K-chunk…k-chunk…k-chunk. One of the doors had caught on something. Between k-chunks, reminiscent of his own breath, came wind.
He paused, disoriented in the putrid dark. The left elevator door? The right? Then fear, like the lightest forefinger, tickled his shoulder. He nearly bent double, and staggered against the wall; which was not a wall, because it gave.
Inside the exit door, he caught the banister, and stumbled down.
Faint light greyed the glass a flight below. Gulping fresh breath, he came out in the hall of sixteen. One bulb burned at the far end.
His next gulp checked explosive giggles. Kidd shook his head. Well, what the fuck were they supposed to do with it? He started down the hall, grinning and disgusted. Still, then why did I go to all that to drag it up?
When he knocked on the door, rattlings suggested it was open. When he pushed it in, a girl caught her breath. “Hey, who’s home?” he asked.
“Who…who is it?” She sounded afraid and exhausted. The window let in dark blue over the iron bunks, piles of clothing, an overturned stool.
“It’s the Kid.” He was still grinning.
“They’re all gone,” she said, from the muddle of blankets. “There’s just me. Please…they’re all gone.”
“I’m not going to do anything.” He stepped in.
She pushed herself up on her elbow, brushed hair back from her face and blinked bruised eyes.
“You’re…the one who was sick?”
“I’m better,” she whined. “Really, I’m better. Just leave me alone.”
“Thirteen, and the others? How long have they been gone?”
She let herself fall, sighing.
“Are they coming back?”
“No. Look, just—”
“Do you have food and things?”
“Please…yes, I’m all right. They split a couple of days ago. What do you want?”
Because he had once feared her, he stepped closer. “Don’t you have any light?”
“Lights, huh?” Plurality and inflection baffled him. “Look, I’ll be all right, just go away. Lights? Over there…” She gestured toward the mannequin.
He went to see what she pointed at. “Has Faust been coming to check you out? He was all worried about you last time I was here.” Bald plaster breasts were snaked with chain.
“Yeah, he comes. Look around the neck.” That was further instruction. “Some guy left them. He ain’t gonna come back.” She coughed. “They don’t got no battery.”
He lifted the heavy links from the joined neck. The smile was paint streaked and chipped under one eye. “Lights? Light shield?” The thing linked to the bottom clicked on the plaster chin, nose, forehead.
“All right. Now just go, will you?”
“It doesn’t have a battery?”
She only sighed, rustled her covers.
“All right, if you say you’re okay, I’ll go.” Something in him…thrilled? That’s what he’d heard people say. The fear was low, the physical reaction runneled and grave. He dared the mirror:
Her bunk was filled with shadow and crumpled blankets.
“All right,” he repeated. “Good-bye. Tell Thirteen or Denny if they come back—”
She sighed; she rustled. “They’re not coming back.”
So he shut the door behind him. Ominous: but what would he have had her tell? He put the chain around his neck. A blade snagged the links. He pulled his bladed hand away.
Light shield?
The thing linked to the bottom was spherical, the diameter of a silver dollar, black, and set with lenses. The heavy links crossed the brass chain and glass bits. He ran his thumb around the back of his vest, shrugged the lapels closed, and walked up the hall.
The elevator opened.
Rising in the dark, “19” suspended orange at eye level, he thought about batteries and rubbed his naked stomach.
At the Richards’ new apartment door he heard voices. A woman, neither Mrs. Richards nor June, laughed.
He rang.
Carpet-muffled heels approached.
“Yes?” Mrs. Richards asked. “Who is it?” The peekhole clicked. “It’s Kidd!”
The chain rattled, the door swung back.
“Why, come in! Bill, Ronnie, Lynn; this is the young man we were telling you about!” Air from the opened balcony doors beat the candle flames: light flapped through the foyer. “Come in, come in. Kidd, some friends of Arthur’s…from work. Arthur? They came over for dinner. Would you like some coffee with us? And dessert?”
“Look, if you’re busy, just let me talk to Mr. Richards a minute?”
“Kidd?” Mr. Richards called from the dining room. “Come on in, will you?”
Kidd sought for an expression but, finding nothing adequate for his impatience, came, patiently, inside; he settled on a frown.
Mrs. Richards’ smile was perfect.
Kidd went into the dining room.
The woman sitting next to Mr. Richards was doing something with her earring. “You write poems, Mary told us. Are you going to read us some?”
“Huh? Oh. No, I didn’t bring any.”
The man across from her took his leather-patched elbows from the tablecloth. “That’s a rather dangerous looking thing you did bring.”
“Oh.” Kidd looked at the orchid. “Well, it’s almost dark out.” He snapped the band open, shucked the finger harness, while the people up and down the table chuckled.
From where he stood, the flame at the white wax taper tip covered June’s left eye. She smiled.
“Here,” Mrs. Richards said behind him. “Here’s a chair. Move down a little bit, Sam. Pour him a cup of coffee, Arthur.”
“What do you think I’m doing, honey,” Mr. Richards said with total affability.
A large woman in blue corduroy began to talk again with the man on her left. The cup passed from hand to hand.
The woman in the green dress smiled, but couldn’t keep her eyes (pale grey) from flicking at the steel cage he had set on the corner of the tablecloth. She put the cup beside it. Mrs. Richards held the back of her chair, about to sit. “Really, just like I was telling you, Kidd absolutely saved our lives. He was such a help. We were beginning to think of him as part of the family.”
At the other end of the table, a large man rubbed one finger against his nose and said, “Mary, you’ve been about to bring in that dessert for fifteen minutes now, and I’m on my second cup of coffee.”
Mrs. Richards laughed. “I have been talking on. Here, I’ll bring it in right now.”
June, her small fists whispering in white taffeta, rounded the table for the kitchen.
The man beside the woman in green leaned around her and said, “Mary’s just been going on all about you and your poems. You just live downtown, near the park?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Where do you live?”
“Ah-ha.” Still leaning forward he fingered the collar of his sports shirt. “Now, that’s a very good question.” His nails were not clean and the side of the collar was frayed. “That’s a very good question indeed.” He sat back, still laughing.
Still plucking at her earring, the woman at Mr. Richards’ right said, “You don’t look like a poet. You look more like one of those people they’re always writing about in the Times.”
“Scorpions?” said the very blond man (tweed and leather elbow patches) over his clasped hands. “His hair isn’t long enough.”
“His hair is long,” insisted the earring plucker.
“Long enough,” explained the blond man and turned to look for a napkin fallen by June’s vacated chair.
Kidd grinned at the woman. “Where do you live?”
She stopped plucking, looked surprised. “Ralph and I used to be out on Temple. But now we’ve been staying—” and stopped because somebody said something on her other side, or may have even elbowed her.
“You like it better there?” Kidd asked, vaguely curious as to where Temple was.
“If you can like anything in Bellona, right now!”
Mrs. Richards entered with a large glass bowl.
“What is that?” the man on Mr. Richards’ left asked. “Jello?”
“No, it isn’t jello!” Mrs. Richards set the bowl before Mr. Richards. “It’s wine jelly.” She frowned at the purple sea. “Port. The recipe didn’t mention any sugar. But I think that was probably a mistake, so I put some in, anyway.”