Skin (3 page)

    "I don't belong anywhere," and wondering as she said it why she had, it sounded so sophomoric, so moronically proud. "I just, I don't really show much."

    "Listen," Crane louder, dragging back attention, one hand full of keys impatient, "can you help me or not?"

    "No. I can't."

    Before his answer, Bibi's smile: "Thanks," as if it had been on her errand they had come. "I'll see you." And gone that moment, out the door and Crane pausing to watch as she did Bibi's silhouette, one long-stepping muscle in tension and his irony, "Well thanks," and graceless down the stairs. Tess watched for a moment longer, to see if she would come back. Nothing. Closing the door, slowly, strange strange eyes and then forgetting it all in the turn and step, back to the workspace and taking up her mask, flipping the grounded switch to start the final burn.

    

    

    Sleeping in to wake sweaty and muscle-sore; the piece was done. Scrap steel and Lexan, glass and the warped plastic throat, it was better than she had expected though still not where she wanted to be; where was that? who knew? She would know when she got there. Still the piece was good: textures all a-mesh and it almost seemed to move, to twitch when not watched, calm semblance of silence in the moment of attention. Smiling a little to think of it creeping loose around the room, trying the windows, trying the door, peering eyeless to clear its plastic throat; dry in self-mockery: anthropomorphizing; watch it. She knew people, artists, who liked to gurgle about their "babies," their "children": "Every one of my pieces is a child of mine," who had said that to her? Horseshit. Children were children and work was work and people were assholes when they started believing their own arty bullshit. They should all work with metal, get burned once in a while: keep them grounded.

    In the shower, the last of the soap in her eyes and somebody knocking, not banging but hard, Tess heard it plainly over the water. Determined. "Shit," hissed between her teeth, eyes burning. Loud: "Who is it?"

    Indistinct.

    "Who is it!"

    "Bibi Bloss."

    Dripping on a T-shirt, the towel around her head, shooting back the dead bolt: "Come on in."

    Alone, smile and ripped leggings, slipping off her black sunglasses to hook them in the stretched neck of her T-shirt. "Hi," closing the door. "If this isn't a good time, please say so."

    "No, it's okay." Stringy wet bangs, dripping onto her cheekbones. Crane's errand? or her own?

    Unerring toward the worktable, she had little feet, Bibi, bony ankles above disintegrating sneakers, she cocked her head like a listening animal and said nothing at all. Examining the new piece for literal minutes, a long time to stand staring but her eyes were busy as a bird's, she left nothing out. Finally: "It's ready to move, isn't it," not a question and Tess nodded, pleased with more than the pleasure of surprise.

    Glancing at the metal rack, tools still in last night's orderly scatter; sun through the chicken wire, endless burn holes and dust. "Tess. Why do you live here?"

    Surprised, "It's cheap. Why?"

    "I just wondered." There was definitely more to it than that but no more was coming now. Silence; Bibi's dirty finger on the piece's throat.

    "What?" wiping at her wet neck, water in her eyes. She felt no footing here, was unsure what to say until she did. Bibi saw, or seemed to; seemed to understand because she nodded, once and brisk.

    "I know; what do I want. Listen, today I made a pilgrimage to that creepy Isis Gallery. Without Crane, incidentally, who's back at his place with two other guys trying to figure out what you told him last night."

    "Doesn't he do his own welding?"

    "Crane doesn't know shit about welding. Why else do you think he came to you?" A pause. "I'm glad I came with him."

    It sounded rude; she said it anyway. "Why?"

    "Because of your work." Full stare, her eyes washed marble light and fingers unconscious on the piece before her. "I wanted to talk to you last night, but not in front of Crane. You must have noticed he's a size-eleven asshole, once he gets started you can't shut him up. And besides, it's none of his business."

    "Are you, is he your-"

    "I used to live with him, if that's what you're asking. He's part-time in a dance group I'm in-he's a much better dancer than he is a sculptor. Which still isn't saying a whole hell of a lot," and that strange little grin again, dry as the curve of a bone. "No, what's mostly wrong with Crane is that he doesn't have anything I want."

    Tess smiled, as much in surprise as discomfort; at least she was honest. "Do I?"

    "Yes. I want to see all your stuff."

    "Why?"

    "Show me," shark's grin, "and I'll tell you."

    

    

    She ended up showing everything, all the way back to Mother of Sorrows, the oldest piece she still had. Beginner's work, not even good enough to be called crude but Bibi inspected it as she did all the others, attention severe and severely focused, all of her there in her eyes. Hot crouch in the endless turn of the fan, windows empty of any breeze and both of them sweaty, spotted with the floating grime from moving between pieces, moving the pieces themselves. Some were painfully heavy, but Bibi was strong as she looked, and stronger; she held up her end with ease. The afternoon passing in a running catalog of material, place, title, then on to method and juice drunk standing, cookies eaten crumbling from the box. The theory and practice of welding, her own experiences, dreary and not, keno accompaniment a chatter and grind to the rod-tip-in-the-shoe story and Bibi's shut-eyed laugh, really funny.

    More talk, Bibi's questions and they were good ones, ancient to modern history now and asking why this place, why not more shows; why the Isis? One dirty hand light on the swollen iron back of Lay Figure, its hideous humps like bones distorted, the face one howling O of blackened wire: "And this is one of the pieces you were going to show there?"

    "That, and Delta of Silver" nodding to the riverine figure of solder and charred iron bone, melancholy line of shine beneath the overhead fluorescents. Night coming on and this day gone purely in talk, when had she done that last? Past memory, loner weeks and months, plenty to do; still did; always did. But no one to talk about it with since, what? All the way back to Peter? Sweet ugly Peter, last lover, almost-best friend with his found sculpture, plastic milk jugs and detergent bottles, and sidewalk paintings that took him finally where it was warmer, where, he said, the sidewalks stayed dry all year. Two letters, one long awkward phone call, already long gone but she was stubborn, she had to be hurt hard to let go. He ended by obliging her, poor Peter, she had not meant to cause such pain to either of them; he was not a monster, he did not want to wound her so. What would he think of her work now? What would he think of her? Strange to think of Peter, now; she had not in so long.

    A sigh, and back all at once to Bibi's quizzical gaze, there was something she should be saying, explaining. The Isis show, right, the pieces they wanted and didn't want. "They only took one," sitting up straighter. "The one you saw, Archangel."

    Impossible to read those eyes, washed to nothing but light. "Why didn't you show them all?"

    "They didn't want them all." The painstaking slides rejected, half an explanation half a month late but she had not wasted time with anger, she had been through this before. Leaning on the toilet wall, pinch of green plastic against her sweaty back. "You were there, you saw what they show. They don't want stuff like mine, that's not what they're interested in."

    The exposed tines of Lay Figure's bones denting the bare skin of Bibi's arm, she did not seem to feel or notice. "What are you interested in?"

    "Metal."

    At once, like a teacher, a cop: "What else?"

    "Making it… work." Her hand moving in half a circle: frustration's symbol, the answer incomplete. "Making it do what I want."

    "What do you want?"

    "I don't know," flat and honest, out before she could think or rethink to call it back. "I guess I'll know it when I see it. If I see it."

    "You won't. Unless you build it yourself." And trapdoor sudden, little meat-eating grin and "Hey: come on. Come see what I do, now," keys without looking, open door and on the landing to stop: and wait for Tess.

    Who stood, waiting herself. "You never said," scarred hand poised on the light switch, the light from the stairway a greasy yellow, cloudy with the tiny blunderings of flies trapped by false eternal daylight, around and around. Downstairs the sounds of big kids yelling, the dumpy thump of a loaded handcart over the uneven threshold.

    "Said what?"

    Hitting the switch, sudden black and Bibi clear, then shadowed as she moved closer, half-back across the threshold. "What you want." Want to give. Or share. Or take.

    Very close in the dark, one hand on the jamb and a smell to Tess like sugar, like sweat, distinct and oddly nameless, your own secret scent found inexplicable on the flesh of another. Her eyes could have been marbles, or bearings, or Lexan chipped cold with scavenged glass, eyes that wait and see in any dark, the eyes of sculpture ready to move when no one watches, ready to crawl and buck and scratch slow paint from the shivering walls like skin from the shrinking lines of tender bone.

    "I don't think I need to tell you," Bibi said. Voices up the stairwell, the jitter of empty bottles like tumbling coins, somebody's curse and her closeness, close enough to touch, her stare to Tess as vivid as taste in the mouth. "I really think you already know."

    Rivertown, the area fancifully named, warehouses mostly empty and the real estate cheaper than almost anywhere; too intrinsically shabby to gentrify, scored forever like burned skin with industry's effluvial and ghostly stink.

    Streets not like caverns but the bottom of cans, trash cans, looking up into rust and darkness and the soundless progress of decay.

    Now before them, grant chemical in heavy red caps, BLDG 2 in shy green, a stenciled afterthought. Prison-bright lights, high noon at night; there were two cars there already and one rusty black scooter, so heavily chained it seemed at first to be scrap. Inside the sound of heavy blowers, and beneath that the shrill of a radio turned up far past its capacity for clear sound.

    Following Bibi toward the noise, Tess looking around at the huge cardboard drums, the heavy labeled sacks. "They let you use this place for free or what?"

    "Yeah, they want somebody here at night," turning left past a glassed-in foreman's booth, no admittance on the door. Jumble of clean-up tools in a corner, fat mops and raveling cloth pushbrooms like the wigs on old-fashioned clowns. "They think if we're here no one will break in and rip them off. Besides they don't use all the space anyway." The radio louder, more space between the cardboard drums, waist-high pyramids of sacks and a few of them ripped to spread fine bluish grit like beach sand across the floor. Scent in the air like warm bleach. "What kind of chemicals are they?"

    "Soap. Industrial detergents and cleansers, stuff like that-I checked. Believe me, I checked. They have another building, it's a lot bigger but the stuff they keep there can give you cancer just looking at it." One more turn and now the music was very loud, the space empty; two women in sleeveless T-shirts and spandex shorts sharing water from a bicycle bottle, a bare-chested man in a blue bandanna perched on a hi-lo. "Hey, baby," the man said, sliding upright from his seat to come nodding to Bibi; on his chest a black tattoo as stylized as an Aztec glyph; one of the women was tattooed as well, fat black bull's-eye circles on her left biceps. The man came to Bibi, kissed her cheek. "I thought this was a closed rehearsal."

    "This is Tess Bajac," Bibi said, an unsmiling gravity that stilled them: may I present the queen; it startled Tess. "Tess, this is Sandrine, and Raelynne, and Paul. They're the only decent dancers in the troupe."

    "Troupe, shit," said the shorter woman: Raelynne. Sandy hair, pure frizz in a ponytail; her accent was all Tennessee. Both ears lined with little rings, slim and shiny as needles in the garish overhead light; the other woman had one ear multiply pierced. " 'S more like a dance club for people who can't dance."

    "It's a mutual masturbation society," Paul now. "For jerkoffs." Rubbing Bibi's neck, the hard muscles of her shoulders, his stare as much as his touch said Hands off. Bibi did not seem to fully notice he was there, turned to Sandrine-dyed red hair chopped chin-length, ragged T-shirt reading genital combat in scissored sans serif-saying, "Flip that," and to Tess, "You watch, okay?"

    "You can sit over there if you want," Raelynne nodding helpfully toward the hi-lo. "It's not really clean, but at least the seat's padded."

    The plastic beneath her still warm from Paul, Tess settled to watch their formation, Raelynne's swagger, Paul's humorless grace; he was very beautiful, Paul, maybe he was Bibi's lover. Sandrine changing the tape and now the music began, a spare rhythm, simple drum beat slow but somehow unsettling, a moment's close listening to discern why: deliberately uneven, it ran 3/4 then skipped, a stuttering but no pattern even in that. Bibi in front, the others scattered triangular around her, all four heads down, arms hanging bonelessly loose. Tess saw a muscle moving in Bibi's thigh, was she consciously keeping time and how could she, there was no time to keep. And a keening, for a startled moment she thought it was coming from the tape but no, it was them, all three of the women in the same painful note, only Paul silent and then it was Bibi moving forward, still keening, still bent and now crouching, half her body frozen like a stroke patient, like a corpse, the other women swaying silent on their feet, arms like wind-cracked branches and Paul crablike, mouth open in Kabuki grimace as he crept sideways to Bibi, still in her terrible stasis, still keening like the warning of disaster unavoidable and then as Paul's outstretched arm reached the barest periphery of her skin, the flat landscape of her belly, she struck him, not in pantomime, not with an actor's false violence but truly hit him hard, Tess wincing instinctively at the dull meaty sound. Struck him on his tattoo and again, still that keening but louder, air-raid whine joined now by the other women mimicking the circular sound of the drums, off kilter, off balance, almost pain in the ears and it grew louder, louder, Bibi striking again and again, full punches,
uh, uh
, little whuffing grunts of effort, she was putting everything into it,
uh uh uh
and all the rhythms increased at once, the keening grown to screams and the sound of Paul being beaten and the hideous boneless sway of the women's arms,
uh uh uh
and Paul's body jerking, now, like electroshock, the hooked-fish leap of a cardiac jumpstart and Bibi's face contorted, spit in the corners of her mouth and uh uh uh and from Paul a horrifying sound, a cry as primal as that of a murdered baby, it took Tess by terrible surprise and she found herself half on her feet, one hand pushing instinctive on the hi-lo's greasy skin to launch herself to the rescue and the
uh uh uh
become the sound of the drums and the wave of the women's arms like the undersea sway of drowning grasses and Paul's cry, cry, Bibi's relentless battering arm and Paul fell to his knees and then onto his face, Bibi striking now at his head, his back, the two women beside her, the movement of their arms mingling with hers, fearful grace and ferocity and the cry again from Paul, but much muted, as if the infant was now dying, dying under the savagery of Bibi's beating and she struck a tremendous blow to the back of his neck, as if she would decapitate him by sheer force; his body bucked once and then the cry tiny as a tear, informed with a nauseating gelatinous undercurrent as if the infant had finally strangled on its own blood. The keening dwindled to a hum, a whistle, stopped entirely. The women's arms stopped moving, lay like the empty skins of snakes across Bibi's torso, her shoulders and breasts moving strongly, hungry for air. The drums leapt into a dreadful sprightly beat, almost a march beat, and then abruptly stopped.