Skin, p.11
Skin, page 11
Slow subsiding smiles, headshakes and Bibi leaning low to stretch, bright eyes upside down: "Hey. Are you sure you haven't fucked him?"
Up and yawning to shut the door, "I'm sure." Pause. "How about you?"
"Oh yeah," about-face, right side up and grinning past the dangle of wires: "I'm sure you haven't fucked him, too."
The new flyer was completely black but for three things: Tess's fingers, Bibi's eyes, and the magistrate of sorrows, red letters like stylized cuts, razor thin and staggered diagonal. They had not even bothered, this time, to post a time, a place; word of mouth would take care of that.
This time the Magistrate himself, itself, blood and suction, the bubble of plastic parts and the larger stretch and finger of the metal limbs, their shearing tips infinitely more manipulable than the blunt hammer-and-tongs of the Triple Deaths; they call that learning. Alligator clips a rusty smile; the fury of the scissors, heavy tinsnips and metal bite. There was a nursery rhyme once, German she thought, about the Scissor Man who came to thumbsucking children; the great red-legged Scissor Man, it had scared the shit out of her as a child and she hadn't even been a thumbsucker. That was there, in the Magistrate, nameless the lord of silver nightmares, the sound a knife makes in the dark; don't tell me, she thought, about knives.
Bibi of course had her cuttings, hinting at lots of plans but for once Tess was not anxious to hear them, did not want to listen or think about Nicky's piques and Paul's missed rehearsals, Bibi's disbelieving sneer, He said he was sick. Well; maybe he is. I am, too.
Smells. Sounds. Everything black this time, costumes and makeup, sketchy sets already in place upstairs, bare metal scaffolding, barely room enough for the Magistrate to move; smoke and blood the only colors. The scaffolding looked half-ass to Tess, complaining to Andy, arms folded huge to tell her she had two choices: either redo it herself or redo it herself. Just like almost everybody else he was doing his fucking best and in case anybody had forgotten he was a dancer and not a fucking ironworker in the first place, right? Right?
Mouth pursed a little, a little, poking him lightly in the chest with her finger, other hand calm on the heft of a chipping hammer; you're a big guy, Andy. Poke, poke. But I'm not all that small myself. Don't you think?
Hot in the room; long jittering whoop of a siren outside. Very carefully, "I don't think you really want to fuck with me, Tess."
As quietly, feeling the smile outside but not in, inside she felt nothing but a very small curiosity dry as a bleached insect, "I think you have that backwards. Andy."
And all at once Nicky at her side, pulling at her like a kid, c'mon Tess. Tess, come on, Jerome wants you.
Which turned out to be true: what was needed was her reluctant blessing on his ringleader plans, the ones he chose to talk about anyway: for Salome, and M-80s, and sound, look, he had pages of small-print specs: "Nicky showed me," hunched up on a tumble of boxes below in the first-floor workspace, the Zombie Birdhouse they called it. "Cops in Europe got 'em," pointing out a paragraph, "ultrasonics, it can send out two different frequencies at a time and it's really fuckin' torqued… 'course that's sort of dangerous, we're not doing that. What we want to do is a flat sixty seconds of a high-frequency scream, you can't really hear it but it's there, you feel it in your body." Dirty face, big smile, heat through the windows bright as light and the lingering miasma of dog piss; sounds good, Tess said. Or doesn't. Get it? but she didn't laugh and Jerome didn't either, slowly back to his worktable and she trudging up to hers, hammer still in hand. He came up later to help with the Magistrate, but all they talked was tech. She didn't feel like talking about anything. To anybody.
And then Michael would come, sit on the couch-bed or maybe, if she wasn't burning, on the stool beside; and say nothing. Small smile, watching, making no comments or noise, sweat on his shoulders, water sometimes or sometimes beer. Head-turned watching and sometimes to Tess the thought unbidden, what would it be like? White-blond hair like ash, like vines between her fingers, O of a sweet red mouth and what would it be like to feel with her tongue its slippery sugary darkness, its black hole like the excise space left behind by a rotten tooth? Heat in her face, am I the only one who hasn't fucked him? Yet? and his silent hand on her arm, smiling; and gone, heat like a-question left behind.
***
Bibi in and out, too, three interviews the week before the show, angry at Tess for refusing to do them with her but not angry enough not to do them alone; more messages on the machine, Tess ignoring them, setup work to do and ignoring that, too, instead out in the parking lot working the Magistrate, sweat-wet and oblivious behind the heavy Dumpster until people saw, people came, yelled, she had to push some guy in the face and Bibi scolding afterward, for fuck's sake Tess you should have known! They did not speak the rest of the day, Tess sleeping angry to wake, snagged weary in sweaty sheets and yes, Bibi was right: she should have known.
But: Bibi barely there and already gone, props to pick up and Tess left alone in the morning heat, below the sounds of beaten metal, the distant whooshing pop of something small exploding. Shitty instant coffee and halfclosed stare to see taped over the toilet another stare, and fingers, the magistrate of sorrows and chalked below in mocking caps the world's longest-running sore.
"It's full," for the twentieth time, Sandrine horrible and lush in heavy mesh, smiling as if she were high. Cobweb chain strung thin from earlobe to nostril, she and Raelynne had added minuscule charms, skulls and curly daggers below identical bright-eyes; they both looked fucked up. So did Andy, so did Andreas in the corner with pursed lips and a rag, attending Paul: just finished vomiting and too ill to even be there, black T-shirt loose and faintly stained over the sick crouch of his shoulders.
And people, people, people, inside and outside and everywhere, some perching gargoyle on the opposite roof, trying to see in; Nicky had said there were others on the roof above them, trying to cut peepholes. Nicky now clustered triplet with Peter and Jerome, all of them headwrapped in black, respirators hung bright against their chests though Bibi had screamed about that, the respirators were white for God's sake and Tess forced to defend them, they need to breathe, Bibi, maybe you didn't think of that.
"The dancers need to breathe, too."
"Then give them respirators."
Each glaring at the other, Tess all bones and angles and sparks, sparks under the skin, formicating shiver like crawling insects, like the angry knurl of each separate and particular element, fear and weariness, hot and cold. For her tonight the whole room, the crowd, each one of them in this loose twist had a distinct and unwholesome odor, the smell that says This is not good. As if the rot inherent in the group had begun to manifest, and rot stinks. Like garbage; the silent fester of anger; like dried blood.
But for Bibi-Tess could tell just by looking-there were no such tremors, never the underskin pavane: hands on hips, clown mouth down, made up by Sandrine to look like Marquesan tattoos, stark black bars across forehead and eyes. Coldly, "The white ruins the symmetry of the look."
"Tough shit."
And Andy, from the peanut gallery, the breathing circle on the edge of a bubbling giggle, private giggle and leaning in to say hey Tess how come you don't try the finger trick on her? Huh? Poke her a good one! and Sandrine's snicker; Raelynne's loose haw-haw, Andreas picking at the tips of his gloves, smile pointed down like a courtier and all of a sudden it was just too much, all of it, all of them, and leaning into Andy, his breath pure candy mouthwash and "Because I'd rather try it on you, fuckface," and shoving him hard, stiff hands smearing the makeup on his slack-muscled chest and from somewhere Andreas and Michael jumping tandem in between and Bibi's grip hard on Tess's forearm, snarling, "Stop it, now!"
Andy falling back, off balance and Andreas's unsteady grasp, Tess angrier than she had ever been, turning on Bibi: hands on her black shoulder blades to shove with all her force, knock her flat on her ass and Tess above, trembling: "Don't you ever grab me like that, Bibi. Ever."
Bibi surrounded now, tender black scowls to help her rise, turning silent away and Tess clenched hands, a sick taste under her tongue. Jerome saying something in her ear but she shook him off, go away, went herself away to a corner, where can you hide in a room full of people, a street full of people, fucking people everywhere oh God if only this were over. I said no show, I said-
And Michael all at once, hand light on her arm and a paper cup of water: "You want this? Tess? Are you thirsty?"
Equally vamped in makeup but still Michael, pale eyes and half a smile, chains across his bare chest; he was supposed to start up the soundtrack and then join the dancers, something about a tribal circle around the cutting altar; she had not listened. Tried to listen now, dry mouth and taking the water, taking his hand.
"Are you okay?"
Her slow nod a lie, sweat down her back and the warm closeness of his shielding body; crowd sounds deeper now, louder, the coughing of beasts expectant. "You're working the Magistrate, right? But not Salome?"
The flat taste of bottled water, she drank it anyway. "No," draining the cup; crushing it. "I gave her to Jerome."
More gently still, "It's going to start soon, couple minutes. Are you sure you're okay?"
Mechanical as a construct, engineered response: "Fine," but his face even closer and his mouth very light on hers, faint moist feel of his tongue, "Then break a leg," and stepping back, gone, over to Bibi still encircled, cocooned, and Tess in dry confusion turning to walk somewhere, away, ending up beside Peter loading the last camera, the view from behind the stage area: "Hey," his grin unsteady, "you torqued?"
"Plenty." Her hands were still shaking. She did not want to look at Michael; or Bibi. Or the crowd. "Ready?" and in the instant the long feedback whistle of the soundtrack, lights cut and the yelling begun: "Surgeons!"
Peter's quick nudge, hurrying back to his bombs and Jerome moving swiftly past as: the drag of heavy curtain, I believe that's your cue: take up the Magistrate's control: be ready. The dancers clambering along the scaffolding, Paul the last one to rise, coordination off like a drugged bug. Cut-down smoke machine pumping smells as rich as rotten meat, instant dead-food miasma and Bibi, turning in that instant, turning on Tess: to stare, lips back like a dog and no sound at all.
The soundtrack in earnest, barnyard groans and the beaten whistle of steam and Bibi stepping, goosestepping, ironic priestess in place, facing the crowd with a perfect flourish of black-gloved hands. She was all of a piece, solid and beautiful as a loaded gun; like a mirror that perfection and threat reflecting back to Tess her own ferocious sad apartness, outsider fighting in the end to get back out.
Shaking hands on the Magistrate: All right, she thought, sliding damp thumbs, fingertips: let's get it over with.
Half a dozen small explosions, grotesquely loud in this enclosure, echoes punctuation in the soundtrack growl and the stutter of strobes, two bodies like lizards crawling slow down the scaffolding-already swaying a little, what a shitty job Andy had done; never mind. Pay attention.
To the Magistrate: its first true show and see how easy to work, to manipulate, vacuum burble and plastic hands stuck in wet beseechment against the heavier plastic skin; reaching, vicious dandy, to pinch with alligator clips the long skirt of the curtain, pinch and twist and rip it like skin, tinsnips moving like the beak of a raptor, a killing bird, the vulture who tears forever at writhing Prometheus: bring me fire.
More bodies off the scaffolding to ring the cutting table, less stylized altar than butcher block and there the jitter begun of steel over twitching flesh, hot trails of blood mingled with the freshet spurt of blood pellets and they were sticky with it, they were slick and grinning and wet. The heavier groan of metal, metal twisting, Salome imprisoned in something like a drum and trying to batter her way out, the battering miked and sampled back into the larger shriek and another victim stripped for the knife and the Magistrate moving to the very edge of the safety ropes, control box in her hands as warm as flesh and squeezing, tinsnips picking at the scaffolding itself, swinging like a beast on the loudest part of the crowd, everyone was yelling, Paul lumbering past for his turn on the table, poisoned yellow eyes like a plague victim and hot, so hot in here, all the windows open and the blowers on full-bore and hot like the slippery cave of a beating heart, a dying heart in the heavy stench of rot, sweat in the grooves of her grin because she was smiling; why? because this is fun Isn't it?
Choral voices now, screaming, Salome hard against the imprisoning skin and a sudden bulge, battering juggernaut thump twinned with an explosion that made her ears ring. Half-deaf in the aftershock, heat and grease and atop the butcher's stage the strop of bleeding flesh, Bibi yowling something, bare blood-spattered breasts and the crowd screaming, screaming to urge her on-
-and now the rhythmic tidal motion of linked bodies: Andy and Sandrine and Raelynne and Paul and the Magistrate's tinsnip fingers chewing, nipping, biting hard and past all the safety ropes, driving the crowd back-isn't this fun? isn't this what you paid to see?-and Salome rocking, the drum rocking, whine of working metal relentless she's getting away-
-and uncontrolled-where is Jerome? loose in a space this small-
-but no, not entirely, the thrust held back and slamming just past the altar, the block, the dancers' instinctive scatter and for a bald hysteric moment Tess wanted to laugh, how's that for a special effect? Stink in her nostrils and the stutter of the strobe; blood like oil and the crawling dancers now with weapons?
-some kind of blunt knives, hands and knees and approach like assassins, Tess's gaze narrow through the stench to see the dancers ring first Nicky, kick and slap then pushing and shoving at Peter, someone hit him and then Jerome, distracted at Salome's control, trying to ward them away-
-and Bibi, halfway up the scaffolding to hang laughing like a bat, like the wingless angel of chaos, laughing at everything and all the stupid half-fake blood and Tess squeezing hard, heat and gristle like bone, metal, blank-faced advance on the dancers like death made manifest: You want to play? Play with this. Pulling, costumes ripping, the tines and snips and clips smeared with the pellet-blood, Cerberus nip at their slick new wounds, biting not to hurt but to frighten, to terrify, send them running, freed bodies, dogs in the path of a car, a train, an avalanche; you don't like the machines? They don't like you, either.
And now Salome working, resistless batter like a madman against the splinter of her chains, let me out let me out and Andy slamming up beside Jerome, shoving, the crowd uneasy now and back against the walls. Retreat, did they smell it, grudge match, grievance, what? What? Bibi black fruit astride the scaffolding tree, no more laughter, bloody arms and back and yelling something, yelling at Tess, big pale eyes in the strobing dark and Tess staring as one stares at an enemy unmasked-
-and on cue-was it?-the sound that was no sound at all, noise hot through the body and somebody pushing for the doors-
-as Salome now unguided slammed once more against the chains and again oh God it's loose-
-and hard into the first thing in her path-the scaffolding, but not bouncing off as she was made to, instead slamming to stick, intense vibration seen in Bibi's clinging body, electrocution-like jerk and Tess in the watching slapped free of anger by fear: "Jerome!" but of course he could not hear, no one could through that sound, hideous, noiseless, felt in the body and the audience moving, brute surge, the lunatic dance of panic at last begun and Tess wheeling at once, hurry, to aim the Magistrate to intercept the shock of stalled Salome against the teetering scaffolding, Bibi at last on the ground and "Get clear!" Tess's own screaming voice in her ears, like a train, like a truck rolling brakeless downhill Get CLEAR get CLEAR and the noises mercifully off as Jerome on his knees snatching up Salome's lost control, off but too late, the whole structure inexorable in a dance of its own: long skeleton reel of pipe and "Get clear!" through the shrieks of the trampling cwd, the dancers scattering, Peter and Nicky curled undercover in the loud enormity of falling metal-
-and Raelynne's siren shriek like the cry of the metal itself, the first pole striking final, striking flesh and fragile bone: Paul.
In the back of the head.
Blood, everywhere.
2
HYPNOTIZING CHICKENS
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars
-Sylvia Plath
Paul had wanted to be cremated; Bibi's voice flat flat of hysteria, face pale as her eyes, she had not slept for almost three days… and Tess could not stand to be in the same room with her, had not been alone with her since the hours in the police station; on their return Bibi had gone up to their floor, while Tess turned left into the Zombie Birdhouse; and stayed there. Away from her tools and projects but for once there was no desire in her for tools or projects, nothing but the dry husk of disbelief like an alien new flavor: the falling metal, the heavy leak of blood.
The EMS tech said that Paul had died almost at once, brain death; token try at revival but he was already past resurrection, vegetable or not. No one had known whom to list as next of kin. Classified as indigent, his cremation was billed to the city; the ashes went to Bibi, in a little tin square half the size of a box of tissues, his name and date of death on a neat white label smeared by fingertips and tears.
To Tess's dull surprise there were no criminal charges, no legal punishments and it felt wrong, wrong that Paul should die and no one be held responsible. Responsibility and culpability, the road between sorrow and guilt; death: and no one, it seemed, was to blame.
Sick-hot day, afternoon, no one working. The canvased form of battered Salome in a corner; apparently they had carried it here; Tess had not touched it since the show, would not now, wished never to see it again. Let them tear it up for scrap. Now Peter, slow to start some busywork, Jerome leafing with half-closed eyes through a newspaper and all at once Sandrine's focusless stare around the Birdhouse door: "Bibi says," in a fucked-up voice, slow and blurry like a sleepwalker, like water through a clogging drain, "we're going to do the ashes in a while. In an hour, she says. Everybody meet upstairs."
