The Cipher (18 page)

"—longer than you think," sketchpad too, expensive-looking charcoal pencils and sitting me down, bossy and rude and making me sorrier I had agreed to this, always assuming that were possible. My motives were unfathomable at best but this time it was all beyond me, I might have been predicting the movements of a stranger, and if I cared to try I would end with nothing more than a vaster confusion. Who deciphers the thoughts that come, windborne, from others' heads? And who gives a shit, once thought becomes action? We all know who gets the blame.

And all this time Malcolm talking, directing, overruling, my God he was a windy fuck. Making fun of my magazine prints on the walls, saying Bosch was a poseur and Bacon a fag. Making fun of my photograph of Nakota and saying it looked like a B-movie outtake. Telling me all about himself, since I obviously did not want to hear. Call it punishment.

He was pretty good, though, sketching. He caught not only my features but what I did With them, and I saw in his sketch a kind of premature aging, the stroking finger of a dissolution coming on me like disease. I'm dissolving, I thought, seeing not so much the lines, the gradual leech of life, but the laying-on of a kind of hyperlife, like a sugar carving melting in blood. Look close now: what's wrong with this picture?

He saw it too, but wasn't smart enough to recognize in his head what his eyes already knew. "You won't win any beauty contests," he told me, "which probably explains that bitch of yours."

"She was good enough for you once upon a time," I said, but very mildly; I had no interest in defending Nakota's honor, not that she had any.

He dismissed that, it was a long time ago. "Sit still," he said. I did, still wondering why, was still sitting when Nakota came home, casual bang of the door, grinning at me.

"Tedious, isn't he." pouring a mineral water. "Malcolm, are you planning on moving in? Because if you are, I want your share of the rent up front."

"I wouldn't live here if
you
paid
me,
" he said, but it was abstract venom, he really was absorbed in what he was doing. Imagine. Nakota was more pissed that he wouldn't fight than she would have been if he had—she was a person of simple wants—and in a sulk spoke to neither of us, punishing me, too, as a matter of course.

Which was all right with me, because I could still hear that music, and it was getting to be one hell-of a strain to try to listen over everything else. With their mouths shut it came clearer, it was almost pleasant to sit there in the cool silence, aching back and open mind, listening, listening—

To the quality of the silence as it changed and, irritated, reluctant to open my eyes, I did, and saw them both, she on the couchbed and he a few feet nearer, staring at the TV. Because the video was on. Of course.

She had done it to piss him off by distracting him, but then again it was her favorite show, too. They really did have a lot in common, much more so than she and I. Small mercies, right. I didn't want to watch but oh yes, there was no avoiding, and so I did, seeing again the same figure, feeling again that overriding mutter of dry disquiet but growing, grown, into something more that I could not name.

I thought, I don't need this. I don't need any of this, I can have the real thing, and I stood up and walked out, no need for an exit line either since nobody noticed I was leaving.

In the storage room I sat on the blanket, my bear pad close by like a toy, breathing in and out the rich bubbling stink of the air, watching from the corner of my eye as Randy's sculpture lifted one armlike stalk and began to move it back and forth, beckoning or warning but it was a little too late for both, wasn't it, and either way I didn't care. I lay with my cheek on the bear pad, staring sideways into the Funhole's depths, thinking through the music of processes both irrevocable and remote; call it reverse entropy; call it the Little Bang.

I don't know if they joined me, later, but when I woke up I was alone, so cold my skin hurt, the garbagey reek from the Funhole all over my hair and clothes, my blanket and pad. Olfactory spoor. A marked man. Upstairs Nakota's sleeping face frowned in protest as I walked past the couchbed to the shower, the blue TV light made dimmer by encroaching dawn.

In the shower I let the water run hard, especially on my hand, pounding through the syrup to 'the lessening meat beneath; if I had cared I would have been plenty pissed at what was happening to my hand, the damned thing was almost all hole now, and what happens when there's nothing left but bone, huh? Huh? I flexed it, forced myself to use it, to hold the soap, to wash. More syrup bubbled out, a twinkling gray like a bad special effect, refusing the water's best efforts to wash it away. Last laugh. As usual. It's hard being a conduit. No flowers, though, please.

Malcolm worked hard, I'll give him that. Unfortunately he had seized upon the continuous play of the video as essential to his work, and when I complained told me I was chickenshit, I had to learn to let go of my petty fears. This was so funny I smiled beneath the tickling cheesecloth; step two already, we had gone beyond the preliminaries more quickly, he said, than usual, he was obviously inspired by the megaweirdness (his phrase).

"I got you," indicating with nimble plastery fingers,
"there."

The sensation of plaster on the skin, even through cheesecloth, is like being buried alive in cheap cement, nose straws or no nose straws. Heightened of course by my petty paranoia, I did not like the video playing all the time, it was like leaving your front door open all night long and trusting to your own stupidity that nothing naughty would shamble in. All I could see was the inside of my eyelids, all I could hear was Malcolm's voice, muttering to himself as he slopped plaster and stared at the TV. I didn't like it, being there in such a stupidly helpless position while he worked on me, what if he decided the video was telling him to suffocate me? One nose straw was beginning to tickle with every breath. I tried breathing less often but that's more difficult than it sounds and I had to stop. And still Malcolm's atonal mumbles, and the faint sounds from the TV.

But it was definitely his medium, and never mind Nakota's kneejerk spite: he wasn't going to make anyone forget Rodin but he knew what he was doing, and in his sure and shaping hands the plaster became the vehicle for, if not the macabre transfiguration he seemed to hope for, then for me the seeds of simple change, if only by way, a subtle way, of observation: a new kind of seeing previously unconsidered and now in an instant become the norm. Or maybe all the, what, megaweirdness was inspiring him more than he knew, maybe the constant black mutter of the video was telling him more than his ears could hear, more than my own attenuated straining could decipher.

And when we, he, had finally done for the day, the night, as I washed my red and itching face, over and over, who should show up but the Malcolmettes. Three of them, anyway: Eenie, Meanie, and Shitty. Or something. I was never all that shit-hot with names anyway and these three were strictly interchangeable. The only way I could find to distinguish them was that one's lab coat was a rusty-blood color and the other two were women. One of which, when she opened her mouth, revealed herself to be the one from the Incubus, the one who'd scoffed at my drunken promises of strange.

They didn't bother sneering at my apartment, it was beneath them to even notice such boring squalor, but they couldn't say enough about the death mask. Clustered close around it and nodding hack and forth: Technique, they said, it was pure technique, pronouncing it like it was the grail of words.

"This compares with a Caldwell," red lab coat said, offensive thrust of nubby chin, please God, I thought, don't let him stroke it knowingly.
"Easily:'

"Or deVore," said the other, non-Incubus woman, who stood so close to me I could smell the stain of her breath, without, of course, acknowledging me at all, though it was my plaster face she now examined so tenderly. The others nodded, Malcolm with a certain smug restraint, a Borscht Belt parody of Hamlet doing humble. "Midperiod deVore," the woman added, hasty caret-dip of head.

"Who the hell," I said, so pleasantly adrift, "is deVore?"

"You wouldn't understand this," she told me, simultaneously swiveling and stepping back so as not to accidentally touch me while she told me off, "but it's an honor to become one of Malcolm's masks."

"That would be why he works in a clothes store," I said, and just then saw Miss Incubus standing before the TV, head to one side like my dog used to do when she was hearing sounds no one else could. All I saw on the screen was static, but I shut it off anyway, brisk hard finger punch to OFF, too hard because I was scared. Of what she'd seen. Not for her, or not for her precisely, but wasn't it bad enough that Malcolm had seen it? Did we need to get all the rest of his crew in on it too? What a sweet Pandora's hell that would be.

And then of course, operating on the premise that anything, no matter how bad, can always get worse, here came Randy, and Vanese, who continued the evening's merriment with a deadpan: "Oh
my,"
and Randy standing sidekick, hands on hips and mouth dour in a frown.

"Don't tell me you let this cocksucker con you into something stupid," no eyes for the other three, who returned the favor and, bored children, started playing with the stereo, trying to find something they liked, no doubt an impossibility.

"Hey Nick," Malcolm's over-shoulder grin, theatrical, did he think this was a movie or what. "Your watchdog's here."

I answered neither. What was there for me to say? I felt as if I were moving through water, a vast and calm preoccupation that in its way shielded me, protected me from the emotions of others, from the facts, and facets, of life. Such as now. The hell with them all. Except maybe Vanese. "He's doing a death mask of my face."

"Does Shrike know about this?" Randy's face was turning red. Vanese gave him a look of secret-feminine scorn, walked past us all to make herself instant coffee. She wore a pair of strange delicate earrings, flat silver loops that seemed to drip and twist in some corrosive dance. I went to her, touched one gently.

"These are nice."

"Randy made 'em." She touched the same one I had, set it swinging. "Reminds him of the Funhole," she said. "Nicholas," lowering her voice, soft urgency, "you didn't let Malcolm talk you into anything, did you? I mean I
know
Shrike, Nakota whatever, I know she was here, but she's got her own agenda, you know what I'm saying?"

I most certainly knew what she was saying.

"So what happened, when he got here?"

"We showed him the video."

She stared at me, past surprise, she even looked as if she might laugh, from sheer appreciation of our brazen idiocy, then shook her head, shrugged, and stirred her coffee. "It's your ride," she said. "Hang on."

Glaring at each other, Randy and Malcolm traded bon mots, none of which I heard, instead hearing not so much below as
through
everything else the, what, the voice of the Funhole, the sound of its workings, as music permeating their voices, the room, like water soaks a fabric yet leaves the fabric itself intact. I stood, head bent, and it must have seemed as though it was their argument I heard, that I cared who did what, that in fact I had any say in the matter at all. Everyone else seemed to think so. What was next? Franchise rights? Funhole Inc.? Didn't
anybody
understand what was going on here?

And of course stupid bastard Malcolm, "Is that right?" to Randy's ever-reddening face and moving to turn on the video again, to prove his point, stupid point, and as if abruptly waking I moved too, faster than they could react, and pushed his hand away.

"Leave it," I said.

My motion had momentarily surprised them into stillness, maybe they had all forgotten I was there, but Miss Incubus was first to bristle to de
_;
fense, turning on me with what she no doubt thought of as a streetgirl's stare; Main Street, maybe. Anytown, USA. Brusque: "What's your problem?"

Malcolm laughed. "Believe me, we don't have time for that."

"Look," and back it came again, that underwater feel, but did you know, I thought, that I can swim? "Look, you don't know what you're fucking around with," I said to her, ignoring the prepracticed stare, they had all of them seen far too many movies. "You really don't."

"You know," she said, pushing right up into my face, "you're nothing but promises, you know that? Bullshit promises, I think."

"You,
think? Jury's still out," and Vanese snickered as red lab coat turned on her and she gave him a look that was the real edition of what's-her-name's counterfeit glare, just as good as a pinch in the crotch and maybe better since it shut him up before he could speak, which is usually the best time, and under it all like a muttered secret that
sound
in my head, rushing like water but like no water I could finally navigate for long, swimmer or no.

"Listen," I said, including them all in my gaze, even I could hear my desperation, "this is really turning out to be—"

The door clicked open, and in the hall's cold-blown rectangle Nakota, one hand on hip: "Well well," stepping in to take over, "looks like the gang's all here."

Oh boy. Waiting to see what she would do, and not alone, I stood in that forking rush of water, one half of me almost hurtfully aware of the temper of the room, the other half dreamy-drowned in the flow, the surge, it was in the end a mercy that they could not hear it too. Nakota poured herself some mineral water, walked through half conversations to turn on, of course, the TV.