Skin (12 page)

    Watching from the window to see him wheel out a broken-down red scooter, wheezing start and gone down the brightening streets, hair loose behind. She was still not tired, but lay down beside Bibi's warm hedgehog curl, eyes closed to dream at once of faces stretched pleading in mad wordless music, mouths spurting flowers like blood and plasma and in the rigid stamen of each flower a calm sad enucleated eye.

    "Oh yeah," box of tapes under his arm, big weight-warped cardboard with heavy's peaches in water-faded red along the longest sides, "I used to use a Yamaha DX-100 and a Korg sequencer, but that's low tech now. So we went to no tech, just a big jumped-up boom box." Examining their equipment, "But this is good, here. Real basic."

    Jerome's slight smile, Nicky and Peter behind, showing the new kid around. Second floor and spring's insistent warmth, a singular closeness in the air as if the whole room were one big closet, a closed-up car waiting to have its windows rolled down. Tess to one side, making the chrome crab walk up and down a set of mockup stairs; legs struggling just as if it were real, flipping occasionally to lie in frantic empty crawl until she righted it again; have to fix that.

    In the farthest corner, the trio's unnamed machine; early today she had cemented the truce by critiquing the construct, fix this, see this here? Fix it. This's okay. Good job, "but next time tell me, all right? Don't make an asshole out of me."

    Jerome, vehement, "We never-"

    "Okay, okay," waving it off; forget it. No new work, today, just the crab and maybe a trip to the scrapyard; and then Michael, showing up with his big box.

    

    

    Bibi had gone to the clinic, her arm infected now past ignoring; Tess had not offered to drive her but like a jack-in-the-box there was Paul, "just stopping by" and of course he would be glad to take her, of course, and Bibi very cool, "Why not? It's your fault I have to go." Tess's frown extravagant, Oh bullshit but no dent in his stare, mournful Paul who was still in the Surgeons but not Bibi's good graces, odds were he would never get back into those. Tess wanted to feel sorry for him; but not today, with his copycat piercings, his subservient smile; funny that he had been able to withstand so many vigorous fights only to crack under the silent treatment. Funny.

    Nicky and Jerome now reworking their machine, Peter filming, leaving Michael to his tapes, bent sorting head and thorough; to play.

    Tess at first unaware, busy: but: subtle sounds, and subtly terrible, someone's repetitive chuckle,
mm-hmm
like a sound from the bottom of a drain, a deep drain, MM-HMM and a guitar, three chords, over and over. MM-HMM. A car door slamming on something soft. It went on and on. No one else seemed to be listening. Michael kept going through the tapes, setting some aside, flipping past others. Three chords. The car door.

    Light through the window, down the crab's smooth chrome skin, sweat at her hairline. Looking up to see Michael smiling at her, just a little, the way an angel might smile: one hand marking his place in the box of tapes. MM-HMM.

    "-seven categories of bodily modification," Bibi and Michael drinking watery vegetable soup, close together on the couchbed and Tess half listening from the worktable, the crab eviscerated anew.

    "Contortion. Constriction. Deprivation," more soup through a straw, Michael with both hands around the mug as if he were a child, a child with cold hands. "Encumber-ments, penetration, fire-"

    "Fire like how?"

    "Like electric shock. Or branding. Or extreme steam, like heat baths and boxes. And the last one's suspension."

    "Like hanging."

    "Exactly."

    "Some of these can be simulated, can't they?"

    Slurp slurp. "Oh sure," vigorously stirring with the bending plastic straw. "All of them, probably, if you went about it right. But I think the real thing is much more effective, don't you, John Henry?"

    Gun in hand, not looking up. "Don't ask me," one sizzling drop, another. "I'm not doing any of them."

    Bibi's shrug, Tess saw it from the corner of her eye. Talking-piercings, scarification, had Bibi ever seen the sundance ceremony? no?-until Bibi complained of pain, her arm hurt, her mouth hurt, she wanted to lie down and did, covers over her head despite the warmth, breathing shallow and ragged until she fell abruptly to true sleep; Tess suspecting her of taking too many pain pills, but saying nothing: she was a big girl, wasn't she? Wasn't she?

    And in the slumbering silence Michael, dragging up the extra stool, come to sit beside her.

    Nothing, for moments, only the sound of her own motions, the tiny scrape of tools, the gentle sound of the solder. Finally: "What do you like better," touching with relic care the motionless legs of the crab, "making sculpture? Or the shows?"

    "Melting metal," making of the crab's wired legs a brief hideous frisson, like a corpse jerking back to hectic life; then nothing. "That's what I like."

    Pale eyes unsurprised, watching her hands move. Bibi on the bed groaned once and softly in her codeine sleep as if touched by dreams whose malice she could neither measure nor control, bad arm in awkward flutter against the pale stained covers and at the unlocked door, Paul: peering in.

    "She's sleeping," Tess annoyed, Paul's presence a concrete reminder of Bibi's bad behavior, it was unfair but that was how it was. "-And since when do you have a key to the big door?"

    "Nicky let me in." Taking a seat beside the couch-bed, beside his sleeping princess; dabbing with his sleeve the sweat on her slack face, looking up into Tess's irritable stare: "What the fuck's your problem?"

    "She's still mad at you, you know," and then as his face fell her instant shame:
why say it? Why hurt him?
More gently, "Listen. Why don't you just let-"

    "Why don't you just go to hell? And take him with you," nodding to Michael who seemingly took no offense, sat quietly still on his stool. Tess turning back to chrome and motion, let them do what they wanted, all of them, as long as they kept her out of it. Cut themselves up, hang from rafters, who gives a fuck. Heat would still rise, metal would still melt. Work would still get done.

    

    

    Hotter everywhere, spring melting to summer, she had been here a year now. Eight shows, it seemed incredible, it was incredible; they could never work at that pace now, now when things took so much longer, required so much more precision and care. So much more discussion. So much more argument.

    The worktable was her oasis, bent over the crab, or the arms of the Triple Deaths, or the new construct that she was calling, privately, the Magistrate: lozenge-shaped, a vacuum cleaner torso, the standard bag replaced with heavy sheer plastic: blood pellets would churn there, small plastic arms and legs-today Michael had brought her a shoebox full, they had spent a cheery hour sorting through headless doll bodies-two dozen plastic swords stolen from Bar Hernandez. Symbols of cutting; of shearing. And beyond the bag, which was after all the gimmick, the come-on: attached to the rolling torso itself long slim limbs like branches, tender as new growth until the blunt fury of their tips: scissors, alligator clips, miniature jaws with real steel teeth that opened and closed according to the whim of the user. With Jerome's patient help-and he was some helper, Jerome, more pure craftsman than she would ever be-the Magistrate would be horrifying in a most subtle way, six weeks' work or less and ready for the next show. Whenever that was; and surprising herself with her own disinterest, relishing less and less the decisions, the day-to-day managing of the performing entity called the Surgeons; it was far more than a good idea grown, it was a process, an ongoing motion whose path she could not, unlike Bibi, see either straight or clearly. The infighting, her three, Paul's problems; and the people, people all the time. Marketing, she called it in a particularly virulent moment,
I'm no good at marketing
and Bibi nodding her head in cold agreement:
You got that right
.

    And then off to see Andreas, Paul presumably tagging behind (and when was she going to forgive Paul? it was getting more ugly than ridiculous, this silent vendetta); Tess alone behind the screens with her three at noisy work on the floors below. And in-between Michael, making tapes; Paul's old chore and he still bitched about losing it though he had bitched incessantly at the having; turning his pique on Michael, who seemed barely to notice, who never complained: which made him a rarity. Andy and Sandrine, and Paul, of course Paul, habitually whining and it all came down to the machines, too much focus on the machines. Even Raelynne muttered, she was supposed to be dancing, not getting pinned and rolled over and pushed around by machine-shop zombies, naming no fucking names by the by and so on.

    And the machine-shop zombies growing touchier, too, withdrawing more and more to their own worktables and Tess could not, did not, blame them; it was harder work for them than for anyone, arranging the effects, and of course they had their own work to do; in an angry moment Nicky had declared their next project to be a trio of constructs called Machine-Shop Zombies whose only function would be to follow the dancers, hurt, tease, and harass them, and Paul yelling
So what else is new?
Shoving, fistfight genesis and big halfhearted Andy somehow incapable of settling them down until Tess, pushing between with gas torch in hand and "How about if I burn off your hair? How about your heads?" and Paul cursing, shoving back and away and Tess feeling without looking Nicky's hand beneath her own, its grip loose and wet on the trigger.

    To Bibi, then, that same night, back from Andreas with a headful of plans but Tess took her aside,
just you and me: let's talk
. Let's go somewhere and talk and Paul moving as if to come along, Tess turning on him: "Go do something." The barest snarl, and Bibi ignoring them both to listen to the messages on the machine; then, brisk to Tess, "Okay. Let's go."

    Slow-starting, the smell of gas, Bibi: "Javahouse?"

    "Anywhere. Anywhere you want." Tess's head against the window, eyes closed, unable to enjoy the solitude, all alone with Bibi; didn't all this use to be fun? Her first words, as they sat down, a back booth: "Are you having fun, Bibi?"

    "Right now?"

    "I'm serious. Is any of this fun anymore?"

    Tapping the menu card, lips still faintly purple like some exotic cosmetic. "You mean the Surgeons? Of course it's fun."

    Tess said nothing.

    "You take everything too seriously." Tess silent still, and Bibi sighed, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand, then changing sides in the booth, good arm around Tess's tight shoulders. "Stop worrying, all right? They're just impatient, it's been too long since we had a show. Besides," reaching up to tug her hair, "we're the ones who matter, right? And we're doing just fine."

    As if from very far away, "They matter, too, Bibi. Everyone matters."

    "Maybe to you." Grinning and the coffee came, very hot, sweet. Cream like velvet, pouring cold from sweating silver. The cup was heavy and white in her hand, steam on its smooth lip. "Listen, I wanted to talk to you anyway, I was at Andreas's again today-"

    Burned skin in her mouth. "I know."

    "-and he said we shouldn't have any trouble doing what we want to do."

    
Who's we?
but she didn't say it. Bright eyes pale as water, each ear hung heavy with gold and steel, crosses and chains thin as an eyelash, and round red rivets in each nostril like fresh jaunty blood blisters. Talking about knives and needles, about Nigerian scarification, about the men-sur, facial wounds, it all became for Tess a river of talk like a burst blood pellet, a pellet as big as a wasps' nest, Bibi's bruised mouth moving with the rhythms of a beating heart.

    And somewhere in the talk Bibi's hand warm on hers, telling her she really ought to try it, they could do it together, it was fantastically empowering and so on and on and on and all Tess could see past the moving mouth was the silence of her worktable, the panels screening out as well as in; and with this thought a strange sadness, as if she had hurt Bibi in some secret way both stringent and irreparable, the longest needle of all to scar them both. And then a kind of fear, and determination: propping up her chin, listening visibly, and nodding, and nodding some more: I see, she said. I see just what you mean. Thinking as Bibi spoke of her own body scarred, and the shiver visceral and harsh:
never. Never never never. I don't bleed, hedgehog; I burn.

    No title yet, nothing; there was nothing they could agree on. Tess lobbying for an indoor show, but they wanted to do explosions, her zombie trio, and she was less inclined these days to tell them no when already they had begun to assume the stance and moves of guerrillas in occupied territory. So: Jerome and Peter and their complicated gunpowder toys, blowups; and Nicky ready to spew ground glass with his new spray blaster. And in this corner, Andy and Sandrine and Raelynne, apparently going under the knife together; and even Paul, whose name was still anathema but whose blood was, apparently, at least good enough to be shed.

    And Bibi doing some of the cutting, under the supposed supervision of Andreas, whose newfound presence at rehearsals was getting to Tess, getting on her fucking nerves, she tried to say nothing, tried to keep out of the way. Yes, Bibi had to learn how to cut, though the idea of taking up the discipline and the knife in the same month seemed just a bit optimistic; but why must it be giggly Andreas and his black corpsegrinder gloves, why not the calm professionalism of someone like Linda Joy?
Why not Linda Joy?
and Bibi's shrug, she's not interested, she doesn't care for performing.

    Good for her. But Tess didn't say it, in fact said nothing; only nodded. She was getting good at that, nodding, the brisk nod, the solemn nod, she could do them all. And upstairs in record time, working again, they didn't need her down there anyway, did they? No. They did not.