The Cipher (20 page)

"Oh, God," in my throat, almost unheard but she heard it, half opened her eyes, and on that ledge of sleep I saw a gravity, the faintest breath of a genuine sweetness in the slow tired blink of her eyes, of the sore smile she gave me.

"Shut up," she said, and touched my elbow, meaning it for a squeeze. "Go to sleep."

And I cried harder, so hard and long that, childlike, I cried myself to sleep. And dreamed for.once of a paradise that even I could reach, past darkness, a place where there was nothing left for my heart to carry. And I lay at rest there in paradise, and, looking up, saw distant and far above me a circle edged in black, and beyond that circle, like a living cloud, the quiet darkness of the empty storage room.

Well, Imagine for yourself the excitement, the speculation, the breathless phone calls that smelled strangely of a bent respect and constantly threaten to become drop-in marathons, even quiz festivals—they were such a curious bunch, the trio that Nakota, bright eyes and sagging lip, had maliciously christened the Three Dingbats. The only way I could keep them away from me was to threatened to bar them forever from Funhole proximity, taking shameless advantage of rights I did not have. But they didn't know that, which was good enough for me, though I also knew it wouldn't work for long.

Malcolm was a more difficult matter. I
had
promised to do the mask, and now was certainly the time to continue since I had rarely looked more like death. And I got him to stop playing the video, though only just. But. what was almost worse, he insisted on going over and over the scene in the storage room, blood and sex and revelation, a puddle positive of melted steel; cold fingers patting my aching face through the chalky slap of plaster, he was doing the mask over, he had had new insights, he would share them all with me whether I liked it or not. Nakota could at least find periodic escape in the musty comatose serenity of Club 22, but for me it was nothing but Malcolm, and his theories, and the nervous blurt of the ringing phone bringing questions and questions, the endless loop of speculation that if not meant so seriously would have been hilarious. In a pitiful way.

"They're your friends," I said to Malcolm. "You talk to them."

He shrugged. "They want to talk to you, Nick." Offhand smile of petty malice, scraping tool tapping lightly against the table's crooked lip, crooked as his own, as warped as his enjoyment of the whole scenario: his pet puppies surrounding someone who doesn't like dogs.

Exhausted by their idiocy, their stupid unending phone calls, by the specter of our little merry band grown insidiously larger, the exponential creep of a process whose end I not only could not predict but did not want to understand, I took the predictable way out. I told them they could visit but that was
all,
if they took even one step toward the storage room that was it, they were gone. They agreed with a haste that was suspicious even to me, and I fool easy.

Throughout the day's work I speculated on that call.

"What the fuck," I said to Malcolm.

"Don't move your lips! For God's sake, how many times do I have to tell you not to move while the plaster's drying," fussing like a nurse in the violent ward, so obsessively close in his inspection that if I looked, and I could hardly help it, I could see the miniature veins in his eyes, red as a dingbat's lab coat. When I was again successfully immobilized, he slouched back across the room, to sit smoking a succession of his horrible cigarettes while I sat straight-backed as a mummy, the usual unbearable itch begun in the small of my back, waiting for the plaster to dry.

"The whole thing blew them away," he said.

Too bad not for real, huh? Although this was not true, or not entirely; I had nothing personal against the Dingbats, I just wanted them to go away. Taking Malcolm with them. Neither of which was even remotely probable anymore.

"I mean it really blew them away." Long expansive puff; how, I thought, can he smoke those things without puking? Even Nakota couldn't take the smell, which lay all over the flat now like a base coat of cancer. "They can't stop talking about it."

Yes, I noticed, but to say it wasn't worth his inevitable squawk about the plaster, so I didn't. Now my hand was throbbing, too, in a more-than-usual way, and I rubbed it, slow, against my thigh in an empty search for comfort, wishing it wasn't so cold in the flat, wishing Nakota was there, wishing I was alone. By the time he freed me from the plaster I was so jittery with irritation the very swish of his hair was enough to make me want to stuff him headfirst down the Funhole without so much as a cheery farewell, and of course it was just then that the door opened to reveal the grinning triumvirate of Dingbats, all of them, God help us, wearing sunglasses. In the snow.

First of all they wanted to watch the video, and when, yelling from the bathroom where I sloppily scrubbed my face (the only pleasure I was likely to have all day), I told them no, they said they wanted to "interview" me about my "feelings."

Oh right. Even for them this was going too far, what next, a documentary? "The only feelings I have right now," I said, slamming out of the b&throom, my stiff jaw still outlined in a sticky ribbon of mingled Vaseline and plaster residue, "you don't want to know about. And what the hell do you mean, interview me? Interview me for what? Your personal archives? Your diaries? What?" Nobody answered. I could feel in my chest a pleasant bubble of rage, freely mingled with self-pity and an overriding regret that Nakota was not home to chew them the new assholes they deserved, side by side with the drier knowledge that she would far more likely egg them on.

"Either you weren't paying attention, the other day," I said, "or you're stupid, and I would hate to think anybody could be that stupid. Even friends of yours," to Malcolm, who froze in the act of lighting another cigarette to give me a look less piqued than surprised, as if one of the drying floor-bound blobs of plaster had spitefully bitten his toe, and he their benign creator; fathom for yourself the sheer ingratitude.

'This is not a game," I said. My hand on the refrigerator door, so angry I could barely remember what the hell I was doing there. When in doubt, get a beer. It can't help, but what can? "This is not some fucking art-school field trip, this is the weirdest motherfucking thing you will
ever
see and if you tell so much as one single person about it, if you even tell them where this
building
is," and, voice risen, I had absolutely no idea how to follow that one up, I had had no prior experience in making threats that were meant to be taken seriously, so I slammed the refrigerator door as hard as I could, sending a

cracked and empty juice jar and a flutter of outdated coupons to the dust-gummed floor below.

Silence. "Don't make me tell you again," I said, and marched back to the bathroom before my traitor face could display the lunatic bray of laughter fighting to blow free. As I closed the door and jammed both faucets to on, a pure continuation of silence, I thought: So of course the first thing they do is run downstairs, right? Which made me want to laugh even harder.

But they were still there when I reappeared, talking quietly among themselves, only Malcolm aloof as he sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to scrape the plaster dust from under his nails; he had nails like a goat's. No one looked at me. In the face of such excessive casualness I became, true to form, more nervous, tripped on my way to the stereo, almost mashing Malcolm's black-booted foot.

"Watch it," and I shrugged, turning on something, loud. My beer was almost gone. Fancy that. To say something I asked the Incubus woman about music, who did she like to listen to. The answer was, as I expected, neatly suffocated by a crash course in modern music theory, which is to say heavy on the bullshit, but I did * find out her name. Doris. She was Doris, and the other one was Ashlee, and the guy was Dave.

None of them drank beer, which figured, but they were at least willing to sit and watch me do

it. As my slump grew more pronounced Doris's eyes brightened, the gestures of her chapped hands became more animated—she was one of those people who love to be told they can't talk without their hands—and Ashlee laughed and Dave was even moved to crack a joke, something about the superrealists who froze to death when they went to the drive-in to see
closed for winter
. Imagine! Levity. Malcolm's silent sulk blossomed at last into open disgust as the hours passed and no one asked his opinion, studied the mask, or even commented on the new direction it was taking, a sharp spiral downward if anyone was interested in my opinion which they doubtless were not. Unless of course I wanted to talk about the Funhole.

Which I didn't. Nor would I allow them to, giving them the brick wall stare when they tried (and they did try, especially Doris, she was a regular Nakota when it came to taking no for an answer). I caught them peeking, swift and blind and sneaky, at my bandaged hand, and wondered if they guessed what painful shiny rot lay beneath, wondered if they caught, as I did, its mushy scent on the smoke-dry air, and if they did what images it planted, what dark romantic horseshit they conjured from parched imagination's empty soil. Because no matter what they thought they knew, I knew they had never seen anything like it. And never would, if I could at all prevent it.

From floor to chair, to bathroom, to refrigerator, letting the door bang with a cold moue of distaste: finally Malcolm's aggravation overcame him. "I'm taking off," he said, and with a stare long enough only to show his consuming displeasure with us all took his premature leave, pointedly not slamming the door. His cigarettes lay forgotten on the floor where he had first been sitting, and it took me just a moment to toss them gleefully overhand into the trash.

"I hope they were expensive," I said, stopping on my way back to get another beer, reflecting as I did how truly bad my hand smelled tonight, was it getting worse or was I growing more sensitive. Ashlee said something to Doris, who shook her head, brisk positive motion, shimmy of ragged hair.

"How come," sitting back down, my unsteady gaze rolling from one to another, "you didn't go with him?"

Dave shrugged.

Ashlee shrugged too and looked away, and Doris, the eternal spokesperson, for once had little to say. It was about then when my drunken boredom overtook me, even being persecuted by the Funhole in one of its less indulgent modes was more entertaining than this. I flopped to my feet and told them it was time to go. At first they didn't believe me, but I was insistent.

"If you hurry," I said, "you can still catch up with Malcolm," oh they were a fickle bunch of fucks, I thought, showing them the door, just drunk enough to find it funny. Which Nakota, when she came home, emphatically did not.

"Oh great," fast and vicious stripdown, tearing at her uniform where it stalled at wrists and neckline, whipping the empty clothes at me. A button struck me softly in the eye. "That's just what .we need: a fucking bunch of yahoo dingbats coming to sit at your feet. Are you that desperate for company? Isn't Malcolm enough for you?"

"Get off my ass," I said, but mildly, still anesthetized and anxious to stay that way. The stink of my hand had metamorphosed into a warm aching smell inexplicably like dirt, soil, the ground outside, an unexpectedly homespun odor that was adding to my idiot sense of well-being, perhaps even a contributing factor in my small but proud erection, which I waggled now at Nakota in an attempt to turn her attention.

"Put that stupid thing away," she said, lighting a cigarette, mean and naked on the edge of the bed. Why was it that no matter how cold it became in the flat, she never shivered, never showed any visible sign of discomfort? "The thing to do," dismissing for the moment both my words and her anger, "is get the camcorder again, and make another video so—"

"I am not making another video," I said, alarmed. "I'd like to trash the one we have."

"I wouldn't," she said, eyes bright with warning, two meanings for the price of one. "If you weren't so chickenshit," blowing smoke,
"and
drunk, you would realize that—"

"Drunk's got nothing to do with it," I said, pushing up on my elbows, soft wince as my sick hand brushed the bed. "You don't—"

"—another
one, so we can
compare
them," louder than she needed to, angry at my uncharacteristic interruptions, I was getting out of my place again, clown prince of the Funhole and forget that I had my own agenda, forget that I was, according even to her own theory, in some bad way an engine to keep the drive. I was supposed to be bait, and catalyst and straight man, to dispose if necessary of worshipful stray lunatics, and oh yeah, empty the ashtrays, too.

She was still talking. "—if any changes have taken place, then we'll have documentation." Crushing out the cigarette. Swift swallow of mineral water, as flat and unappetizing as the smell of her body as she leaned across me to set down the glass. "Even you should see the sense in that."

"You sound like them," settling back to cradle my hand beside me, silent dirty drip of fluid
onto
the already-soiled sheets, what did
I
care. "They wanted to interview me today."

"Interview you?" and she laughed, reaching for the blanket to wrap herself in, cold cocoon for the insect queen, the reader of buggy runes. What had she done with them, those twisted little bodies? And the mouse, whatever had become of it? "What're they going to do, start a fan club?"