. He tugged at Kid’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Lanya sat beside him, slapping first her thighs and then her stomach, once more helpless with laughter.
“Fuck you.” Kid crouched on the loft edge. As he leaned forward, something hissed across his chest.
“Hey, my chain!”
“What?” Denny pushed himself backward, pulling the blankets from the board. He reached, without looking, for his own anklet.
Kid wondered if that was what had scraped so at his side.
Lanya watched, her lips apart.
“My chain,” Kid repeated; he turned to sit on the edge of the loft, and looked down. The end, dangling from his foot, swung inches above the floor. He reached down to pull it up. “It broke this morning…somebody broke it.”
“Who?” Lanya asked.
“Somebody broke it. I tried to fix it, but I knew it probably wouldn’t hold.”
With two fingers he followed it across his shoulder. The break was at the same link. He pulled the ends together.
“Wait a second,” Lanya said. “You don’t have any nails. Let me look.” She crouched before Kid, so close her hair tickled his chest. How can she see, he wondered. “I just about got it.”
She did something with her teeth.
“Hey…?” Kid asked.
“There,” and pushed herself backward.
Behind Lanya, Denny asked now, “Who broke it?” Denny lay his foot on Lanya’s knee. He put down the box, and brought his arms around her stomach, pulled her to him, laid an arm along hers.
“Don’t those get in your way?” She glanced over Denny’s leg at his dog-chained ankle. “Sexy, I suppose.”
“Who?” Denny repeated his question.
“I don’t know,” Kid said. “I really don’t.”
He fingered for the weak link. Part of it was the dimness, but he doubted he could find that link now even in full light. He tugged, first here, then there. “You really fixed it?”
Lanya, her shoulder under Denny’s chin, bit her lip to retain laughter. The words “…in time,” fell through his head, and he was unsure what they referred to. I’ve found something, he thought, in time. Who needs monasteries? He laughed out loud for Lanya’s caged humor.
She let go Denny, and picked up the box, looking about her legs to see if anymore pieces had fallen out.
A cube gnawed the side of Kid’s foot. “Here!”
Lanya recovered herself to hold out the box.
Kid tossed the cube in. She put the box on her thigh to fit the cube in place.
“You really think you’re a funny little cocksucker, huh?” Kid stood up, crouched, moved forward. His head tapped the ceiling. Not hard, but he staggered. “Yeah?” He crouched again, turning toward Denny and rubbing his groin. “Look at you. You suck a nice dick. You give some good head, what do you think that makes you?” He nudged Lanya with his elbow. The cubes rattled; she looked up. “Yeah, I like his tongue up my ass. But you think that makes you anything more than lukewarm shit—Hey, look at Denny!” Kid pointed between Denny’s legs. “See, I do like that and he’s got a hard-on already.” He sat down and smiled. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”