Skin (22 page)

    And quiet, cold ticking quiet and Tess realized she was freezing, her hair cold as forming ice in Bibi's slow gun-sight stare: smiling a little, strange sulky triumph: "Well, Matty said you'd probably say something like that, so I guess you'll just have to wait and see."

    Through a great tiredness, the same dry flatland: "What does that mean?"

    Bibi's smile again, something older, colder than reptilian, cold as the oldest brain of all speaking, short wordless bursts, the back of the back of the skull: "Let's see," she said, "who can keep the most secrets. And be the most surprised in the end."

    A silence, the silence of fundamental, tectonic change; a falling-out in the sense of plates shifting, where nothing is safe, not even the silent ground, the places we have been and always been. Tess felt it would not bear her, her weight or her presence. Where she had once lay cautionless to sleep was now a graveyard and worse than a graveyard; never close your eyes there again.

    The phone's jittery chime, for Bibi; of course. Her cool chatter backdrop and Tess moving heavily, slowly, rubbing with great effort the towel up and down her body as if all her hollowed bones were filled with chilly lead, dragging to gravity, all the way down.

    Now the veiled hostility, but no more big arguments, no real arguments at all unless you counted sniper fire; Bibi was immensely good at that, gifted. Gifted. Nothing as hideous as a death to point to which would at least have been concrete-it's good to be able to see what is killing you, it has its own relief, however dire-instead of this dreadful arid sterility, as if without shared work they could share nothing, not even love was strong enough to keep them together, instead seeming more readily to have driven them apart by placing in their hands the terrible weapons of lovers, who know where all the scars are, all the sick unhealable wounds. Bibi's absences more acute, and in their vacuum Tess: harder, not like last time to fill time but in an effort she did not herself yet comprehend; perhaps it was understanding, the effort to understand, make sense of, control.

    The small figure on the worktable grew increasingly more complex, almost rebuslike in the burden of its meaning: to Tess. Working from morning till her afternoon shift at the body shop, they cut her hours, cut them again as the winter dragged on, everything dragging, she was eating crackers out of the box again while Bibi took her meals elsewhere. She tried to save money on electricity, if they cut that off she could not work, so: sat in the dark when she wasn't working, early dark, dark when she got home; is that a metaphor? Is it? Empty and dark, and Bibi always gone, even when she was there she was far, far away, Tess looking up at times to see her stare so absolute it pinned her where she was, the stare that said more stringently than any words,
I'm leaving; I'm already gone.

    And one afternoon like all the others, reluctantly ready to go to work and Bibi stepping in, surprising Tess (instantly depressed by her own surprise): austere and distant, beautiful in a new black high-collared jacket; from whom had she gotten it? but no way to ask, that right was gone long ago, things were all the way down the hill now.

    "I'm going," Bibi said, flat as a slap. Tiny steel skulls around the rim of her ear, red ear bitten hard by the cold; it was immensely cold, inside and out. "Matty will pick up my stuff."

    It took Tess a moment, not to register her words-there was almost relief in the hearing-but to decide how to react. Slowly she set aside the C-shapes of wire, sputtering orange solder gun eye, as slowly rose from the stool.

    "Well." Her hands were so chapped they were bleeding; painlessly. Curiously painless all over. "Are you living with him now?"

    "We're not fucking, if that's what you mean. I don't have much use for men anymore," and snotty, "although I know you have a different point of view."

    There was no need to respond to this-she and Bibi had not made love for more than a month now and in that time Tess had not even so much as brushed against another human being; but: no need for any response at all, Bibi would say what she wanted to say, planned to say; Tess might have been a painted picture, a particularly dense piece of wall; a sculpture. Motionless, waiting for Bibi to continue but Bibi surprised her again, simply turned, black and white, and walked out-

    -as Tess still standing, listening, her heart beginning to beat very hard-

    -and walked back in again.

    "Tess," holding out her hand, gloved hand, new slick leather around something bright: the keys. "Here. I don't want to keep anything of yours," and gone now this time for good, quick and quiet down the stairs and although Tess heard the door bang-not slam, simply bang-she did not move, stood in the same waiting posture and then suddenly turned, keys in hand and for a moment thought to hurl them, hard as a javelin to gouge a wound in the wall; but instead: pulling on her jacket, goggles in pocket and helmet in hand, ready to go to work and burn, and burn, and burn.

    She would not, this time, cry for Bibi, would not miss her, would not mourn if it burned a hole straight through her body, straight down and finally to death. Instead she burned herself a new pattern: wake before the body shop, work there, sweating under her helmet, sweating out the hours and then at home a different fire, smaller, more focused and intense; working till bed, three or four in the ghostly morning, sleep like metal, inert, to rise; and repeat. Crouched over the beast-machine, she was sick of working for nothing, no purpose; sick of it. Sick, as the construct stretched geometric arms, crawled upright and monstrous and small across the table's landscape. She ripped the canvas from the other, older constructs, freed them to cold dusty light: Mme Lazarus, the Triple Deaths, the Magistrate and all the sculptures; only Salome lay entombed below-stairs, bloody juggernaut unretrievable; maybe the Zombies had scrapped her, cannibalized her as Tess would now cannibalize these others.

    Which horrified Nicky. Hearing the rusty thump and clatter, mild up the stairs but almost comically aghast at the sight of Tess, acetylene torch in hand, constructs carved around her and scattered pieces like organs left to rot on the floor: "What are you doing?" as if she were a madwoman about to take her own life; what was left of it; don't joke.

    "Tess, what are you doing?" at her side now and staring with such a woeful face that she set the torch aside, cracking knees and up to say, "I'm working again, that's all. Working."

    "But all your stuff, you're tearing it up." Mme Lazarus stripped and gutted like a burned-out car, his gaze on the shell of her; back to Tess with a mournful accusatory eye. "If you didn't want it anymore, we could've taken it, stored it or something, but to just hack it up, I mean shit, Tess-"

    
I'm not just hacking it up. Or maybe I am.
"Don't worry, Nicky. I'm going to make new stuff out of it."
Because I'm tired of working for nothing; because I'm burning, burning inside and out and I don't want to eat and I don't want to sleep and I don't want to think about Bibi Bibi Bibi anymore; fuck Bibi.
She knew that Bibi's advent had put her place strictly off limits to the Zombies; similarly Bibi's departure-and they knew, they were two floors down, how could they help knowing-would mean their return; good. She was ready, again, to speak the language of fire, of metal, of pig iron and slag and cables and snips and battering arms but this time battering small, so small, so dense that it was like cutting the burning metal at the molten heart of the world, solid iron shining like an underground star.

    None of which she said to Nicky, underlip down and trying to kid him out of it, heavy-handed, she did not feel at all like joking but she tried. "C'mon Nicky, take it easy, I'm saving all the best parts," and she dangled a scrap of cable depending from which a rusty circlet of metal, some grommet like an eye on a twist of thready muscle rolling so grotesquely that it really did look like an eye and he laughed, a little dry but he laughed. And she laughed, too, entirely false, and Nicky started talking about a show they were thinking of having, they had thought-covert glance-about using, you know, the other one. Salome. Watching her eyes as if she might start climbing the walls.

    "Go ahead," instead. "Use it. Do what you want with it, blow it up, I don't care," and happy now, perhaps they had wanted this permission for a while; they had never really needed it. He would tell Peter and Jerome, he said, they would all talk with her later, talk about Salome and the show. And she smiling, waving at him as she drew the goggles on; it would be good, to talk with them, she had not done much talking lately, not much to say in an empty room. Of course there are advantages to empty: no one to say stop working, no one to say you don't understand, no one in fact to say much of anything at all.

    Except Michael.

    Who came by, grave, sleepless, to see how she was; "I just heard," he said, perching quiet on the edge of the couch-bed like a man come to visit the bereaved. "I was away. -How're you doing?"

    "Fine," sweat and rust an interesting pox across her face, her neck, it was freezing outside; she had the windows open to let out the fumes, all the icicles melted from the window frame. Brittle, herself, as an icicle: "Who'd you hear from?"

    "Bibi."

    Silence.

    "I told her, I don't care about listening to right and wrong, don't make me choose sides because I won't. I'm your friend, too. I always will be." Hands on knees, frayed gloves gone and skin parched by cold to an iron red; redeyed, rubbing at his face. "If I can do anything to help you, I wish-"

    Harsh, "Like give me a shoulder to cry on? Well, I don't want to cry, Michael, and you can tell Bibi that, too, I don't feel like crying because I'm not sad. " Headache like a fever, full-bloom behind her eyes,
what else did she tell you? Did she tell you we fought about you, that she was jealous, that she thought we were fucking, me and you? Did she?
and "Tess, what's wrong?" alarmed, rising and Tess felt her mouth smiling, a smile like the blistered gash of a burn and she told him, sharp as a rusty edge, Bibi's screed, maybe you'd rather have a cock between your legs and when she was finished it took only a moment for the shame to set in, long embarrassed flush as if coming out of a sideshow hypnotist's trance:
did I make an ass of myself? Did I bark like a dog, scratch like a chicken with my hands in the dirt?
Without looking at him, "I'm sorry, Michael, I didn't-I'm sorry."

    His silence, finally looking up at him and he was almost smiling, a strange little smile. Finally, "Was she right?" White light through the window; hot all over, and the air cold against her skin. Opening her mouth, closing it and suddenly Michael laughed, that, one-armed hug, loose and warm as ever: "Boy do you look nervous. Don't worry, I won't hold you to it," and somehow that was an insult, too, Tess trying to explain, it was a fight, see, and I said and he laughed, more softly, kissed her cheek; his lips colder than his hands.

    "Calm down, all right?" and his squeeze, little fissure of pain: her skin cracked open, blood on his hands like a bridge born between them, a lush tropical color like some exotic drink. They looked at the blood in a silence considering, and then like a broken spell Tess pulled her hands away, hunted up a towel, a rag for him to use; and he wiped his hands, slow and careful as if in the performance of a ritual where each step is necessary and necessarily done. And then kissed her again, more chaste than ever, and left: "Call me," from the doorway. "Hear? Call me. "

    
Yes,
she said.
I'll do that,
and her covert gaze from the window, leaning back to see and not be seen; silly; if she wanted to watch and wave, why not?

    
No.

    That night in bed she wept, wretched swirl of empty blankets, hands against her face and she bit down, dry skeleton teeth in the heel of her hand and sleepless till dawn, till the room turned cold with winter light and a perilous dust of snow beneath sills as cracked and porous as the skin of her hands.

    " 'S like Le Cirque Archaos, you ever hear of them?" Nicky expert with duct tape, long nickel streamers down his T-shirted chest, hanging strips of silver skin; he tore one off, applied it to the peeling underside of a plastic breastplate tacked to an empty oil drum. "It's a sort of anticircus, like the Surgeons kind of but without art, you know? I saw the video, it was pretty torqued. -Where'd I put the-"

    "Here." Tess handing him the heavy circle; he tore off another length and taped it to his chest. Cold in the Zombie workshop, almost as cold as her place. She had a terrible headache, it felt like a gopher was chewing its way out of her head. Just back and freshly fired from the body shop, not enough work and too much bad blood; jeered as she left and calm in the doorway, considering a 180-pivot to spray the bunch of them with fire; but that was a Bibi thing to do, wasn't it? Besides they could just as easily have burned her down, too, so why start? Save your energy: look for a new job. Or don't; freeze and starve. But she didn't want to freeze and starve, she didn't want the electricity cut off; she wanted to work, getting so close to completing this new piece, so different from the others, so tricky and oblique. Bad timing for eviction, though no doubt the Zombies would have taken her in if only to keep their former mentor off the street; but the workshop was so crowded with three, four would be unbearable. And they were busy, all of them, arranging shows or working their own pickup jobs or fucking one of the changeless coterie of girls, not women but girls in red slouch hats and leather jackets, girls with high-cut hair and black lipstick whom she sometimes saw running errands, pushing metal, hanging around the service elevator watching the Zombies trundle their machines, up and down, in and out.

    So. Not to worry, she would just have to find something else, the grind in her stomach, she was already pared so close to the bone. But. It would be okay because it had to be, had to and Nicky saying something,
Tess, hey.
"Tess," nudging her and it was Michael in the doorway, stomping snow off his boots; smiling at her.