Skin, p.5
Skin, page 5
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. "
"I build," slowly, "with the metal there is. I don't demand a new kind of metal for every piece I make."
Now, driving back from the scrapyard, the radio on loud and remembering that talk, remembering Bibi's clawing hands. Thinking of the hole in her neck. Soon the new performance, bigger and better and louder, at least they were agreed on that. Bibi called it hardball evolution; to Tess it was just the expected lengthening of the stick, you always needed a bigger stick. And there was that to it that was just plain fun, the hard-work fun of trying to see just how well you could build, to set your own limits and then surpass them. Her boundaries now were further; she was learning the new way to see.
The service entrance was on the building's west side: easiest to unload straight onto the elevator. Pulling up and almost onto a kid, busy with some kind of tool and he tried to run as soon as he saw her. Out the car window in one swooping jump and she slapped him breathless against the wall with her scrapyard bag, jumbled plastic and metal thumping his meatless belly: "Hey! Hold it-I said hold it!" and taking the tool from him: a slim-jim, a jimmy bar.
"You want to break into my place?" Holding the bar in front of his eyes, oh he was young, sixteen or maybe not even that. "I ought to make you eat this, you little shit." An inexpert job, all he had managed to do was scratch the metal jamb. She stuffed the bar into her bag, pushed him backward with one stiff hand; he did not resist her, grimy jeans, bare toes sticking out of ragged Keds, a tangle of bones and dirty hair.
"Out," pointing back to the street, turning her back to him; she was ready for him to jump her but he did nothing, only stood where she had pushed him; watching. Opening the service door just wide enough to back in, in the car and he said, "I'll help you unload, if you want." She did not answer. "I saw the show," he said.
He saw the show. "You did, huh," and his smile, his teeth were terrible. "Why were you trying to break into my house?"
Shrugging, staring down in that adolescent embarrassment as evident as heat. "I just, I wanted to see the stuff again. I wasn't going to take anything."
Tess revved the engine slightly. "Come back tomorrow," she said. "I have to work now."
And he did. Outside the service entrance at the same particular time, a cloudy noon and Jerome, he said his name was Jerome, he would not tell his age. Bright and nervous and tactless, fumbling metal savant who stopped grail-still when he saw Tess's worktable, her books and tools: "All this is yours?"
"A friend lives here with me, but the tools and stuff, yeah, they're mine." He was still beside the doorway, shifting foot to foot, those big dirty toes sticking stranded from his sneakers. "Go on, you can look at it if you want. Just don't break anything."
He didn't stay long, that day, left Tess working but he came back the next day, to touch the tools, to sit silent with the sculpture, touching it, too. On his third visit he met Bibi, who thought he was cute; as soon as he left, "Why don't you use him for the shows? He can help set stuff up or something, run cables."
"Altruist, huh," but Tess had already had the same idea. It would be good to have an assistant other than Crane, or Paul; and Bibi's frown, "At least Paul can dance. That Crane, he better shape up a little bit and I don't mean his fucking pecs that he's so proud of. Know what it was today?" and talking as working, as both turned to their larger tasks, how to make the metal arms clench and twist without breaking, herself a twist of flesh, bent and hedgehog frowning, oblivious as she spoke.
"We are priests," Raelynne's voice amplified, witchy and hoarse, "in the service of motion," and a crash like God's sky opened, the tumbling rush of half-inch bearings down the curve of a makeshift ramp, cataract fall onto a sheet of thin aluminum to scatter haphazard among the audience: twice as many, this time, they filled the room nearly to the doors; ready.
This time it was louder, rattle and thump and the fat blades of an amped-up blower poisonously a-clatter over the bass subsonics, over Raelynne's whoops and Paul's wet growls through a borrowed throat mike, their simulated sex atop a blistered landscape of sheet metal and the others circling like buzzards, masks made hasty of old welding helmets, the twin planes of safety glass, clear and heavy green, slid free to be replaced by thick blinding broadcloth, raveled and black. And Tess again in back, burning, this time working on a piece, right there, through the shriek and clatter, the off-balance pulse of strobes above and the new metal arms mounted high atop a stolen stop-sign pole, grabbing and pulling, fantastically jury-rigged but the people watching did not know, did not suspect just how rigged they were. The sign itself had been stenciled don't across its age-blistered face and nailgunned to the top of the bearing ramp.
The piece absorbing Tess's attention, burn and spatter and smoke, running her own slippery edge, working hard and looking up only rarely, to see where she was in the show: now Sandrine's butcher-dance, hacking at plastic hands; now the lovers in combat, clumsy gauntlets of corrosive-grade plastic and Paul had knocked Raelynne to the ground, not in the script, and Bibi leaping like a crazy lizard from the top of the bearing ramp, landing with a hideous thump on the sheet metal, eyes wide in the surprise of great injury and a fat bubble of blood bursting red from her mouth and Raelynne rising to be struck from behind, Crane and Sandrine hand-to-hand, Sandrine's tattoo ringed with a shiny gloss to make it sparkle, exotic prosthetic in the flexing flesh.
Tess through the mask, smoke around her head and the panels occluding, it was getting harder and harder to see; Bibi on her knees and crawling in a broken way toward Paul, who was not looking, people yelling and her fingers strangely tight in work gloves, into the burn again, legs braced and somebody crashed into her, her fire hitting plastic and the flare of poison stink, instant and dire: we need air. "Air in here!" and the smatter of glass, somebody else shrieking, Tess struggling back to see Raelynne rise again bloody-mouthed to deliver an enormous suck-erpunch to Paul's unprotected belly, doubling him up, striking him again in the moment of his fall. More broken glass. The tape looping back onto itself like the birth cries of giants, the groans of the dinosaurs in their pits and plastic still afire, fumes, Tess dizzy in the shadow of her own fire and someone hit the crashbars, the doors wide and people stumbling out, coughing, the entering air feeding the plastic fire and Jerome, suddenly, wide eyes and extinguisher spray, fat gobbets of foam from atop one of the sculptures, just to the left of the grabbing arms which threatened to push him from balance. And the tape still booming, and the fire out, and the room empty except for the performers, two of whom were vomiting, Tess lightheaded and sick to the door and arms around her, helping arms taking her to safety and to air.
"-just stupidity, that's all it is. If they're supposed to be in charge," a dark pause, "then maybe we ought to rethink this whole fucking enterprise."
Tess, scrubbing her face for the third time, plastic stink indelible down her throat: slow turn, water running to a stop. Listening to Crane, outside on the stairs, Crane who could not see her: presumably as well the others just up from the show's debris, and Paul's voice: "I got no problems with them being in charge." A pause. "Either one of them."
Her hand on the faucet: listen to Sandrine: "-to admit it, she gets a little crazy sometimes, she's got her own ideas-"
"We could get sued. Has anybody thought of that?" Raelynne, dry, "No, Crane, only you would think of that. Who the hell's going to sue us?"
"Who?" His voice swooping, deep registers, the world's last sane man. "How about the kid who got all cut up?" What kid? "He's going to need stitches. And that woman, last time, yelling about being blinded, she-"
Tess, eyes closed in memory: the girl behind the panel; not blinded, no, but the flash would bring pain worse than a migraine, endless crying eyes and the cure for that was a raw potato, cut in two; put it on your eyes and let it sit. She had learned that in the truck shop, too. But that girl didn't know, though, did she?
And Crane still talking, "-Tess's stupid welding torch, what about her? What-"
"What about her, Crane?"
Bibi's voice, so flat even Tess froze, then from behind the green screen to the door to see the four in tableau and Bibi half a landing down. And rising: smoke-smeared, hair fantastic with sweat, black gauntlets shredded to the wrist. Staring.
