Standing there, shifting the weight in his arms—Kidd had to shift it several times—he noticed the striations, like a muzzy image on some vertical television screen, raced to the left if he swayed right; if he swayed left, they raced right. Kidd said: “I don’t think you should get out with me.”
The dragon said: “I wasn’t planning to.”
He shifted the weight again, looked down at it, and thought: It smells…it has a specific smell. And there was an annoying piece of paper—he glanced down over the knees; was it a match book?—stuck to his bare foot.
Why, Kidd thought, why am I standing here with this armful of heavy, heavy meat, filthy with blood…? Then something raked inside his face; his throat clamped, his eyes teared. Either fear or grief, it extinguished as quickly as the lust that had momentarily raked inside his loins.
He blinked, again shifted his weight to the sandaled foot. The bare one stuck to the floor.
Beside him the swayings and motions that might tell him Dragon Lady’s thoughts were hidden in light.
He shifted back the other way. His sandal stuck too.
The car slowed; the door opened.
Mrs. Richards’ fist rose to strike her chin. The gesture was a stronger version of June’s.
Mrs. Richards stepped back, and back again.
June caught her mother’s arm.
Mrs. Richards closed her mouth and her eyes and began to shake. High brittle sobs suddenly crackled the silence.
“You better take your mother upstairs,” Kidd said and stepped, after his grotesque shadow, into the hall.
June’s head whipped back and forth between him and her mother, till an edge of shadow swept over his. It was not him she was staring at, but the bright apparition in the closing elevator.
“I’ll put him in the old apartment.”
“Bobby’s…?” June whispered, and smashed back against the wall to avoid him as he passed.
“Yeah, he’s dead.”
Behind him Mrs. Richards’ crying changed pitch.
The other elevator door, against the rolled carpet, went K-chunk, K-chunk, K-chunk…
He shouldered into 17-E. Put the boy in his own…? Kidd walked down the hall, turned into the bare room. One of Bobby’s hands (the one with the chain, all stained) struck and struck his shin. All he had to do was look at what he lugged not to be sad.
He tried not to drop it on the floor, lowered it, almost fell; and dropped it. He pulled at the bent leg; it…bent again, at the wrong place. So he stood up.
Christ, the blood! He shook his head, and peeled his shirt from stomach and shoulders. Starting for the door, he unbuckled his pants and, holding them with one hand—they dropped to his thighs—stepped into the hall.
Mrs. Richards, standing in the middle of the hall, began to shake her head and cry again.
He scowled and pulled his pants up. He’d been heading for the bathroom but, exposed to her astonished grief, he was thrown back to the moment of sexual response at the shaft bottom. Shit, he thought: “Ma’am, why don’t you go upstairs. There’s nothing you can do. Being here won’t make you feel…any better. June…?”
June half hid behind her mother.
“…why don’t you take her upstairs.” Suddenly he didn’t want to be there at all. “Look, I’ve got to go get some—something.” Holding his pants closed, he went past them into the living room, picked up his notebook and, holding it in front of his lap, stalked out the door.
Thirteen said, “I guess she’s taking it pretty rough,” and stepped back to let him in.
“Shit.” Dragon Lady glanced at the ceiling.
The sound of crying, high and stifled, dripped into the room like something molten.
“Why don’t she shut up!” Dragon Lady said.
“Look, man—” Thirteen started.
“I know, I know. Somebody just asked me if I wanted a glass of wine. Well I sure as shit do. Baby? Adam? You bringing that damn wine?”
“You said,” Kidd began, “you had some clothes?”
“Oh yeah. Sure. Come on in.”
Denny, who was resting a glass jug on the crook of his arm, said, “I think he wants to use the bathroom.”
“Yeah, you want to wash up. Tub’s a mess, but you can use it if you want. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” But Denny’s last sentence had caused gooseflesh more unpleasant than either grief or terror. “Yeah, I better wash up.”
“Down the hall. It don’t have no fuckin’ windows. I’ll get a lantern.” Thirteen lifted one from a nail in the wall.
Kidd followed him into the john.
In the swaying lantern light, he saw a line of rust along the middle of the tub to the drain. The enamel had flaked here and there from black patches. “We had to put a fucked-up scorpion in here a couple of nights back—name was Pepper—and he’d put something in his arm he shouldn’t have. Put him in the bathtub with his spurs on, and he tried to kick holes in it.” Lantern high in one hand, Thirteen bent and picked up a screw from the tub bottom, looked at it, shrugged. “Use any of those towels you want. We don’t got no washcloths.” He put the lantern down on the back of the toilet.
Kidd put the notebook on the seat-top, turned on the water and picked up the soap: Flakes of rust had dried into it.
With a grey towel (torn) he swabbed the bottom of the tub. There was no stopper, so he rolled it up and plugged the drain, then got in before the water had covered the bottom.
“Do you want something to drink?” a girl called through the door.
“Yeah.”
While he sat, scrubbing at his face, he could hear the crying upstairs. He wondered if she were moving from room to room.
The girl came into the bathroom with a white cup in her hands. She wore jeans, was heavy, and had a cheerful face that was trying to look very serious. “Here you are. That poor boy.” She bent down, spilling curly hair from her shoulder, and put the cup on the tub edge. She had loose, heavy breasts under a blue sweatshirt. “That must have been awful!”
Her voice was breathy, and he thought she probably giggled a lot. The thought of her giggling made him smile. “It wasn’t nice.”
“You live upstairs?” she asked.
Perhaps she was seventeen. “I just work there. You know if you keep on staring at me like that, I’m gonna get all excited.”
She giggled.
He leaned back in the tub. “See, I told you.”
“Oh…” She gestured mock frustration, left—she had to push past Denny who stood in the door now. He gave a sharp, short laugh. “You really got yourself messed up, huh, kid?”
“Yeah, well. I guess we couldn’t leave him down there.”
“I guess not.” Denny came in and sat on the toilet cover, picked up the notebook. “Hey, kid? This yours?”
He nodded, only realizing now that Denny’s “kid” had neither capital K or extra d. Kidd grinned and picked up the mug. (Around him the water ran brown. The match book from his foot floated under the spigot.) When he sipped, his mouth burned. “Shit, what is this?”
“Whisky,” Denny said, looking up. “You want wine, we got wine. But I thought maybe you’d want something good and strong. I mean after…” His hair swung in pale blades.
“That’s fine.”
“You write all this?”
“Yeah. Leave it alone.”
“Oh.” Quickly Denny put it on the floor between his boots. He rubbed two fingers on his naked chest a while. Then he glanced up and said, “She’s really going on, huh? I guess that’s cause she’s his momma.”