“But what is…?” she whispered right at my ear, pointing. From the horizon, another light ribboned, ragged, across the sky.
“Is it…lightning?” Denny shouted.
“It looks like lightning!” Tak shouted back.
Someone else said: “’Cause George don’t shine that bright!”
Tak’s bleached face twisted as if beat by rain. The air was dry. Then I noticed how cool it was.
Nodes in the discharge were too bright to look at. Clouds—sable, lead, or steel—mounded about the sky, making canyons, cliffs, ravines; for lightning it was too slow, too wide, too big!
Was that thunder? It roared like a jet squadron buzzing the city, and sometimes one would crash or something, and Lanya’s face would
Here one page, possibly two, is missing.
Don’t remember who had the idea, but during the altercation, for a while I argued: “But what about Madame Brown? Besides, I like it here. What are we going to do when you’re at school? Your bed’s okay for a night, but we can’t sleep there that long.”
Lanya, after answering these sanely, said: “Look, try it. Denny wants to come. The nest can get along without you for a few days. Maybe it’ll do your writing some good.” Then she picked up the paper that had fallen behind the Harley, climbed over it, came out from under the loft, tip-toed with her head up and kissed me. And put the paper in her blouse pocket—bending over, it had pulled out all around her jeans.
I pushed myself to the loft edge, swung my legs over, and dropped. “Okay.”
So Denny and I spent what I call three days and she calls one (“You came in the evening, spent the night and the next day, then left the following morning! That’s one full day, with tag ends.” “That should at least count for two,” I said. “It seemed like a long time…”) which wasn’t so bad but…I don’t know.
The first night Madame Brown put supper together out of cans with Denny saying all through: “You wanna let me do something…? Are you sure I can’t do nothin’…? Here, I’ll do…” and finally did wash some pans and dishes.
I asked, “What are you making?” but they didn’t hear so I sat in the chair by the table alternately tapping the chair-back on the wall and the front legs on the floor; and drank two glasses of wine.
Lanya came in and asked why I was so quiet.
I said: “Mulling.”
“On a poem?” Madame Brown asked.
We ate. After dinner we all sat around and drank more, me a little more than the others, but Madame Brown and I actually talked about some things: her work, what went on in a scorpion run (“You make it sound so healthy, I mean like a class trip, I’m not so sure that I like the idea as much now. It sounded very exciting before you told me anything about it.”), the problems of doctors in the city, George. I like her. And she’s smart as hell.
Back in Lanya’s room, I sat at the desk in the bay window, looking at my notebook. Lanya and Denny went to bed (“No, the light won’t bother us”), and after about fifteen minutes, I joined them and we made cramped, languorous love which had this odd, let’s-take-turns thing about it; but it was a trip. I nearly knocked over the big plant pot by the bed four times.
I woke before the window had lightened, got up and prowled the house. In the kitchen, considered getting drunk. Made myself a cup of instant coffee instead, drank half, and prowled some more. Looked back into Lanya’s room: Denny was asleep against the wall. Lanya was on her back, eyes opened. She smiled at me.
I was naked.
“Restless?”
“Yeah.” I came over, squatted by the bed, hugged her.
“Go ahead. Pace some more. I need another couple of hours.” She turned over. I took up the old notebook here, sat around cross-legged on the floor, contemplating writing down what had happened till then.
Or a poem.
Did neither.
Looked in the top desk drawer—the wood looks like paper had been glued all over it and then as much pulled off as possible. She said some friends lugged it from a burned-out windshield warehouse a few blocks down the hill.
I took out the poems she’d saved, spread them on the gritty wood, on every kind of paper, creased this way and that (red-tufted begonia stalks doffed), and tried to read them.
Couldn’t.
Thought seriously of tearing them up.
Didn’t.
But understood much about people who have.
Looked back at Lanya; bare shoulders, the back of her neck, a fist sticking from under the pillow.
Prowled some more.
Got back into bed.
Denny jerked his head up, blinking. He didn’t know where he was. I rubbed the back of his neck and whispered, “It’s okay, boy…” He settled back down, nuzzling into Lanya’s armpit. She turned away from him toward me.
I woke alone.
Leaves arched over me. I looked up through them. Blew once to see if they’d move, but they were too far. Closed my eyes.
“Hey,” Denny said. “You still asleep?”
I opened my eyes. “Fuck you if I was.”
“I just walked Lanya over to school.” He leaned against the edge of the doorway, holding his chains. “It’s nice around here, huh?”
I sat up on the side of the bed.
“But there ain’t too much to do…it’s nice of her to have us over here, I mean to stay a while, huh?”
I nodded.
About two hours later he told me he was going out. I spent the rest of the morning staring at blank paper—or prowling.
Madame Brown, coming out of her office, saw me once and said: “You look strange. Is anything the matter?”
“No.”
“Are you just bored?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not bored at all. I’m thinking a lot.”
“Can you leave off long enough for a lunch break?”
“Sure.” I hadn’t had breakfast.
Tuna fish salad.
Canned pears.
We both had a couple of glasses of wine. She asked me for my character impressions of: Tak, Lanya, Denny, one of her patients I had met at the bar once; I told her and she thought what I said was interesting; told me hers, which I thought were interesting too, and they changed mine; so I told her the changes. Then the next patient came by and I went back to staring at my paper; prowling; staring.
Which is what I was doing when Lanya and Denny came in. He’d gone back to the school to help out with the class.
“Denny suggested we go on a class trip, outside to look at the city. We did. It turned out to be a fine idea. With two of us we didn’t have any problem handling them. That was a good idea, Denny. It really was.” Then she asked if I’d written anything.
“Nope.”
“You look strange,” she told me.
Denny said: “No he don’t. He just gets like that sometimes.”
Lanya Mmmmed. She knows me better than he does, I guess.
Denny was really into being useful—a trait which, pleasant as he is, I’ve never seen in him before. I helped them do a couple of things for Madame Brown: explore the cellar, take one chair down, bring up a dresser she’d found on the street and managed to get to the back door.
It was a nice evening.
I wondered if I was spoiling it by suggesting: “Maybe we should go back to the nest tonight?”
Lanya said: “No. You should use some of this boring peace and quiet to work in.”
“I’m not bored,” I said. And resolved to sit in front of a piece of paper for at least an hour. Which I did: wrote nothing. But my brain bubbled and bobbed and rotated in my skull like a boiling egg.
When I finally went to bed I fell out like an old married man.
One of them or the other got up in the night to take a leak, came back to bed brushing aside the plants and we balled, hard and a little loud I think.