Skin (31 page)

    Lying on the couch-bed, the sheets matte with grime, dirty as her shoes, the windows, her tied-back hair, everything here was going to hell. Hands behind her head, she used to see Bibi lying so, bare to the waist, breasts pointing jaunty and one knee crossed and bouncing, just a little, too irregular to mark musical time. Marking thoughts, maybe; and what was Bibi thinking of now? Urban primitives. Power in the knife.
I tried to tell you, her cry, he said not to but I wanted to.
Who said? Matty, knee-jerk malice or something drier, darker, puffy fluid left rotting in a basement jar, the way the crawlspace smells; like Matty's smile.

    She thought she would not sleep all night but the simple action of lying still, her tired mind in' the same slow circles like lamed birds, slower and slower and she slept from light to light, waking as sore and dirty as if she had spent the night on the ground; still the rest had left her better and she woke to work at once, cleaning the worktable, sorting and sweeping, by the time her students arrived she had scraped the dirt from herself, too, clean and austere, half a smile on skeleton cheeks.

    

    

    Only three today, Edgar-Marc and Nita, Nicky red-eyed and irritable, they were all less than pleasant though pleasant to her. Snapping at each other, Nicky and Nita especially and "Why don't you calm down, tit-rag?" and Nita's awkward shove, big hands in motion and Nicky's hop back to balance, murdering glare and Tess, sharp: "Quit it!" Silence. "What's the matter with you all today?"

    "It's because-"

    Nita, fierce: "Why don't you just shut up?"

    "You shut up! It's because of the show, Tess," Nicky's stubborn supplication, going on fast and half-gabbling: the show a lampoon, one long mockery of Tess, her work, the art of her boxes reduced to cruel cardboard jokes with spastic plastic marionettes, the Tess character some guy on a stool with a welder's helmet and the others, freed now by Nicky's recitation, adding details: and this: and that, and this, too, it was fucking awful. Naming names and everyone had known, and everyone had laughed.

    "Well," and a shrug: I don't care. She even said it aloud, "I don't care," into their wrathful silence, what difference did it make? She controlled nothing, nothing but herself; and her work. And as if to prove it worked harder still, drove them, too, as she rarely did, drove them hard until they were glad at last to go. And sat quiet in the silence they left behind, the box before her on the worktable like a split chrysalis of gold, its edges planed and burned and bent like elbows struggling in the greasy glue of birth, struggling to get up, and go on, until it was time to fall down again and die.

    And the next day Nita's indignant gift, a review of the performance in no less than the city daily, all of them hunched horseshoe around Tess's bent reading head: "Read it out loud," Nicky said, he could not follow as fast as the others and so she did, monotone, " '-a disturbing and cruel duality, seeming to comment through the use of scarring and tattoo techniques on the brutality of modern life and the redemption offered by a renewal of so-called primitive cultural values.' " Silence; and in the silence went on, making her voice dry, driest, striving for no comment: " 'Although it can be understood as a supremely virulent form of metaphor (or, as in one segment a particularly vicious lampoon of her former partner, and co-founder of the Surgeons of the Demolition, Tess Bajac), ultimately this show is for and about nothing but violence and ugliness, and should be treated, and avoided, on that basis. What value there is here, is unquestionable: there is none.' Does however have tits," but no one laughed or even smiled, she had to do it herself. "For God's sake, you guys," but Nita shook her head, grim; it isn't funny, Tess.

    And then she understood, a moment's surprise at her own surprise: of course, they were embarrassed for themselves, a slur on her was mud on all of them. Silently she read the rest, read it through and found buried in the artspeak a phrase that stopped her, hands tighter on the edges of the paper and there in black and white the words "something here is wrong"; the sentence again, read more slowly, "The viewer is left with the indelible impression that, past the shouts and the quotes, the blood theatrical and real, something here is not about performance, or even art; something here is wrong."

    
Is it that bad?
Over and over,
Is it that bad?
in sorrow, and fear to see it written, mirrored, by an outsider, a mainstream critic moved by half-parts curiosity and duty, paid to go and see what there was to see. It must be very very bad if it was so evident, to someone who did not care.

    Staring down at the paper, they were talking now, saying something and Bibi's name and "Cunt," Edgar-Marc's murmur, Nicky's narrow agreement and Tess surprised, again, at the leap of her anger; she wanted to yell at them, say Don't you talk about her that way. No. No. Folding the paper, oblong drop and "So," rising to set up the screens, act normal:
let's forget about it, okay? Let's get to work
; but no one had apparently the heart for it, sluggish and uninspired, preoccupied. She did not care, she had no heart for it either and sent them away, tomorrow will be better but they didn't leave, instead gathering below at Nicky's and Nicky back upstairs, diffident in the doorway: did she mind if they all took a few days off?
Just to, you know, get a break?

    "Sure," secretly grateful. "If you guys want a break, take one. And Nicky, please." Hand on his arm, squeezing a little; her hand cold, as if she had sustained a shock; did he feel it? No. "Don't take it so hard, all right?"

    "Right," but patently not listening, if she was not man enough for a grudge then he would carry it for her. Music all day and into the night, half-heard, she was busy on her own now, the new box growing, something different about this one, something very dark beneath the gold. Frightened for Bibi, yes, but was she hurt, too; a little, after all? But honestly answering no, Bibi's power to wound lay grounded at a level so deep that these skinside skirmishes were even less than they appeared; Bibi could hurt her plenty, but not this way.

    Now on the table the shiver, false pleated metal as friable as skin, she had not been wrong to think of it as a chrysalis, cold cocoon pregnant with black growth: inside thin strips of leather, old bootlaces dirty and twisted; a heat-ruined penny speared through the bent center, hypodermic length of wire; the eyeless corpse of a mummified mouse. And three drywall nails, heads rusted, tips still sharp and bright, each securing one paw, the broken fourth left free as if clutching for the shoelace, save me; help. The box, the cocoon, closed as prim as an evening bag, she even added the clasp it seemed to call for, heavy split shell-shape iced with corrosion, verdigris as green as plants underwater.

    And while working, working hard, she found herself in a peculiar way missing Michael, whom she did not somehow miss otherwise; why was that? Bibi's leaving had gouged a void so great she had force-filled it with Michael, why did he leave no similar hole? Maybe he had never really been there to begin with. Maybe it's because you used him, the way you accuse Bibi of doing: making of the person a thing, an instrument, a tool; heat gun still on, burning heedless in her hand, guilty, guilty. Hot air blowing past her face, hot enough to make skin blister, wondering where Michael was, what he thought of Bibi's crude lampoon: did he think it was funny? juvenile? was he jealous? You only try to hurt the one you love. And what did he think of the deeper level, the wrongness? Nothing? Anything? Did he even think it was wrong?

    
Thump, thump, thump,
machinery-sound from downstairs, Nicky moving stuff around; were they all still down there? Another, subtler thump from outside, the bass of approaching thunder; this summer somehow a perfect incubator for storms, heavy storms to flood sewers, gutters, snap weary glass like bone too old to carry its own weight, it seemed she was either waking or sleeping to the sound of rain against her windows. Maybe they would break, too, one night, shiver and split like skin parted by the moving scalpel, one of Bibi's knives come calling at last. Remembering Bibi's wild anger, in the street, the cruel surprise of her pinching fingers; and the heavy hand again against her heart:
oh Bibi
.

    Open and close, the chrysalis. Dark outside, the artificial night of storms.

    More darkness, working alone again, no storm this night but a tiredness immense, exacerbated first by another Bibi article, an interview so ugly and bizarre that reading it- fast and standing up, back to the kiosk like a thief-made her want to cry, cry out: Bibi in some fresh gibberish, talking about deformities: "It's like a blessing, you know," (and Tess could picture it, mouth moving in that new strenuous way) "it's better than being born normal. Because this way they're plugged in all at once, they know in their skin what I just now am coming to know in my heart: it's a bridge, it's where you have to be. To know," and it went on and on, explaining her theories devised in consultation with her "adviser," unnamed but almost certainly Matty. Unless she had a new disciple, fresh toy and a frightened thought: what would she do with someone like Paul, now?

    And the guy behind the yardstick-sized counter, hey buy it or put it back and she gave him the money, too expensive. Not enough money to waste, nowadays; not as much school to teach these past few weeks and then mostly they had wanted theory, maybe they were branching out. Nothing wrong with that. Except the money. Walking home, wondering how long it would be home, would she have to move? So what. Maybe better, in a new place, less money, less ghosts. Maybe.

    Banging away, Nicky and somebody else, a couple somebodies: not Jerome and Peter, they were off for a month, a tour. Zombies on the road to four different cities, out in the street the horse trailer behind and a rental truck to follow, even pared down it was still a big show; she had not seen a Zombies show entire in months. Outsider, now; and Nicky, too, apparently self-excluded, invited but declining, he had his own work, Jerome said, his own shit to get done.

    Asking driver's-side Jerome, sun on her neck and "What was it?" leaning in the pickup's window, her arms sticking to the hot maroon upholstery, peeling a little like sunburned skin. Jerome's sunglasses bound jaunty with duct tape, Peter still inside, last-minute gathering. "Did he say what it was?"

    Jerome shrugged, shook his head. "No idea. I thought you might know."

    Peter, struggling into view with a box of parts, the nose of a spreader baffle held under his chin: "Tess, hey," dumping the box in the back. "Jerome, man, you all set?"

    "All set." One arm out to encircle her neck, sweaty half hug and a smile, not quite meeting her eyes as if he were again that young young break-in boy; I just wanted to see. "Wish us luck, hey?"

    "Good luck," and to her own surprise she kissed him, kissed him hard on the cheek. "Have a great time. Come back heroes," and they all smiled at that, break a neck Peter said and Jerome starting the truck: deep tubercular rattle, squeezing her hand once more and gone, horse trailer and all. She had not even known until today that they were going. And why had Nicky turned it down?

    Inside the brisk chug of an air compressor, knocking to no answer so she pushed open the door to see him bee-eyed, safety goggles and a respirator mask, the whole room reeked of paint. Beneath him on the floor a life-size mummy, a dummy, and in his hands some peculiar kind of harness, silver and black and, puzzled, "Nicky? Hey," and in the sight of her a start so guilty it startled her, too: coming forward and his scramble, like a child, to block her view: of what? What?

    Naked white-haired dummy, heavy rings glued to the nippleless breasts, encircling the arms bent like broken, the legs unscrewed at the knees, big screws thick as thumbs, more rings at the smooth pubic valley and where the face should be an oval gouge; nothing. Empty.

    And "Listen," his nervous gibber, he was talking but she did not listen, did not even hear beyond the buzz of sound. Everywhere, all over the room the lampoons so ugly and crude: a box here formed of stiff-bending bodies, clown-faced, silly and lewd; another box gaudy as foil enclosing some kind of food, green vegetable soft with gray-brown rot, scored and bulleted with rings, hooks, fish hooks where its painted eyes had been. Another, aluminum cube and each side a symbol, question mark, exclamation, dollar sign, fuck you in streamlined sans serif: inside it a pair of breasts spiked straight through with knitting needles, bleeding rivers of tacky red blood. Beside that an empty TV chassis scabbed with headless ballerina dolls, encircled in fake metal chains and some kind of writing, she could not read it, would not stop to read it now. A freestanding sculpture of a woman, badly done metal musculature made to move hydraulically, sloppy frowning mouth pierced with pins, hundreds of pins, each point a small and particular shine.

    "Tess, listen, okay?" Nicky beside her, still wearing the goggles, his distorted eyes wide. "Will you just-"

    -and out of the room, she could not even look at him, would not stay with those hideous pieces staring her in the face; horrible, to know they had used their talents and her teachings, skill and knowledge wasted in this absurd and vicious way.

    Upstairs she locked her door, turned off her machine; sat grim and still before her worktable as if she now must work to drive the ugliness away. Hands shaking on the drill, thinking of the magazine article, bending to prop it open to Bibi's thin and terrifying smile: and suddenly exhausted, blood like lead through her weary veins and she kissed the picture, set it where she could see it, eye to eye through the hours of work relentless, eye to eye, lit by sparks through the empty tunnel of night.

    "No more."

    Up all night, and she looked it, here in the light before them: semicircle of serious faces, nervous shuffling, miniature whispering sighs.