Skin (23 page)

    "You eat?" he said.

    "Hi, Nicky." Beautiful now in a glacial way, dirty white parka, hair cut very very short all over and the thin sickle earring, silver in the shape of a scythe. Kissing her cheek, its cold dangle against her skin: "I have a car today, you want to go out? Nicky," politely, "you want to come along?"

    
Gotta work
, he said,
lots to do before the show
. "Next Friday, Tess, don't forget," and back to work ripping tape, Michael asking her questions about the Zombies' new show, keeping her talking until they sat curled in a halfbooth before a steamy window, chicken hut in stick-on letters facing backward to the street; stringy chicken ka-bobs drenched in pink hot sauce, small fat cups of coffee; his thigh next to hers.

    "And what about you?" Sauce on his lower lip. "What'd you do today?"

    Tiying to smile. "Got fired," and then in haste, before he could commiserate, pat her back, cheer her up, stupid, it was stupid, "It's not a big deal, Michael, really. I can get more work, I can always get-"

    "But what about in the meantime?"

    Dead chicken on a stick. "I have some money saved," a lie; a shrug. "I can get by okay."

    Silence. He finished his chicken, his coffee, Tess trying to finish, she was so unhungry, her head hurt so bad. On the way back, stopped at a red light and he touched the keys in the ignition, set them swinging: clipped to the ring itself was another set of keys, Bibi's rejects; with the Zombies' permission she had given them to Michael, he was spending so much time with her now. Kindly time, simply sitting, reading or watching as she worked, saying little, just warm, just there.

    He swung the keys again.

    "I want to move in," he said.

    "What?" Stupid; mouth open. She said it again: "What?"

    "I said," green light, "I want to move in. I'm working a little, I can help you. Come on, Tess, you know you don't have any money saved, you told me a couple weeks ago you were behind on your electric bill, they'll cut it off and then how will you work? Especially with that piece so close to being done."

    Silence. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt sick, head and heart, hurting everywhere and she didn't want him to move in,
didn't want anyone, if I can't have Bibi I don't-

    "Hey," gently, not looking at her-and uncanny, so Bibi- like to know, "I'm not Bibi, okay? And I'm not going to try to be her either, so relax. All I want to do is help out a little, okay? I meant to say something before, but now-" Hands tight on the wheel; she leaned against the other door, slump and slope, eyes closed because she was going to be sick in a minute; or cry; something bad, something she didn't want to do. Something inside, hot like tears but dark, livid, a surging mess like puke, like bile, liquid anger and Michael said something else, she would be doing him a favor, too, it was overcrowded and something-something and she said, very quietly, very very quietly, "I don't want a roommate. I don't want anyone there."

    Open eyes to see Michael looking at her, his face wiped blank. "All right," and then silence for the rest of the drive.

    In the dashlight, door open and on his face a nonexpression so absolute that for a moment, slush to her ankles, head pounding, she could not properly interpret: then past her own misery to see more: not angry, or maybe angry too but-hurt. He was hurt. She had hurt him.

    Standing in the slush, hot whisper of exhaust and she said his name,
Michael, Michael I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

    The car was still running.

    Michael said nothing.

    

    

    Keys lonely in the lock; dark all the way up the stairs.

    She barely made it to the toilet before her whole dinner came up in one long blurt of pink and brown and she crouched with her face on the cold horsecollar seat and did not cry, stared at the wall where Bibi had tacked a postcard of the Empire State Building scaled by a giant skeleton and did not cry. And did not sleep again that night, restless beneath blankets slick with cold, light through the window on her worktable like the admonishing finger of a patienceless god.

    Tweeks later, Michael moved in.

    He parked the borrowed car beside the building, by the service elevator where Bibi had always parked, and brought as little as she had (and stop comparing them): clothes, books mostly-Ballard and Burroughs and Angela Carter, some photography monographs, Arbus and Witkin and Weegee, a strange German omnibus of surgical techniques with a lengthy appendix of failures-and a handful of toilet articles so strangely lavish-French moisturizer, heavy cream shampoo-that on seeing them Tess wanted to laugh: there was a dandy in there somewhere, past the cropped hair and dilapidated boots, the parka that looked like he had fished it from a Dumpster and probably had. He brought as well his silences, his small jokes, help when she needed it; money, and he seemed to know without asking how much was required. While the borrowed car was his he drove her around to body shops, tool shops, parked patient and he never asked for gas money or accepted when she offered; cheering like a child when she found another job: a machine shop, part-time and time enough time to do her real work. He never complained when she spent the night working, never mentioned the stink or the glare, only lay, stretched calm as an angel on a ratty red plaid bedroll unfurled at an angle to the couchbed. He brought the physical comfort of another body in the house, warm and moving (although he did not so much as hint there might be more ways to move, pleasing Tess who thought she had had enough of lovers lately, thank you, thank you so much). And, rarest, he brought to her, again without asking, the gift she wanted most but could not admit to wanting: news of Bibi.

    Who was not idle: she spent, Michael said (and what a tale, gleaned from friends and almost-friends and hangers-on, Bibi knew everyone and everyone certainly knew her) much of her time now moving between the incongruity of plastic surgery clinics to the wet-cardboard reek of the shacktowns, where in the space that no one wanted, much experimentation occurred: where the limits of the body were pushed further and further back, where the philosophy of modification itself was stringently debated, sometimes with fists and grinning teeth: does one modify from love or hate of the body and its limits, for sheer sensation or more eloquent pursuits? -And Tess, passionate: "I wanted it to be more, for her sake. I did," and Michael's nod, arm around her shoulders; only that, a nod: he understood.

    In her own body Bibi sought answers, her disciplines less spontaneous now but more extreme: where once she and Michael had listed for one another the seven categories of body play, the seven major avenues of expression, now she seemed bent on exceeding each. Contortion, constriction, encumberments and deprivation; the walling-away of the body in plaster, the encasing of warm flesh. Fire. Penetration. Suspension. In her own body, by the bindings, the piercings, the elegant tortures Bibi sought her own answers, as well as answers to questions only she would dare to ask (and Tess's pride, cold and obscure: there was no one like Bibi, exceeding limits no one else had guessed were there): proven by new disciplines, rigors she spoke of only obliquely and would not deign to share. Sinking deeper into her own flesh, she seemed to be transforming, in the eyes at least of others, into more, and less, than human, a creature shaped and bounded only by the edge of her desires.

    More mythic than even in her Surgeons days, skinny body in black and red, always a new bandage, a new bruise or laceration: and always the same impatient brutality, as if to find her answers she must tan living flesh, break bones to heal them in humps deliberately grotesque and dire; nothing was safe from her, most especially herself.

    They said (Michael said) she was becoming a fakir, that she slept in bindings, in bondage harnesses, with plaster drying on the rims of her eyes and mouth. They said she was learning how to pierce without bleeding, nothing but a faint plasma dribble to mark the tiny holes, a hundred avid mouths born pink and new on her thin skin. They said she performed the Sundance ceremony, hung from hooks through the skin of her chest, her breasts; painted her face with blood; went for days without eating or drinking anything other than lukewarm water. They said-that anonymous they-that when she spoke it was black genius; was all the way out there; was crazy as a shithouse rat.

    And Tess, listening, hands knotted and thinking, thinking; worrying without thought, just the visceral turn of her guts: something is wrong here. Something is not safe: for her. For anybody connected with her; and who was connecting with Bibi, these days?

    Of Matty Regal Michael said very little; they were maybe collaborating, "maybe," at her deep frown of distaste and dislike. "I don't really know."

    "On what?" The resurrection of the Surgeons? Something worse? What?

    "I don't know that either, but I think if it was going to be performance or anything like that we'd've heard about it, somebody always wants to tell you-anyway." Scratching at his neck, pale drift of stubble. "What're you going to work on today?"

    Day off from her machine-shop job, boring mating of metal to metal but it paid better than the body shop with more free time; like today. Made to be spent at the worktable and she swallowed the end of her bad coffee, rose from the couch-bed: "At it," she said. "All day, if I can." He had errands, left to do them, left her in light and the small figure complete, now, but not done: because she was doing something new, creating as well an environment, the construct's home: thin steel corners and scratched discarded Lexan a smoky blue sky; air; element, the beast-machine made to move within that finite square. At first consideration the idea had seemed too limiting, but now she knew it was not, knew by hard practice that the movements engendered in that bound landscape were by its very circumscription that much more dense, and focused; and free. Terribly free, the way a whole life can be lived in one room. To see the construct pressed and moving against the Lexan gave a feeling she knew she had not conjured with her other works, the big Madame, the triune ferocity of the Triple Deaths. Her original genesis, of room-filling machines, huge lumbering sculpture made to move like dinosaurs now seemed exactly that: extinct, a scope unnecessary: what was needed was a distillation, tabletop constructs (and, perhaps, even smaller?) enclosed in boxes that would both enhance and define their function and meanings; more than art, each box must be memory, fear, sorrow, each box a microcosm of-what? The guilt in the night, the pain she still felt, would always feel? Did it matter, did she need to say the words even to herself? She could not think these things in words, or concepts, any more than she could think of breathing as sheer respiration, heart and blood as circulatory necessities; she knew without words, without conscious thought, knew by the turn of the fire, the slippery drip of silver solder, the slim heft of the hammer and the way it turned in her hand.

    She articulated nothing; only worked. And Michael returned, to watch; through winter's cold decline, the snake dance of ice down the windows; reading sometimes, or sleeping, but mostly elbow-propped in the line of sight, the chitter of metal and sinuosities of smoke, Tess's sweat and smile past the goggles and the bright concentration of the burn.

    She made three pieces, titled none of them; destroyed two and started over with more parts from the older pieces, the large feeding the small; forced nurture. And one night, Michael curled in red plaid and one bare foot extended, she working in her circle and realizing, as she put a piece through its paces, that for this piece at least she had not once wondered what Bibi might have thought of it; had not thought of Bibi at all. And was unsure if this was good or bad, knew only it encompassed a sadness immense, the sadness not of death but death's austere attendant, forgetfulness.

    Cold. Still winter in the room.

    A little sound: sleeping Michael, breathing in and out, warm breath, warm body under the blankets and suddenly Tess wanted to go to him, pull the blankets down and lie beside him, just lie there, her arms around him and her closed eyes quiet, breathing in his smell, breathing in and out. Just lie there.

    
Go on.

    
No.

    
If it were Bibi, you would do it.

    
If it were Bibi,
she thought,
I wouldn't have to
; and back to work, this night a mortician, a taxidermist's tedious slow stripping of one part from another, the peeling-back of metal like the deliberate strop and shed of willing skin.

    

    

    The Zombies were having another show,
Strategic Interventions
; Jerome's name, Nicky's choice of venue: cracked and empty bowl of concrete, built in the seventies for some purpose now unknown and used mostly by skateboarders in the summer. Now, slithers of ice, a strangely dry smell when standing in the center: dead center: Tess was standing there now, hands clenched in pockets, shivering in waves and talking through a little headset mike.

    "How about now?" Peter's voice duplicated, large and small: loudspeakers in three corners and intimate through the headset, like the voices of God and conscience both talking out loud. "Is this okay?"

    "Sounds good."

    "Okay. How about now?"

    "Too much feedback," tapping her ear, realizing he could not see the small gesture; amending, "Feedback through the headset," and the volume came down, her breath a slow trickle of smoke.

    They had wanted her, nagged her to be in the show.
We know you're working on stuff, declaration blunt and excited: come on, it'll be fun, all of us together again.
Pinning her at her worktable-like old times, like old times, too, their awe when she showed the two finished constructs: one caged in blue Lexan and steel, animal and machine; the other in a prison prismatic, fake holography around a scrap skeleton, iron and plastic and wire crowned by the grievous skull of a bird.