“No.” Frank shook his hand, fingers straight, and his head, face a-scowl. “No, no. It isn’t that kind of…Look, I can’t tell you how to be a poet. I can just tell you what I think. That’s all.”
Kid grunted again.
“Don’t take it as anything more than that.”
Do you say thanks, now? Kid wondered. You say thanks for compliments. “Thanks.” It sounded like the most tentative question.
Frank nodded, looked over the rail again.
Kid stepped around him and walked toward the end of the bridge. Halfway, like a tic, he thought Frank was about to tap his shoulder. He turned, and realized, turning, it was some untransformed kernel, perfectly hostile, trying to emerge. Facing into the lights of May, Kid could not tell if Frank looked at him or away.
Squinting, Kid swallowed the thought unworded and went on into the high paths of January; from which he could look down on the crowded terrace.
They’re all here, Kid thought, for me! He was desperately uncomfortable. Frank’s smile—it had made his criticism seem as though he thought he was getting away with something. Well, that still didn’t change what he’d said. Somebody else, Kid remembered but couldn’t remember who, had said they’d liked them…and decided that wasn’t what he wanted to think about now. But with the resolve erupted memories of seven other reactions: Puzzled, indifferent, interests fleeting or otherwise. He recalled Newboy’s complex noncommittal and sensed in it betrayal—not so much Newboy’s but his own—of something the poet had tried to tell him and he had not been able to understand.
“This is like…” he started out loud, heard himself, and laughed. This was like the night in the park when his fantasized reception had pressed so heavily he’d been unable to write.
He laughed again.
A couple smiled and nodded.
His look became surprise as he noticed them. But they passed.
I want a drink, he thought, and saw he was already heading for the bar. I really want a drink very much.
This isn’t, Kid found himself repeating, what it should be about. Repeating it for the sixteenth or seventeenth time, he sat on the stone rail, looking across at the table and the bottles, still without a glass.
“Hi!” Then her expression (and handfuls of scarlet fell down among green fires) changed. “What happened to you?”
His hands went out against her hips: Around one, blue puddled, around the other, green.
“Am I bleeding?”
He slid them back to her buttocks, thinking, how warm she is; lay his face against her warm belly. She took hold of his hair. Before his blinking, black scales flittered to silver, to scarlet, to green.
“No. But you look like you just walked into a wall and now you’re waiting for it to go away.”
Kid made a sound supposed to launch the next sentence; it came out another grunt. So he backed off it and started again a little higher. “I was just…talking with Frank. About my…poems.”
She pulled loose and hoisted herself up on the wall beside him, shoulder against his shoulder, leg against his leg, to become a deviling glitter at the corner of his eye while he stared at his ruined thumbs, now pressed together on his meshed fists’ calloused drum. She asked: “What did he say?”
“He didn’t like them, very much.”
She waited.
“He said everybody here thought I was a talking dog. They all think I’m some sort of dumb nut, that I’m ten years younger than I am, and they’d all be just as astonished that I even spelled my name right—if I had a name…”
“Kid…” which came out much softer than his voice. She put her hand over his. He raised one thumb. She caught it in her fist. “That’s fucking nasty.”
“Maybe it’s fucking true.”
“It isn’t!” Her voice told him she was frowning: “That’s Frank? The one who’s supposed to have had a book of poems published out in California?”
Asking who else it could have been, he said: “Yeah?”
She answered: “He’s jealous, Kid!”
“Huh? Of what,” which was a statement, not a question.
“You’re both poets. You both have a book published. Look at all the attention you’re getting. I doubt if this happened when his book came out.”
“That’s awfully easy. Besides, I don’t care why he said it, I just wish I knew if it were true—Oh, shit! Calkins didn’t even read the poems when he decided to publish them. Maybe he did when they finally came out and was so embarrassed he decided not to show up this evening.”
“No! That’s silly—”
“And you remember how Newboy kept beating around the bush whenever I asked him if they were—”
“He enjoyed them—”
“Shit! He enjoyed me! If he was trying to say anything, he was trying to say he couldn’t make the distinction.”
“And what makes you think Frank is anymore capable of making it? He resents you, he resents the way everybody has fixated on you: And then he tries to read the poems. At least Mr. Newboy was honest enough to admit he couldn’t make the separation. Hell, I like them!”
“You’re biased.”
“You think Frank isn’t? Look, they don’t—” She let go his thumb.
He looked over.
Her fists were knotted above her tidewise, swirling lap. “We’re going about this wrong.” Her bottom lip moved over her teeth, to fix her mouth for some new tone of voice. “He is right. About a lot of it, anyway.”
The simple hurt started in his throat. One swallow dragged it down to his stomach’s floor.
“He doesn’t like your poems and he’s probably sincere. About not liking them. Thelma likes them, and she’s probably just as sincere.”
“I was trying to remember her name. It was sort of hard.”
“It should be just as hard to remember his. Being sincere doesn’t mean they’re right. It just means they believe they are.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Sure. That’s what Frank said, about the poems.”
“Sorry.”
“He’s right about the people, about whateverybody here thinks.”
“Not everybody,” she said. “I suspect not even half. Do you care what people think?”
“I care…” He paused. “…about people. The people here. So if they think that, I’ve got to care about that too. And I wish they didn’t think what he said.”
She made a sound of assent.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come to this party,” he said.
“You want to go?”
“No. I want to stay and see what happens.” Kid opened a hand on each knee. “It’s something not to do again, maybe. But I don’t think I want to leave in the middle. I’m learning too much.” He pushed from the rail and turned to the bar.
Denny said, “What’s the—?”
Kid put his arms around him: Denny’s hands came up first to push, then all of a sudden went tight across Kid’s back. Kid pushed his face against the dry, hot neck and thought: My face must feel cold. He held the hot shoulders and thought: My hands…
Denny moved once, was still, moved again; let his arms half down, waiting to pull away.
Kid raised his head.
Two people passing looked away.
Kid stepped back.
Denny asked, “Are you all right?” then glanced at Lanya.
Her eyebrows moved to answer him.
“I’m okay,” Kid said and wondered if he’d contradicted her.
She asked, “You’re sure?”
Kid put his hand on her bright knee. “I’m okay. Somebody said some nasty things about my poems. Whether they’re true or not, it made me mad as hell.”
Lanya sighed. “I guess that’s why I’m glad I’m not an Artist.”
“Why are you always saying that?” Kid pulled back. “There’s a whole room full of people inside listening to ‘Diffraction’ right now! And enjoying it!”
“I mean—” Lanya looked uncomfortable—“I mean Artist in the way this party presupposes. Sure, I make a piece of music; or a fucking dress for that matter—you’d be astonished how similar they are! But I don’t just think you can be that kind of artist anymore. Lots of people do things lots better than lots of others; but, today, so many people do so many things very well, and so many people are seriously interested in so many different things people do for their own different reasons, you can’t call any thing the best for every person, or even every serious person. So you just pay real attention to the real things that affect you; and don’t waste your time knocking the rest. This party—it’s ritual attention, the sort you give a social hero. I guess that can be an artist if there’re few enough of them around—”