Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

Why why "Why? You got yours on around your neck," nd your neck our eck ck. He hadn't been aware that his shirt was half open.

"Just shut up and listen now. Smokey over there. I know she's got one. But you don't see her with it out and waving it, now?"

"You know," Kidd said, "I figured two people who saw each other with… these: well, they'd sort of trust each other, you know? Because they'd… know something about each other," and wondered if Madame Brown had arrived upstairs for dinner.

Nightmare frowned. "Say, he's got a brain, you know?" He glanced at Thirteen. "The kid ain't that stupid. But I'll tell you: You look at this and you know something about me. I look at that and I know something about you. Well, what are we gonna do with what we know, huh? I'll tell you what you'll do with it. You'll use it to put the longest, sharpest blade on that orchid of yours, soon as I ain't lookin, between that rib, and that rib." His finger suddenly ger suddenly turned to enly his ly jab Kidd's his side. "And don't think for one second I wouldn't do the same thing to you. So I don't trust anybody I see with one at all." He pressed his lips to make a little pig's snout and nodded, mocking sagesse. "Hey, just look at Denny!"

Finished with his food, Denny had walked over to the mannequin. He took up a heavy chain loop from it, draped dark links around his own neck.

"I told you Denny'd run with me. Okay, man. You know when, you know where. Lemme get out of this freak hole. I gotta hunt some more." He stood and lumbered over the mattresses. "I knew you'd come through, Denny. Hey?" He frowned at Thirteen. "Do something with her," and gestured back toward the bed.

"Yeah, sure, Nightmare." Thirteen opened the door for him. When he closed it, he looked back at Denny. Smokey at his shoulder blinked in anticipation.

"Hey, man," Thirteen said slowly after seconds of silence, "are you still into that shit?"

Denny put another chain around his neck. It rattled on the one already there.

Thirteen swung up his hands and grunted. "Come on, Denny, I thought you were gonna stay out of all that. All right, all right. It's your ass."

Upstairs a woman was laughing, and the laughter grew, ghter grew, laughter: "Stop it! Stop it will you?" in Mr Richards' harsh voice. "Just stop it." op it, ghter grew ew.

"Look, I'm gonna have to get back to work." Kidd stood up. "Thanks for the food, you know? And the dope. It's good stuff."

Denny put on another loop, and Thirteen said, "Oh, yeah, sure." He seemed as disappointed at Kidd's leaving as Mrs Richards always was. "Come on down again and smoke some more dope. Don't mind Nightmare. He's crazy, that's all."

"Sure." Kidd went to the door, opened it.

The moan stopped him: hesitant, without vocal color, it came on behind. He started to turn, but his eyes stalled on the mirror. In it he could see practically the whole room:

On the bed where he had been sitting, she had pushed herself up to her elbow. The blanket slipped down, and she turned a face, wet as Denny's from the bath. It was puffed, bruised. Though her temples trickled with fever, the sound, as she swayed, came from the driest tissue.

She blinked on balls of scarlet glass.

The door clapped behind him. After ten steps, he released his breath. Then he dragged back air, rasping with something like sobbing, something like laught er aughter sobb ter bing er.

"Excuse me."

"Yes?"

"Reverend Taylor?"

"What can I do for you?"

On the shelf behind the desk, tape-spools turned. Organ music gentled in the shadowed office. "I … well, somebody told me I could get those pictures — posters here. Of George," he explained, "Harrison."

"Oh yes, certainly." Her benign smile as she pushed herself away from the desk, made him, holding his notebook in the church foyer, absolutely uncomfortable. "Just reach over for the latch there and it'll open."

He pushed through the waist high door. His bare foot left tile and hit carpet. He looked around the walls; but they were covered with shelves. The bulletin board was a shale of notices and pamphlets.

The poster was down.

"Now which picture would you like?" She opened the wide top drawer.

He stepped up: it was filled with eight-by-ten photographs of the rough-featured black man. Reverend Taylor stood up and spread a disordered pile of pictures across more pictures. "We have six of these. They're very nice. I'm afraid I haven't got them arranged though. I just had to dump them in here. Let's see if I can pull out a complete set—"

"Oh. I think maybe—"

She paused, still smiling.

The pictures in the drawer were all full-head photos.

"No." His embarrassment hove home. "You probably don't have the ones I was looking for, ma'am. Somebody told me he'd gotten one from you, and I guess… well, I'm sorry—"

"But you said posters, didn't you?" She closed the drawer and her eyes, a comment on her own misunderstanding. "Of course, the posters!" She stepped around the desk and the toes of her shoes beat at the hem of her robe. "We have two, here. There's a third in preparation, since that article in Mr Calkins' paper about the moon."

Behind the desk were portfolio-sized cardboard boxes. Reverend Taylor pulled one open. "Is this what you want?"

"Really, I'm pretty sure you don't have—"

Harrison, naked and half-erect, one hand cupping his testicles, leaned against some thick tree. The lowest branches were heavy with leaves. Behind him, a black dog — it could have been Muriel — sat in the dead leaves, lolling an out-of-focus tongue. Sunset flung bronzes down through the browns and greens. "It was done with a backdrop, right down in the church basement," she said. "But I think it's rather good. Is that the one you want?"

"No…" he said, too softly and too quickly.

"Then it must be this one."

She flipped over a handful to let him see.

"Yeah — yes. That's it," and was still astounded with the memory.

She peeled the poster from its identical twin and began to roll it up. "It had to be. Until the new one comes in—" as jacket, genitals, knees, boots and background purple rose into the white roll turning in dark fingers—"these are all we have. Here you go. I'll get you a rubber band." She stepped to the desk.

"Hey," he said, putting belligerent stupidity in front of his disconcerted astonishment, "why do you—" He stopped because the idea came, interrupting his question, clearly and without ambiguity, to request the other poster as well. " — why do you have stuff like this here? I mean to give away."

Only later did it occur to him that her ingenuous surprise must have been as calculated to disarm as his naiveté. When she recovered from it, she said, "They're very popular. We like to be up to date, and posters are being used a lot … they were done for us free, and I suppose that's the main reason. We've given out quite lots of the first one you saw. That one," she pointed to the one he held, "isn't in quite as much demand."

"Yeah?"

She nodded.

"What I mean is, why…"

She picked up a rubber band from the desk and stretched her fingers inside it to slip it over his roll. The band pulled in the fingertips: he thought a moment of his orchid. With deliberation, as though she had reached a decision about him, she said, "The poor people in this city — and in Bellona that pretty well means the black people — have never had very much. Now they have even less." She looked at him with an expression he recognized as a request for something he could not even name. "We have to give them—" she reached forward—"something." The red rubber snapped on the tube. "We have to." She folded her hands. "The other day when I saw you, I just assumed you were black. I suppose because you're dark. Now I suspect you're not. Even so, you're still invited to come to our services." She smiled brightly again. "Will you make an effort?"