“What sort of store was this?” Kid asked, behind Tak who was opening the door.
It sounded like a machine was running in the basement. Empty shelves lined the walls, and the wire frames were display racks. The light came from no more than a single bulb somewhere on the stairwell. Tak went to the cash register. “First time I came in here, would you believe there was still eighty dollars in the drawer?”
Tak rang.
The drawer trundled out.
“Still there.”
He closed it.
In the cellar the sound stopped, then started again: only now it didn’t sound like a machine at all, but someone moaning.
“We want to go downstairs,” Tak said.
Someone had scattered pamphlets on the steps. They whispered under Kid’s bare foot. “What was this place?” Kid asked again. “A bookstore?”
“Still is.” Tak peered out where the single hanging bulb lit empty shelves. “Paperback department down here.”
Tacked to an edge was a hand-lettered sign: ITALIAN LITERATURE.
A youngster with very long hair sat cross-legged on the floor. He glanced up, then closed his eyes, faced forward, and intoned: “Om…” drawing the last sound until it became the mechanical growl Kid had heard when they’d entered.
“Occupied tonight,” Tak said, softly. “Usually there’s no one here.”
Between the checked flannel lapels, the boy’s chest ran with sweat. Cheek bones glistened above his beard. He’d only glanced at them, before closing his eyes again.
It’s cool, Kid thought. It’s so much cooler.
Beside ITALIAN LITERATURE was POLITICAL SCIENCE. There were no books on that one either.
Kid stepped around the boy’s knees and looked up at PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (equally empty) and walked on to PHILOSOPHY. All the shelves, it seemed, were bare.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”
Tak touched Kid’s shoulder. “Here, this is what I wanted to show you.” He nodded across the room.
Kid followed Tak around AMERICAN LITERATURE which was a dusty wooden rack in the middle of the floor.
The unfrosted bulb pivoted shadows about them.
“I used to come down here for all my science fiction,” Tak said, “until there wasn’t anything on the shelves anymore. In there. Go ahead.”
Kid stepped into the alcove and stubbed his booted toe (thinking: Fortunately), hopped back, looked up: The ivory covers recalled lapped bathroom tiles.
All but the top shelf was filled with face-out display. He looked again at the carton he had kicked. The cover wagged. As he stared into the box, something focused: a shadow, first fallen across his mind at something Lanya had said at the nest, almost blurred out by the afternoon’s megalight, now, under the one unfrosted bulb, lay outlined and irrefutable: As manuscripts did not become galleys overnight, neither did galleys become distributed books. Manymore than twenty-four hours had passed since he had corrected proofs with Newboy in the church basement.
Frowning, he bent to pick out a copy, paused, reached for one on the shelf, paused again, looked back at Tak, who had his fists in his jacket pockets.
Kid’s lips whispered at some interrogative. He looked at the books again, reached again. His thumb stubbed the polished cover-stock.
He took one.
Three fell; one slid against his foot.
Tak said: “I think it’s very quaint of them to put it in POETRY,” which is what the sign above said. “I mean they could have filled up every shelf in the God-damn store. There’re a dozen cartons in the back.”
Thumb on top, three fingers beneath, Kid tried to feel the weight; he had to jog his hand. There was a sense of absence which was easiest to fill with
BRASS
ORCHIDS
lettered in clean shapes with edges and serifs his own fingers could not have drawn, even with French curve and straightedge. He reread the title.
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm…” The light blacked and went on again; the “…mmmmmmmmmm…” halted on a cough.
Kid looked over the six, seven, eight filled shelves. “That’s really funny,” he said, and wished the smile he felt should be on his face would muster his inner features to the right emotions. “That’s really…” Suddenly he took two more copies, and pushed past Tak for the stair. “Hey,” he said to the boy. “Are you all right?”
The sweating face lifted. “Huh?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Oh, man!” The boy laughed weakly. “I’m sick as a dog. I’m really sick as a fucking dog.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my gut. I got a spastic duodenum. That’s like an ulcer. I mean I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. I’ve had it before, so I know what it feels like.”
“What are you doing here, then?”
The boy laughed again. “I was trying yoga exercises. For the pain. You know you can control things like that, with yoga.”
Tak came up behind Kid. “Does it work?”
“Sometimes.” The boy took a breath. “A little.”
Kid hurried on up the steps.
Tak followed.
From the top step Kid looked around at the shelves, and turned to Tak, who said:
“I was just thinking, I really was, about asking you to autograph this for me.” He held up the copy and snorted rough laughter. “I really was.”
Kid decided not to examine the shape this thought made, but caught the mica edge: It’s not not having: It’s having no memory of having. “I don’t like that sort of shit anyway…” he said, awed at his lie, and looked at Tak’s face, all shadowed and flared with backlight. He searched the black oval for movement. It’s there anyway, he thought; he said: “Here. Gimme,” and got the pen from the vest’s buttonhole.
“What are you going to do?” Tak handed it over.
Kid opened it on the counter by the register, and wrote: “This copy of my book is for my friend, Tak Loufer.” He frowned a moment, then added, “All best.” The page looked yellow. And he couldn’t read what he’d written at all, which made him realize how dim the light was. “Here.” He handed it back. “Let’s go, huh?”
“Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”
“Yeah.” Tak glanced downstairs and sucked his teeth. “You know?” They walked to the door. “When you took it from me, I thought you were going to tear it up.”
Kid laughed. Perhaps, he thought, I should have. And thinking it, decided what he had put was best. “You know—” as they stepped into the night, Kid felt his fingers dampen on the cover: fingerprints?—“people talk about sexual inadequacy? That doesn’t have anything to do with whether you can get a hard-on or not. A guy goes out looking for his girlfriend and doesn’t even know where she lives, and doesn’t seem to have bothered to find out…You said Madame Brown might know?”
“I think so,” Tak said. “Hey, you’re always talking about your girlfriend. Right now, do you have a boyfriend?”
Kid figured they had reached the corner. On the next step he felt the ball of his bare foot hung over the cup. “Yeah, I guess I do.” They stepped down.
“Oh,” Tak said. “Somebody told me you’re supposed to be making it with some kid in the scorpions.”
“I could get to hate this city—”
“Ah, ah, ah!” Tak’s voice aped reproval. “Rumor is the messenger of the gods. I’m sort of curious to find out what you wrote in my book.”
At which Kid started to balk, found his own balking funny, and smiled. “Yeah.”
“And of course, the poems too. Well…”
Kid heard Tak’s footsteps stop.
“…I go this way. Sure I can’t convince you…?”
“No.” He added: “But thanks. I’ll see you.” Kid walked forward thinking, That’s nuts. How does anybody know where anything is in this, and thought that thought seven or eight times through, till, without breaking stride, he realized: I cannot see a thing and I am alone. He pictured great maps of darkness torn down before more. After today, he thought idly, there is no more reason for the sun to rise. Insanity? To live in any state other than terror! He held the books tightly. Are these poems mine? Or will I discover that they are improper descriptions by someone else of things I might have once been near; the map erased, aliases substituted for each location?