Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

He could see Madame Brown beside him now.

She walked, contemplating either the past or the pavement.

Muriel wove ahead, barked, turned, ran.

"I went back once," she said at last. "The next morning. I don't want to go again. I want to do something else… I'm a trained psychologist! Social service was never really my forte. I don't know if the patients who got out were finally evacuated or not. I assume they were; but I can't be sure." She gave a little humph. "Perhaps that has something to do with why I don't leave myself."

"I don't think so," Kidd said, after a moment "It sounds like you — and your friend — were very brave."

Madame Brown humphed again.

"It's just—" he felt uncomfortable, but it was a different discomfort than at the table—"you made it sound, when you were talking about it at dinner, like you still worked there. That's why I asked."

"Oh, I was just making conversation. To keep Mary entertained. When people take the trouble to bring out the best in her, she's quite a handsome woman; with quite a handsome soul — even if the quotidian surface sits on it a bit askew. I imagine some people find that hard to see."

"Yeah." He nodded. "I guess so." Half a block ahead, Muriel was a shifting dollop of darkness. "I thought—" on the curb, he scraped his heel—"Hey, watch…!" He staggered. "Um. I thought you said they had three children."

"They do."

They crossed the damp street. On cool pavement, his heel stung.

"Edward, the oldest, isn't with them now. But it isn't a subject I'd bring up. Especially with Mary. It was very painful for her."

"Oh." He nodded again.

They stepped up another curb.

"If nothing's functioning around here," Kidd asked, "why does Mr Richards go in to work every day?"

"Oh, just to make a showing. Probably for Mary. You've seen how keen she is on appearances."

"She wants him to stay home," Kidd said. "She's scared to death! — I was pretty scared too."

Madame Brown considered a few moments. "Maybe he does it just to get away." She shrugged — it was light enough to see it now. "Perhaps he just goes off and sits on a bench somewhere."

"You mean… he's scared?"

Madame Brown laughed. "Why wouldn't he be?" Muriel ran up, ran off. "But I think it's much more likely he simply doesn't appreciate her. That isn't fair of me, I know; but then, it's one of those universal truths about husbands and wives you really don't have to be fair with. He loves her, in his way." Muriel ran up again, leapt to Madame Brown's hip. She roughed the beast's head. Satisfied, it ran off again. "No, he must be going somewhere! Probably just where he says he is. To the office… the warehouse…" She laughed. "And we've simply got far too poetic an imagination!"

"I wasn't imagining anything." But he smiled, "I just asked." In the light from a flickering window, a story above them, he saw, through faint smoke, she was smiling too.

Ahead, Muriel barked.

And what have I invested in interpreting disfocus for chaos? This threat: The only lesson is to wait. I crouch in the smoggy terminus. The streets lose edges, the rims of thought flake. What have I set myself to fix in this dirty notebook that is not mine? Does the revelation that, though it cannot be done with words, it might be accomplished in some lingual gap, give me right, in injury, walking with a woman and her dog, to pain? Rather the long doubts: That this labor tears up the mind's moorings; that, though life may be important in the scheme, awareness is an imperfect tool with which to face it. To reflect is to fight away the sheets of silver, the carbonated distractions, the feeling that, somehow, a thumb is pressed on the right eye. This exhaustion melts what binds, releases what flows.

Madame Brown opened the bar door for him.

Kidd passed by vinyl Teddy, the bill in his fist. But while he contemplated offering her a drink, someone came screaming across the bar; Madame Brown screamed back; they staggered away. He sat down at the counter's end. The people whose backs he had seen along the stools, as he leaned forward, gained faces. But no Tak; nor any Lanya. He was looking at the empty cage when the bartender, rolled sleeves tying off the necks of tattooed leopards, said, "You're a beer drinker, ain't you?"

"Yeah." He nodded, surprised.

The bottle clacked the scarred counter board. "Come on, come on! Put it away, kid."

"Oh." Wonderingly, he returned the money to his pocket. "Thanks."

Under a haystack mustache, the bartender sucked his teeth. "What do you think this place is, anyway?" He shook his head, and walked off.

His hand had wandered to his shirt pocket to click the pen. He frowned down, paused above some internal turning: he opened the notebook, held his pen in the air, plunged.

Had he ever done this before? he wondered. With pen to paper and the actual process occurring, it was as though he had never done anything else. But pause, even moments, and it was as if not only had he never done it, but there was no way to be sure that he ever would again.

His mind dove for a vision of perfected anger while his hand crabbed and crossed and rearranged the vision's spillage. Her eyes struck a dozen words: he chose one in the most relevant tension to the one before. Her despair struck a dozen more; he grubbed among them, teeth clamped against what cleared. And cleared. So gazed at the cage again till the fearful distractions fell, then turned to her. An obtuse time later, he raised his hand, swallowed, and withdrew.

He jabbed the pen back in his pocket. His hand dropped, dead and ugly on the paper. His tongue worked in the back of his mouth while he waited for energy with which to copy. Sounds resolved from the noise. He blinked, and saw the pyramided bottles against the velvet backing. Between his fingers he watched the curling ink-line peeled off from meaning. He reached for the beer, drank a long time, put down the bottle, and let his hand drop on the paper again. But his hand was wet…

He took a breath, turned to look left.

"Eh… hello, there," from his right.

He turned right.

"I thought it might be you when I was on the other side of the bar." Blue serge; narrow lapels; hair the color of white pepper. "I really am glad to see you again, to know you're all right. I can't tell you how upset that whole experience left me. Though that must be a bit presumptuous: you were the one who was hurt. It's been a long time since I've had to move through such suspicion, such restraint." The face was that of a thin, aged child, momentarily sedate. "I'd like to buy you a drink, but I was told that they don't sell the drink here. Bartender?"

Walking his fists on the wood, the bartender came, like some blond gorilla.

"Can you put together a tequila sunrise?"

"Make my life easy and have a beer."

"Gin and tonic?"

The bartender nodded deeply.

"And another for my friend here."

The gorilla responded, forefinger to forehead.

"Hey, I'm sort of surprised," Kidd volunteered into the feeling of loss between them, "to see you in here, Mr Newboy."

"Are you?" Newboy sighed. "I'm out on my own, tonight. I've a whole list of places people have told me I must see while I'm in town. It's a bit strange. I gather you know who I…?"

"From the Times."

"Yes." Newboy nodded. "I've never been on the front page of a newspaper before. I've had just enough of that till now to be rather protective of my anonymity. Well, Mr Calkins thought he was doing something nice; his motives were the best."

"Bellona's a very hard place to get lost in." What Kidd took for slight nervousness, he reacted to with warmth. "I'm glad I read you were here."

Newboy raised his peppered brows.