Voiding his bladder had quenched Fenster’s heat. As he sat down, he said quite moderately, “Hey, do you see what I was trying to—”
Tak halted him with a raised finger. “Touché, man. Touché. Now don’t bug me. I’m thinking about it.”
“All right.” Fenster was appeased. “Okay.” He sat back and looked at all the bottles in front of him. “After this much to drink, it’s all anybody can ask.” He began to thumb away the label.
But Tak was still silent.
“Kidd—?”
“Lanya!”
2
Wind sprang in the leaves, waking her, waking him beneath her turning head, her moving hand. Memories clung to him, waking, like weeds, like words: They had talked, they had walked, they had made love, they had gotten up and walked again—there’d been little talk that time because tears kept rising behind his eyes to drain away into his nose, leaving wet lids, sniffles, but dry cheeks. They had come back, lay down, made love again, and slept.
Taking up some conversation whose beginnings were snarled in bright, nether memories, she said: “You really can’t remember where you went, or what happened?” She had given him time to rest; she was pressing again. “One minute you were at the commune, the next you were gone. Don’t you have any idea what happened between the time we got to the park and the time Tak found you wandering around outside—Tak said it must have been three hours later, at least!” He remembered talking with her, with Tak in the bar; finally he had just listened to her and Tak talk to each other. He couldn’t seem to understand.
Kidd said, because it was the only thing he could think: “This is the first time I’ve seen real wind here.” Leaves passed over his face. “The first time.”
She sighed, her mouth settling against his throat.
He tried to pull the corner of the blanket across his shoulders, grunted because it wouldn’t come, lifted one shoulder: it came.
The astounded eye of leaves opened over them, turned, and passed. He pulled his lips back, squinted at the streaked dawn. Dun, dark, and pearl twisted beyond the branches, wrinkled, folded back on itself, but would not tear.
She rubbed his shoulder; he turned his face up against hers, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.
“What is it? Tell me what happened. Tell me what it is.”
“I’m going…I may be flipping out. That’s what it is, you know?”
But he was rested: things were less bright, more clear. “I don’t know. But I may be…”
She shook her head, not in denial, but wonder. He reached between her legs where her hair was still swive-sticky, rubbed strands of it between his fingers. Her thighs made a movement to open, then to clamp him still. Neither motion achieved, she brushed her face against his hair. “Can you talk to me about it? Tak’s right—you looked like you were drugged or something! I can tell you were scared. Try to talk to me, will you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I…” Against her flesh, he giggled. “I can still screw.”
“Well, a lot, and I love it. But even that’s sort of…sometimes like instead of talking.”
“In my head, words are going on all the time, you know?”
“What are they? Tell me what they say.”
He nodded and swallowed. He had tried to tell her everything important, about the Richards, about Newboy. He said, “That scratch…”
“What?” she asked his lingering silence.
“Did I say anything?”
“You said, ‘The scratch,’”
“I couldn’t tell…” He began to shake his head. “I couldn’t tell if I said it out loud.”
“Go on,” she said. “What scratch?”
“John, he cut Milly’s leg.”
“Huh?”
“Tak’s got an orchid, a real fancy one, out of brass. John got hold of it, and just for kicks, he cut her leg. It was…” He took another breath. “Awful. She had a cut there before. I don’t know, I guess he gets his rocks off that way. I can understand that. But he cut—”
“Go on.”
“Shit, it doesn’t make any sense when I talk about it.”
“Go on.”
“Your legs, you don’t have any cut on them.” He let the breath out; and could feel her frowning down in her chest. “But he cut hers.”
“This was something you saw?”
“She was standing up. And he was sitting down. And suddenly he reached over and just slashed down her leg. Probably it wasn’t a very big cut. He’d done it before. Maybe to someone else. Do you think he ever did it to anyone else—?”
“I don’t know. Why did it upset you?”
“Yes…no, I mean. I was already upset. I mean because…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s like there’s something very important I can’t remember.”
“Your name?”
“I don’t even…know if that’s it. It’s just—very confusing.”
She kept rubbing till he reached up and stopped her hand.
She said: “I don’t know what to do. I wish I did. Something’s happening to you. It’s not pretty to watch. I don’t know who you are, and I like you a lot. That doesn’t make it easier. You’ve stopped working for the Richards; I’d hoped that would take some pressure off. Maybe you should just go away; I mean you should leave…”
In the leaves, the wind walked up loudly. But it was his shaking head that stopped her. Loudly wind walked away.
“What were they…why were they all there? Why did you take me there?”
“Huh? When?”
“Why did you take me there tonight?”
“To the commune?”
“But you see, you had a reason, only I can’t understand what it was. It wouldn’t even matter.” He rubbed her cheek until she caught his thumb between her lips. “It wouldn’t matter.” Diffused anxiety hardened him and he began to press and press again at her thigh.
“Look, I only took you there because—” and the loud wind and his own mind’s tumbling blotted it. When he shook his head and could hear again, she was stroking his thick hair and mumbling, “Shhhhh…Try and relax. Try and rest now, just a little…” With her other hand, she pulled the rough blanket up. The ground was hard under shoulder and elbow.
He propped himself on them while they numbed, and tried out memory.
Suddenly he turned to face her. “Look, you keep trying to help, but what do you…” He felt all language sunder on silence.
“But what do I really feel about all this?” she saved him. “I don’t know—no, I do.” She sighed. “Lots of it isn’t too nice. Maybe you’re in really bad shape, and since I’ve only known you for a little while, I should get out now. Then I think, Hey, I’m into a really good thing; if I worked just a little harder I might be able to do something that would help. Sometimes, I just feel that you’ve made me feel very good—that one hurts most. Because I look at you and I see how much you hurt and I can’t think of anything to do.”
“He…” he dredged from flooded ruins, “I…don’t know.” He wished she would ask what he meant by “he,” but she only sighed on his shoulder. He said, “I don’t want to scare you.”
She said, “I think you do. I mean, it’s hard not to think you’re just trying to get back at me for something somebody else did to you. And that’s awful.”
“Am I?”
“Kidd, when you’re off someplace, working, or wandering around, what do you remember when you remember me?”
He shrugged. “A lot of this. A lot of holding each other, and talking.”