The Cipher (15 page)

Nakota announced her arrival by some five-star bitching, everybody was assholes, her boss was an asshole, the customers were the biggest assholes on earth. Apparently the big ordeal was some guy puked on the bar and she had to clean it up. I laughed, which only made things worse but I didn't especially care.

"Go ahead and laugh, you stupid shithead," she said, blowing smoke at me. Bitterly, "It was all
green."

"Listen," nudging her, "you know what? I sat out there ail day and I didn't see anybody pay the slightest bit of attention to the door."

"Good/' but still pissed, wanting to find something to complain about even in that, not ready to be glad about anything yet. "When're you moving in?"

"I have one more thing to try, tomorrow morning. We'll see how that comes out." Actually it was pretty mundane, but a good idea, I thought, a commonsense thing to do, the thinking of which pleased me. Early the next morning I called the building manager, a guy I had seen exactly once, left a message I was having some trouble with the pipes in my kitchen and would he please send somebody around to look at them; I gave the number of the apartment nearest the storage-room door. It was the building's only storage room, we had early on made certain of that. Not that it truly mattered: nothing in the Jbuilding had ever been repaired or replaced within living memory, there was certainly no live-in maintenance man, and the clientele being what they were, no one was going to bitch too much about anything in return for the simple security of being left completely alone.

I sat in my accustomed spot and waited to see if anyone would come looking, for tools, whatever: the quintessential fool's errand maybe but maybe I was quintessential^ suited for it. And then again, what else did I have to do? Watch the video?

All day, nothing, or nothing but Nakota's escalating impatience, like sitting next to a jiggling container of acid; unstable. When she left for work we weren't speaking, which was restful, and we weren't speaking much anyway considering I was on the landing most of the day. Evening, I went in, not satisfied but resigned to my results: there was nothing in my upcoming vigil to fear but the Funhole itself.

I drank so much hot coffee, cup after cup, wanting to pour it directly on my aching stone-cold ass to speed the thaw, that I knew I wouldn't sleep for hours, maybe till morning, which was okay because a day of sitting, two days really, is not exactly exhausting. I watched the news with the sound off. It was more frightening that way but more obscurely comical: Was this flat-faced white man, sweating in his suit, perturbed about a big matter or small, time or money, life or death? Was this tight-assed anchorwoman's oblique frown in response to a football score or a natural disaster, was it the passing of a tyrant or a kidney stone that caused her smile?

Halfway through the phone rang; I. expected Randy but got Vanese. Long pauses in her speech, she was diffident, asked how I was doing; I had to smile, I hardly remembered my bruises. Being hurt was no big thing and I wanted to say so, but it sounded so he-man I couldn't. Instead I told her about my new system for watching the news. It made her laugh, a little, but she wasn't really calling to talk.

Finally, after a longer pause: "You didn't do it yet, did you?"

"No." I felt like a doctor, trying to soften the report of an incipient malignancy. "Maybe tomorrow."

"You ought to think this through, Nicholas. I mean I know it's not my business, but I saw, well you know what I saw."

I was what you saw that scared you, I was the thing you don't want to mention. "Vanese," as kindly as I could, "don't worry about it. Really. Nothing's going to happen, okay?" It was a stupid lie and we both knew it, and it killed the conversation. After I hung up I sat in the dark wondering how I could inspire worry, why she would bother to call. Older-sister syndrome, yeah. She probably sat around worrying about stray dogs running loose on the freeway, too. And then I was ashamed, to think something so cynically dismissive of her kindness, was I that big a shit that I couldn't even appreciate simple human concern?

It helps, I told myself, to be human in the first place, and then of course in walked Nakota to further prove my lack of humanity. "Well?" she said, and, "Nothing," I said. "I start tomorrow."

It sounded like I just got a job or something. Kiss me, honey, I'm off to the Funhole.

She smiled, blue teeth, sparkling eyes and all. A celebratory blowjob, perhaps, or at least a surcease from bitching? Yes. And no, but as I lay there, her mouth upon me, my eyes almost closed and skating on the verge, I thought of how I might feel that same time tomorrow, or next week, or whenever whatever epiphany I sought finally overtook me, and to my distress this idea, this disintegration, triggered my orgasm and I cried out as I came, then closed my eyes tight, tight, if I can't see the monster then it can't see me. But after all I was my own monster, wasn't I.

"Shut up," I said aloud and to myself. Nakota did not speak, ignoring me, intent on her own orgasm; she probably wouldn't have answered me anyway. I felt a passionate impulse to cry, hard tears that would hurt like splinters, coming down. I didn't. But the want stayed with me, hour after hour as Nakota lay asleep beside me, skinny jigsaw form blanketless in the cold and that burning, burning in my throat.

And woke in the night to find myself, crouched, lips , open like some mindless nursling, hot face close upon the cool glass of the shining screen as Nakota had done before me, but in—and I knew with a certainty past instinct —much more intimate union. And the figure upon it, dissolving, transforming, crooning in soundless glee as it moved to press, perhaps, its empty cheek upon my own.

"Huh," no word, just barely sound, a huffing groan of shock as if, waking, I found myself thoughtfully tilting an acid beaker, about to drink a vial of virus. Jerking backward and away, a clumsy stutter of movement and I sat back, hard, fresh and smelly sweat on the shiver of my skin, and behind me something, a beer can, fell with a soft metallic crash; Nakota heard nothing, slept on, skin and bones in slumber.

And the image a glimmer, the pure malignancy of its darkness suddenly abloom in comic flickerings, but hey! that's not all, folks. Left-handed, I shut off the TV, hurried back to bed to lie helpless and awake, watching the screen with one sideways eye, the way a dog watches the foot that kicks it, the way the insect watches the huge avenging hand.

Supplies, yes, my pot and blanket and pad of paper, creeping off in the dark dawn—I hadn't slept and finally didn't want to, what better way to approach the Funhole than with aching eyes and preternatural insomniac nervousness. Wrapped in my blanket, the pad to my chest (bear side in), I sat with my back to the door and thought, too embarrassed to say it aloud: Well, here I am.

Here I am.

Dusty floor. Randy's sculpture. A smell like, God help us, baking bread, a robust yeasty stink, good enough to eat. A very thin bug, all minute feathery legs, ran a wide path around the Funhole. I watched it go, wondered suddenly why I had so rarely seen insects, mouse droppings, any indication of life that should surely have flourished in a room so undisturbed, why wasn't there a shitload of cobwebs here? Ever? And of course I knew why, stupid questions to pass the time until, what. Until you're assumed in a pillar of cloud, until all the blood in your body turns to gold, until you go crazy from your own dumb solitude and throw yourself in a grand suicidal gesture not down the hole but out a friendly window?

What a melodramatic asshole I was turning out to be.

I took out the bear pad and started doodling, and the next thing I knew Nakota was kneeling before me, bright eyes and shaking my shoulder, hunting no doubt some kind of transformation. "Well?" she kept saying. "Well?"

"Well nothing." I was exhausted and pissed, all I wanted to do was sleep. "Let me sleep," I said, and pushed at her, it was like pushing away a nosy determined dog. "Just get the fuck out of here and let me sleep," and I pushed her again, harder, and she slewed sideways, making no motion at all to arrest her slide, ended splayed before the hp of the Funhole with a nasty smile on her face.

"Good move," she said. "That was a close one, wasn't it?"

"Who gives a shit," I said, and meant it, meant it too when I said, consciously cruel, "It doesn't want you anyway, Nakota. Shrike.
Jane.
It wants me."

And it was so. And it was said to hurt her. Which it did.

And I didn't feel bad. Which scared me, as much as the sudden rich throb of my wound, an approving twinge, gladhand so to speak and remorsefully, I reached out for her, saying something, I don't remember, and she took my proffered right hand and squeezed, hard and vicious, driving her fingers into the most painful circle of my flesh, squeezed till I literally gasped and in blind reaction hit out at her, hit her in the face. I looked at my hand, horrified to see my fingers spotted with her blood.

"Congratulations," she said, and I saw she was laughing.

"Please," I said. "Please just go away."

She did, but not for minutes, long minutes with her bright eyes watching me as I assumed my sorrowful crouch, sat with head finally averted so I did not have to see. When she left I checked the door, could it be locked from the inside? No, or the outside either. I would have to fix that.

When I slept again my dreams were painless, oddly dry for such a literal position, there on the lip, the rim, yeah, of a bottomless drink of dreams. Dumb stuff: about my car, a movie I'd watched with Nora, a beach I'd once slept on, wrapped in some woman's worn-out rain poncho. That last dream was more vivid, when I woke it was to the scent of the plastic poncho, the cold gritty rasp of the sand against the back of my hand, I.had used it for a pillow. How cold it had been that morning, gray unspectacular dawn and me standing, weaving, still half-high and pissing into the calm waters of the lake. Up the hill to the all-night party, which by that time had degenerated into three drunk women talking about TV shows and a guy passed out on the front porch. I had found a bed and slept in it, and in four hours woke much as I felt on this Funhole floor, cramped and more exhausted than when I had lain down. The bear pad pressed, now, into my cheekbone, and I cuddled it like a toy as I fell back to sleep.

Hunger woke me the third time, my body clock saying it was probably afternoon. Nakota had gone to work. In the empty flat I made a shitty meal of burned eggs and half a bowl of vegetable soup, there was hardly anything to eat but I could hardly complain since I hadn't been to the store in, what? Days definitely, probably longer, who knew what Nakota was eating. The flesh of others. After spending all that time in the dark, it was hard to think of going out, of venturing into the frigid day. Maybe tomorrow.

Cautiously, who knew what I expected, I turned on the TV. Nothing not normal. If I stayed in the storage room at least I'd never have to see the video again, unless of course it started projecting itself on the walls, my own personal drive-in, stop it, just stop it. On the news they told about a man who had had a stroke at the wheel of his car and as a result flattened two kids on bikes. Three people dead and nobody to blame.

Lying on my back on the couchbed, one hand behind my head, feeling grubby and too listless to actually do anything about it, and thinking I could hear music, somebody's radio, a tune with a bass so subliminal that I could not hear it, could barely feel it as a whisper in my bones. Maddeningly beautiful, and faint as an insect choir, like standing in the dark and glimpsing— the barest peripheral, an image behind your eyelids—the passing of your one desire, close enough to nuzzle if you could only fix its motion, see it all the way.

Fainter. And nobody's radio.

Funhole music.

I hear you.

Back then to the dark, boneless slump before the hole, the gloryhole, lying beside it like a lover too timid to reach for what is offered. God it was cold in there. Gray light coming in under the door. And that sound, no more distinct for proximity, same sweet ghost howl not so much siren song as the song that charms sirens. Pillowed again with the bear pad, all my body sore still from the vigil. Aching in my hand like the beat of my heart.

And if I slept, it was a sleep like fugue, and in that sleep Randy's sculpture began to twist, elegant stance before my eyes, I never touched it but it moved. Moving, nothing so clear as in time to the music but connected nonetheless, its strut like the dance of stalking bone, the weak directionless illumination a shine down its elegant lengths. And me witness through my closed eyes, my dreaming gaze transfixed and then abruptly waking to a pain so outrageous that tears dribbled down my cheekbones, I tried to sit up and found I could not move my arm, my hand, it was like being staked down, crucified to the floor. From my hand a fluid clear as water snaked its living way to the Funhole, and instead of running into its depths formed a transparent black rainbow above it, gaining in radiance as more fluid left me and the pain trebled. I writhed against what held me, I moved my head back and forth as if that would somehow help, rainbow and wall and rainbow again, and Randy's sculpture suddenly bounded straight and horrifying up in the air as if it would fall, impaling arc, directly into my chest. A coughing scream, no I won't look and I felt a little echoing thud and looked again to see the sculpture sitting chummily next to me, its metal dripping only slightly, mingling with my hand's extrusion to form a silvery mix that did not alter the rainbow's color but gave the bow a jaunty flex that it demonstrated by moving in definite time to the music, which instead of swelling grew dimmer still, maddening as the knowing shine of the sculpture beside me.