Skin (37 page)

    Not much talk, shuffling, a few half laughs but by and large they were too solemn for laughter, for the high spirits that accompany anticipation; more altar than circus ring, and they acted accordingly. Inside no light but flashlight jitter, no sign, no indicator but something there, just past the alcove, mounted gaudy as a trophy, lit from beneath with a trouble light the cord for which hung low and black as a ruptured vein.

    The box.

    And Tess stopping, staring, bodies pushing past unseen as shadows and her eyes opaque, as she might stare at a street wreck left where it had happened, instructive atrocity painted in black and spinless tire and bone: see what can happen, when you're not careful? See her sculpture, raped of its frame, razor wire and bent sparrowbones: the blond hair gone, false gray eyes excised and in the sockets of the hedgehog itself a pair of human eyes, goggle-eyes wet and brown and smelly in the smooth metal clasp, small mouth jingly bright with safety pins circled tight as a cinching gag, the whole of it wrapped in hardware-store chain, the kind you use for a dog, and overdressed again in sloppy pink cellophane, like a candy grotesque; a sweet treat; a jest.

    
God, oh God; oh Bibi
.

    Her heart like lead, thickening in the airless feel, pressure: as if she had waited too long on the ocean's floor, far past all possibility of breath; all the people had pushed past her; she was alone. A man at the door, taped hands and heavy-handled flashlight, green T-shirt with hesitation cuts in clean white capitals just where his nipples must be, he must have been calling her: "-or out, last chance, okay? Either show me the invitation or get the fuck out, all right, lady, you listening or what?"

    Producing the many-folded paper from her pocket, he did not unfold it, instead played the light across her and then followed her through. Dark inside, and claustrophobically small; muted red lights like the wet house of a beating heart. No chairs, no altars, no stage; just people, standing around, talking in quiet voices. There was a tape player on the bare floor, and as if on impulse the girl standing closest pressed Play.

    Nothing, at first, or nothing Tess heard, still unable to do more than stand, wrapped and bounded by the shape of her anger, all her frantic haste come to nothing. And then a sound, a muttering, slow and guttural and dry, the sound perhaps made by disease as it creeps killing through the body, of death ancient in the whorl of the brain; the color of bones and sticks snapped black for burning, like the claiming smile on the face of the thing you fear. That; and red air, and the people grouping, without consensus, as if brute instinct forced them closer in the imperative of that sound.

    Which did not cease, grew louder but not loud, just enough to stop all talking, to stop movement; over and over but not a loop, variations minute but quite distinct if you listened closely and there was no other way to hear it, listening as you listen to the approaching silence of the prowler, the noise the air makes as the knife divides it, elemental, a sound heard only once.

    A woman's voice, whispering very softly whispering Bibi's voice.

    And the red light, one bare crude spot on her face springing hectic from the darkness and that first look told Tess that Bibi was finally lost: the last edge at last behind her and her face pointing out of the dark like death's own finger: you and you and you. The whisper was not for effect: there was something hideously wrong with her mouth, her lips distended as if pulled by invisible wires and ringed somehow by a red so dark it was almost black, a necrotic color, the color of decay; when they moved it was with effort, sluggish and slow and Tess, watching, listening, felt as if her own mouth and lips were as split and ripped and spliced, as ground: more than her own life she wanted to spring for Bibi, drag her out, away, precious burden and gone. Gone. Home, but then the image of the violated sculpture like the corpse of a baby, a child, their child, there was for them no home together, could not and never be; and then her hands wanted Michael, wanted his face, his lying mouth; her hands and her blunt nails; her teeth-

    -and Bibi speaking, that dry bloody whisper:

    "There exist so-called primitive tribes who practice and have practiced a variety of rites that our modern society calls aberrant, and wrong: the piercings, the negation, the wearing of the Ituburi-the waist-binding-the sharpened sticks and the heavy stones. In Australia, in certain puberty rites, they used the tip of a flint to rip the penis open, from the head to the testicles. This was done to prove through the power of pain that we are not our bodies. That our bodies are subject to our wills. That with enough pain, and enough practice, you can use the body to transcend the body."

    Red silence; and a smile on the wounded mouth.

    "This is the lesson that we forget. This is the lesson of the knife," as if in a dream, that mined whisper and moving forward, more than her face into the warmthless burn of the red light and she stood almost naked, washed in metal, ringed and pinned, circles of silver through ears and lip and nostrils, all of it strung with chains hung with special glyphs-the scorpion, the ram, the death's head pale as real bone-the chains running low as veins down her starvation belly to the rings in her vulva; rib bones visibly bruised, face bruised, her hair so matted-dirty it was like a little cap on her head; and held before her the slippery edge of the razor, small as her bandaged fingers, small as her grasping hand.

    "We can learn the lesson again, but it isn't for fun, it isn't for pleasure, it's because we need to, because there's a place we need to get to and nothing else can take us there, not fucking or drugs or learning, not even the people we love can take us there. We have to go alone.

    "On a carpet of blood."

    And as if conjured from her words, the light gone bright and Tess saw the room much changed from her first notion, still narrow but two stories high with a hole in the ceiling as if for a fireman's pole: and in that empty circle, faces: staring down. Andreas. Matty Regal. Andy. Two women she did not recognize, all of them ferociously silent and intent, listening to Bibi as if to the voice of their own demanding hearts, one heart between them all and all desires the same: her voice: her hands: her will. Her knife, pointing up now in a gentle pedagogic gesture, patience: the lecture is almost done.

    "There are all kinds of ways to get there, as many ways as there are people. I found the way that works for me, and for my friends. You're responsible to find your own way, but once you watch us, you might know-" and then nothing, a little silence as if she was listening to something inside her head, some music played by her thickening blood; and then smiling a smile so completely inhuman, as if the very muscles of her face had gone long and stiff and feral that Tess felt her hands clench without volition into fists, nails hard into her own skin as if digging for balance; help me.

    Head up, the tip of the beckoning knife and "Andy?" and he jumped, heedless leap to gravity's harsh embrace but landed seemingly without hurt, hard on the balls of his feet to sway at once to balance. "Andreas?" Another leap. "Matty?" less leap than graceless fall, landing in a loose crouch half-caught by Andy's arm; and smiling.

    "Michael?"

    Head and heart, pounding, cold hands shaking and here he came, dropping down blithe as an angel, folded wings and lightly chained, the matte silver of surgical steel. Tess watched his vision touch her, saw him realize it was her: a slight tension in the pale half smile, a drawing-in as if in muscular anticipation of battle; of pain. In no other way did he acknowledge her, instead turning to Bibi to take in his own smooth touch her bandaged hand.

    Still in the other, the razor; and Andy, already pulling off his shirt, his grimy sweat pants, kneeling in a classical pose. There was around his neck a ring of dirt; in his earlobes long delicate wires shaped like the patterns of myth, the veves of voodoo, each depending intricate as a chant to end in weights, crude and bulbous, seemingly too heavy for the wires to bear. He was sweating; Tess could smell it, heavy on the close red air.

    She was sweating, too.

    "Andy," Bibi's smile, distorted, as, gently freeing herself from Michael, bent graceful with the razor to stroke with its shining tip a series of lines across Andy's back, fresh red lines convergent with others, old scars, as deft and complex as the veves in his ears. Blood in the razor's wake and the minute sound of the tape resetting, and from Andy a sound very much like the sound on the tape, in the air, he was smiling, bleeding and smiling and the tip of his penis had begun lightly to protrude from his dirt-colored underwear; his earrings swung, pendulums to mark the time.

    Andreas, now, in preparation, shirtless and bent before the knife and Bibi like a thoughtful nurse pushing back his hair to cut around his shoulders, his neck, cutting very deeply now, horse collar of blood and fluids, he was breathing hard, breathing through his open mouth and a heavy urine odor, he had pissed himself; from the pain? The women who had hovered like bats above were now beside him, acolytes maybe for Bibi or maybe subjects, too, ready for the cutting, holding his arms as he wept: "Oh," as if one word contained all thoughts or need for thinking, "oh, " over and over as the razor moved, deep roads and leading all to one direction, one red path and way-

    -and the people around Tess merging, now, no plan or volition but moving closer till they were touching, hand to hand, back to back, all of them touching and touching her, too, the silent hysteria of the flesh as stringent as electricity's white focus and-

    -Michael's smile, taking from Bibi the razor to present instead a different tool: curved at one end like a shepherd's crook, the razor at the other slim and clean and small. Placing it in her hand with another smile, no teeth, lingering and so false with loving-kindness that Tess began, at last, to move.

    Through sound and flesh on a path of anger, rivets and black stones, triangles of metal matte with rust and sharp with tetanus to build a grudge piled mountain high: you fuck, and the movement of her own muscles hot somehow and separate, as if she could feel each one, warm red creatures in the landscape beneath her skin; did Bibi feel this way, when she was cutting?

    
You fuck.

    And Matty, ritual strip to crouch naked at Bibi's feet, Michael half a step behind, still looking only at Bibi who smiled, now, mother and child, god and creation and her hands on Matty's neck, stroking, squeezing, her thumbs working the hollow diamond of giving skin at the juncture of neck and chest, pushing as the watchers pushed closer, almost helplessly, mouth-breathing, hands empty and sweaty and wide and Andreas gave a brisk loud groan and fell; fainted? as the two women dragged him sideways, blood like some farce map printed, coy and bold, across the filthy floor and Andy gripped his penis and wept, face all grimace and eyes seeing only inward, no room around him.

    And Tess's motion.

    And Michael's smile.

    And the instrument in Bibi's hand rising to hook, sweet and sharp, into Matty's throat, intersection of bone and gristle and the blood popped bright as a brand-new joke, flipping the tool in her fingers to repeat the path of her incision as, cutting, she kissed his slack cheek, each closed eyelid and kept cutting and cutting-

    -and Tess's gaze meeting Michael's smile as she shoved through the circling wedge, wet flesh and open mouths and pushing hard-

    -to see the blood, wild arterial leap to make Bibi wet with it, slick with it, and Matty's eyes open now, wide open as if waking to find himself in a place he had never dreamed of being, and from that place cried out, some word, something and Bibi's red hand jerking in sudden brutal need to cut him open wide open-

    -and someone screamed-

    -and in her own red moment Tess in motion, arms out to lunge for Bibi
stop it stop it Bibi NOW
, grab and find instead Michael before her, blocking her, grabbing her reaching arms and she fell on him instead like iron onto stone. Shrieks, piss smell, blood and blood and the sound of the door banging open, shut, red in the dark regained and Tess's hands on Michael's throat, face-to-face like lovers, all her rage, all her strength but he was stronger, choking her now, pushing her, forcing her back to the space by the door, hard against the wall and hit her head, hit it again so hard it took her vision, made her blind, made her fall and in that fallen instant felt the flashlight, doorman's flashlight with the long incongruous heft, the phallic handle and as she rose, slow vision rising with her Bibi's wet growl: inhuman: so terrible that Michael turned and congruent with his motion Tess swung the flashlight, all her muscle, only once.

    No one else now in the room, tape still cycling and the door still closed. Tess sinking, hands and knees to vomit, small smelly burst accompanied by pain amazing, her throat and head one locus of cold red light. Spitting blood, and Michael, jigsaw position, bleeding from the ear; already a swelling above his temple, the point of impact, bulbous-smooth as a mushroom cap. The flashlight where she had dropped it, and he made a little noise, soft, like a fussy child in sleep.

    "Bibi," rising, sick laborious whisper through that swollen throat, bending to touch Michael's neck; his pulse was strong. "We have to call 911, he's- I hurt him." Stupidly, "Bibi, I hurt him."

    And Bibi's stare on Tess, now, milk-teeth bare like an-

    -animal in the hungry act of feeding, red drizzled skin and metal warm with it, painted, runic and manic and bright nothing in her eyes-

    -as Bibi turned away, turned back to Matty; all done bleeding now; all gone.

    "It didn't work," to him, to Tess, to no one. "We were supposed to go together. He was supposed to take me, too."

    Michael's sigh, as if in assent; the red room silent as a bubble of blood. Blood on her hands that moved to her lips, tasting it now, her face inexorable from dark puzzlement to a blank and growing rage that Tess, seeing, feared instinctively, as she would fear fire, fear death and "He was supposed to take me, too."