Skin (25 page)

    And then a cool internal pause.

    Meat on the chopstick, the bifurcating spear. "Michael, where'd you hear all this?"

    "The message." Nodding at the phone. "On the machine, it was a-"

    "I erased that."

    "No you didn't."

    
Yes I did. Did I?
Remembering the minute, heatgun anger and suddenly unsure; she had had a hard time playing it, maybe she hadn't erased it.

    Maybe she had.

    "-mentioned something about it, too," a name she didn't know, woman's name, Michael had many friends. "She was even going to try out, I guess, but then she ran into Crane-remember him? Bibi's old-"

    "I remember."

    "Yeah, so anyway Crane gave her some story about the Surgeons and that Bibi was even more extreme now, so she -what's the matter?"

    "Nothing." More extreme. How many little rings now, Bibi, how many scars, how much blood? Is all of it yours? Remembering Bibi's lectures to an audience of one, one at a worktable sitting silent in the storm of doctrine, they're going to do it anyway; it's so powerful. Like sex. Like religion. The freeing of primitive instincts, the direction: they have to be led. Bled? Sacrificial blood, Bibi slick to her elbows, covered with blood and honey and Matty behind like a nurse at the table, altar:
scalpel please; knife please; ax. Please.

    "Tess, what's the matter?" His frown, close enough to smell the ginger on his breath, the tang of the beer; he took her hands. "This shit with Bibi-I know you hate Matty, I hate him, too, he's an asshole, but Bibi's a big girl and she can do whatever she wants with whoever she wants. Even bring back the Surgeons, unless you feel like suing her for-"

    "Oh please-"

    "I know, it's absurd, that's what I mean. She's a free agent," squeezing her hands now, softly, "just like you." More softly, looking down so she had to look up: "Are you jealous? Still?"

    Pale in the light from the worktable, two hundred certain watts and his eyes unblinking, staring down at their joined hands; Tess's burned skin like a brand: for lying. "No," leaning now, the Judas kiss. "I'm not jealous, it's just-I don't know what it is. I guess I think it's not a good idea," and looking past him at the light on the worktable proper, the figure of number five and the growing box around it: a female figure this time, and razor wire rusted like braille: what did it say, what cryptic sorrowing admonitions if only she could read? See your future in the wire.

    Michael said something else, bright, released her hands to start eating again. Tess put her food aside, gray as flesh in the little cartons, the beer in her mouth like ash and water, a penitent's drink: the sour genesis of tears.

    Rumors, it was all she had but there were always plenty of rumors, even for someone as isolated as Tess, about someone as fiercely flamboyant as Bibi. The Zombies heard some things, Michael heard things, too, and she encouraged him, all of them, to hear more: relentless and at the same time remorsefully conscious of use, it was ugly to use people, especially to do a job you ought to do yourself; and why not? Why not just pick up the phone and call her, say What are you doing now? Let's be buddies, Bibi, let's let bygones be bygones and how about I get in free to your shows? And incidentally, what kind of shows are they going to be? The kind they hold in basements and empty buildings, the kind with half-closed eyes and mouths a little open, just a little, just to catch the smell? The kind someone has to clean up after, careful motion of the rag and the long broom, sweeping wet toward the slippery hole of the grate in the center of the floor?

    Filtering gossip, the half-heard, the improperly remembered and from it Tess made her own tapestry, her own little puzzle and clue: picture this: Bibi had apparently met, again, the inevitable limits, began to feel her own experimentation on too small a scale, so voila, new Surgeons, but not really Surgeons after all. This would be performance, maybe even dance, too, but its essence was to be the body transformed, the dark caperings of flesh fantastic, bound and banded, pierced and scarred and ridged with the needle's calligraphy of pain, and passion. Around her she had begun to gather this group, more rigorous and exclusive than the Surgeons had ever been, had begun, already, to train them to her own severe specifics, while still, said Michael-quoting the vast they-continuing her own private experimentation; her body was the vanguard.

    Matty Regal was part of it, of course, and Andy, but no others whom Tess knew, or knew she knew: perhaps she had met them, at the few parties Bibi had dragged her to, seen them at the shows, crouched and grinning, the ones who screamed loudest for the needle, who pushed and shoved at the sight of blood.

    And Michael disdainful, he had met, he said, a few of them, didn't know names but if that was Bibi's idea of-

    "What are they like?" Avid as an open mouth and hating it, hating herself for the feigned tone, the lightly raised eyebrow; you liar.

    "Let's put it this way," leaning over her at the worktable, balancing his chin on her shoulder tensed true and straight as a two-by-four: "She was better off with the Surgeons. A lot better. When she thinks ‘jump,' they all go hop off a building. Metaphorically, unfortunately. And it isn't jump she's thinking, not anymore… They're the last thing she needs now, Tess, and that's a fact." Musingly, half-lost with his lips on her neck, "I want you two to work together." Hands on her breasts. "Just the two of you, no baggage, nobody else to get in your way. Then you'd see some sparks." Thumbs kneading at her nipples and Tess half-aroused, half-irritated, she wanted to work: almost a smile: "Me and Bibi, yeah. And what would you do?"

    She felt his smile against her skin, the stretch and pull of his lips, flesh to flesh: "Me? I'm the director." Fingertips light on her nipples, irresistible, her own loose grip on the heavy screwdriver, tilting upward like a phallic pun and his teeth were on her neck, canted sharp as a wolverine's: "Don't you know there's always more than one way to perform?"

    Heavy rain. Electricity flicking on and off, a child's light-switch mischief, near midnight and Tess winding down: more tired, tonight, than usual, a long dark day and this piece was done, really, it was down to tinkering now. Woman figure, its skull the tiny sleekness of a rat, mummified rat, she had found it wedged behind the toilet behind a V-shaped spear of subdivided plaster, beheading it free of its starved body with one guillotine pinch of heavy-duty tinsnips and for some reason Michael had found this funny, laughed all the way out the door. Dirty gray fur merging with the slender steel of stick-figure shoulders, the rudimentary nervous system of thin-coated wire that made it, her, move. And she will: just press your hand against the razor wire, just exactly so; does it hurt?
Mm-hmmm
.

    Noise at the door, rising expectant for Michael: but: Nicky. Two cans of Chinese beer, rain-slicked hair and he looked like a ferret, a wet ferret, an old-style greaser. "Hey," holding up the beer. "Got a minute?"

    "Sure. Just finishing up," socketing the soldering pencil, neat sweep of plastic crumbs, slivers of wire into the basket; she left the big light on. Knee to knee with Nicky on the couchbed, raising the beer one to the other.

    "To your stuff," and smiling, her headshake as she drank the toast. Foam on her lower lip. Something strange about Nicky; she realized he was nervous. About what?

    "Tess, listen. I gotta ask you something." Silence. He drank his beer in long hectic swallows, a stalling drink, set the empty can at his feet. "Your stuff-it's really great, you know?"

    "Right."

    "Come on," and he was nervous, nervous enough to be angry. "It's fucking great and you know it. I want to," pause unto awkwardness and then, "I want you to show me."

    "Show you what?"

    Picking up the can, squinting away. Squeezing the can. "Show me how to do it."

    Her silence, now, honestly nonplussed; Nicky was as good with metal as she, what would he need to learn from her? Technique? Approach? "Nicky," picking her way, "I don't know what you-"

    "Like that," pointing, can forgetful in his hand, "that piece there, that's a genius piece, Tess, that's the maximum article, it's fucking torqued out of its mind! I want to do that. I want to make stuff like that. I want you to show me how." Pause. "Michael says-"

    "Says what?"

    "Just that, just-your work, it's great." Nicky was lying; no, Nicky was not telling everything. Nicky was so nervous now he could not keep still, had to rise from the couchbed, fidgety bounce to the worktable to touch with still hands the barest edge of the razor wire. How big his hands were. "So will you, or what?"

    "Nicky, what can I teach you that you don't already know?"

    "Just let me watch, then, all right? Just let-" Unwilling, unable to think of what else to say: "All right, if you want to, I don't care but, Nicky, you should really-" All smiles, bounding back to grab both her hands, big puppy spilling her beer unnoticed: "Tess, man, it'll be fucking great, you'll see," jumping bean and to the door, leaning back around it to say "See you tomorrow!" as if they might start at the first wink of dawn, cloppity-clop down the stairs, her new trick pony and what the hell, really, had all that really been about?

    "What was that all about?" startling her but just Michael, wet cheeks and on the stairs unheard in Nicky's backwash, coming to kiss her and his lips were wet, too. Letting his jacket fall where it was, headshake like a dog out of water. "It's raining like a motherfucker out there. What did he want, Tess?"

    She told, faint bemused brevity and instantly surprised by his instant scorn: "Nicky?" heel-pushing off his boots. "His brain wouldn't even make a good sponge. What the fuck can Nicky learn from you?"

    "What's the matter with you?" before him, head cocked, hands loose. "Why should you care?"

    Slippery hands through hair dark with water, rubbing them dry against his thighs. His lips looked puffy, the bratty frown of a spoiled child; faint strawberry on his cheek shifty as a bruise concealed. "I don't care, that's not the point. I just don't think it helps you grow, that's all. I think it wastes your time."

    "You're the one who sent him to me."

    His underskin stillness, the sense of a square of silence over a big dark hole; and her own surprise uneasy, where had that picture come from? What hole? but he was talking, "What's that supposed to mean?"

    Michael says. Michael says
your work's great.
"Something you told him. Something about my work. Don't you remember?"

    "If I remember right," coming toward her, each step separate and particular, "the last thing I said to Nicky was where's the can opener, matey. I don't know what the fuck he's talking about." Close to her now, not smiling, taking her hands in hands as cold and slick as the endless spill of rain down the windows, black cataract and his voice very reasonable, very matter-of-fact: "You do what you want, Tess, but I'm telling you right now I think it's a waste of time. You don't grow, you know, you die."

    Her pause, deliberate, deliberately long:
It's my time to waste and I'll die if I want to
but she didn't say it, said nothing, rain on the window, cold fingers around hers as she pulled her hand away,
I have work to do tonight. All right?

    
All right?

    "Whatever you want, honey," his smile, casual strip of his shirt, damp shirt, neck and armpits ringed with wet; hair half-wet, half-dry, pale and dark across his scalp like a changeable pelt, as if he were two creatures. "I think I'll just go to bed."

    Nicky was serious; he meant to watch and the next day he did, initial distraction but the longer he sat there the blue of his jeans became the dun of the wall, his slouch the peripheral fade of a coatrack, a bent sculpted arm; even his questions came couched in a flat un-Nicky-like monotone, she could answer without thinking hard.

    There were six of the boxes now, the seventh grown and building under Nicky's stare: this one a slanting tunnel of sullen steel burned dark around the round-mouth aperture, and inside no figure but a torso, studded, poisoned with eyes, all eyes, eyes in the armless armpits, eyes in the belly and groin, eyes made of tiny steel balls etched with the wide pupils of hysteria, the slanting glare of madness: and more eyes, couched in slits surprising, here and there up the sides of the tunnel, some gouged to blindness with big blunt-headed nails: see no evil. And then her capricious spray of heavy matte black, paint in blurts and spots and here and there, only a few eyes left open, only a little vision left to see, what? Nicky, watching, himself all eyes? Michael crossing like a smiling spirit, muffled and buffered in heavy black, long legs, new-old boots, bandaged wrist and an oversize black peacoat he claimed he had found in a club:
don't let me bother you. Either of you.
And Tess, her own thin smile back, saying nothing, she was saying nothing a lot these days. Except in bed.

    Where his hands were often cold, his corpse feet oblong against her shins; bad circulation, he said, or said It's cold in here; warm me up. His erection like a lead splint, iron in her hands and she worked him hard,
I'll make you warm; I'll burn you.
Burning, sucking his bruisy lips, wet thighs all muscle; she had lost weight again, her visible bones cored with vanadium steel, her teeth socketed brittle as she rode him, rode him, hands on his shoulders, grip through his growing hair, growing longer, sweet little pubic curls and when she came she growled like an animal, grinding teeth; her fingers left marks in his skin. He liked her to leave marks. He had plenty of them, abrasions, skin in little halfmoon bites-

    "When did I do that?"

    "Last week. On the floor, remember?"

    -and she wanted to leave more, bite harder; burn; some things needed burning. Working all the time, she hated the machine shop, stupid robot work but they needed the money, they were living on what she made beyond Michael's vague income, his unspecified employments (he did not tell and she found without surprise she was uneager to learn; there was much about Michael she was content to leave alone). Working on her art, staring Nicky and, now, Bryan, one of Nicky's friends, sallow and always frowning, as if he were attempting to suck out her brain and all she knew through the strawlike tube of his concentration; lots of luck. She could have had more observers, more silent students-people were calling her, now, people she had not thought of for a year and more: gallery people, even, asking if she was showing at all.
No,
she said, if not polite then at least civil, a little, but sometimes less in her surprise: dismay: they wanted her to show, they wanted to see; they wanted, Michael said, to buy: commissions.