He looked around again, opened his notebook, turned quickly past “Brisbain” to a clean page, halfway or more through.
“Charcoal,” he wrote down, in small letters, “like the bodies of burnt beetles, heaped below the glittering black wall of the house on the far corner.” He bit at his lip, and wrote on: “The wet sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the general gritty stink of the street. From the rayed hole in the cellar window a grey eel of smoke wound across the sidewalk, dispersed before” at which point he crossed out the last two words and substituted, “vaporized at the gutter. Through another window,” and crossed out window, “still intact, something flickered. This single burning building in the midst of dozens of other whole buildings was,” stopped and began to write all over again:
“Charcoal, like the bodies of beetles, heaped below the glittering wall. The sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the street’s gritty stink.” Then he went back and crossed out “the bodies of” and went on: “From a broken cellar window, a grey eel wound the sidewalk to vaporize at the gutter. Through another, intact, something flickered. This burning building,” crossed that out to substitute, “The singular burning in the midst of dozens of whole buildings,” and without breaking the motion of his hand suddenly tore the whole page from the notebook.
Pen and crumpled paper in his hand; he was breathing hard. After a moment, he straightened out the paper and, on a fresh page, began to copy again:
“Charcoal, like beetles heaped under the glittering wall…”
When he finished the next revision, he folded the torn paper in four and put it back in the notebook. On the back the former owner had written:
first off. It doesn’t reflect my daily life. Most of what happens hour by hour is quiet and still. We sit most of the time
Once more he made a face and closed the cover.
The mist had turned evening-blue. He got up and started along the street.
Several blocks later he identified the strange feeling: though it was definitely becoming night, the air had not even slightly cooled. Frail smoke lay about him like a neutralizing blanket.
Ahead, he could see the taller buildings. Smoke had gnawed away the upper stories. Stealthily, he descended into the injured city.
It does not offer me any protection, this mist; rather a refracting grid through which to view the violent machine, explore the technocracy of the eye itself, spelunk the semi-circular canal. I am traveling my own optic nerve. Limping in a city without source, searching a day without shadow, am I deluded with the inconstant emblem? I don’t like pain. With such disorientation there is no way to measure the angle between such nearly parallel lines of sight, when focusing on something at such distance.
4
“There you are!” she ran out between the lions, crossed the street.
He turned, surprised, at the lamppost.
She seized his hand in both of hers. “I didn’t think I would see you again before—Hey! What happened?” Her face twisted in the shadow. She lost all her breath.
“I got beat up.”
Her grip dropped; she raised her fingers, brushed his face.
“Owww…”
“You better come with me. What in the world did you do?”
“Nothing!” vented some of his indignation.
She took his hand again to tug him along. “You did something. People just don’t get beat up for nothing at all.”
“In this city—” he let her lead—“they do.”
“Down this way. No. Not even in this city. What happened? You’ve got to get that washed off. Did you get to Calkins’?”
“Yeah.” He walked beside her; her hand around his was almost painfully tight—then, as though she realized it, the grip loosened. “I was looking over the wall when these scorpions got at me.”
“Ohhh!” That seemed to explain it to her.
“‘Oh’ what?”
“Roger doesn’t like snoopers.”
“So he sets scorpions to patrol the battlements?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Sometimes he asks them for protection.”
“Hey!” He pulled loose; she swung around. In shadow, her eyes, turned up, were empty as the lions’. He tried to fix his tongue at protest, but she merely stepped to his side. They walked again, together, not touching, through the dark.
“In here.”
“In where?”
“Here!” She turned him with a hand on his arm.
And opened a door he hadn’t realized was beside them. Someone in flickering silhouette said, “Oh, it’s you. What’s the matter?”
“Look at him,” Lanya said. “Scorpions.”
“Oh.” Leather jacket, cap…and leather pants: long fingers pulled closed the door. “Take him inside. But don’t make a big thing, huh?”
“Thanks, Teddy.”
There were voices from the end of the hall. The flakes of light on nail-thin Teddy’s attire came from candles in iron candelabras.
He followed her.
At the end of the bar a woman’s howl shattered to laughter. Three of the men around her, laughing, shed away like bright, black petals: four-fifths present wore leather, amidst scattered denim jackets. The woman had fallen into converse with a tall man in a puffy purple sweater. The candlelight put henna in her hair and blacked her eyes.
Another woman holding on to a drink with both hands, in workman’s greens and construction boots, stepped unsteadily between them, recognized Lanya and intoned: “Honey, now where have you been all week? Oh, you don’t know how the class of this place has gone down. The boys are about to run me ragged,” and went, unsteadily, off.
Lanya led him through the leather crush. A surge of people toward the bar pushed them against one of the booth tables.
“Hey, babes—” Lanya leaned on her fists—“can we sit here a minute?”
“Lanya—? Sure,” Tak said, then recognized him. “Jesus, Kid! What the hell happened to you?” He pushed over in the seat. “Come on. Sit down!”
“Yeah…” He sat.
Lanya was edging off between people:
“Tak, Kidd—I’ll be right back!”
He put the notebook and the paper on the wooden table, drew his hands through the shadows the candles dropped from the iron webs, drew his bare foot through sawdust.
Tak, from looking after Lanya, turned back. “You got beat up?” The visor still masked his upper face.
He nodded at Tak’s eyeless question.
Tak’s lips pressed beneath the visor’s shadow. He shook his head. “Scorpions?”
“Yeah.”
The young man across the table had his hands in his lap.
“What’d they get from you?” Tak asked.
“Nothing.”
“What did they think they were going to get?”
“I don’t know. Shit. They just wanted to beat up on somebody, I guess.”
Tak shook his head. “No. That doesn’t sound right. Not scorpions. Everybody’s too busy trying to survive around here just to go beating up on people for fun.”
“I was up at the Calkins place, trying to look over the wall. Lanya said he keeps the bastards patrolling the damn walls.”
“Now there.” Loufer shook a finger across the table. “That’s like I was telling you, Jack. It’s a strange place, maybe stranger than any you’ve ever been. But it still has its rules. You just have to find them out.”
“Shit,” he repeated, indignant at everybody’s questioning of the incident. “They beat hell out of me.”
“Looks like they did.” Tak turned across the table. “Jack, want you to meet the Kid, here. Jack just pulled into town this afternoon. The Kid got in yesterday.”
Jack pushed himself forward and reached out to shake.
“Hi.” He shook Jack’s small, sunburned hand.
“Jack here is a deserter from the army.”
At which Jack glanced at Tak with dismay, then covered it with an embarrassed smile. “Ah…hello,” he said with a voice out of Arkansas. His short-sleeve sportshirt was very pressed. Army shorn, his skull showed to the temple. “Yeah, I’m a God-damn deserter, like he says.”