Dhalgren

But, for personal reasons, I will not have attended your party when you read this. I am distressed.

I have been rude.

And I have often imagined that to be the most terrible admission I might ever have to make.

Forgive me.

It is not much consolation that the powerful are most successful as patrons when least in evidence. I am concerned with what I presumptuously consider my City. I have always felt every society must have its art; and for that art to have ultimate use, it must be free of intimidation from the centers of power.

Therefore I have not read your poems. Nor will I.

Were I less gregarious, or Bellona more populous, I could be content to read them and never meet you. But I am a very social being, and Bellona is the social size it is.

We will meet.

And I eagerly await your second collection, whenever it should be ready. Its publication, hopefully, will be as expeditious as publication of your first.

My friend, I am fascinated by the mechanics of power. Who in his right mind would want the problems and responsibilities of the nation’s president? Lord, I would! I would! But one cannot be president with a Jewish grandmother. A millionaire family with connections at Harvard helps. A moderately wealthy one with strong emotional ties to Wooster (paint-thinner manufacturers in Cleveland) can be a downright nuisance.

Shall I twist the knife?

A degree in corporate law from Yale is one thing; one in patents from N.Y.U. (cum laude, 1960, and still two tries at the New York bar. Personal reasons again…? The pain!) is something else again.

I ramble.

More than likely I shall not be at the house for a while.

Until we do meet, I remain yours,

Sincerely,

Roger Calkins

RC;wd

too dark to see.

I heard Denny say: “He’s asleep.”

I opened one eye against my arm. The other stared With the other I could see the top of the doorway. Then her Then steps below / and somebody moving something to get by / were Lanya[’s]. I lay waiting for the circle of her hair to dawn at the loft’s edge.

“You aren’t sleeping.” She grinned and came on over. “I got all the kids stored away.”

“Good,” I said. “Why were you so pissed off at me when I brought them in that morning?”

“What?”

I raised my head out of my arm and asked again.

“Oh.” She turned around on the edge and slid her butt against my side. “I’m just lazy—almost, but not quite, as lazy as you. And I don’t like imposing on people.” She put her hand in the sleeve hole of my vest. “Besides, I thought you should have kept them.” Her fingers, cool, were touched the chain.

“You did?”

She nodded.

That upset me. “I really misunderstood you.”

“I know you did. I read what you wrote I said about it in the kitchen / about / when D-t brought in the article.”

“And that’s not what you said at all, huh?”

“What I said was: What are you going to do about them? What arrangements were you going to make about getting them over to the school, if any; getting a couple of changes of clothes for them; maybe a permanent mattress that was theirs—things like that.”

“You really think they’d be better off here?”

“Where you found them, somebody was trying to burn them alive. I could always pack them off with the Richards—”

“What about some of the black families of the kids you’ve got?”

“You have a very funny picture of this city,” she said. “There aren’t any black families here. Some of my kids hang around the George Harrison circus. Or whoever will put up with them. Some, as far as I can tell, are completely on their own.”

“Where did you park them?”

“With the commune, mostly.”

I lay back down. “They would have been better off here.”

“Mmm,” she agreed. “Rose went with a woman who’s been keeping three girls for a couple of weeks. Everybody was pretty nice about it.” Her fingers moved. “But you should have kept them.”

I rolled over on my back.

Her hand dragged around my stomach.

“I didn’t want them.”

“Maybe somebody else around here in the nest would have. Everybody liked them…I wanted them.”

“You don’t live here,” I said. “Except five days out of a week. And you’ve got them: in school.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Five days out of a week. But you have a point.” She took her hand away. “Tell me, how do you do it?”

I asked: “What?”

“How do you—well, I was just thinking about the article.”

“Have you heard people talking about my article?”

“…yours?” That her smile held less mocking than it might was how I knew she mocked.

“About me. You know what I mean.”

“Funny…” She drew her feet up cross-legged / wrinkling / on the blanket; “Last night at the bar people were talking about you—as usual. But they didn’t spend too much time on the kids’ rescue. It jars with your image, I think.”

I thought about that.

She explained: “It isn’t two-sided enough for you. It’s just straight heroics.”

I heard Denny come inot [into?] the room, move things under the loft looking for something and not find[ing?] it—Lanya glanced down—and leave[ing?].

“All the good gossip about you usually has that dualistic two-sided thing of being bad and good at once—do you worry about your image?” she asked, suddenly.

“Sure.”

“I’m surprised,” she said. “You never seem to purposely do anything about it.”

“That’s because it never has any relation to what I actually do do. My image is in other peoples’ heads. Keeping it interesting is there [their?] problem. I worry about it in the way I could worry about the reputation of my favorite baseball team. I don’t for one minute think of myself as a player.”

“Maybe so.” She picked up my hand and touched the / thickened thumb-knuckle I’d gnawed / raw/ red pink again. “I mean some day you’re going to wash your hands thoroughly and show up with a perfect manicure. And I’ll leave you forever. You really are schiz, you know?”

Which made me laugh. “I just it [?] the article had mentioned George. I don’t think it’s/I it’s leaving him out is—” I’d started to say fair—“good for my image.” Which made me laugh again.

So got up, stretched, put down my plank, went inside—and was suddenly bellowing and yelling and laughing, and everybody was pouring in to see what was going on: “Night run!” I told them. “We’re gonna make a night run!” Which we did—to the building with the stained glass windows (the lions of the city, a parti-colored flicker from our lights) with Lanya along, mouse quiet; and there was a funny almost-fight with three men on the street. But after they got as nasty as they dared, I guess it struck them how stpud [stupid?] they were being; a couple of times they got pushed into a wall, though.

At the nest, Denny filled up a bottle from the pail on the stove; I took it on the porch and wrote some more.

Lanya came to squat behind me, hands on my shoulders, cheek on my cheek. [“]You’re really up/going/ aren’t you? Maybe staying at my place wasn’t such a bad idea?”

“It was a good idea.”

She said, sweetly: “I was fucking pissed, you know, when Madame Brown told me you’d split. But when I got here and everybody said you were writing, it was okay.” She picked up the sheaf of blue paper. “I’m going to steal these away to read. I’ll bring them back in twenty minutes. All right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You know I feel better about these than any I’ve written before. Not that that means anything.”

“Good enough to have a second collection?”

I grinned at her. “I think I’m even more anxious not to have one.”