Skin (24 page)

    "God, Tess, these're-" Nicky's hands reverent on the boxes, Ming care. Staring at the bird skull, its small dead geometry balanced against the weightlessness of the box's interior. "You do any more of these?"

    "Just these two," and then they were really at her,
come on Tess, this shit is great! The best ever, you gotta be in the show, you don't even have to do anything, just put these where people can see 'em. C'mon, it'll be-

    No. Smiling; but no, she did not want to do that anymore; Michael silent behind her but she knew he agreed; he had told her so. No sense in forcing yourself-his nighttime hands on her shoulders, gentle to work the taut muscles loose;
you'll show again when you're ready.
In a month, or a year, or never, what difference does it make so long as you're happy with what you're doing?

    But: the three of them so crestfallen, Nicky especially, that her rash agreement, she would work in the show, setting up, how's that? Okay?

    Okay. So now, numb hands and wind-dry eyes and: "How 'bout this?" a whine like a drill straight through her head, she snatched off the headset and held it at arm's length as if it had burned her, scowling across the bowl and Peter's hands spread wide, Sorry.

    And Michael then, with hot coffee, shooing her back to the van: "Take a break," the faintest kiss on her cheek. "I'll take a turn now."

    It took longer than they had expected, wiring problems and now no time to eat dinner, the show due to start in less than an hour so: in the van, Jerome pulling out a bottle of vodka, label half-peeled like sunburned skin and "Have some," nudging Tess with the glass neck. "Warm you up."

    "Fuck me up, you mean," but that was something Bibi would say, wasn't it? "Give it here," and she took the bottle, strange tasteless taste; not warm, but it seemed she felt the cold less, or maybe she was already numb. They all drank some, jammed together in the van, Michael's arm the closest heat, sure around her shoulders.

    Sundown so early, the earth's rotation toward spring but it still got dark at six o'clock, dark now as she and Michael crawled out of the van, one last drink and over to one of the bonfires, strategic bonfires from which came smells like seared plastic and bubbling flesh; hideous smells at first but you got used to them, or maybe that was the numbness talking again. Strategic Interventions had begun, chattering feedback whistle and the idiot bounce of Jerome's pogos, directionless springloaded bullets standing maybe half a meter high, each bounce accompanied by a grunt or a coughing squeal: made to make noise upon impact. Just like human beings.

    It was a good show: lots of noise, explosions, lots of threat for the audience; Tess caught herself scanning for Bibi and turned deliberately away. Pogos, and Peter's hideous looping screams, Nicky's propane altars and all of it overlaid for Tess like a strange template of the past, fires in the night and there should be bodies, leaping like the scattershot pogos; less nostalgia than brute memory, reminding her as well why she did not want to perform again; ever again. She sighed, or made some sound because: Michael, breath on her neck, "Hey," squeezing her upper arms, "what's the matter? What's wrong?"

    "Nothing," lying. "Good show. Better than the Surgeons," and he did not reply; did not agree, probably, but so what? Only Bibi would really understand, see as she, Tess, saw now, with the double lens of memory; and Tess did not want to think about Bibi now. Ever. "Very good show," she said.

    The audience thought so, too, cheers and the cheerful wild vandalism that usually followed a Zombies gig but there was so little here to vandalize (except the equipment, which would have earned the vandals something unenjoyable) that the energy instead turned partylike, a big party, Tess and Michael swept through it and into the van, crushed close with the Zombies and assistants and there was another bottle of vodka, its label intact: santa marisa above a lolling senorita with heavy coconut breasts; since when did Mexico have anything to do with vodka? Since when have you had anything to do with it?

    "It's a celebration," Tess's mutter less festive than defiant but one of the assistants heard and yelled, "A Zombies celebration!" and everyone laughed, Night of the Living Zombies, To Kill a Zombie, Death and the Zombie. Zombie V, The Final Countdown. Zombies in Love. Tess's head back, against Michael's shoulder; his arms around her and very warm.

    Warmer still in the Zombie Birdhouse, there must have been a hundred people there; somebody put on Killbilly and Nicky loping by, drunk and shirtless and grinning: "Wanna dance?" Handing her a bottle of vodka; Santa Marisa metamorphosed into good old Brand X. Maybe it wasn't even vodka, maybe it was bleach. Industrial strength. She drank, held the bottle so Michael could drink, too. She could feel his hands, hotter even than the room around them, hottest of all against her waist, each finger a separate heat.

    It's a celebration.

    Killbilly into something else, someone's homemade tape, shrieks and bass-heavy laughter, a wrong-speed voice saying "Don't be nervous" over and over. Don't be nervous; don't be unhappy. Tired of being unhappy, sick and tired: over one thing and another, Bibi and work and money and so on and so on, Michael was right: things were looking up for her now. Weren't they? Certainly they were. Michael knew. The only one to see what she was trying to do (and a part of her undrunk mind speaking with the scornful clarity of perfect understanding,
You're trying to make another Bibi out of him, aren't you? Well, it won't work
) (
shut up shut up shut up
). His hands on her shoulders;
shut up
.

    More people dancing. Almost completely dark in the room now, Jerome firing irregular bursts of orange fire at the ceiling. Her own admonishment, "Don't burn the fucking place down, Jerome," and his smiling slurred apology, firing out the window instead; Jerome was always so reasonable. Jerome was such a good friend. Not as good as Michael, but very good indeed. Michael's mouth grazing hers now, soft and sweet, his tongue touching hers just a little, just at the tip; warmth entering warmth, and everything wet inside.

    More firing. Somebody else playing with a nailgun, and Michael's steering arms, let's go sit on the stairs for a while, somebody's gonna get hurt with that thing. Two big plastic tumblers filled with straight vodka and ice, ready to sit until, halfway up: two skinny sweaty shirtless girls, hissing and groaning like cats in their inexpert coupling. One of the girls had breasts like Bibi's, or maybe that was memory again, memory wrong; dark areolas, stiff little nipples; the other girl was kissing her neck, kissing and biting, Michael easing past them as if both they and the girls were conveniently invisible-such manners-and into their room.

    Into the dark, and against the door; so cool in there, cold, his hands cold from carrying the drinks and his sweet wet vodka mouth, open on hers, on the dry twist of her neck. Kissing and biting like the girls on the stairs, nothing like Bibi, nothing and her own palms flat and up and down his back, up and down, feeling the cabling stretch of muscles, the unexpected lump of a scar and his fingers rising to hook the raveling neck of her T-shirt, pull painfully down until it tore, gone and his hands on her breasts, rough, squeezing and his mouth in her neck, "Oh, God, Tess," pressing hard against her, pressing her up to the wall. Her back bare, moist against the flaking paint and tearing open the silvery square he gave her as with his other hand he yanked down his jeans, raised his shirt and in one motion she clothed him, skinned him in rubber the scent of which mingled with his scent, his smell all over her, mouth, hands, everywhere as he angled past her thighs, and inside. All the way inside. His teeth on her throat like an animal, lunging between her sweaty legs and she beat on his back with her fists, harder, her head kept banging the wall and she beat him in rhythmless fury, harder, harder, his pale new curls in her hands now and dragging his panting mouth to hers, kissing him blind and busy teeth now too nipping at her lips, her lower lip, biting till it hurt: the pain a spur and bucking now against his hips, harder and this time she must have said it out loud because he groaned, "Oh Tess" and she pulled him to her, hands, thighs, straining, blunt-nailed fingers digging at his back and coming like a seizure, a sickness, fever's orgasm to burn her empty and in the end she screamed, loud wet convulsion of sound and in the echo of that instant she felt him come, driving her back into the wall so it hurt, holding her there, pinned like an insect and his eyes wild and blank as a bas-relief, and she hung on him as if she were boneless, panting as he did like a beast run to ground.

    "I want to be everything," he said, voice wet, guttural in the incubus dark; hands on her body like pinning circular sculpture. "Everything for you."

    She woke sick, shamed and bent almost in half, long scouring puke and Michael there to help her back to bed.

    Naked gooseflesh, flapping covers and it was hard to meet his eyes until, his hand deliberate, turning her face to kiss: deliberate, too, on her sewer mouth: "Hey," so sweetly. "It was bound to happen, Tess, don't be sorry."

    "I'm not sorry," and he lay down beside her and closed his eyes, toothpaste breath tender on her wretched cheek. Herself sleepless, and memory edged by the vodka's erosion: show, party, sex, more sex on the floor, Michael saying Everything, over and over.

    Everything for you; what was that? Lover? Friend? Assistant? She didn't want an assistant. Liaison, then; adviser, someone to help out when she needed it. Someone to talk to. Someone-that clear inner voice again and clearly sour, so much louder now without alcohol's winnowing filter-like Bibi. Bibi without tits, is that it?

    No. Deeper burrow. No it is not.

    Her expectation, then, for things to change; the shifting plates again, but this shift, if it truly came at all, was far subtler; to the surface eye there was little change at all. Winter's slow decline, and: lover now, his presence intensified; warmth, always, in the bed-their bed? Long legs hooked about hers, sweaty tangle of pale hair like a child's, a little child asleep. Skinned knuckles from carrying in some scrap for her, beaming, he had found it on the curb. He liked to find things for her, things she found useful, could incorporate into her art. He liked to make breakfast. He liked to fuck. A lot. He liked her to talk about her art; still part-time at the machine shop but full-time on the boxed sculptures, boxed figures; Michael had taken to calling them simply "the boxes," is that box done? are you going to make a new box? The third was done; the fourth taking shape, beautiful split chicken bones, the rubbery brace of heavy plastic: thin anemone spines of purest aluminum crossed with the unforgiving heft of heat-split iron, the whole terrible, and terribly sad; they were all sad, the boxes, their one shared characteristic a characteristic loss; full of emptiness. Why, Michael asked, one hand light on her shoulder, why are you so sad?

    "I'm not." Voice distorted by the mask, fine dust everywhere. Delicate wire, tweezer-wound like a metal grapevine up the farthest spine. "The world's sad, Michael, not me.

    "The world's not sad. The world's a lock," zipping his jacket, heavy plastic cap and hand on the door, outward bound; to where? Out. "The world's a lock and we're the key." Exit line; he liked those, too, exit lines, pronouncements. Had he always? or was it just the knowledge lent by intimacy that showed her things unseen before?

    Bending to work again; and the phone. Ignoring it until she heard Bibi's name: her pounce belated, whoever it was had hung up. She hit the message button so hard it did not for a moment work at all, then the garbled end, man's voice she didn't recognize, something about a talk or a lecture. Bibi, giving a lecture? A demonstration, certainly and with knives, but a lecture? Podium Bibi, using her own body as a graph: nose, ears, lip and here's my labia piercing, as you can see the ring enters here-

    
Stop it.

    Hand on the button to play it again and then instead: erase. Back to work. Get the fuck back to work.

    And the slope of the chicken bones, marrowless, and in a moment's rage turning the heat gun on it all, turning it so high the plastic brace melted like ice, like skin in a furnace, a crematorium, melted to run and coat the coaxing wire and pool at the bottom, at the construct's feet like the heaviest blood in the world. Faint cooling bubbles; an ugly smell as, hammer in hand, she turned on the carcass of the

    Triple Deaths and began methodically to strip it down, all the way back to iron, down past the memory of its bones.

    "It wasn't a lecture," Michael said.

    Half-distracted, "What wasn't," scrubbing her hands, thin seams of melted plastic beneath her nails; burns on her wrists bad enough to leave definite scars; her mind not on work, today. Something else, and Tess asked him to say it again.

    "That message, on the machine." Unpacking a greasy bag of egg rolls and fried rice; cheap Thai beer. Paper napkins sticking to the cartons. "Bibi's thing, it wasn't a lecture, it was like a, an audition, I guess. Cattle call. She's starting a new group."

    Gray soap trapped convulsive between her hands, and she squeezed; then forced her voice down to normal. "The new Surgeons, right?"

    Frowning, sharp chopsticks poised in his hands; like needles. "I don't know, really. Supposed to be performance, like dance, but it's not about dance anymore. They're not asking for dancers, anyway."

    "Who's they?"

    "Bibi and Matty Regal, I guess. Some other people- you remember Andy, and-"

    Matty Regal; fuck. "Sandrine, those guys?"

    "No. Not that I know of. I guess it's all about the body." Beckoning hand from the couch-bed folded halfclosed, "C'mon and eat."

    Burns still stinging, sloppy with the chopsticks, she had not used them in a long time, not since she and Bibi had gone out to-stop it. Eat. A new Surgeons, but all about the body. Bibi's body, Bibi and Matty Regal, Matty like a rat familiar, smelly chittering grin;
are you jealous? Is that it?