“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.”
“Now?” Lanya asked.
“Yeah, now!”
Denny crawled over to look in the box. “We got all the pieces.” He sighed.
“Um-hm,” she said quietly, and closed the lid.
Denny put the box in the corner. Kid pulled out his vest and put it on.
Lanya sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed. Kid could not decide if her expression were pensive or absent. “Come on.” He tossed her blouse, and did not wait to see what she did with it, but reached for his pants.
“Did everybody leave the house?” Lanya asked.
“It sure is quiet.” Denny said.
Kid looked back.
Lanya pushed another button through its hole. The blouse tails lay a-tangle in her lap.
Denny stooped listening, his cock, finally, lowering.
“I’m hungry,” Kid said. “I haven’t done anything but fuck for twenty-four hours: you, him, his girlfriend—”
“You’re a busy—” Lanya pulled on her jeans—“son of a bitch.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“—him, then you again.” The two hooks came through the belt. “Jesus!” He looked up.
Denny said: “It sure is quiet. Maybe everybody went out.”
“That’d be nice,” Lanya said.
“Do you guys keep food in the house?” Kid asked.
“Not very long.” Denny tossed Kid his projector.
Lanya started down first. She held the laces of her tennis shoes in her teeth. “I can’t carry them and climb too,” she had to say three times before they understood.
While Denny dropped over the edge, Kid turned to get the orchid.
The light around the window shade was neon orange. As he picked up the clustered blades, red gleamings poured down the edges. Kid frowned and backed to the ladder.
In the hallway, Lanya asked, “Has the smoke cleared up outside?” The window in the hall door was filled with light like bloody sunrise.
“I guess they all have gone out.” Denny looked in another room.
“Do you think maybe it is clearing off?” Lanya asked. “Let’s go outside and see.”
Kid followed them to the front door.
Lanya opened it and went down the steps. “There’re still clouds all over the sky.” She reached the sidewalk, turned around, looking up—and screamed.
While Kid and Denny hurried down, the screaming lost voice and became just expelled air.
On the sidewalk, they turned to look up in the direction she stared:
From the edge of the sidewalk, three-quarters of the disk was visible above the houses. The clouds dulled it enough to squint at, but it went up, covering the roofs, and up, and up, and up. What they could see of it filled half the visible sky. And, Kid realized, half of the sky is huge! But that fell away into impossibility. Or unverifiability anyway. The rim was a broil of gold. Everything was like burning metal.