The Cipher (26 page)

"Well, at least I know where I stand."

The apartment was larger than mine, which was no feat, but there was a home look to it that my place would never have. Randy's art was everywhere, ^ome pretty nice pieces, there were snapshots of the two of them, of friends, there was a bunch of dried stalks and leaves in a big ceramic pot. Beat-up friendly furniture. All the amenities missing back home at the flophouse of the. damned.

She nodded back at what I guessed was the kitchen. "I was frying some sausage," she said. "You want some?"

"Yes," I lied, followed her to a square little box of fake red brick and a grease-brown galaxy of refrigerator magnets in the dubious shapes of fruit. She nodded me toward a cupboard. "Cups there, coffee there. Milk in the fridge if you want it."

I didn't. Smooth fingers on a knife, chopping peppers. She had on some bright green do-rag or headscarf or something, a Cleveland Browns T-shirt. Dumping the peppers into the pan, bright sizzling flash. "I heard all about last night," she said. "I'm real glad I wasn't there." No smile, severely stirred the peppers, hands efficient with anger. "I wish Randy hadn't been there either."

"So what do I want."

"Right."

"Well, first of all I'm sorry—" but she wasn't buying that shit, not for a minute.

"I know," she said. "It wasn't your fault. And that
is
your fault. You're supposed to be in control here, Nicholas." I didn't say anything. "You're the one who started this, or the both of you did, whatever. But she's crazier than a shithouse rat, crazier than you even, Randy told me what she did last night. She doesn't give a tin shit if people get hurt. If they get killed. That guy's arm is fucked
up,
you hear me?"

Again I said nothing, but a sick circle opened in my chest, a heavy feeling like the worst of blame. I wanted to know how bad he was hurt but had no courage to ask. Instead I cast down my gaze, drank coffee through dry lips.

"You think she cares about that guy? About anybody?
Skit.
There's no trusting her at all."

"I know that." I tapped the bag. "That's what this is for."

She dumped the sausage and peppers on plates, ripped paper towels from a roll. "What is it, a choke chain?"

"Almost." I showed her the padlock, saw her face break into a smile of relief that discouraged me greatly, because she was happy for nothing and her disillusionment might cost me her help. But. "It's not what you think, Vanese. It's for locking me in."

"Oh great," and she threw her fork straight at my head, missed me, put both hands to her forehead the way my mother used to do. "God
damn
it, Nicholas! How can you be so stupid? That thing is going to
kill
you, you got that? Kill your ass! And you're going to lock yourself
in
with it?"

"Just listen to—"

"No,
you
listen! I've had about enough of this shit, I don't
need
this shit, you hear me? You hear me?" Her voice was getting higher as it got louder, I thought she might hit me or cry, sat waiting for either. Finally she sat down, stared at her plate, pushed at the chair as if she would go hunting her fork; I gave her mine.

A sigh as she took it, and she squeezed my hand; her fingers were cold. "I'm sorry for hollering," she said. "But all this is driving me crazy, and I don't know about the rest of you folks but I don't
like
to be crazy." She sighed again. "Eat your sausages, they're getting cold."

I finally got her promise—it took till the end of the sausages, wasn't easy, but I got it. "Today," I said, for maybe the tenth time. "Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. Today. Now, if you want," gathering up her plate and mine, taking them to the sink. Over the hot-water sound, "I have 16 ask you something, okay? Just one thing."

"Go ahead," already looking down, away, I knew what was coming.

"Why don't you," gesture with the ratty sponge, "just walk away? Let it go, let her fuck with it if she wants to."

"I can't, is all."

She kept looking at me. "Why not?"

Well? Why
don't
I? Because it doesn't want me to. Because I don't want to either. "I don't know," I lied, my face filling with simpleton heat, and she shook her head at me, slow pity, deep disgust.

"It's for her, isn't it? So she doesn't go in without you. So she doesn't," a pause, in vast wondering scorn at my stupidity, "hurt herself."

"Well no, not really," snagging the lie, wondering why it was, if it was, any worse than the truth, any less believable. "I just don't want, I mean I think it's better if I'm there, if—" Stop jabbering, you dumbshit, shut your red face.

Vanese shook her head. "Lord," she said, dried her hands, got her coat, and would say nothing else at all.

Once again the somber gather of supplies, a bigger load this time and Vanese's sudden question, "Not to be nosy, but where're you going to shit, Nicholas?"

"Down the Funhole," I said.

The mask spooked her. Adding to its menace was, perhaps, the fact that she had not seen it as it was now, nailed up in all its chilly splendor, chalk patina and ghostly eyes closed, the better to see what you're thinking, my dear. "Doesn't that thing give you the creeps?" she said, and then a dry chuckle, of course it didn't, of course I had seen worse. For that matter, so had she.

As she walked beneath it, to enter the storage room, I let my gaze drift up: Abandon Common Sense, etcetera. And in that pause I saw, I thought I saw, the features shift, the plaster bones and muscles glide into a new and frightful configuration, so unlike my own, and so familiar.

The face from the video. The smiling face of nothing.

Smiling at me.

"Vanese," I said, soft as lost breath, "will you come and look at this?"
Did
you look at the mask?
See
it? And again the change, shift backward, into neutral if you will: my own face, white-skinned and silent, giving nothing away.

"I don't want to look at it," she said, from inside the storage room. "I just want to get out of here. This place is
cold." 
¹

An ether smell,

"How can you stand it?" stepping unwittingly closer, rubbing her arms as she looked around, "I mean how—"

And Randy's other sculpture,
Dead Head
or whatever he called it, tiny sinuosity, did it move or not? Did it move toward her? "Vanese," I said, "I think you better go."

"Well. Okay. You got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Everything."

It was definitely moving. I saw it moving, and heard as if some sneering sound track a giggling mutter from the hall, no one was out there, no one with throat enough to laugh, anyway, and anyway I don't get that joke. "Vanese," louder, "I think you should go right now. Just make sure you take the—"

The sculpture skull's mouth opened, little steel grin, and the rest of the half-melted metal leaped, emphatic thrust toward her, and grabbing the end of her coat, yanking her off balance and she shrieked, tiny little squeaky sound like a small and bad surprise, dead mouse in your shoe, dead bug in your cup. I grabbed her right arm with my right hand and dragged her, hard, away from the sculpture, it was burning a hole in her coat, a slender smoke like solder and the ether smell belched hard out of the Funhole and I shoved her against the door, yelling, "Get out of here!" And stood panting, listening to her breathless, listening to her snap the padlock on.

For long minutes I tried to talk to her, through the door, tried to ask if she was all right, but all I heard were murmurs, low-voiced mutters, and I yelled in scared frustration, "Vanese, speak up!" and heard in perfect mockery my own voice saying, "Vanese, speak up!" And the giggle, again, and I realized Vanese was long gone, she had left right after the lock was safely on. I took my place, then, arms folded, back against the door like a kid guarding a clubhouse.

"You don't take any chances at all, do you," I said. "You fuck. Do you."

The skull's mouth opened, perhaps the mask's mouth was flexing, too, but the voice came from the dark.

love you

I had known Nakota would be past furious, but as usual I underestimated her.

No screaming, no, she wouldn't waste her strength, but fighting, so it took Randy
and
Malcolm, with Dave a helpless observer giving me the blow-by-blow, to drag her away. Vanese came back with a tired report: "Dave's upstairs sitting on her."

"Good."

"Malcolm wants to put the video on."

"Tell Malcolm—no, tell Randy to break his fucking neck if he so much as touches that video, or even the TV, okay, Vanese?" Stupid absentee general giving orders through the door. I thought of Nakota, rigid with fury upstairs, frustrated hate like a laser frying a hole in the floor —no thank you, there're enough holes in here already, ha-ha—and made little speeches in my head, little noble declarations of my sterling intentions. When it was really selfishness. Diluted, yes, with worry for her, that was true, but that was selfish too: hurting her hurt me. What had she said? "Nicholas lost it." Yeah. And would lose it again, no doubt. But now it didn't matter. Now I was safe. From Nakota, from her geeks, the Dingbats, everybody.

Head against the door, ah, a lovely quiet moment, alone with my empty head. A yawn so deep it reminded me of when I'd actually slept, last, a real sleep possible here on the lip of nightmares? Well. No doubt. Anything's possible, isn't it, when—

"Nicholas!"

Randy's voice. Tight.

"What?" sitting up, eyes open, heart starting up hard. "What's the matter?"

"It's Shrike, man, you don't know what she's doing, Vanese can't hold on to her—"

"Vanese shit, where the hell's Malcolm? Or Dave?"

"Malcolm left, Dave, I don't know where Dave is. I can't take her with me, I gotta go to work." Tighter still. "She wants to get a chain saw, she says she's going to shoot the lock off the door, she—"

"She can't, it's—"

And unmistakable, Nakota's witchy shriek from the stairwell, Randy gone and my scared yelling notwithstanding, that was the last I heard of any of them. I put my head in my hands.

A smell like roses, drenched and bewitching.

"It's not funny," I said.

My hand was itching, had been in all my talk with Randy, a horrible bubbly itch and I rubbed it viciously against the floor and felt a lump, something I absolutely did not want to see but I looked anyway: the smell, the rose made flesh. And blood. All over my arm.

"I said it's not
funny,
"and I smashed my hand as hard as I could, like swinging a bat, against the door. It hurt so bad it was all I could think of for a long, long time, and that was good.

Not light in the room, but less dark. Scratching, like a mouse, close by my ear and I opened my eyes, my hand like a migraine still. Somebody saying my name.

"What." Oh my throat was dry. Left-handed I scrabbled for the bicycle bottle of water, drank a little, a lot. "What is it? Who's there?"

"It's me. Vanese." If that was really Vanese, then things were very bad. "How you doing?"

"Fine." I considered my hand. One of the fingers was definitely broken, or fractured, whatever. It was swollen like a cartoon hand, the hole in the center a cheerful carnival red. "I'm fine. Where's Nakota?"

"I don't know."

"What about you? Are you okay?"

Silence.

"Vanese, answer me."

The skull was mocking my words, moving its mouth in unison. "Vanese," I said again, and threw the water bottle at the skull. "Stop it, you shit! Vanese, please answer me."

"Nicholas?" A deep pause. "I don't think I want to come back here anymore."

"What happened? What—"

"She wrecked my car, Nicholas. Drove it right through my mother's garage." A slow sigh. "My mother got hysterical, Nicholas. She's just . . ." Nothing. The skull winked at me. Something fluttered in the back of the room. "Randy said, I got to go to work. Take her somewhere. Anywhere. So I took her to my mother's, and she tried to steal my car. I got in it, and she, she just ran right
into
the garage, I thought she was going to drive right out the other side. She's crazy, Nicholas, I mean the girl is insane, something's broken in her head now." Another pause. "She hit her head. So did I."

"Is—are you all right?"

"She's fine," without bitterness, but without concern. For Nakota, or for me. "I'm fine too. The doctor gave me a couple shots, for pain, you * know," which went a long way toward explaining that draggy Demerol voice, that emotionless drone. "But I have to get back to my mother's. At least," a slow funereal chuckle, "she left the car."

"Vanese?"

Nothing.

"Vanese, are you still there? Vanese!" The skull rotated, a deliberate motion weirdly reminiscent of an old-time stripper. "Vanese!"

Very very quietly, through the crack of the door: "You better watch it, Nicholas."