Skin (28 page)

    His hand falling away slowly from her like a shed limb; and silence as he slept, or seemed to, and Tess lay waiting, night rolling like a wheel toward sleep, toward morning, toward found meaning and its secret twin, forgetfulness, in the rarefied chamber austere of work, and work, and nothing but.

    Michael's breathing, child-sweet, sleeping hands open like night-blooming flowers, small dull sore at the juncture of wrist and palm.

    And now Bibi's face on the ceiling, outlined in shadows, running like metal, molten; like blood.
Whose blood, Bibi? Do you miss me at all?

    

    

    The next show on the heels of the last, it seemed to Tess too quickly: Catherine wheel in big aggressive letters, someone's bare breasts in bright silhouette and-again- Bibi's iconic stare; those eyes. Tacked to a magazine kiosk, the dull daytime door of a club, stuck to a hundred telephone poles; even on her worktable, spread under Michael's considering fingers; and to Tess's entering stare, his unsmiling touch tracing beneath Bibi's eyes: "Good production values," he said, "we could use something like this."

    "For what?"

    "For when you decide to stop punishing yourself and start having shows again."

    That was past answering, so she said nothing, nothing when he told her, he said, what she ought to have known for herself: it was time to stop bullshitting around, take some responsibility for her art, go see the fucking show. One arm out like Mussolini, chin stuck out and declaiming, she was cheating herself, worse yet she was cheating her art by the way she-

    Not loud, but harsh, jagged cadence of half-desperation: "Why don't you do it, then? Huh? Why don't you start making art instead of bitching at me?"

    And Michael at once very still, pausing on the breath taken for reply but saying nothing, bas-relief; and a feeling beneath that silence; what feeling? His face so calm, beautiful as the moon or the surface of black water, and underneath the long slick splinters that can tear your skin to ribbons, rip up your hands, pierce your eyes if you fall; glass underwater, and what made her think of that? A memory: falling on the beach, falling underwater and the pain she had not guessed was there, slim and incredible, sliding deep into her knee; blood on the water, on her leg pulled forth lean and slick as a root. Screaming for her mother, her child's voice, screaming.

    Then as if she had not spoken, his slow headshake and "If you won't do it for yourself, then see it for your students, do them a favor. They're what you care about, right?"

    Tired, exquisitely tired and into her rubbing fist, fist against her lips, rubbing and rubbing as if she would wear away the need to speak: "They can go if they want, I'm not stopping them."

    "Yes you are. By your attitude you are."

    "They can do whatever they-"

    "Because you don't go, they won't. They think they'd be betraying you or something, they think-"

    "Then let them tell me! What are you telling me for?" Voice rising, but she forced it back down, monotone, monochromatic: gray. Fist to her lips again. "How do you know what they think anyway?"

    As quietly as she, but with great emphasis: "I hear the things people don't say."

    
I bet you do
but she didn't say that, didn't say anything, went about putting the screens into place again because she was ready for a burning, yes, today was the right time to burn something. River of metal and she Charon, pilot of the dead, the metal-cold, the empty boxes growing even smaller, now, little pieces you could hold in two hands, like a bomb: no lesser energy, in fact more, a laser's concentration, distillation, an immense subtlety needed to bring the power of pain to a place that small, to hold it in your hands like agony's particulate: the better to examine you, my dear. My darling. Why had she never made a box about love, made anything about love? Even in the happiest days with Bibi: why not?

    
Maybe you don't know how to love.

    She had thought she loved Michael, but now, see him turning away-again, away from her, she had hurt him somehow by her words; the pain she had not intended like the spiked garden of glass underwater. But what to say to a turned back, how to make amends to a closing door?

    He was reading AntiTrust, an ad for Bibi's show within, next to the ads for leather shops, for the all-night titty bars with double-digit cover; he did not look up when she said his name, said it twice, did not look up when Nita came in, Bryan, Edgar-Marc and the others like a pack of street dogs, scruffy, energetic, she had forgotten it was time for them, not time to burn. The hell with it; she would burn anyway.

    To Nita: "Go downstairs," picking up her own helmet, "ask Nicky to bring all the helmets he has, goggles, whatever. -Where is Nicky, anyway?"

    "On-site," Edgar-Marc's little-boy croak, a voice forever on the cusp of puberty. "He said to tell you."

    The Zombies show upcoming; she had forgotten. Too many shows to remember. "All right, then. Nita, go on, Jerome or somebody is probably down there." Waiting in their amiable noise but she herself in silence, Michael's silence, watching him from the corner of her eye: graceful slouch across the unmade bed, had they really slept in that bed last night, warm and wordless, had he touched her with the tip of his penis, just lightly, just there on the inner skin of her thigh: like an insect with a flower, like a doctor with a needle? This won't hurt a bit. Had she held his panting head to her shoulder? whispered his name on orgasm's cusp, whose name? Whose eyes, in her mind's eye?

    "I got these," Nita back with one helmet, a pair of painter's goggles hung from her big hands like an ornament; useless, and Tess opening her mouth to say so when Michael, rising, still so very still but nodding to Nita, "I'll show you. Come on," and out the door, down to the second floor; he knew where everything was.

    Edgar-Marc saying something, obviously happy with the presence of the screens; joyful pyromaniac, he liked to burn, he reminded Tess at times of herself, of Jerome. Jerome who went to Bibi's shows; maybe they all wanted to go, maybe Michael was right and she was holding them back. She ought to say something, make some disclaimer, hadn't she already told Nicky to go? And Nita? When Nita came back, she would make a point of telling her, telling all of them they had her imprimatur and more.

    

    

    Readying for work, spreading out for their inspection her scrapyard bounty; the spent morning climbing hills of metal, creaking silence all around as if inorganic matter had found a way to grow; and wasn't rust growth, of a kind? the growth of decay?
If you don't grow, you die
; one of Michael's favorite sayings and now Michael returned, Nita behind and subdued with an armful of helmets; handing them out. A long strand of sunlight across the floor, warm and steady as a bridge, the bridge between now and never. She stared at it, so long that finally someone, Bryan, said something,
hey Tess.
Tess? And raising her gaze to cloak it, then, in heavy plastic and heavier glass, to hide from light in darkness and in darkness summon the brightest light of all.

    Rain smeared across the windows, last night had been Catherine Wheel and Tess had slept poorly, slept alone, Michael's self-righteous kiss before leaving:
I Am Doing This For You.
Right. Her head aching, up too early and Michael still not back; fine; let him do what he wanted.

    Alone in the shower, trying to masturbate and only sorrowful, thoughts falling heavy as water and Nita's knock remedial, had Tess promised her this time? Probably. Anyway she didn't say no, set her to work on brazing, busywork, keep those big hands moving and now, again, the bright crash, Nita's anxious grab and "Shit, Tess, I'm sorry," scrabbling tools from the floor, headlight eyes dusted with gray; sleepless eyes.

    "I'm sorry, I'm so fucking clumsy," setting herself to haphazard rights. "I-" and a big yawn, prolonged and the pink wash of her open mouth. "I was up real late last night."

    As tired: "Doing what?"

    "I-" and the pause so long Tess knew: the show. She had gone to Bibi's show. An absurd urge to smile, there was something strangely touching about that flustered half stare, hands still on the rearranged tools; maybe Michael had been right, she had by her own avoidance come down too hard. So: careful now, casual: "How was it?"

    And Nita's smile, relieved, "Oh, Tess, it was really in-tense, it was redline. I figured he, I mean I thought-did he tell you?"

    Frowning, the sludgy feel of her brain beginning to turn, worm under rocks, under pressure: "Did who tell me? Tell me what?"

    "Michael," very unsure now, face flushing a deep discomfortable red, big fingers busy unconscious with the tools, the shiny edges. "Did he-"

    "I haven't seen Michael since yesterday morning," and a sudden idea, contracting like cold water, the words out of her mouth as hard and flat as her hands on the worktable, fingers tight: "What did he tell you?"

    Silence; the nervous silence of fear.

    "Nita. What did he tell you?"

    Blue eyes blinking now, wide and dry with alarm: "He said you should know about the shows, it would help you, he said you wouldn't go for yourself and that I, that we should, like, be your eyes. We should see for you, he said, he said that I-"

    As if from the bottom of a well: "Who went?"

    The jitter of tools. "Me and Edgar-Marc. Jerome was there, too, but he wasn't with us, I don't even think he saw we were there."

    "No," not even to Nita, of course it would be Nita, Nita and Edgar-Marc because they were the least sophisticated, weren't they, easy to manipulate, Tess's little helpers; anything for Tess. Anything can be a tool; Michael knew that, there wasn't much Michael didn't know, was there? Way ahead of me, and her flat hands were cramping, she felt like a piston's hammer the headache's singular pain, amplified by anger, red and black behind her eyes and poor Nita, still staring, waiting for Tess to-what?

    "Hey," slowly. Approaching the way you approach a frightened dog, one hand out:
it's okay. See?
"Nita, it's all right, I'm not mad at you. Okay? Just tell me what Michael told you."

    "Just, just what I said before, that we should go in your place. Because you wouldn't go for yourself. He said," still blinking, rapid flutter of crimping lids, "you needed to know. For your art."

    "Did he say," as slowly, almost conversational, "why I wouldn't go myself?"

    "He said he wasn't sure."

    Standing in the silence like an alcove, a pocket of space outside considering time, standing so long that Nita had to call her name twice: "Tess?" Timidly. "Tess, are we still going to work today?"

    Water in her eyes from the pain in her head; her mouth felt oddly loose, as if she had been fighting, as if someone had broken her jaw. Beside Nita, now, at the worktable, hands blind against the shapes of making, the tools and the wire and screws: "Sure," like an old woman, heavy and old with a killing disease. "We'll work until Michael comes back."

    

    

    After five, and Nita fled, false thanks and glad to be gone, her heavy welder's boots clunking briskly down and out and Tess still at the worktable, its surface spread with the silver clutter of punches and chisels, like tools for an operation: strong, slim, impeccably cold. In hand the chipping hammer, one end beveled, one end a point blunt enough to split bone. Heart beating tandem to the pain in her head; waiting.

    And Michael in, he must have passed Nita in the street: pale hair wind-wild, T-shirt ripped a little, ripped along the hem like a frieze, a fringe. Red around his lips, windburn maybe, faint smile that widened briefly for her, a glossy sliver of yellowish food caught between his teeth. Look past that smile to see the thought that prompts it, the busy factory of brain; what is in your head, Michael?

    "What?" Pausing; she must have said it aloud. "What did you say?"

    "I said," her voice like the hammer, "how was the show?"

    Coolly, "Very instructive. Very intense."

    "That's what Nita said."

    Now: reaction, anger or denial, the gathering moment of possible explanation but instead she saw the seamless stillness of a neutrality so absolute that it was as if she accused a statue, a piece of her own sculpture, the heavy curve of a light pole in the street: no expression in the reddened mouth, that silent gaze and "You bastard," advancing on him, "how dare you go behind my back, how dare you use them that way?"

    "How dare I? Listen to you," but without heat, her own rage blown back like the air from a smelting furnace, the blister and belch of running steel. "They don't belong to you, Tess, they have a right to do whatever they-"

    "They have a right not to be lied to! Or used, to make a point, to-"

    "What point? That you're afraid to go to Dibi's shows, that you're jealous of her?"

    Hands shaking at her sides and in her grasp, still, the hammer; she slung it backward and away, sharp clatter and "Jealous? That doesn't even make any sense."

    "Oh yes it does, I can see it, I can smell it on you," mouth much redder so close, red as a blister, as the burgeoning cast of a sore. "It makes you crazy that Skin-bound's ten times as successful as the Surgeons ever were, you can't stand to see her succeed that way without you. So you denigrate what she does, you tell Nita and Nicky and the rest of them not to-"

    "That's a lie!" Shouting now, harsh echo in tandem with the pain, anger and pain twin sisters, twin screaming harpies against the dry-rolling balls of her eyes. "That is a fucking-"

    "You're the one who's using them." Roused now, palecheeked and the long eyes strangely bitter, voice like a hammer striking, chipping at iron and bone. "You talk about Bibi, about how she manipulates people, but you're the same way, you're worse, you want to control what your students see-students, that's a laugh, what're you teaching them? To be like you are, afraid? Afraid to go as far as you can go, as far as you have to go, to make your art? Bibi knows. Bibi's the one who isn't afraid."