Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

"Oh, hey…! Hey…! Come on, hey!" somebody shouted as Kid descended among them.

They started up the alley.

"Which way?" Nightmare called over a cluster of black heads in which, like, respectively, a lemon, a cumquat, and a dandelion among plums, were Tarzan's, and Copperhead's and Revelation's.

"Up this way. We have to pick up somebody."

Smoke encysted the corner street lamp in a giant pearl.

"God damn!" Somebody coughed. "How do you guys stand all this!"

(Kid couldn't see her because they had left the doorway's light.)

"You just ain't been here long enough, man! You'll get so you can't breathe without it after a while!"

"Somebody turn on some God-damn lights!" Kid called out, feeling across his chest for his projector. "Come on, huh?"

Dragon Lady's dragon raised, luminous jade, ahead. The mantis and the griffin flared, swaying, with misty penumbras.

An indigo spider flickered, mandibles higher than Kid's head — flickered out once around Copperhead, then gained full brightness like tardy neon.

Glass disappeared inside his newt.

Spitt's beetle glistened up like bottle glass.

Nightmare turned to Kid and grinned. "You got it pretty bright tonight, Kid," and flashed out beneath raised pincers.

The plastic colors opaled in the smoke.

Peacock (that was the Ripper), mantichor, and iguanadon, the spectral menagerie turned up the avenue.

"Are you sure this is where Lanya lives?" Kid asked Denny. The others milled about the stoop.

"Yeah," Denny said. "Yeah! Sure, ring the bell."

Kid did. Moments later, after footsteps (and he heard someone say, "Oh, dear…" behind the peephole), she opened the door and stepped out, all silver, into the smokey light.

"God damn!" Raven said appreciatively behind him.

Lanya shaded her eyes, looked about, said, "My God!" and burst out laughing.

Madame Brown, in something blue and tailored, stepped out behind her, looking tentative. The diffused light gave back to her heavy face the lines and over-madeup quality Kid had first seen by candle light. Once more her hair was harsh henna. And her neck, bound and bound around again with the optical beads, looked far too heavily decorated — yet it was the same way she wore them with her daytime browns and beiges.

Muriel barked once, leaped forward, and came up on the end of the leash.

"Oh, why don't you leave her home?" Lanya coaxed. "Look at our escort. We'll be—"

"Kid doesn't mind Muriel coming along; do you Kid? You said Roger had all those grounds. She'll be a perfect dear."

"Naw," Kid said, and discovered, saying it, he did. "Bring her along!"

"She just gets so lonely if I don't take her with me." Madame Brown surveyed the arrayed scorpions.

Muriel tried to run down the porch steps, couldn't and barked again.

"Hush, now!" Madame Brown said. "Hush!"

"Here, I'm giving this to you." Lanya handed Denny the piece of equipment Tak had taken from the warehouse with the cloth. "Put it in your shirt pocket for me?"

The silver fringe on Denny's sleeve shook in curtains of light as he put the control box away.

Lanya took Kid's hand. Her dress was sleeveless, scoop-necked, and reached the ground. She leaned to whisper: "I've got something for you too," and handed him her harmonica. "Put this in your pants pocket for me?"

"Sure."

Feeling the metal on his thigh through the dime-sized tear, Kid stepped down among the others. Lanya, Muriel, and Madame Brown came behind.

As they started, he heard Madame Brown: "Your arm looks a lot better. It hasn't been giving you any trouble?"

"No ma'am," Siam answered. "Not much. Any more. But I thought I was gonna die when you just poured all that iodine in there." He laughed.

They crossed the street.

"That was the only way I could think to keep it from getting infected. You were very, very brave."

"Shit." Siam said. "I hollered like a motherfucker — pardon, ma'am. But you remember how they were holding me down."

"Yes. And I still think you were brave."

"It's nice of you to say so. But if one of them niggers had let go of me, I'd a' probably killed you." He laughed again.

They spread the sidewalk, the street, each beast sailing on a pool of light.

Windows dripped with molten reflections — those with panes.

Perhaps half had their shields lit any one time. A boisterous black in silhouette would turn on a bright hippogryph, a mantichore; some gorgeous parrot or lizard would collapse around an ambling, side-lit figure — Kid tried to recall what that one had been, but her apparition, among so many, attracted his attention only by vanishing.

Dragon Lady, lights out, looked skeptically at Lanya, said to Kid, "I thought you said this weren't no dress-up party."

"Then you and I," Lanya told her, "will look that much better!"

Dragon Lady laughed. "You and me? Oh, honey, we sure will!" She dropped back and linked her silver arm in Lanya's bare one. "We gonna strut out fine, honey, and make them sons of bitches suffer!" Which made Lanya laugh. For a block the three of them walked arm in arm in arm.

But at some altercation ahead, Dragon Lady flared in jade and hastened forward to quell it:

Revelation (a frog) had started quarelling with Cathedral (some large bird that could, Kid realized on closer view, have been intended as an American Eagle): The Dragon moved between them, making more noise than both; they quieted.

Behind and to the side, Tarzan fingered, but hesitated to ignite, his parti-colored gila monster.

"That one…?" Madame Brown nodded ahead with a deep frown and theatrical restraint. "Have you noticed, but every time his griphon flickers—" which it just did, revealing stringy yellow hair, knobbly spine, pockmarked buttocks, and grime-rimmed heels—"but doesn't it look just like he doesn't have any clothes on at all?"

"He doesn't." Kid said.

"Is there anything wrong with him?" Madame Brown demanded. "Is he all right?"

Her tone had changed from smutty complicity to puritan distress. Kid recognized each but could not follow the mechanics of transition; he grew fearful of the light-headedness in which his mind bobbed. "No. He just doesn't have any," he explained, wondering if he were losing again his ability to follow logical connections.

Madame Brown said, "Oh…" in a tone at total odds with either previous.

They swarmed across the little park between Brisbains.

"I hope we get a ride back," Lanya said. "This is a long enough walk sober."

"Don't count on it."

"Roger is always talking in the paper about driving people in and out of town. Maybe he could have one of his drivers run us home afterward."

"I've seen his car. It's something from the thirties. Besides, how'd we fit all these people in?"

"You're just too democratic for words." She kissed his cheek. "Do you think I look nice?"

"Didn't I say so?"

"You did not. Nor did you say, 'You really made that dress yourself?' Or any of those things for which I'd prepared such very clever answers."

"Did you really make that dress yourself?" Kid slipped his hand around the tickling material on her waist. "It looks nice."

"Don't press too hard," she said. "I don't want to injure the material. No, no… I'm not driving you away!"

"I think you look nice," Denny said. "I think…" He whispered in her ear.

"Young man!" Lanya said. "I don't believe I know you—"

"Aw," Denny said, "go suck on my dick…" and started away.

"Hey, I was kidding…" Lanya called, amused puzzlement at Denny in her voice. Her waist tugged in Kid's arm.

Denny turned, his face flickering in the passing lights. As they caught up to him, he grinned. "I wasn't." He put his arm around her too.