Skin (18 page)

    Then alone, and on her knees as if in dreadful prayer; and from the silence of her open mouth saliva, salt like tears and thin as spider's silk, depending in slow acid dwindle to the ground.

    Warmth into cold, time not so much passage as absorption; there was the eloquence of the longlegs to work on, there were other things to do. She worked pickup every other afternoon, machine-shop grind but it was infused with the blessing of thoughtlessness, calm as medication and she needed that now. She found it best to think as little as possible; to feel if not nothing then nearly nothing at all. Thoughts of Bibi were as always inescapable, but she had learned a measure, an approximation of distance; a firewall between herself and the sheerest burn of all.

    

    

    Michael called, and called, and then did not; no one else called her except strangers with whom she did not bother, or Jerome, hollering up the stairs: "Hey Tess!" at times some weird masculine approximation of Raelynne's remembered screech; sometimes she answered, sometimes not. When she did it was to come down for a beer, for talk or sometimes silence, just to sit and watch what they had made; they were busy these days, they were in demand but, she found, curiously shy to admit it; did they think for a minute she would mind? be envious? Sitting in afternoon shadow, hair twisted wet from an after-work shower, she drank stale apple juice and with Nicky watched one of their videos on the new stolen TV.

    "Peter's gettin' really good, isn't he?" and she nodded, he was: the cold eye of the natural documentarian, you ought to be in pictures. "We're selling 'em now. The tapes, I mean. You'd be surprised how much we make."

    Juice sour in her mouth, "No," gentle shake, "I probably wouldn't." You are there, sort of; all the excitement with none of the risk. On the screen Jerome smashed a tower of red-painted heads shaped from scrap wire, with a flamethrower set the tower ablaze. She drank more juice.

    "Hey, you know, we got another show coming up, at the-"

    "I know. You told me."

    "Right." A pause; she knew what was coming. "Listen, if you want to, you know, you're always welcome. Might cheer you up a little, right?" and then earnest, close to her face with the smell of mingled juice and beer and the things no one else would say: "Tess, don't get pissed, but listen: you got to forget a little, you know? I mean I know that you're working on stuff and you got a job and everything, but it's like you're not even there anymore. I mean it's over now, and anyway it's not like he was your best friend or anything. Right?"

    And she smiled without feeling, shook his shoulder lightly; in fact it was her best friend she was mourning, the best friend she had ever known. Horrible to know that in brutal fact Paul's death was incidental to her pain, not instrument but only circumstance; torment lay grounded elsewhere but there was no explaining that to Nicky or anyone, no trying to try so: "I know," she said, but with such patent patience that Nicky went still with the silence of confusion, opened his mouth once or twice and then left her alone to finish watching, crash and smash, burning metal and paint running like the river she had once hoped to create, metal in liquid motion before motion turned on her, turned on them all. And upstairs the slim presence of the longlegs, dancer's legs, was she building Bibi's ghost? Trapping the trappings, the beauty and the stretch, too confused herself to stalk the black parts, the deeps where the fire began, and hardest of all to admit even to her secret self that she missed Bibi as well as mourned her, missed her so dreadfully in the emptiness upstairs that now all she wanted was the impossibility of Bibi back. Bibi the cruel and the careless, Bibi who did not miss her, Bibi who blamed her for Paul as if by doing so she herself might evade the pale scar of responsibility, there on her head like a brand.

    Still: she was Bibi, endlessly, friend before enemy, love before hate and even after in memory's stubborn colors: see her shadow, there, hedgehog ball and bright eyes, drawled jokes and small rages, her protectiveness when Tess was working, her willingness to carry more than her share. No way, perhaps, to balance this against that sore mouth saying "He was mine" but balance was not what she was after, was it? Balance was perfect, and perfectly empty, empty like a shed skin, something left behind.

    So. How to keep up, or try to; pitiful nonchalance, what a sorry asshole she must seem. Must be. Michael she did not call, afraid in some obscure way that his concern had dwindled with the pressure of her obstinance; if he was no longer a friend, she could wait forever to find out; another loss she had no strength to bear but only fend from the prospect of bearing. She had had with Bibi no real mutual friends beyond the Surgeons, to half of whom her name was presumably anathema; the Zombie trio were her link to both past and present, Jerome and Peter, gregarious Nicky with a friend in every basement bar, every cheap nitro club. Her clumsy questions, who comes to the shows? Anybody I know? Yeah? No, Sandrine, I haven't seen her, and Raelynne's a barmaid? Really? And Bibi, what is she up to?

    Working, they said, or said they heard; they heard a lot of things. Crosstown flat, cold water running bloody with rust and they said she was a regular at all the skin parties, the tattoo shops and bondage shops and S&M affairs, they said she even went to the shacktowns; was she crazy enough for that? Yes, they said, but others denied it, even Bibi wasn't nuts enough to hang there. Probably. Experiments, the malleability of flesh and skin, what was she piercing now, what food for her cuttings did she find? He was mine; and who was hers now, and how deeply, and with what bloody mess? Could she, Tess, buy her way back if she was willing to bleed for it? willing to take the knife? No. Plenty of pain, now; no more, not that kind; never.

    Sometimes on her solitary trips Tess imagined she saw Bibi, arm in arm with someone, a boy, a woman, sometimes alone in that jaunty cold walk; in dread kept the figure in sight until sight proved her wrong: only someone who looked like her, walked like her, pale eyes and chopped hair but never Bibi all the way down.

    And an afternoon, late after work, dragging home through gauntlet streets a burn damp with stink and sweat to burn some more and Jerome out front, talking; some guy, red plaid shirt and black bandanna and as he turned she saw it was Michael, half-blank, half-smiling, halfsomething else and he put out his hands to take hers in a touch begun tentative but gripping, then, till it hurt in her knuckles and bones and she was so glad to see him, so glad to see him again. For himself, surely; but he would know, wouldn't he? Better than anyone, he would know.

    Dissembling, she had a little pride left anyway and up the stairs, gave him some ice water from the bicycle bottle in the squat refrigerator, showed him the longlegs but her mind was so far elsewhere that her hands shook on the stems of metal, how is she? how to ask? But kind, he was kind and he solved it for her, took her to sit on the couch-bed and said, swift and simple, "You know, she hasn't ever got over that fight you guys had. She really misses you, Tess."

    
I miss her. I miss her
. "She's a busy girl," her gaze away. "I hear she spends her time in the shacktowns now."

    He made a face. "Shit. Have you ever been down there? All these little houses made out of shipping pallets and cardboard, and those toxic drums even the dumps won't take and they sit around there swapping needles and pissing on each other and half of them are just fucking crazy.

    "Sometimes I think she's crazy; you should hear her talk, sometimes. But she's not scared of anything." Half a smile. "Like you."

    One bright cold drop of water unnoticed on his lower lip. Hands clenched austere between her knees, looking toward the window; had she so quickly run out of safe questions? "How is she?"

    Michael's gentle shrug. "Skinny. She's lost a lot of weight."

    "Less is more."

    Headshake, less gentle. "You guys kill me, you know that? You're both saying the same things but you're saying them to me. Why don't you just break down and tell each other, huh? Why don't you just pick up the phone and-"

    "Why doesn't she?"

    "I don't know, you tell me. You're the only one who understands her anyway." Hand over eyes, slow blown breath; patience lost, try again. "Listen. Why don't you come with me tonight, and see her. Okay? Just see her, say hi, and leave. Or take it from there, or kill each other or whatever you want. What do you think of that?"

    The opportunity: Will you? Heart fast from the temptation, near to scared laughter and less than half a smile, "What's it to you?" and his arm then around her, squeezing her tight.

    "None of your business," head light against hers, soft little pressure, knock knock. "Hers either." And a big smile, sweet and slow. "Jeez. Girls."

    "This is it?" Crummy box-shaped row house with brick like acne, busted windows and six big kids in baggy jeans hanging outside the door; they were all, she saw, pierced in some way, ears and nostrils ringed over and over in interconnecting circles, shiny and complex. Tattoos and scars, waiting for Michael to chain his scooter and one of the kids laughed, called out, "Hey man, don't want it anyway."

    "She doesn't really live here," past them up the wide unpainted steps into half-dark and heavy garbage smell. "Just visiting. Guy named Tony. You won't like him."

    She didn't. Forever to answer the door, even her wet-palmed hammering knock and at first he pretended he didn't know Bibi; coy, then smiling, sure. Come on in. Big bare dewlap breasts, both nipples pierced and he told her about his cock piercing, 's called a Prince Albert, you ever heard of a Prince Albert?

    "Yeah," staring down at him, he was a good four inches shorter than she. Dandruff like nits in his hair. "I know what that is."

    "Wanna see it?"

    "No."

    "The chicks love it."

    "I bet."

    Michael, softly, with a certain coldness she had not seen in him before, "When do you expect her?"

    That got a laugh. "Don't 'spect her at all, man, she just shows up whenever the fuck she feels like it, whenever she gets her shit together from those fuckin' shacktowns. I told her, you bring any of that shit here I'll ream your ass for you."

    The idea of anyone reaming Bibi's ass was bemusing, Tess almost had to smile through the stuttering drive of her heart. Michael said something, low, she didn't hear because there were sounds in the hall, one of the outside kids laughing as the door swung crookedly to: Bibi, pushing in.

    Purest white, virgin and martyr, white hair, white head-wrap like cerements and new white sneakers sparkling against the floor's red linoleum filth: shiny all over with rings, studs, bright surgical steel like tiny surface manifestations of a blunter core within; staring back at her; to save her life Tess could not have spoken first.

    Silence, and the kid at the door scraping slowly away. Even ox Tony did not speak; incurious? or conscious of currents, of plates shifting deep beneath the ground? Beside her Tess could feel Michael, tension, her own bones thrumming in the space beneath her skin.

    At last, dry: "Hi, Tess," and that pale gaze unsteady, up and over and down to her hands; nails torn and rings on every finger, coptic crosses, miniature skulls. Up to Tess again. "Come to visit?"

    "No," and from her own mouth, not loud but certain, absolutely sure, "I came to take you home."

    And instant as a blow what she would never have believed: the big pale blinkless eyes filling steadily with tears, as out of place here as the coursing blood of angels, of stripped seraphic veins. It was as if Bibi did not feel them, heavy bright glycerin, her mouth moved on a word and Tess felt her own tears, drove them back; they would not be shed here no matter what.

    "C'mon," she said, iron in her throat, out the door and silent Michael behind them, the three of them in the halflit street and Bibi suddenly laughing, a shaky laugh, "We can't all fit on that," and Tess unable to talk, biting hard at her inner cheek, red from her mouth and Bibi in wonder said "You're bleeding," and suddenly her face collapsed into a terrible fist, as if everything not dead was pain and Tess grabbed her, skinny little hedgehog, death's baby sister and hugged her tight, tight; and she did cry, then, Bibi, silently onto Tess's shoulder, little chin digging in and without ever raising her head.

    And Michael, half a pace away and Tess saw his smile, small but so true, so informed with warm pleasure that her tears ran as well for him: for his persistence, for his patience and the fruit of it, their joy.

    "I don't have much stuff, anymore," nimble legs crossed high at the thigh, arms curling complicated as Shiva in some series of slow exercise as lovely, itself, as a dance. Square blocks of shadow, indigo drift across the plane of the floor, dust-sugared and striped with the terminus twist of cables, red and black and dirty blue. Michael had gone nearly after arrival, hugging them both swift and briefly, longest smile for Tess as he closed the door. Tess's hurried shower, aware she still stunk like work and Bibi nonstop, talking and talking, filling in all the time apart:
and then I did this, and then I did that, and then I worked a couple weeks for Linda Joy, that was cool but we didn't really see eye to eye; so I left. And little chunks of time, a week dancing: Skeleton Fist, you know what that is? 'S a club. Sort of. And I did some work for this guy, he's a therapist, one of those free-lance clinics, you know-

    From beneath the water: "What kind of therapist?"

    "Mmm," bony little shrug, "sexuality. Deviant sexuality, I guess you could call it."

    "What'd you do?"

    "Referrals."

    -and on and on, so much to happen in what was really such a short time, a short time that felt so long and now that it had ended felt like nothing at all. Toweling off, nonstop smile for Bibi on the couchbed: how she filled the room with just herself. "Anyway I've been moving around. I left that one flat, the bed and everything," a slim yawn, "all those magazines, I got rid of it all. Most of the clothes, too."