Skin (27 page)

    Right. Michael's serious nod; they were all nodding; they were all very serious. Tess had wanted to run out of the room; but that would be selfish, wouldn't it? They all seemed happy, anyway, and anyway she did her best to do what they wanted. Didn't she?

    And waking in the night, her own mouth open and weeping, crying in her sleep and Michael warm and solid beside her, solidly asleep, arms like lead and bare feet dusty against sheets white as winding cloths; he had spent half the night trying to talk her into seeing a Skinbound show; never. Never never never. You should see what she's doing, see for yourself; no, she had said. I don't want to know what she's doing.

    "It could help you." Exasperated, trying not to show it, showing it when she said How in that particular dull dead voice, staring at her as if she was the crazy one, as if someone had drilled a hole in her head and let out all her brains. "In your art, that's how!" and louder as she said nothing, loudest in the vacuum of her silence until she had turned on him and threw the first thing that came to hand, a black-handled chipping hammer that struck a dent as deep as a quarter in the wall behind.

    His injured shrug:
Fine
. "Fine," and showering, mute and beautiful his naked walk across the room, into bed like an angel atop a sarcophagus; the death of her career, probably. She had worked then, slow and laborious until a short stupid burn, the blistered skin of her thigh; then slept. To wake weeping, wake afresh to Michael's calm gravity, such sweet reason, hand in hers and asking Why.

    "Are you afraid?"
No.
"Are you embarrassed?"
No.
"She doesn't have to know you're there, Tess, she won't even see you," that winning smile but he wasn't winning anything, not here, no use and after a while he stopped; gave up? Maybe. Hands on her throat, loose strangler's grip, mocking throttle that made her head rock back and forth, gently, gently on her neck.

    "You're exasperating," hands a little tighter; kissing the side of her face. "You know that? If you don't grow, you die. And I won't let that happen. You know I only want what's best for you, don't you?"

    "I know."
Do you?
He kissed her again, left as Nicky and Nita came in, hot coffee and opinions, yeah they had seen the flyer, who hadn't? "Fucking thing's everywhere,"

    Nicky blowing noisy at his foam cup. "I even saw it in the pisser at Junk's last night."

    Nita's nod, she had seen it there too, lots of people were talking about it, were planning on going. "They think it's like the Surgeons," and no one but Nita could pronounce that hearsay name with such juvenile reverence, "but I said-"

    "Go if you want," Tess said. "Why not?"

    Silence.

    Nicky's incredulity, "Are you going?" and no, shaking her head, concentrating on the articulated metal hand motionless and adept on the moveable lid of this new box, new piece all of a piece: one metal finger snapped off at the knuckle, one ringed with a bolt painted circus blue. Inside the box was empty; for now. They were still talking, loud and she forced attention, forced herself to turn around.

    "I'm not going," Nita firm and Nicky's echo, to them it was about loyalty; let them do what they wanted. She was in charge of nothing and no one, no wild and singular tribe; no one would ever dance, fight, die because of her; not now; not ever.

    "Okay," the upturned tip of the soldering pencil, silvery drip of solder; machine blood, and their puzzled faces close; they would not ask, not again. "Let's get going here."

    "Tess."

    "No."

    "Tess, you have to go."

    Sullen, "I don't have to do anything." But die. And work. Cold water from the showerhead, why did he choose these moments to badger her? Wet and waterblind and naked; smart. "You go."

    Calm with decision, beautiful-exceptionally so tonight, babychick curls and all in black, austere; not by any chance by chance. "I will. If you're too stubborn, if you can't put personal differences aside for the sake of your art, then I'll-"

    "Don't give me-" but he wasn't hearing, listening, the water too loud and his pronouncement, he would be her eyes and ears if she refused to use her own; he would do that for her. How to summon energy to explain, how to say that to see Bibi's grotesque new circus would be not only to reopen wounds but to salt them with iron; she was tired, now, of pain, she wanted to work and be left alone.

    Michael, coldly, "That's incredibly selfish."

    "That's tough."

    Nothing else. Rubbing her arms and legs, shiver in the steamless air and listening: gone. Wet hair down her back like a drowning victim, staring out the window, to the west: Battery View, a gallery, big gallery set up how? Heavy listing rags, black rags, altars? Scaffoldings? Bibi there already, crouched and grinning like a spider in the darkest corner of the room: changed how, now? and with what light in her eyes? Don't tread on me. And Matty Regal beside her, lesser demon, the jaunty smile of smaller wrong, and her massed troupe, pure Pavlovian sycophants swinging hooks and the shimmer of chains, ready for the lights and the needles, waiting for blood.

    Percussive sounds; metal, falling.
I'll give you all the blood you need
.

    
Be careful, Bibi. No one tells you the truth anymore
.

    
Be careful, Bibi, oh God be careful now
.

    The small cyanide twitch of the articulated fingers, the box lid moving up and down like the vicissitudes of a smile; Bibi's show had been titled Force Majeure. No real dance but a lot of movement, lots of the old fake blood; the bolt-ringed finger looked as if it had once been broken, set poorly to form a curious hornlike hump, calcification; what force shatters steel bones? Force majeure? All kinds of motion, choreographed frenzy of cuttings and bindings and Bibi, Michael said, had been beautiful; all in white like an angel on fire. She had opened the performance by cutting a long shallow trench in her own arm, the sleeve of her costume red and redder in the course of the show. The gallery had been standing room only; a lot of people to watch her bleed herself.

    "She dedicated the show to Paul," Michael said; voice hoarse, he had been a long time coming home last night. Inside the box an emptiness, dry and white. Tess shifted on her stool, minute calibration of movement; the metal fingers flexed again. Could they crush bone? Incrementally?

    "You know, you're not doing yourself any favors, Tess, by not-"

    "Are you still talking?"

    Closing up, now, in an instant, sealing door and through the crack the narrowed stare of disapproval, the brief pointed exhalation that means patience is gone. "You can be a real cunt sometimes, you know that?"

    As weary, "Sticks and stones."

    "Why do you do this?" Hands on her shoulders, not stroking, not squeezing; lying there. His hair still smelled like cigarette smoke. "It's like you hate me. Do you hate me? All I want is for you to keep growing, to get where you need to be."

    The fingers twitched again, unsynchronized, spasmodic, as if the phantom limb to which they belonged had been victim of surging voltage, a killing jolt and Michael's lips very close to her ear: "Bibi knows where she needs to be; I saw that last night. And I know what you need."

    The phone rang; neither moved. Matty Regal's voice, brisk and nasal: "You missed out, Bajac," and something else she didn't hear, the machine cycling into silence as dry and empty as the air in the box. Michael gazing at the phone, a curious blank gaze as if the space behind his eyes lay waiting for the shuffling thoughts to right themselves, like cards in a game; then to Tess, gravely: "He's an asshole. But he's right."

    Quiet as if in the silent cavities of the body; Michael's hands on her shoulders like Art's policeman, you'll have to come with me now. Tess chose a tiny screwdriver, and screws as small as tears; her fingertips were numb. She did not speak or make a sound, and finally Michael turned away, slow creak of the couch-bed, the susurration of blankets drawn high.

    Outside, car doors, Nita and some of the others; it was already almost noon. They would want to talk about the show; they would be loud and opinionated; they would know what she needed, too. How did everyone get so sure? Light and heat; metal and blood; was everyone smarter than she was? Stronger? She had no business teaching anybody, no business being anything but alone with the things she understood: heat and liquid metal, tools and smoke and the confines of the helmet, the only world in which everything was both controllable and past prediction, hot with corrosion and yet perfectly clean, desirable, tender with the possibilities she could see as well as she saw silent Michael, distant as an iceberg, heard as well the steps on the stairs and the hand-she heard it-poised to knock, twice and strident, upon the door.

    

    

    A longer wait between shows, spring bleeding into summer; Michael spent more time gone, Tess had lost ten pounds, she was never hungry. Nita and Nicky took her out to dinner, cafeteria Thai, her hands folded in the booth like a good little girl out for a treat too special to enjoy. Pink shrimp curled forlorn as fetuses, a plastic pitcher of ice water sweating dully on the gray laminate of the table. Upside-down plastic flowers nailed to the ceiling. Nicky told her Matty Regal was thinking of using sculpture in the next show; blunt fingers curling and uncurling his plastic straw and what did she think of that?

    "Nicky, it's a free country," less mild than exhausted, she was sick of being asked for her opinion; wasn't Michael enough? The people at the next table were arguing over a movie. "Let him do what he wants."

    Michael had ceased arguing, but his declamations were pervasive, like the genesis of fire, like rubbing skin to make a blister, to peel it finally back to flesh; he was getting to her, but not the way he wanted. Bibi's face on the cover of a musiczine, Bibi in an ad in the giveaway entertainment weekly; entertainment weekly? Bibi in a tabloid, lurid: skinbound in cockeyed red, her lips red, teeth bare, strange little teeth. Two weeks from now
; are you going, Tess? What do you think, Michael?
Matty Regal using sculpture, Bibi using a knife: are there any volunteers from the audience? Is there a doctor in the house? Nicky and Nita, Bryan and the rest of them, she had trouble remembering their names sometimes, they were all faces: brown eyes, blue eyes, crooked glasses, funny spearmint grin in a circle around her, watching. See? Art. See the hand that catches, the fingers that squeeze, the box lid flapping like a singular terrified wing, wouldn't you want to get away?

    But there's nothing in there.

    
That's the point.
But she didn't say that, tried to get them to see for themselves, make their own points; wasn't that what it was all about? Trying to smile,
see you tomorrow.
Sleeping alone; dreaming of Bibi and waking with her fingers curled between her legs, wanting her; estrangement, a word like a promontory cliff and
no, Michael, I don't want to fuck you, no Michael I won't go to the show.

    

    

    Others went: over three hundred people saw the second performance, paying customers; that kind of money would buy a lot of Betadine, sharpen a lot of knives. Jerome went, told Tess that no matter what, it was still a hell of a show, and Peter chiming in that there were even elements the Zombies might like to incorporate in their own work, certain effects, certain measures of crowd manipulation; Tess silent through this rushed hallway update, lips dry and thin as the smile on a stick figure and she wanted to ask Does anyone bleed? Who bleeds? Who cuts?

    "It really is like a tribe," Jerome said, and Peter nodded, it's follow the leader, it's all Bibi's show. "She's really something, Tess. You might even want to-"

    Brittle headshake, brittle smile. Back inside, locked door and again to work, finish the hand, the grasping hand atop the box of nothing, entropic box filled with everything we become, even the dust of the body's leavings swept away by time's disinterested breath; in the end we have no bodies, in the end we have, we are, nothing at all. Nothing.

    And Michael, back from somewhere, where do you go, Michael? Little sweat curls at his temples, shirt damp beneath the sleeveless windbreaker, black as a dirty rag:
running? Fucking?
Appalling, to know that she did not want to find out, did not want to ask
Are you seeing someone else?

    
Don't you care?
not to him but to herself:
don't you care?

    
No.

    
Why not?

    And now, his hands on her arms, up and down the bare cool flesh, his touch was so very warm. "Tess-are you okay? You don't look good."

    Swiveling on her stool, flat smile like a snake on a rock. "Maybe I need a tattoo. Or a scar."

    His silence. They seemed to have two modes these days, silence and anger, punctuated with moments of a tenderness decayed: head on his shoulder, one nipple soft and thoughtful between his fingers; he would whisper to her, then, tell her how he admired her, yeah absolutely, admired her art, the relentless determination, he saw how she was withdrawing, saving her strength for her work: great, that's great. The nipple half-hard in his touch. Eyes half-closed, Tess sighting the ceiling, what was there to see? Smudges become faces, the faces of Goya dreams, Bacon's screaming pope screaming down at her. Michael's voice in her ear, insinuation, hand damp on her breast.
You have great stuff in you, you have genius, Tess. I swear to God you are a genius. You just have to be willing to let go of everything, even yourself, even what you think is right and wrong, there is so much you could-
and shifting, still in his arms, her face half toward his in the unkind dark but no vision of him in her eyes: "Michael: don't start. Okay? No more commercials."