Skin (17 page)

    Michael still holding the magazine, reaching with his other hand to touch hers, that squeeze again and a simple sadness in those eyes: "You know, Tess, if you ever want company, I could come over. We don't have to talk or anything," a look as if nothing bad had ever happened, a smile that knew it had and in some way would keep happening, would happen forever. "If you want, you could show me some stuff, what you're working on now."

    Her own smile, her new flat smile, magazine left behind; her work was her own now; stay that way. "Same as always," she said, still smiling. "Hazardous machinery."

    See the prance of the daddy longlegs, the real thing, real long legs up the cold branch of the soldering pencil, a broken pencil, Jerome had promised to loan her his for now but Jerome was not home today, was out arranging the first Zombies performance, he was nervous and happy and had had, he told Tess solemnly, diarrhea all night long. "Chocolate squirts, man," running one hand over his skullcut, incongruous as the mustache he was growing, little pencil mustache, Nicky said he looked like a pimp. Nicky said that Scuff was for assholes anyway, it was nothing but a poser 'zine and everybody knew it except for a few tit-rag gallery geeks and the kind of people who still wore combat boots to clubs. "File under F-squared," his awkward half-embrace. "Fuck off and forget."

    None of the three, in fact, seemed very upset or even interested in the article, of course they had their show to be interested in, their own nameless endeavor with scatterguns and bombs; they had asked her, oblique and sure of rejection, to be part of it, to be, in capitals, a Special Guest. She had refused, but only after a great display of consideration, after letting them think she had thought it all over and over; no, but: and thanking them as well, she appreciated it, wished them luck and of course she would come and watch. Next Saturday, they told her, and showed her the flyer, bright sinus green and staggered red letters, machine-shop zombies and the date, an address in the neighborhood of Bar Hernandez, very close in fact to Bibi's original rehearsal warehouse.

    Going there felt strange, stranger still to be at a performance yet a step apart, part of the audience: empty underpass parking lot on a humid night, everything glossed with moisture: sweaty hands, slick metal, sticky plastic litter to drift and catch like skin against her own. Wondering if anyone recognized her, hoping she would see no one she knew; would any of the Surgeons come?-stop thinking of them that way, they don't think of themselves that way; stop it. Innocuous in baggy black T-shirt, long shorts like a bike messenger, not at the fringe conspicuous but just beyond it, beyond the sundown sputter of arc lights and the nervy shift of the crowd.

    Big crowd, at first surprising but then again (again) it was what Jerome had called spillover: the three of them remembered not for the Surgeons so much as for something disastrous and exciting, like the old buzz at the old shows: what might happen here? Unpredictability, of all commodities the hardest to fake.

    They started out on time and with explosions, much more powerful than any they had used in previous shows (and stop comparing): preplanted explosive charges, she remembered Nicky telling her and here was Nicky himself, big rubber Halloween devil's head and she knew him as much from his walk as the scattergun, spewing chunks of ground glass as he played the nozzle back and forth, farmer and fireman, what do you want to be when you grow up? Another explosion and on the tinny soundtrack a woman screaming, no movie shriek but a real woman in real pain or fear, screaming her head off and here came Peter, another rubber mask but this one with the eyeholes gouged jagged, half the witch's face ripped free and springload eyeballs jouncing uselessly long as he advanced upon a misshapen heat-sculpted tower of heavy plastic, slick and pavement-gray, and in his hand shears, heavy-duty pneumatic metal shears, cuts up to eighteen-gauge rolled steel Peter had said with his usual laconic pride; sometimes it seemed he admired the scavenged tools most for shapes; engineered capabilities aside, as if one might enjoy a car for how it looks rather than how fast it can go, what distances it can travel.

    Peter began to carve the plastic tower, the woman still screaming in the background at a slightly higher pitch, Nicky spraying long loops of glass against the ground, scattering dirt, small rocks, concrete chunks; they had not roped off the area and now sections of the crowd darted back and away to avoid the glass, pushing backward and for watching Tess memory sudden and sick, the crowd escaping battering Salome, Paul in the scaffolding shadow, why hadn't she grabbed him, grabbed the control, done something? Raelynne's scream; the woman's scream on the soundtrack, for one horrible moment she thought it might be the same, Peter had taped that show as well as all the others-calm down, calm down, one good listen shows that isn't Raelynne, her peculiar hog-calling screech, just some woman sampled from TV or something, they should have asked me: I could have screamed plenty.

    Jerome, now: she had missed his entrance, big clown head complete with huge pink hair, embroiled with a black-dressed manlike construct that, with its own heavy Dracula-masked head, appeared almost a fourth member, the newest Zombie of them all: big articulated arm around Jerome's shoulders, Jerome struggling to get away, another huge explosion and some packing crates in a Dumpster started to burn, heavy resin scent weirdly pleasant and in the sudden orange flare she saw Michael, black cap and shirtless, moving mouth and beside him, Bibi.

    Unconscious step forward and then consciously back; most certainly Bibi: hair chopped almost bald, long white T-shirt and some kind of short pants, knickers, her hand on Michael's arm now, she was yelling something into his ear. Staring, still and Tess found herself stepping farther back, as if she would hide, get lost in the crowd and another big explosion, brighter burn and staring like a deer in headlights as Bibi saw her, too. Shining, they called that; it was against the law. Because the deer was helpless, then, helpless and blind and she wanted to leave, right then, slip into the dark anonymous but she had promised Jerome she would not leave, would watch the whole show, stay till the end. More explosions; the woman's scream in her head now like tinnitus, a ringing inner ear to take her balance and her poise; it's just Bibi, for God's sake; she ought to be nervous to see me. After what she did; and thinking of that made it easier, made it imperative to stand hipshot and arms crossed, watching, staring and when after careful hesitation she searched the spot again they were gone.

    Distracted now-were they crossing through the crowd? and the scream revved to a pitch impossible, loud blackboard shriek and the people near her were fidgeting, a few moving away and gone with hands to their ears and Jerome was apparently battling the construct, Nicky and Peter in tandem to free him and suddenly a bright terrible sizzling, Jerome's pink hair aflame: corona around his dewlapped mask, still dangerously enveloped by the articulated arms and without thinking Tess was through the crowd, elbows, kicking, shoving into the circle and over splattered glass but it was already over, his smothered head no longer burning and tearing off the mask in one convulsive motion: face very red, was it burned? and instantly an explosion so huge she bent instinctively, fetus-curl (hedgehog) and in the backwash found herself nearly deaf, saw Peter's mouth moving strongly and Nicky firing upward, fountaining burst of, what? more glass? No, plastic, some kind of tiny little balls, hit lightly in the face and she saw they were miniature eight balls: bad luck. Jerome was beside her, apparently he had been trying to talk to her but now he was simply dragging her away, off and now people were applauding, arms moving as if choreographed; was the show over? Yes. And Jerome up close, not burned but still veiy red, shouting in her ear: "Can you hear me at all?" and digging from his own ears big brownish things like slugs: earplugs.

    "Some," knowing she must be shouting back but helpless to stop. "Not a lot."

    Overexcited and he wanted her to stay, steering her off again to a place past the performance area, behind a warehouse the sloping pit of a loading bay and Nicky and Peter there waiting among others, boys and a few girls and did she want something-something, she couldn't hear, it was already getting better but she shrugged and touched her ears: "Tomorrow," shaping the word, "okay?"

    Nicky pantomimed driving, did she need a ride? and one of the boys beside her, taking her arm: this way. Nodding: then turning to Jerome to give him a quick hard hug, the same for Peter, for Nicky, sharp thumb's up and then moving to follow the boy with the keys.

    Big fat-tired Mitsubishi trike but with a doctored engine, the speedometer only went to eighty klicks but she knew they were going faster than that, leaning hard around the corners, lots of corners and all at once there, down her street to see another scooter, leaning against the building: two people waiting.

    Michael and Bibi.

    "Thanks," still too loud and a certain feeling, not anticipation or fear, something: walking toward them and Bibi staring at her, ugly clothes, ugly haircut and new piercing in her upper lip, silver ring almost lost in the swelling around it, purple as a sore: staring at her.

    Michael said something, we saw you at the show but Tess ignored him, staring back only at Bibi: who kept staring at her until finally: "Well? Can I come in?"

    Up the stairs and Tess glad for the moment's darkness, glad not to have to look at Bibi; worse than I thought it would be, a jittering rhythm as if her heart had suddenly enlarged, grown too skittish for its space; it took her an extra moment to work the lock. Clearing her throat and she stood with one foot arched half-on her work stool: nowhere else to sit but the couch-bed, uncomfortably far back against the wall, so Bibi stood. Facing her.

    "I hear you're pissed off at me," and Tess's lunatic desire to laugh, At least you can hear but nothing here was really funny, was it? Was it? No. "About that article." Her voice hollow in her head as if her head itself was hollow, the balancing foot in sudden jerking motion; keeping time to nothing, to her heart; stop it. "All I want to know is, did you talk to that guy?" Too loud. "The guy who wrote it?"

    "No."

    Silence; the ticking of blood. Bibi's lip looked infected, ugly. "Are you sure?"

    With what seemed to be genuine irritation, "Why should I lie about it?" Pause. "Especially to you."

    Still too loud: "Yeah, especially to me." Her own pause and then, magnet disbelief, "It was a pretty fucking rotten thing to do, Bibi, it-"

    "Don't you listen? I said I-"

    "-exploiting the dead, even you should realize that that's not-"

    "Fuck you!" and Michael's aborted motion in the corner of her vision; one arm out, supplication? "You're the one who had to push it, with your stupid Zombies and their homemade M-80s, and Salome, what about Salome? If it's anybody's fault it's yours." Breathing hard, the little ring in her lip quivering, painful little shine. "I never said anything to anybody but you're the one who fucked everything up just to prove a fucking point, and that's what's unforgivable, that's what's really-"

    "Me?" Yelling in earnest now, off the stool and above that tilted face, those unblinking eyes. "Who sent them out there with knives, Bibi? Who put them up to attacking-"

    "Attacking, shit! You're the one who-"

    "And Paul shouldn't even have been there, he was sick, you made him sick with your stupid cutting and you didn't even know what you-"

    "Don't talk to me about Paul," very close now, very shrill. Dilated eyes. "Don't try to shit me that that's what this is all about, you never even liked Paul, you hated Paul, you thought he-"

    "What difference does it make what I thought of him? He's dead, and you used him, you used him like you use everybody else. All of them, everybody-me-your own body, for God's sake, Bibi, your own flesh and blood and you don't even-"

    "Oh right," and right in her face now, scorn like spitting iron. "Like it's any of your business, like you care. Like you cared about Paul," and wrist to forehead, anguish burlesqued: " 'Oh, poor Paul' when you couldn't even stand him, you used to make fun of him all the time. Why shouldn't he have been there? He wanted to."

    "He wanted to because you wanted him to."

    Silence. Close enough for Tess to see straight into her eyes, see the stringent beat of her heart, her own pulse rapid and sick and watching the sore lip rise into a faint and delicate sneer: "Well. He was mine anyway, wasn't he?"

    More silence. Bibi staring at her; Michael starting to move, come forward-

    -and in one motion abrupt Tess raising the stool, smashing it with all her strength against the wall, colt-legs cracking and "Get out" coming at Bibi with her hands out, "Get out"-

    -and Michael trying to grab her hands, her arms, shoving him away with one stiff arm in half a punch and turning on Bibi again, swollen mouth pursed and staring and grabbing her, hard, grabbing her little shoulders and pushing her, dragging her out the door, "Get out" and down the stairs, wanting to throw her down the stairs, watch her tumble, watch her fall and get hurt and "Get out of my house" and into the street, still screaming, screaming over the heads of the people there, lots of people, she saw Jerome's wide eyes and Michael reaching to pull her back, clumsy, as Bibi on the scooter and gone, weaving a little to right herself and people staring, there must be a hundred people here. Nicky trying to speak to her but Tess turned, past them again and pounding up the stairs, Michael behind: "Tess, wait a minute, just-Tess, wait a minute! Don't-"

    Slamming the door, hard but he got in anyway, she hadn't locked it, came to stand beside her, hand out as if to gentle: "Tess, just-"

    "Don't," already crying, hoarse tears of rage and shoving him away, "don't." Crying into her fists, she had never been so angry, sick-angry, in another minute she would be on her hands and knees throwing up, throwing up blood. Michael behind her like an explanation, too lame and too late and finally she heard him turning, heard him finally go-