could hurt him now. Not dreams or plots. He was Armand's child.
"But these things must wait," Armand said gently. "You must come and do as I tell you. We must finish what was begun."
"Finish?" It was finished. He was reborn.
Armand brought him in out of the wind. Glint of the brass bed in the darkness, of a porcelain vase alive with gilded dragons. Of the square grand piano with its keys like grinning teeth. Yes, touch it, feel the ivory, the velvet tassels hanging from the lampshade. . . .
The music, where did the music come from? A low, mournful jazz trumpet, playing all alone. It stopped him, this hollow melancholy song, the notes flowing slowly into one another. He did not want to move just now. He wanted to say he understood what was happening, but he was absorbing each broken sound.
He started to say thank you for the music, but again, his voice sounded so unaccountably strange-sharper, yet more resonant. Even the feel of his tongue, and out there, the fog, look at it, he pointed, the fog blowing right past the terrace, the fog eating the night!
Armand was patient. Armand understood. Armand brought him slowly through the darkened room.
"I love you," Daniel said.
"Are you certain?" Armand answered.
It made him laugh.
They had come into a long high hallway. A stairs descending in deep shadow. A polished balustrade. Armand urged him forward. He wanted to look at the rug beneath him, a long chain of medallions woven with lilies, but Armand had brought him into a brightly lighted room.
He caught his breath at the sheer flood of illumination, light moving over the low-slung leather couches, chairs. Ah, but the painting on the wall!
So vivid the figures in the painting, formless creatures who were actually great thick smears of glaring yellow and red paint. Everything that looked alive was alive, that was a distinct possibility. You painted armless beings, swimming in blinding color, and they had to exist like that forever. Could they see you with all those tiny, scattered eyes? Or did they see only the heaven and hell of their own shining realm, anchored to the studs in the wall by a piece of twisted wire?
He could have wept to think of it, wept at the deep-throated moan of the trumpet-and yet he wasn't weeping. He had caught a strong seductive aroma. God, what is it? His whole body seemed to harden inexplicably. Then suddenly he was staring at a young girl.
She sat in a small gilded straight-back chair watching him, ankles crossed, her thick brown hair a gleaming mop around her white face. Her scant clothes were dirty. A little runaway with her torn jeans and soiled shirt. What a perfect picture, even to the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and the greasy backpack that lay at her feet. But the shape of her little arms, the way her legs were made! And her eyes, her brown eyes! He was laughing softly, but it was humorless, crazed. It had a sinister sound to it; how strange! He realized he had taken her face in his hands and she was staring up at him, smiling, and a faint scarlet blush came in her warm little cheeks.
Blood, that was the aroma! His fingers were burning. Why, he could even see the blood vessels beneath her skin! And the sound of her heart, he could hear it. It was getting louder, it was such a ... a moist sound. He backed away from her.
"God, get her out of here!" he cried.
"Take her," Armand whispered. "And do it now."
KHAYMAN, MY KHAYMAN
No one is listening.
Now you may sing the selfsong, as the bird does, not for territory or dominance, but for self-enlargement.
Let something come from nothing.
STAN RICE
from "Texas Suite" Body of Work (1983)
UNTIL THIS NIGHT, THIS AWFUL NIGHT, HE'D HAD A little joke about himself: He didn't know who he was, or where he'd come from, but he knew what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on the corners, the big steel and glass buildings full of milky evening light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the bought things of shining plastic and metal-toys, computers, telephones-it didn't matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss through plate glass windows when nobody was about.
He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in