Skin (14 page)

    "Do you want," and she saw his scooter, hurried slant against the fence, "to go for coffee? Or a drink, or something?"

    Silent, then "No"; then what do you want? I don't know. I don't want to do a show now, things are too bad; bad blood. I want to be left alone. I want to work; I want it to be like it was. "No thanks," her smile artificial but she was making the effort, anyway, and that was worth something. Or ought to be. Michael's scooter a faithful tail, all the way back until the last street: skittering abruptly left, the sick-bug drone of his engine gone, lost in the night sounds. Inside pause to note rehearsal, Michael's recorded soundtracks and thump and bump and grind. And scratch. And scar.

    No thanks.

    Worktable at once but no desire to work, instead mechanically setting things to rights, scattered tools, the cans of flush and solvents upset. Across the room, halfdusk despite her light and Bibi's bed heaped full with costumes, black and red, rags and harnesses and long strips of rubber, leggings made of vinyl and bright snaps; just detritus yet all at once she crossed the room to sit a silent moment in that pile, mess and crumpled textures and smells, hands open as if in touch she might take more than was truly there; find the full in the empty, past in the present; what was needed from what sheer and simply was.

    

    

    The next day like all the others, Jerome's near-constant clang two floors down and Sandrine screaming counterpoint down the stairwell "I can't work like this!" Bibi hurling an armful of big empty cans, props, stinky and rusty all the way down the stairs and Nicky writing names on them,
sandi
and
ray
and
andy
and
paul
in heavy black marker and then blowing them up. One by one. Under the windows.

    And, late, Tess and Bibi in the shared quiet of exhaustion, for once not working or even fighting and then, abrupt: Raelynne, beer bottle and too much jewelry, clanking like Sandrine's totems and determined flop, even past Tess's frown, Bibi's austere half-lidded gaze.

    "This troupe," without preamble, "this troupe is going to shit, and you want to know what the trouble is, I'll tell you. Besides letting a bunch of dumbshit kids play with fuckin' dynamite, by the by and naming no names." Drunk, but not a lot; Dutch courage, they used to call that. "It's that blond-headed cuntstrummer, you want to know."

    Bibi's head cocked like a puzzled dog's and Tess's eyes narrowed in instant disbelief: "You mean Michael?"

    "Yeah," stubborn to Bibi's incredulous laugh, even Tess had to smile. If anyone was outside the problem it was Michael, the conciliator, the bridge between the groups; patient cyborg, half-metal and half-flesh. "Michael's the only one who doesn't bitch," and Bibi's nodding chime, Michael was the nice one.

    "The only nice one," and to Tess a smile exclusionary, secret and Tess smiled back; how strangely dear Bibi was sometimes, you could want to murder her and then she would make a face like that: little hedgehog scarface with her nose grommets and studs and long bright earrings worked to look like razor wire. Did Bibi feel that way, too, looking at her? Yes? Maybe; maybe not?

    Long sloppy swig and Raelynne insisting, "You guys, I'm serious," but they were not, not anymore, Tess leaning forward, Bibi back and joking: Michael subversive, Michael the tool of long-gone Crane, Michael the secret love slave and Tess, deadpan, "We're probably the only ones who haven't fucked him," and Bibi's tickled screech, more and more silly and Raelynne finally pissed and shoving out the door, fine, fine. You all do what the hell you want, it's fine with me.

    Slow subsiding smiles, headshakes and Bibi leaning low to stretch, bright eyes upside down: "Hey. Are you sure you haven't fucked him?"

    Up and yawning to shut the door, "I'm sure." Pause. "How about you?"

    "Oh yeah," about-face, right side up and grinning past the dangle of wires: "I'm sure you haven't fucked him, too."

    The new flyer was completely black but for three things: Tess's fingers, Bibi's eyes, and the magistrate of sorrows, red letters like stylized cuts, razor thin and staggered diagonal. They had not even bothered, this time, to post a time, a place; word of mouth would take care of that.

    This time the Magistrate himself, itself, blood and suction, the bubble of plastic parts and the larger stretch and finger of the metal limbs, their shearing tips infinitely more manipulable than the blunt hammer-and-tongs of the Triple Deaths; they call that learning. Alligator clips a rusty smile; the fury of the scissors, heavy tinsnips and metal bite. There was a nursery rhyme once, German she thought, about the Scissor Man who came to thumbsucking children; the great red-legged Scissor Man, it had scared the shit out of her as a child and she hadn't even been a thumbsucker. That was there, in the Magistrate, nameless the lord of silver nightmares, the sound a knife makes in the dark; don't tell me, she thought, about knives.

    Bibi of course had her cuttings, hinting at lots of plans but for once Tess was not anxious to hear them, did not want to listen or think about Nicky's piques and Paul's missed rehearsals, Bibi's disbelieving sneer, He said he was sick. Well; maybe he is. I am, too.

    Smells. Sounds. Everything black this time, costumes and makeup, sketchy sets already in place upstairs, bare metal scaffolding, barely room enough for the Magistrate to move; smoke and blood the only colors. The scaffolding looked half-ass to Tess, complaining to Andy, arms folded huge to tell her she had two choices: either redo it herself or redo it herself. Just like almost everybody else he was doing his fucking best and in case anybody had forgotten he was a dancer and not a fucking ironworker in the first place, right? Right?

    Mouth pursed a little, a little, poking him lightly in the chest with her finger, other hand calm on the heft of a chipping hammer;
you're a big guy, Andy.
Poke, poke.
But I'm not all that small myself. Don't you think?

    Hot in the room; long jittering whoop of a siren outside. Very carefully, "I don't think you really want to fuck with me, Tess."

    As quietly, feeling the smile outside but not in, inside she felt nothing but a very small curiosity dry as a bleached insect, "I think you have that backwards. Andy."

    And all at once Nicky at her side, pulling at her like a kid,
c'mon Tess. Tess, come on, Jerome wants you.

    Which turned out to be true: what was needed was her reluctant blessing on his ringleader plans, the ones he chose to talk about anyway: for Salome, and M-80s, and sound, look, he had pages of small-print specs: "Nicky showed me," hunched up on a tumble of boxes below in the first-floor workspace, the Zombie Birdhouse they called it. "Cops in Europe got 'em," pointing out a paragraph, "ultrasonics, it can send out two different frequencies at a time and it's really fuckin' torqued… 'course that's sort of dangerous, we're not doing that. What we want to do is a flat sixty seconds of a high-frequency scream, you can't really hear it but it's there, you feel it in your body." Dirty face, big smile, heat through the windows bright as light and the lingering miasma of dog piss;
sounds good,
Tess said.
Or doesn't. Get it?
but she didn't laugh and Jerome didn't either, slowly back to his worktable and she trudging up to hers, hammer still in hand. He came up later to help with the Magistrate, but all they talked was tech. She didn't feel like talking about anything. To anybody.

    And then Michael would come, sit on the couch-bed or maybe, if she wasn't burning, on the stool beside; and say nothing. Small smile, watching, making no comments or noise, sweat on his shoulders, water sometimes or sometimes beer. Head-turned watching and sometimes to Tess the thought unbidden, what would it be like? White-blond hair like ash, like vines between her fingers, O of a sweet red mouth and what would it be like to feel with her tongue its slippery sugary darkness, its black hole like the excise space left behind by a rotten tooth? Heat in her face,
am I the only one who hasn't fucked him? Yet?
and his silent hand on her arm, smiling; and gone, heat like a-question left behind.

    

    

    Bibi in and out, too, three interviews the week before the show, angry at Tess for refusing to do them with her but not angry enough not to do them alone; more messages on the machine, Tess ignoring them, setup work to do and ignoring that, too, instead out in the parking lot working the Magistrate, sweat-wet and oblivious behind the heavy Dumpster until people saw, people came, yelled, she had to push some guy in the face and Bibi scolding afterward, for fuck's sake Tess you should have known! They did not speak the rest of the day, Tess sleeping angry to wake, snagged weary in sweaty sheets and yes, Bibi was right: she should have known.

    But: Bibi barely there and already gone, props to pick up and Tess left alone in the morning heat, below the sounds of beaten metal, the distant whooshing pop of something small exploding. Shitty instant coffee and halfclosed stare to see taped over the toilet another stare, and fingers, the magistrate of sorrows and chalked below in mocking caps the world's longest-running sore.

    "It's full," for the twentieth time, Sandrine horrible and lush in heavy mesh, smiling as if she were high. Cobweb chain strung thin from earlobe to nostril, she and Raelynne had added minuscule charms, skulls and curly daggers below identical bright-eyes; they both looked fucked up. So did Andy, so did Andreas in the corner with pursed lips and a rag, attending Paul: just finished vomiting and too ill to even be there, black T-shirt loose and faintly stained over the sick crouch of his shoulders.

    And people, people, people, inside and outside and everywhere, some perching gargoyle on the opposite roof, trying to see in; Nicky had said there were others on the roof above them, trying to cut peepholes. Nicky now clustered triplet with Peter and Jerome, all of them headwrapped in black, respirators hung bright against their chests though Bibi had screamed about that, the respirators were white for God's sake and Tess forced to defend them, they need to breathe, Bibi, maybe you didn't think of that.

    "The dancers need to breathe, too."

    "Then give them respirators."

    Each glaring at the other, Tess all bones and angles and sparks, sparks under the skin, formicating shiver like crawling insects, like the angry knurl of each separate and particular element, fear and weariness, hot and cold. For her tonight the whole room, the crowd, each one of them in this loose twist had a distinct and unwholesome odor, the smell that says This is not good. As if the rot inherent in the group had begun to manifest, and rot stinks. Like garbage; the silent fester of anger; like dried blood.

    But for Bibi-Tess could tell just by looking-there were no such tremors, never the underskin pavane: hands on hips, clown mouth down, made up by Sandrine to look like Marquesan tattoos, stark black bars across forehead and eyes. Coldly, "The white ruins the symmetry of the look."

    "Tough shit."

    And Andy, from the peanut gallery, the breathing circle on the edge of a bubbling giggle, private giggle and leaning in to say hey Tess how come you don't try the finger trick on her? Huh? Poke her a good one! and Sandrine's snicker; Raelynne's loose haw-haw, Andreas picking at the tips of his gloves, smile pointed down like a courtier and all of a sudden it was just too much, all of it, all of them, and leaning into Andy, his breath pure candy mouthwash and "Because I'd rather try it on you, fuckface," and shoving him hard, stiff hands smearing the makeup on his slack-muscled chest and from somewhere Andreas and Michael jumping tandem in between and Bibi's grip hard on Tess's forearm, snarling, "Stop it, now!"

    Andy falling back, off balance and Andreas's unsteady grasp, Tess angrier than she had ever been, turning on Bibi: hands on her black shoulder blades to shove with all her force, knock her flat on her ass and Tess above, trembling: "Don't you ever grab me like that, Bibi. Ever."

    Bibi surrounded now, tender black scowls to help her rise, turning silent away and Tess clenched hands, a sick taste under her tongue. Jerome saying something in her ear but she shook him off, go away, went herself away to a corner, where can you hide in a room full of people, a street full of people, fucking people everywhere oh God if only this were over. I said no show, I said-

    And Michael all at once, hand light on her arm and a paper cup of water: "You want this? Tess? Are you thirsty?"

    Equally vamped in makeup but still Michael, pale eyes and half a smile, chains across his bare chest; he was supposed to start up the soundtrack and then join the dancers, something about a tribal circle around the cutting altar; she had not listened. Tried to listen now, dry mouth and taking the water, taking his hand.

    "Are you okay?"

    Her slow nod a lie, sweat down her back and the warm closeness of his shielding body; crowd sounds deeper now, louder, the coughing of beasts expectant. "You're working the Magistrate, right? But not Salome?"

    The flat taste of bottled water, she drank it anyway. "No," draining the cup; crushing it. "I gave her to Jerome."

    More gently still, "It's going to start soon, couple minutes. Are you sure you're okay?"

    Mechanical as a construct, engineered response: "Fine," but his face even closer and his mouth very light on hers, faint moist feel of his tongue, "Then break a leg," and stepping back, gone, over to Bibi still encircled, cocooned, and Tess in dry confusion turning to walk somewhere, away, ending up beside Peter loading the last camera, the view from behind the stage area: "Hey," his grin unsteady, "you torqued?"

    "Plenty." Her hands were still shaking. She did not want to look at Michael; or Bibi. Or the crowd. "Ready?" and in the instant the long feedback whistle of the soundtrack, lights cut and the yelling begun: "Surgeons!"