Skin (6 page)

    Still curled, glancing at Tess, "Trouble?" and Tess's instant litany, hands on the worktable as if she would push it like Titan through the floor: she had no idea what she was doing, she was fumbling like a tyro, she was making it up as she went along.

    "Did you want it to be easy?"

    "No. I just want it to work. " Glaring down at the small elementary being, thin cable ligature and drops of oily blood. "It doesn't even walk like a person. When it walks. Which is never." Glancing back at her sculpture, rowed now before the windows, wry notion of informing them with motion, at least they were already built. At least they-

    - and silent, staring, Bibi saying something but she ignored it, rising to touch the sculptures, feel them roughly up and down like a soldier or an athlete, do you have the blood? Do you? Hands scraped and pinked by their varied surfaces, blind-eyed to see them covered in the white arc of flying sparks, ranked onstage in full dark and the dancers, Bibi, between them, roped claustrophobic with cable and chain, struggling, struggling, Tess behind spraying that continuous fire in the air. And the small human figure, not made to walk, not made to do anything but what it already did, jerk. And twitter. And spasm. Lit from above like the last live human caught by God's wandering eye.

    And Bibi, beside her, "What? What?" and grinning, little teeth in bare excitement. "What?" and Tess turning, her own smile-she felt it-long and sharp across her face like electricity itself, archangel in motion with the message of constant light.

    Dressed in metal, faked from beer cans and duct tape, Raelynne making Tin Woodman jokes as she wrapped her feet with Ace bandages and long swaths of pewter-colored cotton, her head in a black turban; they all wore turbans, Raelynne, and Paul, and Sandrine. And Crane. And Bibi, ribbons of black and silver like the skin-scraps of a flayed machine, gray gauntlets of webbed plastic and a neckpiece of splintered boring bits, all eyes penciled heavy black like a traveler from the land of the dead. Tess herself wore black from head to toe, hot in tight cotton, hair braided back and tucked into her collar; hair shirt. Her hands were sweating on the pinpoint tip of the button mike: her job to start the show.

    Naivete, maybe, but she had expected the whole process to take longer, grow more slowly from idea to expression. But Bibi was in a hurry, Bibi kept pressing: wilder ideas of motion, not only web-caught strugglings but acted violence at the hands of the sculpture itself, the bristle of Mater Intrinsecus, the paired grotesqueries of Lay Figure and Dolores Regina, the rusty shark's jaws of Sister Jane, Mother of Sorrows: all ragged and roped with heavy black cables at which the dancers would claw and scramble, push and bite; and die, Bibi's character especially beneath the hooded wings of Archangel (unsurprisingly unsold and returned from the Isis) bitten to blood-capsule death by its vicious teeth. They had the basic idea in place within hours, Bibi choreographing and Tess sketching placement of the pieces, of herself behind with the white spray of fire, both talking at the same time, gleeful override, look at this-no, wait, look at this! Bibi's laugh like an arc itself, sparkle like burning metal; Tess's little metal figure in triumphant lounge across her worktable, limbs in perfect sprawl the way they would be under purest watts of holy light.

    "We don't want it too perfect," over her shoulder, sweet breath on her neck. "We want to put all this stuff in place and let shit burn."

    Location was Bibi's problem; her angry sigh, "It's the welding part that scares them off, the fucking sissies, they think we're going to burn down their dumb galleries or-" Galleries; shit. Without real thought, still eyeing the sculpture: "How about here? The place's half-empty anyway."

    Bibi's thinking silence, then, "There's plenty of room. And we wouldn't have to truck the sculpture." Punching her shoulder, very lightly. "You're pretty smart, John Henry."

    "It's my job."

    So: their name in bold black electrical tape on the building's gray-pitted wall: surgeons of the demolition and beneath a plastic sheet with day and time, their phone number and suddenly constant messages, what was Surgeons of the Demolition and what was "an instructive series of tableaux"? Xeroxed flyers of a backlit Archangel and Bibi's staring eyes nailgunned everywhere, hyping word of mouth in the clubs, at Inflexion and Bar Hernandez, carefully worded teaser for the alternative papers, even the pirate radio station whose all-night DJ Sandrine used to date, everyone's friends recruited to push the word.

    Tess sweating at the scrapyard, buying yards of split and dirty cable, "That stuff won't work" and getting it cheaper. Moving the sculpture piece by slow piece down the service elevator, Paul a surly helper, cables strung and restrung with obsessive care. Nerves everywhere, nerves and dust and dead bugs, hurried work and Crane's loud objections to some piece of business, calling it melodrama, calling Bibi a dictator and "You," swinging on Tess crouched sweaty with duct tape fat as a manacle around her wrist, "you're worse, you're Himmler, you're-"

    "You're the asshole," Bibi's glare, "asshole. And you better find this out now, and that goes for all of you"-voice like a siren over the bass-line roar of the tape and with one hand she slapped it silent-"me and Tess are in charge here. Got that? No democracy. Got it?"

    Head down, Tess kept working, loud the sound of the ripping tape and around her the dry quiet of a drawn line.

    "Tyranny, huh," Raelynne lacing dance shoes, legs canted in a broken V. " 'S cool. Turn the music back on, okay?" and Sandrine coming in late with a bagful of blood pellets,
got 'em at the costume shop, man, aren't they great? Look!
and a sudden spatter, laughing blood leaking from her mouth and everyone had to try, the floor a stained mosaic and Bibi yelling Leave it, leave it: it looks good that way. Crane in a sulk, refusing to join in the play and Tess saw his gaze on Bibi, did not turn as he turned on her: flat-eyed: her own stare as level and as cold. Go ahead, asshole-and she's right, you are an asshole-go ahead. Say something.

    His silent pivot, back to the tape machine, and Tess pulled another length of tape, long and slow.

    The last rehearsal and sleeping to wake early and alone, sitting up to crank the windows and let in the end of summer. Did this place get cold in the winters, with its church windows and concrete floor? She would find out. Would anyone come to their show tonight? Would things work the way they were supposed to, would anyone like it? She would find that out too.

    And now: sweating in black, the locked room huge and hot and ready, the pirate DJ outside keeping some kind of order while they placed themselves. Tess looked at no one, dry-mouthed, nervous in a way she had never been before but yet strangely buoyed, loner finally part of a pack. Hers the final word through an earbutton speaker mike jury-rigged from a kid's walkie-talkie set: "Go," and the doors opened from deliberately overbright light to disorienting blackness, shapes of people-lots of people, my God, lots of people-moving in, slowly, blinded eyes groping and the music on, loud, the pencil spot hitting the splayed ma-chine-figure and behind the membrane, yellow vinyl and Tess started arcing, goggles on, welding a slow burn on scrap and Raelynne's banshee scream-no one could scream like Raelynne-as the sputtering firelight found her, wrapped like a slave and screaming, screaming, the others steeped in groans and cries like rehearsal but louder, much louder, crazy, and the second pencil spot on Bibi, eyes wide like on the flyer, her face seemingly caught in the snarl of Archangel's teeth.

    A girl's shriek, and from Bibi a groan, struggling with Archangel and Tess kept burning, burning, her view distorted by distance and goggles, someone yelling and it was hot, behind them, hot in her tight black turban, hot in the screams and the fountain of fire, the dogs barking now in faraway alarm and Paul wriggling past her like a snake, pure bucking torso and he was way too close, sparks on his bare back, mouth wide in one mad grimace and gone, trailing cable like intestines. Some guy yelling "Fuck, man!" and Tess saw Bibi seemingly atop Archangel, holding on to the razored wings: slashed plastic gauntlets and the first of the blood pellets running down her arms, strange pudding-black to Tess's shielded gaze.

    Louder. Hotter. Welding a rough spattered line, current too high and the line bubbled with wet metal, the smoke getting bad now, this place was not as ventilated as she had hoped or else someone had forgotten to open the windows. People yelling, she could not turn to see what they were so excited about, must be Bibi. Shrieks as loud as the music and Tess found she was shouting, too, wordless in the heat and the noise, Bibi rushing past her in the thirsty dance of fire and she was all blood now, smeared across her clothing, she was blood and Tess was fire: burning.

    And someone crying, very close, "Hey! Hey!" over and over and it was some stupid girl right next to her, white T-shirt and open mouth, "Hey!" and Tess shoved her away with one foot sideways in her ass, get out of here, what was the flash doing to her eyes? And now, already? the crescendo, she heard the tape turn from the bass-heavy groan to the sounds of explosions, one after the other, louder and louder and the current all the way up, burning, metal wet and slippery as blood and the whole cable-web shaking, the sculptures trembling, what was making it move like that? Turning to look in the scattering sparks and the people in the front were pushing back, pushing the others, it was hard to see how many in the twice-dark and it was Bibi shaking the web, her costume ripped and bloody, howling into the explosion sound and falling backward as if poleaxed, curling onto her side to spew a long gelatinous ribbon of blackest blood like a curling finger at the feet of the crowd.

    And then no motion, perfect, just the way they had rehearsed it: the drop abrupt into stillness. Stillness, and silence, except for the endless soundtrack barking of the frightened dogs.

    And then applause. Over and over, applause.

    They could not stop congratulating themselves, yelling like a winning team in a locker room
Did you see that
and
Shit, man!
Tess leaning hard against the wall, a curious light-headed glee and Bibi beside her, still bloody, her' smile a little too wild.

    "How'd you like it?" and Tess laughing, hugging her one-armed, there were no words for it, it had been the strangest fun she had ever had. To work like that in front of people, to have them so close, to be so close to others: again. Let's do it again.

    Talking too loud till too late, all of them still jittery, Bibi finally waving them gone with her sticky arms, the fake blood dried now to an unpleasant dirty brown. Into the shower, and to Tess, impatient in her own sweat and stink, it seemed she took forever. Stepping out with curious modesty, wrapping the towel tight and Tess's sudden stare.

    Warding Tess off, hand out: "It's okay. Method acting," showing teeth but Tess pulled at the towel, turned her left and right like a mother with a child: on her arms ragged marks red as burns, big V-shaped gouge bright as a brand on her neck. Her back one long abrasion the color of raw bacon.

    "You're all cut up. Bibi, you're all-"

    "I know, I know. Stop yelling," kicking away the towel to skin into an oversized T-shirt, settling it carefully across her back. "It's not that bad, anyway. Shit, it's only blood," and now her smile was back, but narrow, red as the scratches running up and down her arms. Tess waited, wanting to say something, wanting to ask how did it happen but she knew how it happened, Bibi climbing the sculpture, the sheared edges and the ragged hasp, not all of the blood from pellets, dark and sweet. Bibi was still smiling at her, pale eyes blinkless and bright with some fathomless hilarity that Tess did not, all at once, want to see; in silence turning away, to the shower where she stood in water as cold as she could stand it, stood for a long, long time. When she emerged, Bibi lay in sleep too still to be honest, scratches covered, the gouge hidden behind the innocent white of a fresh bandage. On her back the drying puzzle of bloodstains, seeping through the T-shirt, red to brown like the inevitable slow corrosion of metal to broken rust.

    

    

    The next show had a title-
In the Service of Motion
-and a date too close, Tess was fighting with a new piece, blunt chassis modification, building not from scratch but someplace further: working simultaneously with and against the function, as if one might engineer a bird to fly backward and upside down. Bibi was gone somewhere with Paul, and Tess was glad; the aftermath of the last show was still a topic unapproachable, it was awkward to know it was still there, like a big bag of shit on the floor that no one will touch, let alone clean up.

    Empty scrapyard sack; Bibi had left her car keys. It was so much easier to drive there, much less limiting in her scavenging choices and she needed no limits now; she had to have everything she could carry, could afford. This new way of working was demanding a new way of thinking as well, an expansion, a blending between static and kinetic, between sculpture that did not move, was not meant to move, and machines that were created for nothing but. And it all had to be viewed through the lens of its eventual use, the performance, big loud vortex into which it would be thrown to scratch and batter its own way out; or deeper in. Bibi called it tanzplagen, literally "plague dance" though she chose to translate it as "torture dance": "It's not like anything anyone's done before, all that pretentious performance art shit, like Jimmy Castro, or those jerks in Boston with their Projekt Skullpture. Or Antique Chorines, although they can be funny, sometimes."

    Tess, amused, "Come on, Bibi, we steal, too," but Bibi's passionate denying headshake, no no no, this was different, different at its heart. Unable to articulate, erupting at last into gestures, nails hooked in the air and "It's where you are when all that other shit runs out, when it leaves you. When it turns out to be too weak. "