“You remember,” Denny said. “Stevie? Marceline?”
“I remember,” I said. “I know who I am…”
“Michael Henry,” Denny said.
I put my hand on Fenster’s shoulder. “You go dance.”
“Naw, I’m not into the bare-ass bit.”
I frowned at the dancers; only fifteen or twenty were naked.
“Go on.” I pushed at him; he stepped back. “You don’t have to take your clothes off. You just go dance.”
Fenster looked at Lanya. To stand up for him? I flashed on him pulling her shirt closed across her breasts, buttoning the top button, patting her head, and walking away.
“Go ahead.” I was angry. “Dance!”
“Come on, Kid,” Lanya said, taking my arm.
Fenster walked off now, laughing.
“You wanna sit down?” Denny asked.
“Come on,” Lanya said. “Let’s go sit down.”
Denny took my other arm; but I twisted to look back.
Fenster walked between the dancers, now pushed, now helping a girl wearing just a sopping T-shirt who fell against him, now ducking beneath one of the glittering lines pulled between bright creatures prancing at the tree.
“What are you trying to do?” Lanya asked.
“Take off my clothes. I don’t need anything…anything now.” I tossed my boot on top of my vest. I lifted my chin and raised the seven chains and the projector. Links dragged my nipples. I held them up, swaying, and let go. Some hit my nose and cheek and ear. Some fell across my shoulder, and slid off, clattering, to the grass. I looked down to undo the twin hooks on my belt; pushed down my pants. Lanya held my arm so I wouldn’t fall getting my foot out the cuff.
“Feel better?” Denny asked.
I tried to undo the clasp at the side of my neck. A file of insects, it felt like, charged down my belly, caught in the hair of my groin. The optic chain sagged around my ankle.
“I think you broke it,” Lanya said.
“I can fix it again,” Denny said. “I got nails—”
“No,” I said.
From the commune, from the nest, and from the people who’d just come to watch, they clapped and leaped beside the fire. Seven more, barking, calling, and yipping, broke from the loose ring, turned among and beneath (one very black girl jumped over) the beaded chain that crossed and crossed the clearing. The heads of beasts blown out of light like glass broke scarves of smoke; our throats tickled from the harsh air.
Three silhouetted figures, heads together, came toward me, whispering. Copperhead, center, conferred with Raven and Cathedral. Raven and Copperhead were naked. (The different curl and color of their hair, suddenly bright at the sides of their heads with the fire behind them…) Copperhead had his hand on Raven’s shoulder.
Copperhead was saying: “Protection! Did you get that? Calkins asking for protection—?”
Cathedral said: “Scorpions don’t protect nothing.”
Copperhead said: “They shot out practically every God-damn window in the God-damn fucking building. Man, it was something!”
Raven asked: “They shot up Calkins’s place? The sniper…?”
Copperhead said: “Not Calkins’ place! And it weren’t no fuckin’ sniper! It was them people back at that big store. You remember that big fuckin’ apartment house Thirteen used to be in, up on the sixteenth floor? God damn, man, they shot the whole fuckin’ place up, practically every God-damn window in the building!”
“Shit, man!” Cathedral shook his head. “The honkeys is bad as the niggers.”
Copperhead humphed: “Protection!”
Raven laughed.
They walked away in the dark.
I watched the fire. One pants leg was still around my ankle. The optic chain, as I swayed, swayed against my calf. “I want to…to dance.”
“Then get your foot out your pants cuff,” Denny said. “You’ll trip yourself.” He sounded like he didn’t want me to go, though.
Each Clap! struck something inside my skull that made a flash all its own. My ears thundered as though only inches from the drum. Each explosion left some crazy echo stuttering in the tattered noise. I stepped forward, moiling my genitals in my hand. They felt sensitive. I stepped again.
“Watch it—”
Lanya must have held my pants leg down with her foot, because they came off. I stumbled, but kept going. Toward the dance.
In a black turtleneck sweater he stood, with folded arms, among the spectators. He didn’t see me looking at him. But Lady of Spain and D-t and a couple of others did and stopped dancing. Prisms and lenses hung down from my neck. Mirrors and prisms swung from my wrist. Lenses and mirrors dragged from my ankle behind me in the grass.
He shifted a little. Firelight shook its patina across his brown hair.
“Hey…!” I said loudly. “I know who I…who I am now. Who are you?”
He looked at me, frowning.
“Who are you?” I repeated. “Tell me. I know who I am!” A few more dancers stopped to listen. But the clapping was still awfully loud. I shook my head. “Almost…”
“Kid?” he asked; it had taken him until then to recognize me, naked. “Hey, Kid! How’re you doing?”
It was the man who’d interviewed me at Calkins’ party.
“No,” I said. “I know who I am. You say who you are.”
“William…” he began. “Bill…?” And then: “You don’t remember me?”
“I remember you. I just want to know who you are!”
“Bill,” he repeated. And nodded, smiling.
Two people who’d stopped to listen began to clap again.
“I know that,” I said. “I remember that. What’s your last name?”
He raised his head a little. His smile—a dragon, bobbing by, stained his face a momentary green—tightened: “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.” His mouth stayed a little open, waiting for a laugh to come out.
But the laugh came from me. William…? I shouted: “I know who you are!” and doubled with hysteria. “I know…!”
“Hey, Kid? Come on now…” Lanya—she and Denny had followed me—took my arm again. I tried to pull away, stumbled into the dancers’ chains, and turned, flailing my own. But she held on; Denny had me too. I yanked once more and fell against a guy I didn’t know who cried, “Owwww!” and hugged me, laughing. I turned in a shield’s glare, bright blind a moment, and moments after images pulsed everywhere.
“Come on, man,” Denny kept saying, pulling at my forearm. “Watch out—” and held up a strand of chain so I could get under.
“That’s right,” Lanya said. “This way…”
I got dizzy and nearly fell. Fire and branches wheeled on a black sky. I came up against bark and turned my back to it:
“But I know what his name is! It has to be. He couldn’t be anybody else!” I kept telling them, then breaking off into a giggle which, when I let it go, twisted my face in a grin so huge my jaw muscles hurt and I had to rub them with the heels of my palms. “That’s got to be who he is! You understand why, don’t you? I mean you do understand?”
They didn’t.
But, for a while, I did.
And, bursting with my new knowledge, I danced.
I’ve never had more fun.
Then I came back and sat with them.
Denny’s hand was on my knee; Lanya’s shoulder was against my shoulder, her arm along my arm. We sat on the roots, ten feet from the high, forking fire, watching the men and women jog and jump to the sounds of their own bodies, one arched and beating the backs of his thighs, one spinning slowly, and shouting loudly, each time her short hair brushed by the sagging branch. Somebody danced with his belt loose and swinging. And somebody else was taking off her jeans.