The Cipher (17 page)

When Nakota heard about it, the next bleary morning when she woke me coming in, all she did was laugh. One hand poised in the act of shedding a shoe, the other against the couchbed to hold herself steady, and those strange teeth wet and bare in a long sustained crow, she finally had to sit down she was laughing so hard. At last "Oh, Nicholas," wheezy with mirth, patting my blanketed thigh in mock congratulation, "nobody can fuck things up the way you can. Malcolm is—"

"You know him?"

"We used to be lovers." There was something unsettling in her use of that term, I had never thought of her as actually having a lover. Screwing people, yes, absolutely, and the weirder the better. But a lover? No.

"He's an artist," she said. "When he isn't selling clothes. He makes these kitschy plaster death masks," pulling off her other shoe, settling down beside me. One pointy hipbone gouging softly as she moved. "He thinks he's God, and all these little assholes, his groupies, they're all a bunch of goddamned yes-men and all they do is follow him around. Like puppies looking for their mother's tit." A dry sniff, careless toss of the other shoe. "Fact is he's a pretty shitty artist, but nobody can tell him that, or at least not till recently. Richard—you know Richard, down at the Incubus? no?—anyway Richard says Malcolm can't show there anymore, his stuffs too cute. Malcolm was
extremely
pissed off," smiling as at a droll memory. Guess you had to be there.

"So what's all this got to do with me?" I didn't really want to know, I'd heard enough on the subject already, but it was one of those questions you have to ask.

She was going to answer, her mouth opened a little, and then closed in a different kind of smile. "You'll find out, won't you?" And nothing else, fell asleep beside me skinny and superior, her chin digging into my left forearm, the idea of my discomfiture and eventual self-induced downfall no doubt sweet as a lullaby, drifting her into whatever black excesses passed for her dreams.

Slowly I raised my right arm, palm downward, let my unbandaged wound drip and bubble as it would, onto the bare skin of her shoulder; what fell was syrupy and gleamed in the seeping dawn, like the droplets of poison that fall forever in the face of chained Loki; and what fell, clung. My arm tired and carefully I lowered it to my side, fell asleep watching the fluid not so much dry as coagulate on her skin; when taints collide. If I coated her in it, head to toe, would it serve as her chrysalis, would it make a new woman of her? She could stand to be a new woman. She could stand to be a new anything. But maybe in the grand tradition of mad science I should try it on myself first. And maybe not.

Noon when I woke. She was still asleep. The fluid lay undisturbed on her shoulder, a shiny clot, much prettier than when it came out of me.

Cautious not to wake her, I slipped from couchbed to shower, from shower and hasty dress to Funhole, nauseated with hunger, still barefoot, my clothes clinging to my half-dry body. Wet hair and cold, so cold, lying beside it, I still hadn't remembered to buy a lock for the damned door. The air, the Funhole's private atmosphere, almost porous with odor, rich and faintly bad like spoiling food. Internal incense, the smoke of constant praise.

'Tell me," I murmured, my lips almost touching the dusty floor. "Tell me before he gets here."

No time to waste, Malcolm. Leather lab coat, stink of smoke, grinning at me from the salt-scarred pavement. Head wolf, come confident alone without the pack. Daylight was no good for Malcolm, total dark was his milieu. His sunglasses were crooked. "Where're you goin'?" he said.

"Right now I'm going grocery shopping," not stopping but slowing, a little, giving him the moment to join me if he was going to. "You can come with me if you want."

"Grocery shopping," with a lilt meant to show-amusement, or maybe merely shitty. He fell into step with me, or rather linked his ironic amble to my perpetual slouch. I bet he even shaved ironically. "I usually let my girlfriend handle all that."

"You said you were always ready for new experiences, right?" Sliding into my car, letting him wait a minute before I unlocked the passenger door. "Have one on me." Nyah nyah, I can do irony too.

Silence between us made me nervous, as nervous as the frigid planes of the day around me. Above the choking sound of my heater, I said, "Are you off work today, or what?"

"I'm an artist," now definitely shitty, but willing not to chew me a new asshole for the sake of belittling my ignorance. Under other, less complex circumstances, I could have had a lot of laughs out of this guy. Tm always working."

"Uh-huh." Into the IGA parking lot, an acre of slush and abandoned carts, cars parked at strange angles. Inside was even brighter than outside. The cart I chose had a twisted front wheel; I kept helplessly hitting aisle displays, other carts, even Malcolm once or twice. "Beer," I said, cart inventory, "mineral water. Crackers. Eggs."

"Real domestic type, aren't you?"

"Peanut butter."

"How can you eat that stuff?" pointing at my no-brand peanut butter with genuine disdain. "Peter Pan's the only good kind."

I had to borrow two bucks from him at the checkout. Malcolm smoked all the way home, pretentious Gitanes, clenching one between his teeth when he talked. His sunglasses were still crooked. He criticized every song on the radio until in self-defense I put on the all-news station; then he mocked the news. As I parked, I thought about Randy's plan to feed Malcolm to the Funhole. "Randy's right," I said, one bag in my right arm—newly bandaged hand throbbing in dull rhythm, shit I had forgotten to buy gauze—two in my left. Malcolm didn't offer to help.

"Right about what?" he wanted to know, following me up the stairs.

"About you."

"And what does Randy say about me?"

"That you're unique."

He laughed. "I bet he does. Hey, Nick, let me tell you something about Randy. Randy's a grease monkey, he works for a goddamn gas station—"

"Towing service."

"Whatever. Him and his twatty little steel pieces, I mean come on, they all look like car bumpers, stop bringing your work home with you." He laughed and I didn't. "He's a failed sculptor, he's a failure at
life
. He just hasn't realized it yet."

"How's things at the clothes store?" I asked, pausing for my door key.

He didn't like that at all. "Who—"

"Nakota told me. Says you work at a clothes store, selling T-shirts or something. Hey, don't be embarrassed," with my friendliest grin. "We all have to, eat sometime, right?"

"You know Nakota?" as if he was only waiting for my flimsy explanation so he could shoot it down. I told him she lived with me. Nasty, "She's never said anything about you."

"Shy," I said, and the evidence stared at us as I pushed open the door: naked and smoking, blankets around her waist as she sat reading old
Art Now
magazines, her sneer for both of us in proportionate degrees of unworthiness.

"Oh boy," she said at Malcolm. "I thought I smelled something."

"Missed me," walking to her, leaning over to cup one breast as if this would put my nuts in a permanent tweak. I started putting the groceries away.

"Get your hand off me," Nakota said, "I don't want to touch anything that's been touching your dick."

"Used to be I couldn't get your hands off it."

"Don't remind me. I still get flashbacks."

It was schoolyard bickering, stupid, but one thing was ominously apparent: Nakota did
not
like Malcolm. Not the usual halfass contempt she felt for almost everyone, but actual malice. Which made all this far more dangerous, gave rile the sensation of walking not on ice but on something much more volatile, walking on the backs of giants. And she behind me. Wearing stilettos.

"So." Grinning at him. "Want to watch a movie?"

Oh boy. She never was one for wasting time. I opened up a beer, thought longingly of the mad quiet of the Funhole, lying there in my prayerful trance, why I was turning into a regular Nakota. Bedlam instead tonight, obvious in Malcolm's reply: "I don't watch films anymore."

" 'Films,'" with one of her ugliest smiles. "I'll show you a fucking
film,
you roach." This endearment meant nothing to me, but Malcolm tightened up like someone had just shoved an icicle up his ass. "Nicholas, put the video on."

"Wonderful," Malcolm said, "home movies."

"You'll like this one," I told him. Now that it was inevitable—and let's not forget, kids, who put this whole doomed scenario into action^ do I see a show of hands?—I was determined to have whatever weak fun I could. "Lots of action."

I hadn't seen it myself for a while, I was courting enough disaster as it was. I had no idea if Nakota was still watching regularly, but if so, it just didn't seem to pack the same wallop, or maybe she was wallop-proof by now. Maybe it had never been intended to pack the same wallop. Maybe it was just a lure, why not.

Malcolm's string of bitchy comments—he was one of the truly bitchiest guys I had ever seen— wound down shortly after the first minute. Silence was an uncomfortable mode for him but he was so busy trying to figure out how the hell we'd faked this that he wasn't ready for the real, and at the part where, Nakota claimed, it all diverged for everybody (but me; and yes, I saw it again, the cool beckon of that same figure, and had the same reaction, a curling-up inside, a mortal shriveling) (but this time, what? something worse and I shrank from the naming, pulled back as if from some unfathomable contamination that had already gone fatally far), the climax, so to speak—then he froze, mouth literally open, and open it stayed long seconds after the tape was over, disappeared into buzzing gray silence.

I rubbed my eyes, drank a little of the beer. Nakota smirked. Still Malcolm said nothing.

Finally, in a tone stripped of all falsity, burned down to a nub of hungry essence, he turned not to Nakota but to me: "I have to do you," he said.

"Do me?"

"Your face. Make a mask of your face, like that," gesturing at the TV. "Like the one in the video. I don't know how you did that, but I want to try to duplicate it if I can."

Nakota, strolling naked for a glass of water, taking Malcolm's matches from his shirt pocket. "Malcolm's famous death masks," she said. "Not sold in any stores. Not shown in any galleries, either."

"Will you do it?"

I didn't know what to say, fell clumsily back on the truth. "I don't know. I don't know if I want to."

"Nicholas has his own work to do," Nakota said. "He doesn't have time for you."

"Why does everybody in the world talk for you?" Malcolm said to me. "First Randy, now Queen Bitch here. Just tell me, will you do it or not?"

Nakota clearly wanted me to refuse, but I had no interest in pampering her spite. If it had been Randy asking, I would have said yes at once, but I didn't like Malcolm, I didn't trust him, it was like keeping half a snake in your pocket, a sicked-up vicious pet. Vanese's advice or no, to me it seemed the best idea entirely to get him out of here with the least possible damage. Worse, any time spent dicking around with a mask, even to pacify him, would steal my Funhole time, so much of which already went to waste in the unavoidable things I had to do to live. And I simply didn't want to do it, I mean who wants a death mask of their face? No. Bad idea, Malcolm.

"Will you do it?"

I shook my head, positively no, and said, "All right."

And then—I can't imagine what my face looked like, I couldn't have been more surprised if an animal had crawled out of my mouth, those were in no possible scenario the words I had meant to say—I just sat there in mute asshole gloom while Nakota and Malcolm leaped headfirst into war.

They were pretty energetic about it too. It was easy to see what they saw in each other, although in modulated degree and for wildly different reasons; in fact it made me wonder what it was in Nakota I loved. Although that was a question whose answer I had never failed to find, and at this point it was almost comically moot, and anyway I had other, more simple problems to consider if not solve. Such as my inexplicable acquiescence to Malcolm's death-mask wish. Which seemed to somehow fill the bill begun by my equally inexplicable boasting that had brought the whole circus into lurid life.

About the point where Malcolm was screaming, "Because I'm an
artistV
and Nakota was screaming back, "Yeah, you're an artist all right, a bullshit artist!" I left, closing the door behind me, not even bothering to do it quietly. They wouldn't have stopped for money.

The hallway was extra cold, but the odor of the storage room was ripe and welcoming as a womb, and with embarrassed pleasure I slipped inside, lay facedown beside the Funhole, my right hand resting lightly on its lip. I thought I heard from its deeps not music but the elegant drone of bodily organs, a sound so unimaginably soothing that I felt I could not only sleep there, I could sleep forever, till all of me was a death mask, a human catafalque turned to happy dust on the quiet floor. The last thing I did before I slept was remove my bandage, and let my hand dangle, a sweetly sordid treat in a smiling mouth.

Malcolm was, unfortunately, as good as his word. Next day and already bustling around the flat, apparently come to stay: dragging his stuff in, plaster and cheesecloth and tools in a fake leather case, talking all the time and me leaning up against the couchbed, hearing like an echo's echo, a trickle of dream that Funhole music, not command but insinuation; it was hard to concentrate on anything else. Especially Malcolm.