Skin (16 page)

    "You said that before."

    "I meant it."

    Shifting themselves, now, answer in hand and unsure what else to say, nervous hands fiddling with the empty cups, the crumpled beignet bag, obviously uncomfortable in this new atmosphere where everything had changed. Peter's uncertain glance to Jerome, breaking the silence, "Well I started editing down those tapes"-then instant stutter back to quiet: taboo topic but Tess smiled, ugly little smile: "That one really ought to sell."

    And Nicky, surprising them again: "Tess," very firmly, "none of that shit was your fault, and if everybody's too chickenshit to say it then I will. You're the one who tried- no," angrily to Jerome, rejecting some sort of covert signal, "I mean it. She didn't do shit, it's all their fault, those dumb fucks playing around with their stupid knives, that's how you lost the box and-"

    "Nicky, shut-"

    "-Paul had no fucking business even being there, man, as sick as he was, but she had to go and let-"

    "Stop it," her own voice eerily conversational, up off the stool without knowing, or feeling, feeling nothing past the desire to hear none of this, now or ever. "Just stop, all right? It's over, and I don't want to talk about it, so I'm just going to work now," toward them, moving them with her motion (and memory, the Magistrate's sweep toward the crowd, the dancers, I'll give you a special effect and she had gotten one, hadn't she? the most special one of all), "I'm going to be working all day so I'd appreciate it if you guys left now, okay? Thanks for the coffee," and out the door, stubborn Nicky turning for one last stare and then he was gone, too, the door closed, the room empty. Clean and square and lit by the calm hot oven light of day, all the time in the world now to work without worrying about interviews or shows, without talking to anyone, seeing anyone; do not disturb.

    The light on over her worktable, fierce hunch to settle in, settle down:
to what?
To work and never mind why, if you kept looking for the why behind everything you might never work again, you might never bother to breathe again. So: head down and keep busy; and on the floor, on a strip of waxed paper her forgotten beignet, food for ants, for mold, for all the small erosions of heat and time, entropy's relentless remembrance and the slow organic rust of rot.

    A small piece, she was working on a small piece this time, just big enough to fit comfortably on the worktable. No name or title, begun as a way to keep working, keep from thinking but a week into it she found it good, insectile stretch and impossible dancer's grace, a leggy thing that moved in disturbing ways.

    At first like a cloud the gray encirclement of guilt, unsure if it was right to take pleasure in work, in anything; still not certain but now it was easier to breathe a little, to keep busy and find more than busywork in her light, with her solitude and tools; no one else had been to visit; she never answered the phone so that was not a problem. Up, wash, sometimes eat and work till sleep, sometimes fully clothed on the unopened couchbed, head back and the new construct stepping dainty through the surface of her dreams-when she remembered them; many were not good to remember.

    And up, sometimes, in the night, unconscious focus for what waking told her was Bibi, the sound of Bibi's breathing, the whispers and cries from her side of the room, her dreams; what was she dreaming now, Bibi, did she wake, too, crying for Paul? For anyone? Don't think, Tess would say and sometimes aloud: "Don't think," in the dark like a prayer for poison. Pillow lumped and hot like a small body cooling; don't think; and sometimes she did not.

    In the mornings it was the new construct again. Scale small, like the jitter of the crab but this was something different, made as her sculptures used to be made, for no application, no purpose beyond the fact of its existence. Here is a thing, black angles that can move like the shift and purl of remembered shadows, like the drip of dirty water in a cracked plastic bucket, like the smell of the room where the intern brought you the news. You can almost hold it in your two hands, this thing, but there is something in you that does not want to touch it, that does not want it to touch you: something that after contact makes you wipe your hand down the side of your leg. Something that Tess felt inside her, near her heart, drifting like a caul unmoored, slow and gray; every day. Every day from now on.

    In the mirror she saw her face not older but somehow newly full of bones, as if her own mortality were pushing up against the tiring barrier of her skin; she spent very little time with the mirror these days. Hair in a long coarse tail, ragged T-shirts and barefoot over the metal shavings, summer's descent to mimic her own; descent into what?

    Cold. Silence, although the downstairs Zombies provided plenty of companionable noise if she had been inclined to companionship; but it was her move and they were leaving her to it. Zombie Birdhouse, it was a sign on their door now, she passed it going and coming, scrapyard rendezvous: the scrapyard, the one thing that had not yet failed her. Rust oasis, sometimes she spent hours there, up and down the piles with the absent balance of a goat, a wall-walking baboon, crawling like a hairy-legged spider up the carcasses of split hi-los, corroding drums as empty as old sacs, the sad pendulous sway of husked cranes; she had badly wanted a crane, just a little while ago, to help move around the heavier constructs, Mme Lazarus in particular; no need for it now. She had not worked with any of them, maintenance, nothing for the Madame, the crab, the Triple Deaths or Magistrate; Salome she wanted never to see again. Just the unnamed legs and small torso lying blandly on her table, sweet lubricant trickle as pink as flavored grease; this handle, here, this useless part of a larger uselessness, industrial-quality steel-tank vacuum now pocked and filigreed with rust: this little handle might very well work on that nameless daddy longlegs; if it snaps off; there.

    The one thing she stole, all the rest weighed and paid, not a lot this trip but later than usual, closing time and the bag heavy as thought on her shoulder-no more car-almost completely dark and "Hey," from beyond the fence. Again, softer, "Hey," and she saw that it was Michael.

    Beautiful; his usual beauty but unseen for weeks and so more painful and noteworthy: black bandanna printed with faded skulls and sleeveless black Stickler for Punishment T-shirt, bruised cheek and pale in the greenish wink of the streetlight: untouchable and strange as a stranger, as if the moment prior to conception might stand with sleep-tight eyes in the midst of life and say: This is how it was, before.

    Around his eyes, circles, but his hands were warm as they touched hers, squeezed and did not release; her own hands in contrast seemed cool as lead. A smell like clean sweat and he was talking, head down and quiet and she asked him to say it again: "I said," reaching to take the bag from her, "she wants to see you."

    From the place inside, instant the place with the caul; and terror; and what else? "I don't want to see her."

    "She misses you."

    "Bullshit."

    "Tess," hands out, palms up, the sincerity of frustration and who asked you to come here? Who asked you? "She does, I know she does. She talks about you all the time." Shaking inside, tremor like the shimmer of light over water, no plain point of emanation but from everywhere, marrow and substance; blood and guts. Taking back her bag, sharp and heavy the shift against her shoulder, slumped shoulders and edges through frayed canvas like a duelist's point, like a needle on flesh: "I bet she does," and it was hard to see, to look, she did not want to have to look at him. "All the time."

    And now past them, seeming to startle Michael, who stepped not away but forward: the scrapyard manager, locking the gates and brief nod at Tess, not quite questioning: "You all set?"

    "Sure," nodding back, false voice, "all set for now," and the harsh lunatic urge to cry, run; turning opposite away, as the man turned, to walk, hard, piston heels against the pavement and Michael's movement behind her, trying to gain and then abruptly stopping, she felt him cease as if in a finite pool, the ripple of chase subsiding and she walked harder, bag striking metronome against her body, banging like a beating fist on an empty door. All the way home, stripes of dark and light and dark again and inside to pass the Birdhouse, empty: up the stairs and her heart had the rhythm now, sharp against the shrinking wall of her chest. Cluster of shadow past the calm worktable shine, magic circle, white light in which problems could at least be presumed to be solved; for good; forever; where those same shadows, pooled about the draped base of the Madame, of the Magistrate and the Triple Deaths, stood less substantial than memory or dreams: the ghosts of dreams, memory's memories like the soot from roasted flesh, the smell of a house burned to the ground.

    Flat below her ribs the beaten ache of the heavy bag and on her shoulder abrasion uneven, like a brand; a scar. The bag at her feet, one step outside the light and suddenly she was crying, crying so hard her knees bent, as if in her body metal, iron, lead in the blood like a circulating poison, one hand loose-fisted before her mouth; fence, shield, or neither. Pain correct and perfect as a rebus and crying until she retched, nose and eyes and rising like a paralytic to take the step into the light, to the table, to upend the bag and try to work until she could; or slept, or fell out of her chair or died with one slack hand soldered cold to the table; inert as mud, as a husked plummy body on a thoughtless slab, saved by silent death from the precisely sliding needles of memory and thought.

    

    

    Late morning, and through the windows the boxy glare of Indian summer sun; cold here last night, the floor cold still to shabby summer sneakers. Home with two paper bags crumpled loose, sculpture shapes: dry muffins in one, breakfast; and Bibi in the other.

    Not
AntiTrust
but
Scuff
, no magazine Tess knew but on the cover in red austere: death of a surgeon, her own foundry-face inset juxtaposed with a more recent photograph of Bibi in nun's high-collared black. Too expensive but she bought it anyway, home to scald her hurried mouth on coffee too hot to drink. The byline unfamiliar: a long piece, few pictures, one disorienting photograph of Paul, smiling teenager in front of someone's white brick house. The rest were crummy snapshots from Surgeons shows, blurry and poorly lit;
Tess Bajack
, said one of the captions, herself in smeared featureless motion, and the ill-fated machine Magistrate of Sorrows.

    Ill-fated.

    She read the article through. The phone rang twice: background voices, she did not listen. She read it again, more slowly, flipping back and forth; in the pages' middle Paul's picture, she had to keep passing him, back and forth his smiling face, no infection and no scars, no idea of what was to come. How many years ago? Six? Ten? Back and forth.

    Into it for the third time and the phone again, Michael: "Tess, it's me, I know you're there so pick up, okay? Okay? I saw the article, I-" and taking up the phone like some rare instrument, putting it slowly to her head as if too wise for quick proximity: "What?" Outside the barking cry of a fire engine, right past her building and for a moment she couldn't hear him, "What?" again more strongly and his voice swooping back, too loud now: "-even talk to him, none of us did. Nobody even knows who this guy is, Andy thinks he might have met him at one of the skin parties but he's not sure. Anyway Andy didn't talk to him, I didn't talk to him. Nobody talked-"

    Ill-fated. "What about Bibi?" Someone, a girl outside, laughing, another girl squealing some name, an insult and laughing back. Tit-rag: was that a new slur on the street?

    
Tit-rag, you old tit-rag, Bibi you fucking lying tit-rag, Bibi you cunt.
"Did Bibi talk to him?"

    His pause. "Will you believe what I tell you?"

    "Did she talk to him?"

    Breath in her lungs like a gas, the vapor between atmosphere and the dry airless air of space. The phone pressed to her ear and he spoke very quietly: "Why don't you ask her yourself?"

    She did not want Bibi in the room, the careful new landscape so easily destroyed; I'll meet you, she said, and Michael said Javahouse, a choice Bibi would have made, was Bibi there with him now? Like a cartoon devil on his shoulder, whispering, snickering in her pointy horns and nun's blouse, a copy of the magazine rolled under her balancing arm? "Half an hour," Michael said; "I'll call her now."

    Twenty minutes, drinking the cheapest coffee, starting down to her skin every time someone opened the door; the magazine before her, facedown on the table so the waiter couldn't see. And finally Michael, unshaven, ugly ripped shorts the color of dried snot and bending to touch her shoulder, a firm squeeze, was it meant to be heartening?
Be brave. Buck up.

    One hand tight on the magazine, as if she could feel Bibi's face inside. "So where is she?"

    "Not coming." Biting his lip, pale underlip with a faint reddish mark, cold sore, blemish. "She said she didn't want to-she didn't want to talk about it."

    Relief; and disappointment, strange such disappointment, how she had watched each brief emerging figure, is that her? No. And no. "She didn't want to talk to me, you mean. -Thanks," putting out her cup for more coffee, Michael upturning his, fat chipped china, pale lip now soft against the paler curve.

    "Can't blame her for that." From one ear the faint dangle of silver, sickle-shape through the summery mess of his hair; still dandelion. "You really think it was her, don't you?"

    Shrugging, a little, how loose her muscles felt, the same feeling she got after pushing metal, after burning hard for hours. "Who else?"

    "I don't know." Magazine in hand, head down and Tess closed her eyes, thinking:
ill-fated
. Hazardous machinery, irresponsible use of same so close to the audience, the dancers forced to cooperate with effects that were, how exactly had they put it-right, "dangerously engineered": come on, who else could have said that, who else provide such a warm pathetic slant? Defenseless dancers versus Nazi Tess and her jackboot trio; bajac-boots; she even laughed a little, a little sour laugh and as Michael looked up, "I'd really like to think it wasn't her, I really would." Rubbing her eyes, aware at once of how dirty she felt, unshowered, how tired she was. "It was a fucking rotten thing to do to all of us. Paul, too," the name firm in her mouth, easy to say; surprise. "And when I see her I'll tell her so. If I ever do," sliding out of the booth. "I don't get out much anymore."