Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

His eyes stung; he sniffed for the detergent smell.

Or was the smoke thicker? He wiped his face on his cuff.

In the hall, people laughed: footsteps. A door closed.

Gooseflesh enveloped him. His next heartbeat shocked loose his breath; he breathed. Perhaps ten seconds later he realized how tightly he was holding the handle. He laid the mop on the floor, went to the open door, and looked into the… empty hall. For at least a minute.

Then he got the mop and began to work again.

They're cheating me! he thought to replay the familiar. The tone was wrong. To think words set off pricklings.

More water.

His hands, soaked and soaked again, were translucent, the yellow all out of the horn, flesh white and ragged around the fragment nails and swollen crowns. Yeah, leprosy. He recalled Lanya sucking his middle finger with something like relief. What she liked was funny. Especially what she liked in him. Her absence mystified.

Slopping suds over recollected sands, he tried to hallucinate her face. It dissolved in water. He scrubbed the balcony sill, and backed into the room, swinging cords from side to side.

Confront them about his salary? Yes! Images of gifts for her. But he had not seen one store open; not one! Do they talk salary, he pondered, and I talk wages just to keep up?

But we haven't talked!

The inside of his mouth held much more room than the room. As he mopped, he seemed to stagger, shin-deep in tongue, bumping his knees on teeth, and his head against wet, palatal rugae, grasping for an uvula to steady himself. He flopped the mop in the water again, eyes a-sting, and passed his arm across his face; the blunted chain raked his cheek. Energies searched through the mechanic of his body for points to wreck changes. The rhythm and slosh lopped talk out of the brain. "I live in the mouth…" he had been mumbling over and over, he realized as he stopped it. Stopping, he mopped harder at the swirling floor.

"You…?"

He blinked at June in the doorway.

"…didn't get…?"

He grunted interrogatively.

"You said you were going to get me a… picture of…" Her knuckle made its habitual strike at her chin.

"Huh? But I thought you didn't…"

Her eyes beat, banal and wild. Then she ran from the door.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry! I didn't think you…" thought about running after her, sucked his teeth, shook his head, didn't, and sighed.

In the kitchen, he changed the dirty water in his pail for clear, then dry-mopped as much as possible of the flood.

He worked methodically. Every once in a while he made a sound of disgust, or shook his head. Finally he got to swiping after his own footprints. Which was futile; you just made more.

Balancing on one foot in the doorway, he fumbled at his sandal. Leather and wet flesh: He might as well throw it away. But the tab slipped into the buckle. He picked up his notebook and clacked to the elevator.

Half a minute later, the door opened (from the door beside it, where he did not want to look, came hissing wind); he stepped in. The thought, when he recalled it later, seemed to have no genesis:

He did not press seventeen.

"16" glowed before his falling finger in the falling car.

No bell-box was on the door.

Cloth or paper covered the hole inside.

Jaw clamped, he knocked; clamped tighter when something inside moved.

The door swung back. "Yeah?" Hot grease clattered.

Behind the man in the undershirt, the girl came forward, her features disappearing to silhouette before the hurricane lamp on the wall.

"What'cha want?" the man asked. "You want something to eat? Come on in. What'cha want?"

"No, I just was… well." He made himself grin and stepped inside. "I just wanted to know who was here."

"You wanna eat, you can." The girl behind the man's shoulder floated back far enough to take light on a cheek bone.

Against the wall people slept in iron bunks. Men sat on the mattresses on the floor. The lantern-light cast down hard blacks to their left.

The door swung behind Kidd. When it slammed, only one looked up.

Against the wall leaned a motorcycle with a day-glo gas tank. In one corner stood a dressmaker's mannequin, splashed with red paint, head twisted to the side, and looped with rounds of greasy chain (but none of the kind Kidd wore under his shirt and pants).

"I been doing work for the people upstairs. I was just wondering who was down here." The room smelled stale, and the cooking odor brought him momentarily back to a filthy fried-food stand where he had not been able to finish eating in waterfront Caracas. "That's why I came down."

Somewhere the sound of water ceased. Wet, blond hair dripping down his shoulders, a boy walked, naked, into the room, picked up a pair of black jeans. Glistening, he balanced on one leg. He glanced at Kidd, grinned: then his foot, bunioned, hammer-toed, and mostly ankle (with a dog's choke chain wrapped three times around it), went into the denim.

"The people upstairs?" The man shook his head, chuckling. "They must be somethin', all the shit that comes down here. What they do to each other all the time? Hey, you want to smoke some dope? Smokey, get our friend here some dope. Get me some too." The girl moved away. "You like dope, man, don't'cha?"

Kidd shrugged. "Sure."

"Hey, yeah. I thought you looked like you did." He grinned and hooked his thumbs over his beltless jeans; his first finger joints were tattooed love and hate. Between thumb and forefinger on the left was a large, red 13. "The noise that comes down here out of that place; was he beatin' her up last night?"

"Huh?" Kidd asked. "I thought you made all the damn noise."

Someone else said: "Oh, man, there was all sorts of crying and stuff comin' down."

And someone else: "Look, Thirteen; what come up from this place must be pretty weird too sometimes."

The second voice was familiar. Kidd looked for it:

Sitting on the bottom bunk, out of the light, was the newspaper carrier, Joaquim Faust — who now raised a finger in greeting. "How you doing, kid?"

Kidd gave back a bewildered smile.

There was someone in the bed Faust sat on.

Smokey returned with a glass jar, a plastic hose and brass bowl in the rubber stopper.

Thirteen took it from her. "God-damn water pipe, and you think somebody would fill it up with water — or wine or something. That's nice too, you know? Creme de Menthe or like that." He shook his head. "Nobody's got time." On the wall he struck a wooden match. "Some good hash, man." He pursed his lips on the rubber tube. The flame suddenly inverted over the brass. The bottle swirled with grey. "Here you go!" he mouthed, with tucked chin.

Kidd took the warm glass and sucked sweet, chalky smoke.

The arch of air grew solid beneath his sternum: breath held, palate tight, somewhere after ten seconds he felt sweat on the small of his back. "Thanks…!" Smoke exploded from his nose.

The pipe had gone to others.

"What kind of work you doing?"

"Hey, Thirteen, he gonna eat?" somebody called from the kitchen.

Through the doorway Kidd saw an enamel stove licked with burn marks.

The boy from the shower stooped to buckle his boots. "Give you a hand in a second." He tucked his cuffs into the boot tops, and stood. Scratching his wet belly, he ambled inside and asked, "What is that shit, anyway?"

"I've been moving furniture around for them, upstairs." Kidd said. "Thirteen — that's you?"

Thirteen raised his tattooed hand, then snapped his fingers. "Sure. Come on in, come on inside and sit." The girl passed Thirteen the water pipe and he extended it toward Kidd. "And have another toke."

Kidd drew in another chest full, and passed the pipe to someone else who wandered by.