Skin (32 page)

    "When you do that kind of shit," staring around the circle, "you insult me. You insult yourself, too, and everything we do here." Burning feeling, somewhere past her ribs, the gassy feel of too much coffee, no food, anger's dull hangover. "I don't ever want to see that shit again."

    Silence. Then Edgar-Marc, quiet: "So what're we supposed to do, just take it?"

    Tess's silence, now, and them waiting in it like an empty room beyond which might lie an open field, an open grave, the sleek gleam of the operating theater; she held it like the last beat in a song, then, flat as her hands: "Take what? Bad publicity? Name-calling?" and softly her chanting whine: "She called me names, she was mean to me. Grow up!" yelling, startling them, widening eyes and for a moment wished Bibi there to see it; she would have been proud. See: I can manipulate people, too; and thinking that took her anger, her edge, made her turn away to say without looking, "You do what you want. But not here."

    Leaving them then, trudge up the stairs and nobody followed. Only silence behind, not the wound but the puckering pocket of scar. She was sweeping under the worktable when: the diffident knock: Nicky. Nita. Edgar-Marc.

    No one said anything until Nicky, finally, "You get that reversible drill to work yet?" and Nita, one hand out, past the threshold and let me see it, I'll take a look at it. Edgar-Marc saying nothing, quiet to stand before Tess and then: "You want us to throw them out, or what?"

    "Throw what out?"

    Looking down, then at Nicky, Nita by the table with the drill in her hand. "The, you know. The pieces."

    "No," strongly, surprising them one more time. "Don't ever throw your work away." Thinking-not the others, but did Nicky know?-of juggernaut Salome, of the thrust and brood of the Triple Deaths, the Magistrate of Sorrows. "Keep it," flicking on the lights, white-green fluorescence in the darkening wash of yet another storm. "Just keep it covered."

    The rest of them never came back, took their pieces and gone. It was as if they had never been.

    "Just once."

    "No." Trying not to sound sullen, Nicky's aimless batting fingers, skating the salt shaker past her and "Why not?" for the twentieth time. That day. "Just once, she never even has to see you, she doesn't even have to know you're there."

    "You sound like Michael."

    An unhappy comparison, but he did not show annoyance; he was trying very hard. They were all trying, Edgar-Marc and Nita and her big hands still, side by side in the booth like kids in church. They had taken her out to dinner, Jimbalaya's, fake Cajun food drenched in no-brand red pepper, still it was better than the crackers and dry cheese she was used to eating. One pale chunk of chicken on the end of her fork, specimen.

    "I don't want to go there, you know that's the last thing I ever want to see. I see enough anyway in the papers," sad and comic, Bibi's grainy stare in the back page of the entertainment section, I'll give you entertainment. The industrial cabaret of Skinbound. Step right up. Or down.

    Nita now, and carefully, "But how can you tell us how to feel about it, Tess, when you haven't seen it for yourself?" and the automatic answer, I don't tell you how to feel, I just tell you what to do about it. Not to do. Maybe they were right, but even if they were she would still need more, a harsher spur: remembering Bibi in the magazine: industrial cabaret, industrial accidents, and now Nicky saying something, know thine enemy, right?

    "She's not my enemy," but how could they be expected to understand that? The opposite of love is indifference, not hate, but how could they know that either? Nicky playing with a sugar packet, Nita mournful with her waterglass. Edgar-Marc gazing down at his fingernails, very dirty fingernails, lumpy and black, black as the clumped mascara on Bibi's staring eyes, staring at her that terrible day, there on the curb: how bad was it, then? And now, how much worse had it gotten? Bad enough to know at one remove, at a glance? A whiff? A sound, a whisper, what would it take to gauge and what would she do about it if she did know? Help her? stop her, what? Know thine enemy: Bibi's wrongness, that was the enemy, the depth and degree of Bibi's slide and "All right," like a line crossed and she said it again, "All right. Next show. When's the next show?"

    Nicky careful not to show pleasure, careful not to crow but he couldn't help his smile, Nita's smile and Edgar-Marc's excited half-bounce, a kid before the circus, black circus of pain. "Domination and Paradox, " the salt spilling, Nicky's grin released, "and I'll even pay your way. Okay? Can't beat that, right?"

    Domination and paradox. "Okay," slowly, already sorry. "All right."

    Big place, warehouse, steel box already full of restless echoes, the movement of bodies, all kinds of bodies climbing slewed bleachers, tier to tier, peak to peak; some taking seats, some jumping halfway to land grinning and clumsy, too much energy; too much noise; already way too much of everything and they were hardly in the door. Tess kept looking around and around, as if she expected Bibi to pop out from behind a trash barrel, jack-in-the-box atop the bleachers yelling Got you! Ridiculous. Damp hands in pockets, she had changed clothes over and over, stupid, is this your first time? Come here often? Idiot. She was still sweating. Nicky on one side, Nita on the other and Edgar-Marc behind, they found her a place to sit and sat around her, honor guard, prison guard: don't worry, she wanted to say,
I won't run away
.

    Heart too fast.

    
I won't run away
.

    The stage area unshrouded, nothing special, nothing much at all: square scaffolded construction much like the bleachers around them, careless drape here and there, short lengths of orange nylon rope. Metal chemical drum upended, numbers stenciled bare across its peeling sides. Spotlights hung precarious and close above the drum; other lights, red gels higher up and above them the steady green burn of fluorescents, industrial constellation, what zodiac? No archers or twin fish, instead the dragon rampant, the scorpion, the headsman, the knife. The Red Empress, shaved head and bloody smile, scars thick as pearls up and down, up and down the thin bare arms as if gifted by disease as rare as that smile. Knife in hand and hand in glove, come to make chaos, come to make the water ran red, turns staves to snakes with the faces of children, cut and bleed and

    Nita, quizzical, "Hey Tess?"

    -and the lights went out.

    Tremendous noise, one galloping roar and the sound of feet, hundreds of pairs of feet pounding against the bleachers, tremor through the wood and flimsy metal as if it were flesh and bone, Tess on her feet and Nicky trying'to take her hand, to steady her but she did not want to be steadied, did not want to touch or be touched but simply to stand in the darkness, heartbeat wild and wait: wait for Bibi.

    Who did not come. First a trio of boys, dancers, they moved like dancers anyway: bare chests and ragged leotards, perching and tumbling around the dram as the lights changed from red to blue and back again, slowly at first and then faster, faster till they flickered and the tallest of the boys snatched up by the others, borne to the drum like an altar and in their hands like magic some kind of knives-

    -and the knives through the air and down without melodrama, so quickly Tess did not have time to look away-

    -ripping at his thighs, his pelvis-

    -ripped his leotards free to show the tattoos on his thighs, red and black like necrotic roses, roses of flesh and the boys yelling something, all three, some bad tone poem about the will to dominate and half the audience yelling along, whooping and beating time, terrible seesaw rhythm become chant, becoming roar and the-boys falling, bending in half and half again in limber prostration; Bibi, now? No.

    Now another dance, different dancers, women now in black robes moving only their hands, each outfitted with sheathing gloves ripped palmless and on their bare palms painted triangles, red and black, they kept talking about Egypt and the spicy smell of mummified flesh, greasy black grins and someone started beating the altar-drum, jack-handle drumstick and a big whooping pound and a red spotlight here she comes.

    Her own heart beating as if in pain; hands wet and moving, clasping, releasing, in and out of her pockets as if they were stolen and she pledged to hide them, hiding them poorly; what would she look like? What would she do?

    And the music, changing, hammering now an old, old rhythm, they might have played that rhythm on the lip of the volcano, on the edge of the bleeding cliffs, women rising, boys unbending to turn, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil and opening their mouths in sudden brutal light, glare-white to show that they had no tongues-

    -and fingers crammed into their mouths, pulling at the emptiness to fling out things black and wet, what the fuck and flying through the air and she saw they were dental dams, just dental dams, nothing worse than that-

    -and the light gone black again, her dazzled eyes needing a moment to adjust, and in that blinded instant Bibi came. The Red Queen.

    Face held up, pointed like a gun into the howling light to show every guttering bone, every sculpted shaft and plane: honed, and everywhere crossed and banded, everywhere silver, pinching steel-tipped fingers, metal scissoring at her hungry bloodless skin and beautiful, so beautiful-

    -and sick with it: the wrongness heavy as a coating, a syrup, the sugary shine of inner rot made manifest and as she opened those big eyes it seemed she saw everyone, everyone there, stark in the maelstrom of screams, the three boys at her feet and the boy next to Nicky howling "Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!" and Tess, the crawl of sweat down her cheeks, wanting to do something: run: scream: staring and staring and-

    -others coming, now, sliding or leaping or creeping beside her, Tess thought she saw Andreas beneath half a mask, six or seven and all of them wearing masks, or horns, or animal ears, big jackass ears and the three boys masked now, too, all of them wearing dogs' heads, not rubber but fur, real fur, real snouts, taxidermist's work and for Tess the sudden sick sensation, what must it smell like, inside those heads, so tight over the wearers' own, so tight in all this heat? And Bibi calling out, miked voice clear and absolutely calm: "The paradox of domination is the paradox of freedom-"dogs before her"-the freedom-"

    -at her feet, snouts in grotesque snuffling motion up her legs, between her thighs "-to be a slave-"

    -and she grabbed at them, one by one, pulled their heads-

    -back, bent their bodies backward till it seemed their spines must crack and the soundtrack now informed with the shrieks of animals, cacophonic, unbearable, it was like being in the middle of a slaughterhouse, a slaughterhouse bounded by your own beating temples. Tess wanted to cover her ears but would not, would not move, would only stare as Bibi took a long razor, old-fashioned straight razor, dogs' heads bent back still and at their human throats, the blade-

    -drawing a line, pink line, not even real blood yet, just pink, just the summery plasma drip and now they all had razors, mules and bulls and strange lion-headed cats and they were all cutting each other, merry slicing here and there, nicking and picking and Bibi turning on the audience-

    -and her stare, hands loose and coming forward and the sudden dreadful grin as if she saw Tess, saw her, came for her as she could and never would come for any other: because I love you, that awful grin, I love you, Tess, I want to fuck you, come to me now. Now and her mouth open, to speak, to say "Who will be my slave?" and one of the dancers, performers, coming from behind to offer a mask, pig mask, grinning sow mask and Bibi grabbing it up, grabbing a girl from the lunatic front-row surge, a crying blond girl in a ripped black bra and slamming the mask down over her head, spinning her balanceless to show the rest: slave: pig.

    And pushing the girl before her, loose-limbed silly stagger and onto the drum, up, there you go, piggy, there you are and Bibi crying out, deeper voice now, Red Queen priestess on the shivering edge of the wound, "The power to take is better than the power to give, you have to give to get, you have to want it, do you want it?" The audience answering, maelstrom; but she was asking the girl.

    "Do you want it?"

    Crying, mumbling sounds picked up by Bibi's mike: indecipherable, the girl's glottal hiccups and groans and Bibi suddenly screaming DO YOU WANT IT in a voice to split skin and the girl as if released, shrieking back: "Yes!"

    And the soundtrack now abruptly drums, kettledrums, and Bibi taking up this time not a razor, not a knife, not a weapon that Tess could see but the audience knew it at once, screamed their approval, screaming and Tess yelling to Nicky, yelling right in his ear What's she got? What's she got? and his bellow back, he had to say it twice before she understood. Fish hooks. Hooking up the flesh to cut it, cut it to leave a scar, leave marks and all the animal heads in motion now, whooping up and down, into the audience, climbing like evil children up the stairs at night and the bull's-head coming toward them, toward Tess, for a moment's horror she thought the mask would fall at her feet and she see behind it Paul, more bone even than Bibi, pared finer still and grinning eyes, bull's eyes, she had to fight the urge to run and saw, as the bull passed by her, others were running, too, here and there, some toward the stage, the drum, and some away, some jumping straight off the bleachers as they had done before in play but now in earnest, hitting the concrete floor badly as thrown fruit, a girl fell flat on her back but no one went to help her, no one went to see if she was all. right, if she was trampled, if she was-

    -hurt-

    -and Bibi shouting something else, Tess did not hear but as surely as a hand in the dark felt the need, need in the strain and gloss of Bibi's movements, the tension in the muscles of her knife-ridden face and she screamed, really screamed, screamed like everything that was wrong coming out in one long terrible noise beyond succor or control-