Ink (33 page)

Pierrot pulls away.

“But in a woman's robes?” he says. “I'd be ashamed.”

“No shame,” says Jack, “no fear. Or else your hope of spying on the maidens ends right here.”

Pierrot thinks about it. You can see the thoughts go through his mind, the image of himself in drag, disturbing but somehow enticing, this forbidden thing he's never tried, a part of him that's always been denied.

“What kind of dress do you think I should wear?” he asks.

“A gown that flows from shoulder down to foot,” says Jack.

Jack looks him up and down, his head cocked to one side, a queer eye quietly assessing. Brushing Joey's long hair back, he takes him by the chin and tilts his face.

‘And on your head we'll put a hood,” Jack finally decides.

“Describe my costume more,” says Pierrot. “What else?”

He's getting braver now. Jack flounces all around him, camp as knickers, miming measuring and framing Joey in a square of thumbs and forefingers.

“Yes, well. You'll need a dappled fawnskin, obviously. And a wand to hold.”

Oh, but Pierrot's not that bold. His shame resurfaces and he recoils.

“No. I can't do it. I could never dress up as a girl.”

“Then it'll end in tears,” says Jack.

And suddenly the whole queer tailor act is dropped.

“And when Pierrot and my maidens come to blows,” says Jack, “my dear, the blood will flow.”

“You're right,” says Pierrot.

Again he has that distant look, as if he knows somewhere inside that his own tragedy's unfolding, his control unraveling. It's Harlequin who's at the wheel of fate now, and Pierrot's just a passenger along for the predestined ride.

“You're right,” he says. “I'd best go spy upon them first.”

“It would be smarter,” Jack says. “You'd just be inviting trouble if you went there looking for a fight.”

Pierrot faces out into the audience, a broken king, considering the world that's slipping from his grasp. Jack stands behind, his hands upon Pierrot's shoulders, like a boxing coach giving his fighter a massage.

“But how will I get through the city? I'll be seen,” says Pierrot. “In broad daylight…”

“Then we'll go by quiet back streets. It'll be OK.”

Jack's hands run down to squeeze Pierrot's arms.

“I promise you,” says Jack. “I'll take you the least visible way.”

——

Pierrot's eyes close for a second. Something glistens on the greasepaint, on the smears of black under his eyes. He looks at me, his pupils wide and dark, and I know that right now, right here, for all his ice-cold attitude of callous cynicism, Joey really is the king of tears.

“Whatever,” he says quietly. “Just as long as no one laughs at me.”

“Oh, Pierrot,” says Jack. ‘As if we would.” [He gives the audience a wink.] “Let's go into the palace then, and plan the route.”

“OK,” says Pierrot, “I'm ready now. I'll go inside. I need to think about it though. I could still ride out, sword in hand.”

His words ring hollow.

“I
could
follow your advice. Let me decide.”

“Look out, my saucy jack. Look out, you rogues and ragamuffins of the Rookery. They're coming for us all They're coming hard and fast and, boys, tonight looks like the sky is gonna fall. They're coming with the lethal needle and the damage done by one angel assassin's chi-gun's going to look like scratches on a dreadnought's hull by the time they've finished what they've only just begun.”

Joey can Jeel his last pill kicking in now. Emotion muted like a radio set buried underground and running out oJ batteries, the signal itselJ degenerating to a hiss oJ white noise. It doesn't matter iJ it
is
Jack. It doesn't matter if it isn't possible that it is Jack. Joey has a job to do, and he stopped worrying about the world's impossibilities a long time ago.

The shadow on the pedestal rolls backward like a diver going off a boat, disappears behind the stone to land with a quiet crush of bushes underfoot.

“I'm Screaming Don Coyote, coming to you on the one and only Radio Free Kentigern, coming out to you from Hell on Earth, and if this show is our last, if we're all lost, well, friends, we're going to go out with a bang, ‘cause right now, mis amigos, yes, right now we've got for you the music that they said had died, the tunes they said we'd never play again. Well, listen up, my friends, ‘cause this is the Narcotics with their grinding, pounding, speed-thrash cover of a classic track. This one's for Jack, but it's for Joey too, because we know that underneath it all you're just a little blue.”

“As a wise man once said, you can't always get what you want, my friends, but keep this in mind, you know sometimes, you just might find you get, yes sir, exactly what you need… And that's to ‘Open Up and Bleed’
…”

A simple blues riff starts, low and repeating. One two three four, one two three. One two. One two. One two three four, one two three. One two. One two.

Joey circles sideways round the low metal railing that bounds the flowerbeds at the foot of the pedestal. Jack steps out of the bushes and onto the broken tarmac of the park's path, backing away from him out onto the bridge. Yellow-and-black police tape flutters from the sandstone balustrades. The white chalk outline of the sentry's body has been spray-painted by vandals already, fleshed out in multicolored patterns, like some cartoon tattooed man steamrollered into the ground. It's the sort of thing the two of them used to do—tear up crime-scene cordons, spray-paint over fingerprints or fibers … fuck with the pigs at every opportunity.

Joey nods at the sentry's psychedelic shadow.

“One of your own, you fucking moron,” he says.

“Bollocks,” says Jack. “Thought he might be a rook. Ironic, eh? Considering.”

Considering this is where you killed me.
The thought doesn't have to be spoken for Joey to hear it.

“You're not Jack Flash,” he says.

Jack Flash is dead, he thinks.

‘Aren't we all?” says Jack.

Joey reaches out a little, probing the fucker's psyche, trying to get a handle on him, but his soul is slick and dark and every move he make slides off this stealth mind. There are only glimpses, glances—memories of a father whose combed-back hair fell across his forehead when he was angry, of traveling with Grandpapa on the autobus into Stadde Cintrale, to the
tabak
, and the smells, the smell of his pipe tobacco and the smell of wet dog fur as the setter shook its rust-red coat, and the sound of a mother humming a folk song at a family wake, and the feel, the first nervous touch of fingers as they run through a girlfriend's soft hair and—

He can't shake the feeling that none of these memories really belong to the bastard. Some of them don't even belong in Kentigern.

They circle each other, both looking for a weak spot, an opening. Joey can feel the chi-energy writhing beneath the surface—sex and death, a stripper dancing with a snake—but it's just power, just another narcotic, like Joey's stock of uppers and downers, inhibiters and facilitators. There's a lot of New Age bullshit
talked about the chi, about spirit, the soul of the earth, the fossil fuel that was once flesh like us, that we will all in time become, but Joey doesn't believe in spirit. He doesn't believe in ghosts or demons. The chi doesn't have avatars, just addicts.

So he knows this “Jack Flash,” he knows the fucker has a history, a reality, a tawdry little truth that makes him tick. Not Jack, not his Jack, but another Rookery brat, fucked-up on orgone, dreaming that the world is just a dream because reality's too hard to face.

“I know who you are,” he says. “I know exactly where you come from.”

But this other Jack smiles and Joey feels a sudden blast of bestial desire and fear—a surge of rodent passions bubbling under the surface—rats under his feet—a sentience devoid of reason—only mood and attitude.

“You can't even imagine where I come from.”

Don's out among the audience now, talking in frantic gestures with the Duke. We have a problem; look, it's clear our Pierrot's under the weather, dodgy stomach bug, we think—oh no, not castle food—but we were wondering whether—yes, you saw how wet he was with sweat—almost delirious, indeed—well, what it is—I mean—we need some sort of substitute and who else could, or would, or even
should
play noble Pierrot,
prince
Pierrot, the
king
of tears? We are professionals, so, oh no, we
will
not let this ruin your night's entertainment. No! On with the show, we say. It must go on. There's only just a few more scenes to come. Our man can carry on for maybe one at most, but if—and honestly, I tell you it will be such fun—if you were to become involved in our divertissement, our humble, poor attempt at your amusement—well, imagine, a great
Duke
of Hell like you, how well you could
command
the stage. M'sire, you'd show them rage, I'm sure—and there's no lines to learn, there's just Pierrot, grand in his destruction, roaring over everything, a king who's lost his head, you know—a lion of a man like you, m'sire—we
know
that you could do it. You could knock ‘em dead.

“Girlfriend,” Jack says to me, “it's time to act. The Harlequin is getting close. The quarry's almost in the trap.”

A homicidal snick of teeth, a flash of blue eyes underneath the mask, he backflips over to me, spins and kneels to take my hand, my irresistible Jack
Flash. He rises, twirls me, pulls me into an embrace, a kiss. His tongue darts in between my lips as hands slip under silk to tickle down my side and smooth my hips. One travels round toward my butt.

“No underwear,” he whispers. “Slut.”

“Fuck you,” I hiss.

He whirls away. He cartwheels to the curtain's edge, stage left, and pulls it back to peek around: a glimpse of Joey getting changed, a ciggy dangling from his lips. Half-naked Joey flicks his circled thumb and fingers at him, and mouths a silent
tosser,
—mad but not deranged. As far as Joey's method mania is concerned, we're past the worst of it at least. His character's a puppy from now on. It's not him who's the wild beast.

Jack twirls to me again, a dog that knows he's going for his walk, circling excited between door and leash.

“It won't be long,” he says, “until we reach the rites and we can take our vengeance out on him. Let Pierrot pay with his life.”

He licks his lips. I think we're lucky Joey is the only one who packs a knife.

Meanwhile, Don rattles on with all his prattle, trying to convince the Duke to join the show, give it a go. He flatters and cajoles, he uses fast talk and slow sell and plain old-fashioned begging. He uses all his skills of what he calls neuro-linguistic programming, craft of street hypnotists and mind readers, signals and clues so subtle that the Duke's not even conscious of the way he's being led. What with the psychoactives we've been pumping out into the crowd all night, he's in a quite suggestible state already and, as Jack keeps everyone else amused with his display of tumbling dance, I watch the Duke rise from his chair. He nods his head, deep in the trance.

Behind the throne, Guy stands with Anaesthesia now. She's listening to him but watching Jack and, even as the Duke succumbs, it's seems her sense of who she really is slowly returns. She rolls her shoulders, cricks her neck, adjusts her stance like someone at a party moves their weight from foot to foot, but with each movement she looks less demure, less maidenly. Her feet farther apart, her hips uncock. She turns her gaze to me and our eyes lock for a brief second till she closes hers and drops her face. She takes the riding hat off, and unpins her hair. When she looks up again she's staring at the Duke with hate.

Jack snaps his fingers right in front of me. I jump.

“Earth calling Thomas Messenger,” he whispers.

Hell
, I think. It's Hell, you mean, instead of Earth. And fuck you if I miss my sister. But I nod.

He kicks himself up off a prop. He swings from rigging, a mad monkey pirate reveling in the madness that he's bringing.

“I'll drive him mad,” he says, “and fill his head with wild delusions. Till his mind is gone completely in confusion. While his senses are his own, we'll never get a woman's dress on him; and, after all his menacing and threats, I want to hear the laughs as he is led in woman's dress all through the city.”

Anaesthesia—Phreedom, pretty little Phreedom who grew up, God, so much more than me; who walked out into Hinter's night, her brother and her son both lost, set out to start a raging fight against the angels and the demons, all the archons of the broken Covenant, the dukes of Hell and all their knights; who lost herself in trying desperately to do what's right—shakes out her long red hair. She undoes the top few buttons of her riding dress, brings out a necklace made of chicken bones and leaves it hanging there for all to see.

“But now I've got to go,” says Jack, “to make Pierrot pretty in the robes he'll wear, so he'll look oh so fine when he sets out from Hell's halls to play victim to the rage of his own mother, Columbine.”

Jack slips back into a dark area of the stage. I watch Don lead the Duke down one side of the hall, and round behind our wagon. Then, Guy at her heels, my little sister Phreedom strides along the facing wall. With all the pseudo-medieval setting, she should really have a sword. But then again, I think, she's less the knight and more the dragon.

“The King of Tears will come to know the Harlequin. The son of Sooth will show his nature in the end,” says Jack.

He lights a cigarette, fire glowing on his leather mask.

“A god most terrible,” he says, “for all his gentleness to men.”

Slowly, lazily, a vast steel bulk of metal storm cloud blotting out the moon, the rumble of its engines shuddering the ground with visceral thunder, the dreadnought of the skies moves closer to its target. Airbarges swarming round it seem like minnows round a whale, and the ornithopters, smaller still, like pond insects skittering across the surface of the water. As a hundred chi-cannons turn against the Rookery, Joey takes the pillbox from his pocket, clicks it open and pops a white one. They're every bit as good as the Circus assured him they would be.