Kidd nodded and ground his knuckles in the soap. “I got all that junk off my face?”
“Nope. On the side, under your chin.”
He lathered there. The lantern showed the suds gone tan.
Denny gestured. “What you got a hard-on for?”
“Your scrawny ass hanging over the back of your pants.”
“Yeah?” Denny grinned. “Be the best piece you ever had.”
But when Kidd sloshed the lather off his face, Denny was still looking at it. “How’d your run go?” Kidd asked.
“With Nightmare?”
“Yeah.”
“It was a fuck-up.” Denny shrugged. “We didn’t get nothing. Time before was really good. Next time be good too.”
“What you guys run after?” Kidd drank some more, and rubbed the rusty soap on his stomach.
“You all that interested in scorpion shit?”
Kidd shrugged. The soap bobbed away.
Denny nodded. “You interested, you ask Dragon Lady.”
“Not that interested.” He retrieved it, pushed it between his toes.
“You ask her, she’ll tell you if she thinks you wanna know. Dragon Lady, she likes you.” Suddenly Denny stood. “So does Nightmare. I’ll be back in a second.”
Kidd took another drink, and fell to scrubbing again. His nails were lined—ruined rim and bitten cuticle—with brown. He dunked his head, rubbed it, lifted it; dark streaks wormed from the drippings.
“Here you go, kid.” Denny came back in with an armful of clothing and sat down again on the toilet. “Now we got this pair of pants; and this pair—naw, that’s pretty raunchy. I guess these’ll fit you. Nice belt, too. I dunno who left all this shit. You think there’d be a shirt in here, you know.”
“I thought scorpions didn’t wear shirts.” Kidd stood up in the loud water to soap his groin.
Denny glanced at him once more. “Shit, I better keep my ass out of your way. You want a black leather vest? That’d look good on you, kid, you know? Scorpions just wear vests, usually. You seen the one I got?”
“How old are you?”
“Eh…sixteen,” followed with a questioning glance.
Fifteen, Kidd decided. “I’m practically a dozen years older than you. Stop calling me kid.”
“Huh? You are?”
“Yeah. Now throw me that other towel.” As he caught it, the door crashed back. Dragon Lady lurched in, dark face twisted, stained teeth bared, shaking a fist with one finger up. “Look, when you go back upstairs, you tell that bitch to cut it out, you hear? It’s driving me up the fuckin’ wall! God damn, I know it’s her kid, but—well, Jesus Christ, she been whining up there a fuckin’ hour!” She looked at the ceiling and bellowed: “I mean, go out and take a walk, lady!”
“Dragon Lady…” Denny’s interruption seemed to take in none of the scorpion’s rage.
“We dragged the cocksucker up there for her! She keep it up, I’m gonna go up there and beat the shit out of her, if you don’t quiet her down!”
Anger and the cold air: his erection, anyway, was gone. “The walls are thin.” He rubbed himself with the bunched towel.
“Dragon Lady?”
“What do you want?”
“The…Kid was asking about the run.”
Kidd sensed the hesitant disobedience was some acquiescence to previous commitment. But he could not be sure whether the newly implied capital was respectful or mocking.
“Yeah?” Dragon Lady’s anger was quickly exhausted.
“Look, lemme out of here and see what I can do upstairs,” Kidd said. “We’ll talk about it some other time.” He wished Mrs. Richards would quiet too.
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Try and shut her up, huh?” Dragon Lady backed out again.
“You don’t want the vest?” Denny still pawed in the heap.
The crying suddenly rose in pitch. Outside, Dragon Lady said, “God damn!”
“Yeah, I want the fucking vest.” Kidd stepped from the tub, reached down, and drained the whisky. Twin warmths of agreement and alcohol turned through him.
Denny, still sitting, was bent almost double, as he sorted the clothing. His belt loops tugged his jeans below his buttocks’ crevice.
Kidd sucked his teeth again and toweled his groin. “What’s she here for, anyway?”
“Dragon Lady?” Denny glanced up, unbending.
“Yeah.”
“You remember when you were here last time, Nightmare was collecting us for the run?” Denny shrugged and fell back to sorting. “Well, she’s bringing us back, I guess.”
“Oh.”
The door opened again. The girl stood there, with a plastic cup this time. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you were…” That was to Denny who didn’t look up. So she said to Kidd, “Denny told me I should bring you another glass after fifteen minutes. Did you finish the first one?”
“You don’t give a fuck whether he finished it or not,” Denny said, still bent over. “Just give it to him.”
“I’m finished.”
She blinked rapidly, while they exchanged mug for cup. Then, without glancing at Denny, she left. Kidd drank some more, then put the cup on the tub edge. “Thanks.”
Denny, still, didn’t say anything, almost as though embarrassed.
In black jeans and leather vest, Kidd went into the front room.
“Oh, man!” Dragon Lady was saying. “This is just too much—”
The crying was louder here.
“Dragon Lady,” Smokey said, tugging at the tassels of her macramé belt, “why do you shout things up there like that? It…it isn’t necessary!”
“Well,” Dragon Lady said, thumb hooked around hers, “if I was making that big a fool of myself, after about an hour, I don’t know as how I wouldn’t appreciate somebody telling me to cut it out—like they meant it!”
Which Smokey seemed to think was funny; Thirteen’s reaction, though, was silent, hand-throwing frustration. He moved, almost protectively, between the two women; Smokey didn’t seem to mind.
“Look,” Thirteen said, with settling gestures of the palms, “if your neighbor, I mean your own neighbor is going through that, you’re just obliged, obliged, see, to put up with—”
Dragon Lady threw her glass. It missed Thirteen. Smokey ducked too. “Hey, watch…!” Thirteen shouted. Pieces of glass rocked on the floor. Wine licked down the wall. Smokey just blinked and looked like she didn’t know whether to be amused or angry.
But Dragon Lady launched into a doubled-over laughter. “Oh, Thirteen…Thirteen, you are so—” Chains swung, flung back around her neck as she stood. “You are so chicken shit!” She laughed again.
Maybe, Kidd thought, scorpions just yelled loud, laughed a lot, and threw things.
“Baby!” Dragon Lady shouted. “Adam! We gonna get out of here, soon…”
“Good-bye,” Kidd said, at the door, and went. (The girl in the blue sweatshirt who had brought him the whiskey was the only one who said “good-bye.” Somehow, though, he was sure it was time to leave.) In the hall, it occurred to him he hadn’t even noticed if the sick girl were still in her bunk or not.
5
He carried the nest tables into 19-A.
Mrs. Richards stood in the middle of the room.
“Um,” he said, “I thought I’d bring these, uh, up with me. Since I was coming. You said you wanted them by the…” then went and put them by the balcony door.
“Your clothes,” she said. “I was going to give you some of my…son’s clothes.”
“Oh. I got these…” They were all black, too.
Her hands gripped one another beneath her breasts. She nodded.
“Is June all right?”
She kept nodding.