Skin (19 page)

    "What about that blue thing, that dumb Queen Mab dress?" and Bibi's swift grin, fuck you and she poked Tess in passing with the stretch of one bare foot.

    "Yeah, that, too, don't be a bitch. See, this's what I've got now-it's better than clothes," and she pulled free the white shirt, swiveling turn to display the long slim lines of scars precise, white runic tattoo as pale as her eyes and barely rimmed by faint receding pink; troubling, and beautiful, and strange. From over her shoulder: "I got it done after-you know, after, and a couple new piercings, too- my lip, you saw my lip." Sore purple hole healed now and she sounded nervous; how strange, to think of Bibi as nervous, and before Tess could speak Bibi's own lowest voice, soft as a floorboard groan: "It didn't make me happy, Tess. None of it. Not even this, at first," backhand brush of two fingers. "I did it to keep going. To just keep on going."

    Hedgehog; it knows only one trick, one good one, and Bibi the hedgehog inside-out, baring the softest spots for the knife and the needle; nothing in the end left vulnerable to pain except the softest spots of all, where no needle can ever reach.

    Head down, a little, shirt stretched on her crossed arms and she was so beautiful, pierced and shorn, pale as a ghost boned with steel and sharp metal and now her smile again, itself like a piercing: "So do I sleep with you, or use the floor, or what?"

    "Anywhere you want," Tess said, "if you-" and her voice croaking loud and sudden and to her harsh astonishment came tears, hot and bitter as a caustic, an acid to burn for all the lost life, all the lost time, face grinding hard into the towel and Bibi instantly there, thin arms to hold her tight, saying
shhh and John Henry and everything will be all right, now, you hear me? Everything is going to be all right.

    

    

    And waking, the drifting line of blue dark and the fierce warmth of Bibi, there in the bed, curled caging around her larger limbs as naturally as a spider to prey; I have you, that touch said, I know exactly where you are. Thin scissoring thighs, shorn raptor's head like a pulled punch in the middle of her back and back to sleep, smiling, the room was cold around them but together they were warm.

    Pulpy orange juice and hot beignets-Bibi's treat, juice on her lip and shreds of pulp like skin, curbside past the kiosk, their knees cornpanionably close. She wore one of Tess's sweat shirts in a morning chill that had not faded, itself faded to a color like dirt and sleeves rolled high above the thick chain bracelet, it looked like iron vined with razor wire; real metal, pretty in a weird way on the bony stalk of her wrist. Big compound-eye sunglasses over the pale gaze, brushing crumbs disdainful from the sweat shirt: "Don't you have any real clothes?"

    "Don't you?"

    "No. Yeah. I have a bag at a friend's house, we should go and get it. Let's go now," past the last of her beignet, crammed into her mouth like a child impatient. "It's not that far."

    "What friend?" No napkin, wiping one hand against the other; such a feeling of looseness in her muscles, she felt so good. Squinting against the sun, "Not that guy, what's his name, Tony."

    "No, not that asshole. You'll like this guy."

    So: gone, not arm in arm but the distinct feeling of it, down the street and her own sudden idiotic grin, it was good to be together again, she had not realized how isolated she had become: as if, blinking into light she realized how long the dark had lasted, the changing of the seasons, the passing of a year; not that long but that was how it felt and Bibi, in uncanny chime: "I missed you, John Henry. I thought about you a lot." Slow sideways grin. "Mostly when I was going to do something bad."

    "I bet."

    Her friend lived, Bibi said, in a walk-up: eight flights of a walk-up, grit indescribable, pure urine stink at every step. Half the doors on each floor were either smashed or missing, there was garbage all over the floor. "It's kind of a sty."

    "Who's your friend, the Ancient Mariner? The curse of the mummy?-shit," scraping dry at a desiccated turd tenacious on her shoe, hollow chummy voice suddenly above saying, "Don't fuck up the woodwork, man."

    Lean death's head, skinny as Bibi and pierced in more places, thin nostrils ringed, rings in his lip, his ears: flashy and ugly and Bibi grabbing his hand in a complicated squeeze, turning with pride to say, "Matty, this is my friend Tess Bajac. Tess, this is-"

    "Matty Regal," Tess said, slim memories revising now to include this monkey skullface. "I know you," without compliment. "I've seen your work."

    "I've seen yours, too. You don't show much anymore, do you?"

    "No. Do you?"

    "I don't work in sculpture anymore," flat airless superiority like stating a fact to a feeb. "The whole art scene sucks."

    So did your sculpture. "I remember you from the Isis," remembering more than that, a kind of pretentious academic reek clung to him still past the scent of deliberate declasse, the kind of fuckhead who enjoyed writing artist's statements. In triplicate. "You did pretty well there, didn't you?"

    "So did you."

    "Wrong. I never sold a piece there."

    "Jeez," Bibi said. "Just let me get my bag, okay? Matty, we're too busy to fight with you now," and in and out while they stared at each other, this is Bibi's friend? Jeez is right; and Bibi with her bag, dirty black nylon and Matty nudging her, you going to the Fist tonight? "No," shaking her head, one arm around Tess. "I told you, we're busy."

    "Eating at the Y," and for a moment Tess did not even understand it as a question, did not understand at all until Bibi's sharp stare, "And how's that any of your fucking business?"

    "Don't get touchy. I don't care who you screw."

    And Tess, fouled by his smile, not wanting to resent it openly for fear of hurting Bibi's feelings, angry all over and down the stairs, silent, into the sun like an autoclave and Bibi's voice in her ear, "Don't be mad, it's just Matty." And then diffident, itself a surprise-
Bibi shy?
-"I hope you don't mind."

    "Mind what?"

    "If some people think we're lovers. They used to, before -I didn't know if you knew."

    Another surprise: and a warm prickle, a throb at the base of her spine and memory, brief and strong as a smell: Bibi last night, small breasts pushed into her back; So do I sleep with you or what? and her own smile now, wide, confused: "No, I didn't know." Pause, try for a joking tone, is it a laughing matter or not? "Are we?"

    Bibi's pause, far more subtle, six long strides and no smile at all. "Ask me again tonight."

    So the thought, now, planted and growing in lush confusion; neither one brought it up but for Tess it was there: at night when they slept, in the morning when Bibi walked cat-naked to the shower, the stretch of her, the slim scarred tension of back and pointed breasts. All-day busy, and maybe that was better; it kept her from thinking too much, in a direction that deadpan Bibi had perhaps never intended. Or had. Who knew? In a strange way it was like the old Surgeons' gossip, who hadn't fucked Michael; it got her wondering:
what would it be like?

    But: busy: in differing directions, the routine established neatly and without plan: Bibi off nocturnal, Tess at the bodyshop or hunched in boneless ease before her worktable; she found that Bibi's presence (or absence, some nights till near morning) in some way-new and old-freed her, released her to the first days when the only thing surpassing hardest work was the gleeful exhibition to Bibi of same: look what I did! Slivering burn, again the resin drift of solder smoke and the turn of the screw: see: metal sinister, the longlegs in matte achievement; within a fortnight it was finished.

    Up and down, small ball body and legs double-jointed, promenade in the oblong squares of cool sunlight in dainty steps, as if evil wore beauty's dress, its spangled cat's-eye smile. Bibi, wrapped in faded red cotton like a bright young beggar, sat on the couch-bed and clapped her hands.

    "It's beautiful. No it isn't. It's worse than beautiful," and Tess paused, the smile only Bibi seemed able to call from her. "But what are you going to do with it?"

    Shrug. "I don't know. Isn't it enough to just make it?"

    "Oh, I get it: art." A little yawn, back of the hand; out late again last night; shacktowning? Why ask? A new bruise born on one of Bibi's cheekbones, almost theatrically dark; a beauty mark; she didn't ask about that, either. Gentle little landmines: each had her own;
just let's don't spoil it, okay?
Michael had called again, what he liked to call his checkup calls:
How're you guys doing?
and Tess's smile, could he hear it in her voice?
Fine
, she had told him. Fine. No mention of the landmines, the sense of walking warily, if with joy; why spoil it for him, either? He was so happy to see them back together, so proud of his part in it and justly so, would they ever have reconciled without him? Wanting to think so, but truth was stronger, gray with strength:
no. No
.

    Bibi, sitting straighter on the couchbed: "So you're never going to show again?" Pause. "Or perform?"

    
No.
"I don't know," pitter-patter, little devil's feet, the longlegs in minuet orbit around the couchbed. "No plans."

    "Very existential." Another yawn, sweet pink gullet and the trembling silver of the ring; labrette, that was called, that kind of lip piercing; stick around long enough and you'll know them all. "Well, I have plans, for tonight. Linda Joy's doing a blood nibbing, and a friend of hers- of mine's getting her clit pierced, remember I told you? I asked you if you wanted to come, and you said you'd think about it, remember?"

    Yes; and no. Bibi's hints over this particular cutting had become almost tedious; maybe this was some new manifestation of her personality since they had been apart: Bibi the Nag.

    "I have to work this afternoon," longlegs's prance around to her side of the couchbed, turning her face away. "I don't know how late, and then there's stuff to do here," and Bibi's pounce, one arm hooking playfully hard around her neck: "Come on. You can take a night off, if you want to."

    She could; and wouldn't, it must have showed on her face for Bibi at once, smile a little too bright: "Come on, Tess, just this once. It'll be fun. You can see some people you haven't seen in a while, Sandrine'll maybe be there, and Andy-"

    "Andreas?"

    "No." A discreet frown. "He doesn't, he's not really in the scene anymore. But you could see other people, and the piercing, it's really beautiful. The woman lies in the center, and some of her friends take turns holding-"

    "Bibi, really, no."

    Slow cool drain from pallor to anger, colorless, and when she spoke her voice was flat, fighting not to show it, not to let it go: "Tess, you know, I don't ask you for much, I haven't asked you for anything since, since we got back together. But I'm asking you to do this for me now."

    "It means," skeptically, "that much to you, to-"

    "Yes. Yes it does-"

    "-for me to sit in a hot room with a bunch of strangers and watch some woman get a ring through her cunt?"

    A slapped silence, and Tess instantly uneasy; as instantly, "Bibi, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just-"

    "You just." Flatter than ever but with a peak beneath, harsh; the spike through the ligament, the bone through the bloody wound. "You just hate everything I love. You hate everything," and up, even in her anger she was careful not to jostle the longlegs, poised below their feet like a patient pet. "You just don't care very much about me, Tess, that's what it comes down to so why don't you just leave me alone?" And up to skin out of ragged red, into black on black and gone, Tess calling out the window but she did not look back; Tess had not expected, much, that she would.

    Hands flat on the glass, that hard skin no needle could pierce for pain or pleasure: watching her go. It was their deepest divide, visible everywhere, filigree roots in every talk they had, in the words they did not say; deeper even than the trauma of Paul's death. They did not discuss so much as orate around it, at first like crossing cracking ice, then as weeks passed without the emergence of fissures, bolder; yet still terribly careful to be kind.

    Until today, her own clumsy impatience, she had hurt Bibi. Tight lips, closed eyes in self-disgust, remembering Bibi's care not to crush the longlegs, she could have stepped on it, cracked it like a breaking bone. And I hurt her, I said the one thing that would probably hurt her most except for coming right out and calling her a freak, a needle-happy sideshow freak.

    Bibi thought, Tess knew, of her own machine continuance-especially now, when she would not even show, much less perform-as part of something she, Bibi, had left behind, having in itself no worth or deeper value other than the tangible object produced, producing in the end only the deadly pronouncement,
Yeah; so?
And to Tess Bibi's obsession with piercings and cuttings was a kind of unfortunate sidepath, a sideshow, a descent almost into-say it;
you think it, don't you?
: the freakish: it was for nothing, wasn't it, but the hectoring of limits? Which was interesting, certainly, and liberating in its way but ultimately a deader end:
my friend got her clit pierced; yeah; so?
Do you modify to improve, or empower, or simply to feed the greedy black scorn of the human boundaries that succor flesh to blood to the pulse and contraction of the emperor mind within? To her questions-rare, but she asked, she made herself ask-Bibi was purely elliptical: soft breath on her shoulder, quiet beside her in the dark:
Tess, listen, it's not something I can explain in words, you have to do it, it's something you have to feel.

    And for Tess the feel of Bibi's own desire, the need to share with her, to steep her in the bright blooded ecstasy of pain; in the service of the most capricious god of all, Change.