Skin (7 page)

    "I build," slowly, "with the metal there is. I don't demand a new kind of metal for every piece I make."

    Now, driving back from the scrapyard, the radio on loud and remembering that talk, remembering Bibi's clawing hands. Thinking of the hole in her neck. Soon the new performance, bigger and better and louder, at least they were agreed on that. Bibi called it hardball evolution; to Tess it was just the expected lengthening of the stick, you always needed a bigger stick. And there was that to it that was just plain fun, the hard-work fun of trying to see just how well you could build, to set your own limits and then surpass them. Her boundaries now were further; she was learning the new way to see.

    The service entrance was on the building's west side: easiest to unload straight onto the elevator. Pulling up and almost onto a kid, busy with some kind of tool and he tried to run as soon as he saw her. Out the car window in one swooping jump and she slapped him breathless against the wall with her scrapyard bag, jumbled plastic and metal thumping his meatless belly: "Hey! Hold it-I said hold it!" and taking the tool from him: a slim-jim, a jimmy bar.

    "You want to break into my place?" Holding the bar in front of his eyes, oh he was young, sixteen or maybe not even that. "I ought to make you eat this, you little shit." An inexpert job, all he had managed to do was scratch the metal jamb. She stuffed the bar into her bag, pushed him backward with one stiff hand; he did not resist her, grimy jeans, bare toes sticking out of ragged Keds, a tangle of bones and dirty hair.

    "Out," pointing back to the street, turning her back to him; she was ready for him to jump her but he did nothing, only stood where she had pushed him; watching. Opening the service door just wide enough to back in, in the car and he said, "I'll help you unload, if you want." She did not answer. "I saw the show," he said.

    He saw the show. "You did, huh," and his smile, his teeth were terrible. "Why were you trying to break into my house?"

    Shrugging, staring down in that adolescent embarrassment as evident as heat. "I just, I wanted to see the stuff again. I wasn't going to take anything."

    Tess revved the engine slightly. "Come back tomorrow," she said. "I have to work now."

    And he did. Outside the service entrance at the same particular time, a cloudy noon and Jerome, he said his name was Jerome, he would not tell his age. Bright and nervous and tactless, fumbling metal savant who stopped grail-still when he saw Tess's worktable, her books and tools: "All this is yours?"

    "A friend lives here with me, but the tools and stuff, yeah, they're mine." He was still beside the doorway, shifting foot to foot, those big dirty toes sticking stranded from his sneakers. "Go on, you can look at it if you want. Just don't break anything."

    He didn't stay long, that day, left Tess working but he came back the next day, to touch the tools, to sit silent with the sculpture, touching it, too. On his third visit he met Bibi, who thought he was cute; as soon as he left, "Why don't you use him for the shows? He can help set stuff up or something, run cables."

    "Altruist, huh," but Tess had already had the same idea. It would be good to have an assistant other than Crane, or Paul; and Bibi's frown, "At least Paul can dance. That Crane, he better shape up a little bit and I don't mean his fucking pecs that he's so proud of. Know what it was today?" and talking as working, as both turned to their larger tasks, how to make the metal arms clench and twist without breaking, herself a twist of flesh, bent and hedgehog frowning, oblivious as she spoke.

    "We are priests," Raelynne's voice amplified, witchy and hoarse, "in the service of motion," and a crash like God's sky opened, the tumbling rush of half-inch bearings down the curve of a makeshift ramp, cataract fall onto a sheet of thin aluminum to scatter haphazard among the audience: twice as many, this time, they filled the room nearly to the doors; ready.

    This time it was louder, rattle and thump and the fat blades of an amped-up blower poisonously a-clatter over the bass subsonics, over Raelynne's whoops and Paul's wet growls through a borrowed throat mike, their simulated sex atop a blistered landscape of sheet metal and the others circling like buzzards, masks made hasty of old welding helmets, the twin planes of safety glass, clear and heavy green, slid free to be replaced by thick blinding broadcloth, raveled and black. And Tess again in back, burning, this time working on a piece, right there, through the shriek and clatter, the off-balance pulse of strobes above and the new metal arms mounted high atop a stolen stop-sign pole, grabbing and pulling, fantastically jury-rigged but the people watching did not know, did not suspect just how rigged they were. The sign itself had been stenciled don't across its age-blistered face and nailgunned to the top of the bearing ramp.

    The piece absorbing Tess's attention, burn and spatter and smoke, running her own slippery edge, working hard and looking up only rarely, to see where she was in the show: now Sandrine's butcher-dance, hacking at plastic hands; now the lovers in combat, clumsy gauntlets of corrosive-grade plastic and Paul had knocked Raelynne to the ground, not in the script, and Bibi leaping like a crazy lizard from the top of the bearing ramp, landing with a hideous thump on the sheet metal, eyes wide in the surprise of great injury and a fat bubble of blood bursting red from her mouth and Raelynne rising to be struck from behind, Crane and Sandrine hand-to-hand, Sandrine's tattoo ringed with a shiny gloss to make it sparkle, exotic prosthetic in the flexing flesh.

    Tess through the mask, smoke around her head and the panels occluding, it was getting harder and harder to see; Bibi on her knees and crawling in a broken way toward Paul, who was not looking, people yelling and her fingers strangely tight in work gloves, into the burn again, legs braced and somebody crashed into her, her fire hitting plastic and the flare of poison stink, instant and dire: we need air. "Air in here!" and the smatter of glass, somebody else shrieking, Tess struggling back to see Raelynne rise again bloody-mouthed to deliver an enormous suck-erpunch to Paul's unprotected belly, doubling him up, striking him again in the moment of his fall. More broken glass. The tape looping back onto itself like the birth cries of giants, the groans of the dinosaurs in their pits and plastic still afire, fumes, Tess dizzy in the shadow of her own fire and someone hit the crashbars, the doors wide and people stumbling out, coughing, the entering air feeding the plastic fire and Jerome, suddenly, wide eyes and extinguisher spray, fat gobbets of foam from atop one of the sculptures, just to the left of the grabbing arms which threatened to push him from balance. And the tape still booming, and the fire out, and the room empty except for the performers, two of whom were vomiting, Tess lightheaded and sick to the door and arms around her, helping arms taking her to safety and to air.

    "-just stupidity, that's all it is. If they're supposed to be in charge," a dark pause, "then maybe we ought to rethink this whole fucking enterprise."

    Tess, scrubbing her face for the third time, plastic stink indelible down her throat: slow turn, water running to a stop. Listening to Crane, outside on the stairs, Crane who could not see her: presumably as well the others just up from the show's debris, and Paul's voice: "I got no problems with them being in charge." A pause. "Either one of them."

    Her hand on the faucet: listen to Sandrine: "-to admit it, she gets a little crazy sometimes, she's got her own ideas-"

    "We could get sued. Has anybody thought of that?" Raelynne, dry, "No, Crane, only you would think of that. Who the hell's going to sue us?"

    "Who?" His voice swooping, deep registers, the world's last sane man. "How about the kid who got all cut up?" What kid? "He's going to need stitches. And that woman, last time, yelling about being blinded, she-"

    Tess, eyes closed in memory: the girl behind the panel; not blinded, no, but the flash would bring pain worse than a migraine, endless crying eyes and the cure for that was a raw potato, cut in two; put it on your eyes and let it sit. She had learned that in the truck shop, too. But that girl didn't know, though, did she?

    And Crane still talking, "-Tess's stupid welding torch, what about her? What-"

    "What about her, Crane?"

    Bibi's voice, so flat even Tess froze, then from behind the green screen to the door to see the four in tableau and Bibi half a landing down. And rising: smoke-smeared, hair fantastic with sweat, black gauntlets shredded to the wrist. Staring.

    "What about her?" Closer. "What about me, Crane? Are you going to sue me?" Even her voice stalking. "If I threw you down the stairs right now, would you sue me?" Hands on him now, her fingers flexing hard against the thin slick of his silver vest, the others stepping back; instinct; away. Crane far larger, far heavier, Crane's slitted eyes and no attempt to move, or even move her hands, scratching deeper now, she had torn the fabric, her hands all at once in gripping motion and he was tumbling, abruptly off balance as the others flattened startled to the wall and Bibi aloof above, smiling? And Tess, instant past the door her lunge to grab him back, yank his arm hard to keep his fall contained; something hurting in her back, the stress of his descent arrested.

    Everyone staring; everyone silent. And Bibi, breathing through her nose, twin lines like scars deep and sudden in her forehead: "You asshole. Go home."

    Crane on his feet, shaking sudden and enraged away from Tess, her guarding arm and down the stairs, not looking back: the ferocious slam of the fire door setting the dogs to yelping. Bibi's arrowed shoulders loosening, just a little, the tiny sound of her breath released.

    "Go on," Tess to the others silent around them, "go on in," and waiting out their motion, Bibi where she was; waiting too. Tess closed the door, then quietly, to her alone: "I saw you hook his leg."

    The barking dogs. Bibi shrugged.

    "Did you want him to fall?"

    Shrug.

    "Bibi, answer me. Did you want him to fall?"

    Another shrug, a step closer and "Did you see me jump off the ramp?" next to her now, linking arms. "Boom! I thought I broke my foot. Wasn't it cool?" and the smile tempered with something both hideous and sweet, something that made Tess close her fingers about the trusting arm, squeeze it lightly; and for an instant's darkness close her eyes.

    Crane was out, back to the old group Raelynne said: "Back to his dumb toe-shoe shit," but Bibi's sneer was more succinct-"He was never what you'd call simpatico"-and also final, as if Crane had ceased existing in the instant of his departure. There was talk about replacing him, mainly from Sandrine and Raelynne, both of whom believed the group needed another male presence:

    "For balance," Sandrine said.

    "For balance and to fuck me," Raelynne said, "and to carry the heavy shit, right, Tess?"

    Hot-wiring under surgical light, brief distracted nod; Jerome blushing beside her; he was learning not to, learning a lot. Jerome had found the buckets of bearings, had showed Tess where she could acquire a surplus army smoke machine, other toys less obvious, one's greasy guts now delicate before her like an anatomy lesson. Hungry, Jerome, hungry all the time, what does this do? What's this for? How many amps, how sharp, how fast? He found her workspace endlessly enticing: the cardboard cartons of welding rods, menagerie of files, solder pencils, chipping hammers, double-sided filter masks like twin insectile snouts, even the endless sound of the ventilator a flat bassless music, work's own harmonic voice. Living on air, sleeping, when he slept, on a pallet-bed on the disused second floor-the show floor-so he could be close, and need not take the long trudge back to wherever he was squatting these days from his rapt tutelage with Tess.

    Who found him more than useful, in many ways, not least a bright protracted shield when she needed it; Bibi's infrequent immersions in Paul, for instance, or now, let them talk to each other, she had work to do. Anyway dance was Bibi's preserve: who, what, how many; though scrupulous, always, to inform Tess of her choices, ask opinion, ask advice and often take it: "You don't think like a performer," Bibi would say. "That's invaluable."

    Their talks: Bibi coiled loose on her broken-down bed, sucking tonic water through a red straw, and Tess, legs drawn up and a handful of bent hinges, telling them like rosary beads, one by soundless one. Before even the shows themselves was the intricate fun of this; there was no one like Bibi, no one who could speak so sharply, listen so full. Partner in the best way, right hand and left, each what the other was not. So many ways a joining like this could fail, and they had avoided them all.

    So. Tess was content to leave dance to Bibi; if she needed another body she would get one. Meanwhile Jerome would move the sculpture, splice wires, ask a million questions and apparently be satisfied to sleep on splinters for the privilege of working with the Surgeons; already, a reputation.

    It was true-renown both antic and frantic, anything, said the buzz, could happen at a Surgeons show. How far, in such a short time; once started, the buzz went under its own power, obeyed its own acceleration. Fed by the wet excesses of Infections and Their Uses, its slippery near nudity, its buckets of costume-shop blood splashed wild counterpoint to the strangely foodlike odor of smoking rosin solder, by the ominous theatrics of Hysterica's mimed balletic cannibalism beneath a swaying frieze of plastic masks made to mimic the dancers, features heat-gunned to distortions too gross for mere caricature, as if those huge twisted faces were the outward manifestation of souls too ugly to contemplate for long: each show brought louder crowds, larger crowds, word of mouth urged by more and less than truth, rumor running like too much current until
Slave to the Burn
, where for the first time they had to turn people away, had to pay with beer two steroid cases to hang on the crashbars until the show was ready to begin. Even Bibi's ambitions had not prepared them for this.