Nightmare mumbled very loudly:
“Too much.”
“You want to come to a party?” Kid called after Nightmare in the hall.
“Here?”
“At Roger Calkins’.”
Nightmare’s head went to the side. “What am I gonna do at a party up there?”
“It’s my party. Calkins is giving it for me at his place. Bring Dragon Lady along.”
“Just your friends? In his place?”
“His friends, too.”
“Oh,” Nightmare said. “She ain’t gonna come without her sidelights.”
“Adam and Baby?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all right. All of you come on up. It’s in three Sundays, by the paper date. Soon as it gets dark.”
“Calkins’ friends, them people you read about in the paper?”
“Probably.”
“That astronaut guy gonna be there?”
“I guess so.”
“Motherfucker,” Nightmare said. “You know, Baby don’t put no clothes on. I mean he’s funny and he just refuses, flat out, you know? And Dragon Lady ain’t gonna come if he don’t.”
“He can come. If he wants to come buck naked, that’s all right with me.”
“Yeah?”
“You guys come anyway you want. Bring your lights. That’s all they probably care about.”
“I don’t got nothing to dress up in,” Nightmare said. “This ain’t a party you have to dress up for?”
“I’m coming like this.”
“You know I’m gonna tell Baby you said to come on up to that party buck naked.” Nightmare frowned. “He probably gonna do it, too. Cause he’s a real funny motherfucker. I mean he walks around in the street like that, all the God-damn time.” The frown broke before laughter. “I gotta see that. Yeah, I gotta go see that shit.”
“Three Sundays,” Kid said.
“Maybe we all come over here first?” Nightmare offered.
“Okay. I’ll see you then, if I don’t before.”
From the nail hung the framed photograph with the broken cover glass. Father, Mother, the two brothers and the sister gazed reprovingly in their dated dress. With black marker, on the glass, someone had drawn, across the boy’s and the woman’s mouth, outsized mustaches.
“Hey, there, pops!” Nightmare saluted the bearded gentleman in the photo. “Kid, I’m gonna split. Thanks for the invitation. I’ll tell the Lady. We’re all waiting to hear about your next run.”
Nightmare opened the door.
Their shadows spilled the steps into night.
“So long.” Nightmare trampled his own down to the sidewalk, waved, and stalked away.
Kid looked back down the hall. All three light bulbs were working, as well as the one in the bathroom. I guess, he thought, I picked a good nest. The films of his thought hanging beyond words curled and withered, made all the motions of the thinnest tissue caught in blasting flame. I guess…
Spitt stepped out of the living room. “We gonna eat out back, hey; Nightmare still here?” His hand, straying on his chest, concentrated its motions around the scar.
“Nope.”
“Oh.”
Behind Kid, the closing door clicked.
“He could’a stayed,” Spitt said. “We got plenty of food for tonight—”
Kid wandered down the hall.
I am a parasite. I have never made a home. Even here, I have not instructed a home to be made. In my whole stay, though I cannot recall looking for food, among these twenty, twenty-five faces, some among them must take that care. I crawl from place to place, watching homes created or crumbling around me.
He wondered what kind of party Calkins expected.
Breath bucked from his nose; that was laughter.
On the service porch, Kid looked down into the yard (firelight on the ceiling beams), grabbed the sill of the window, reared back, vaulted: “Whooop-peee!”
Others laughed.
“Jesus Christ,” Raven said. “You’ll break your fuckin’ neck!”
Kid staggered, agonized.
Three hands came to steady him.
And three voices:
“Man, that must be fifteen feet!”
“It ain’t fifteen feet—ten? Twelve? Here, Kid, have a drink. You know there’s a God-damn liquor store just around the corner and ain’t nobody even broken in the window?”
“It’s broken now. Shit. We’re gonna have to work a week to drink up all that booze.”
Kid took another step, grinning, between the scorpions who flanked him. Pain shot again from calf to thigh. Did I break my knee, he thought. No. It’ll be all right in a minute…
“You all right, Kid?” That was one of the black girls with bare breasts joggling jingling links. “Man, you scared me good when you come leaping out like that!”
Kid took another breath and grinned. “I’m okay.” He leaned on the black shoulder, while she pulled away from another girl to support him. She laughed, shifted, steadied; and Kid pulled away, took another step, another breath. “Yeah, I’m okay. What we got to eat?”
The Ripper, with a can opener, kneeled over a big, odd-shaped can. “One of them canned hams.” The tin wept gelatin down its red and blue label. “We found three of them.”
The fire crackled on the bottom of a kettle hung on a pipe propped on cinder blocks. “The gas isn’t working in the stove?”
“Yeah,” Denny said, across the fire, “but we thought we’d cook out.”
The first bubble on the…soup? stew? grey at the kettle edge, shook its reflection of the porch window frame, and burst. Another bubble grew.
Kid took his weight off his throbbing leg. Better. He flexed, feeling the tender machinery of knee and ankle jarred from place. It was his booted leg. Perhaps the soft sole had hit a rock?
“Don’t throw your God-damn bottle in the yard, man. Don’t you know about pollution? We gotta live here.”
“You shut up, or I’ll pollute you!” a short-haired white woman said.
“Throw your fuckin’ bottle over in the next yard, will you?”
“Okay, okay…”
Light snarled in the loops of chain, laid out dull splashes on dark leather, lit the trough beneath a black lip, put wires of light in greasy brass hair, glistened on the puffed rim of a lashless eye, sank in the graphite nap bushing an ovoid skull.
The Ripper laughed and bent and wiped at his mouth with his wrist. The orchid, from the chain at his neck, spun bright petals.
“Here…!” A bottle neck hit Kid’s mouth, clicked his teeth, hurting his gum.
“Christ, man!” Kid beat it away. “I don’t want no God-damn wine,” which was the taste he licked from his lower lip; he rubbed his mouth. “Somebody get me something real.”
“You want this?” Denny asked.
“Yeah. What is it?” Kid drank, and cleared his burning throat. “You know when I was your age I use to be a fuckin’ booze hound? I don’t even like the stuff now.” He took another, smaller drink, and handed the bottle back to Denny; “But I was a fuckin’ hound.” Guys argued:
“Now what you gonna do with that?”
“Cut it up, cook it over the fire.”
“You can eat it right out of the can like that.”
“Hell, no. That’s ham, man. You’ll get trichinosis!”
“Man, you can’t get trichinosis from no canned ham!”
“Well, you’re gonna cook mine before I eat any.”
Somebody passed out long-handled kitchen forks. (“That’s all right. I got my huntin’ knife.”) Bubbling soup dribbled the kettle’s side. Kid’s leg felt about okay. He turned, smiling at the dark, as scorpions joggled him to get at the meat. (“Hey, somebody start opening up the other one, will you?”) Soup hissed and chattered in the flame. The edges of the evening softened with the liquor. He looked for Denny and Denny’s bottle.