The Cipher (21 page)

"Funhole Fan Club," I said, made faintly nauseated by the change in odor from my hand, from the color of the sheets where the fluid lay discreetly pooled; I moved away, a bare small inch. Outside traffic was exceptionally loud. I lay listening to it as Nakota fell to her own brand of rest, to dreams gashed with smelly wonders, peopled with the strengths of her delusions, what were her new ones going to lead us to? Another camcorder my ass, though in morning's reality there would most likely be very little I could do about it, there never was, was there? Never had one been so neck-deep in shit and so helpless to reach the flusher. If only I could believe that none of any of this was my business. Or my fault.

Doris had a camcorder.

Of course. And of course Nakota found that out the next day, Day Two, my happy trio over early with McDonald's coffee and dry muffins, and immediately the pair of them perched knees to knees, chummily on the couch while Dave and Ashlee sat sketching on napkins with Malcolm's expensive drawing pencils, pictures of what they thought might be in the Funhole. And
giggling
over it, God.
Romper Room
for demonics. I was all out of bandages so in dull desperation I sat trying to wind half a T-shirt around my hand after stuffing toilet paper in the hole itself, a process as uselessly messy
as
the hole itself, too, if you wanted to get philosophical about it, if you wanted to think at all.

"Let me help," Ashlee said to me.

"Not a chance," through my teeth as I strained to hear what Nakota was saying to Doris, what was giving her that bright-eyed grin.

"—back around noon," Doris said. "He said he had some stuff to pick up, you know," hands shaping a face in the air, "for the mask."

"We could go there right now then," Nakota standing with quick energetic grace, pocketing my keys since her car wasn't running. "At least start on it today, before I have to go to work."

"Start what?" although I knew, it was the fucking video, she just couldn't wait to mix whatever brew she'd been scheming on last night, her documentation, a travelogue of the indescribable maybe but maybe just a bigger fucking mess for us all and in particular me, why had I ever left that storage room, why had I even bothered to come out? My clearheaded plan had been just another self-deception.

"Start what," I said, and stood, still and shaking, to block her exit: an unheard-of defiance, so surprising that she laughed, as the others sat watchful, avid as birds, Doris arrested in the act of standing, human tableau of indecision.

"Get out of my way, Nicholas," with no more than usual malice, but when I refused, a feral smile as she pushed at me, sharp fist in my shoulder, hard enough to show she meant business, and I pushed back, hard enough to say that I did too. She stared at me the way you stare at Fido when he growls at you over the table scraps, and then without preamble hit me, a brisk and painful punch. Ducking into the blow I reached for her, grabbed hair and shoulders and shoved her hard against the door, held her there and said so only she could hear, "Don't do this, you hear me? Don't do this."

"You are so—" she began, then shook her head, shook off the notion of actually explaining to me my own stupidity, her gesture indicating the inherent waste of time in such an occupation. "You're willing to go on the same way forever, aren't you? Just going in there and taking whatever you get, hands out, gimme gimme gimme like a fucking two-bit beggar. That's your whole style," glancing around as if to indict me by my own squalid helplessness, so virulently displayed in the sorry way I lived. "That's
you.
But it's not me, and I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince you of what an asshole you are, what a cowardly piece of shit not to take what's being offered, what's being practically thrown in your face. So if you really want to stop me," blue-white incredible smile, daring me, daring me, "then I suggest you kick my ass. Otherwise, get the
fuck
out of my way."

Who blinked? Who do you think, head down, stepping back, my hands dropping reluctant from her shoulders, trembling up and down my arms with anger unused, the dash of adrenaline useless in my blood. "Well come on," impatiently to Doris, who leaped up, passed me without a look, maybe Nakota would be her new mentor now. They didn't close the door so I did, not embarrassed but oh, ashamed, for my weakness, my capacity for defeat, my endless versatility in displaying both. When I got around to looking at them, Ashlee and Dave were pointedly not looking at me. One of the few things, perhaps, they were good for, but now I was in no mood.

"Go on," I said, "why don't you go with them?" and with no more invitation they stood, leaving Styrofoam cups, a crumpled bag, their silly scrawled drawings, and Malcolm, his voice as he passed Nakota and Doris in the hall, his miffed surprise as Dave and Ashlee hurried past with artificial smiles. "What the hell," he said to me, over-shoulder glare and bag in hand, his hair in some new complicated braid, "was all that about?"

I shook my head, shrugged, my two most convincing motions. For once I looked forward to the ritual of the plaster, the cold sealing of my mouth. Malcolm was especially rude, especially when he saw the wasted drawing paper, but even that I welcomed, just deserts, proper punishing scorn for the weakling I was: about that Nakota was essentially right, but about everything else so wrong, immutably mistaken in profound and ominous ways that only I, it seemed, could predict: perhaps it takes a coward to see where the danger really is.

By the time they got back Malcolm's irritability had trebled, due to some malfunction of material and an unfortunate incident involving half a cup of coffee, and I awash in my own jittering dread making matters worse by twitching every time I heard a sound in the hall. The four of them walked in together, Nakota of course in the lead, the camcorder bag jaunty in her hand, expert sneer of one-upmanship as she breezed past Malcolm to light up one of his cigarettes.

"You look like the cat that just ate shit," he said, and she laughed.

"Looks like you're making a mess," glancing around at the spillage, crusts of plaster, the broken faces of the two discarded masks. "I'm making a movie. Want to watch?"

"What the fuck is she talking about?" looking not at me, naturally, but at Doris, and in the same tone, "And where the fuck were you? I could've used some help here."

Doris shrugged. "We needed to get the camcorder. Nakota's going to—"

"What're you, her maid?"

"It's better than being yours," Nakota said, and winked at Doris.

"The camcorder was at my house," said Doris, somewhat aggrieved at his tone but too excited to care much, puppy-bright around the eyes, gestures going a mile a minute. "And we had to stop for tapes, too, we got a three-pack 'cause we're going to—"

Abruptly Malcolm pushed away the kitchen chair he leaned on, shoved it so it skittered, a motion that (as we all knew from the movies) signified a man at the end of his patience. "I don't know what stupid games you're playing, what kind of shit," sparing a glare for Nakota, who ignored him as she continued to smoke his cigarette, "she talked you into, but I am working on an important piece here, I am
trying
to
create
something here that is a little more enduring than some fucking two-bit home movie and I—"

"Oh
roach,
" Nakota said, "shut up."

It was a gift with her, the ability to throw just the wrong switches at just the wrong times. Malcolm's face swept red, his overbite fairly bristled with rage as, Doris in the lead, the other three took prudent steps to put themselves at the periphery of the action, while Nakota stood smirking as usual, the center of the blossoming storm, tapping one slim-handled sculpting tool against her skinny thigh as Malcolm, braid swinging, launched into his eruption.

Still faintly plaster-dappled, I rose unnoticed in the general tension, slowly circling back around the kitchen table and quietly out the door, closing click soft behind me and I ran like a bastard, hurry hurry hurry on the stairs and into the storage room, shut the door with a slam and my back to it, saying to myself, Think, think, she'll be up here any minute, what can you do? What

and whack, whack, her insistent fist already at the door, oh God is there to be no time of grace at all? No. No. "Nakota," I said, positioning myself in as braced a stance as possible, why wasn't there a lock on this fucking door, "go away."

Even I could hear how lame I sounded; she didn't even bother to laugh, just used Dave to slam open the door, sending me into a balance-less spin across the floor, clumsy polka that left me sprawled on one knee as the four of them trooped in, Malcolm apparently too proud to join the fun. Nakota grinning, the camcorder poised in her arms like a favored pet, the others rubbernecking, awed no doubt by the sheer dusty normalcy of it all, all until you got to the hole in the floor of course, you're not from around here, are you?

"Go away," I said again, my hand begun a threatening throb, the Funhole behind me as ominously still, like the calm surface of a midnight lake just before the heralding ripples of the monster. "This is wrong, and worse than that, it's
stupid,
look how much trouble we had the last time we—"

and a thought like a sledgehammer: You should have stayed upstairs, asshole, she says it doesn't work without you why the
hell
did you tear ass to get in here oh you stupid fuck

and Nakota's snarl, "Get out of my fucking way!" as the record light went on, idiot glow of the LED, and she advanced on me like an army, her own small cadre of troops almost too excited now as she backed me to the hole itself, an almost inaudibly deep grumble begun that tremored the floor beneath me, oh Nakota am I going to have to hurt you to stop you? Again? I can't I

and without thinking I grabbed her, left hand a fist in her hair, clenching right hand, hole hand, over the maw of the camera, you want to take a picture of a hole well I got a hole for you take a picture of
this,
coating the lens with the drift and glitter of my slime, the juicy scum that incredibly began to bubble as it touched the surface of the lens, devoured the hood in swift corrosion, a mobile cancer and still my hand in her hair, grinding, twisting, it had to hurt and at that moment I didn't give a shit, it was her own fucking fault
her
fault not mine. Not mine. And still the creeping burn, destroying the body of the camcorder itself, eating away as far as the strap and the useless box dropping now, falling to the floor, a hollow sound as it struck and with one swift thoughtless motion I kicked it down the Funhole, and only then pushed Nakota down, and away.

"There," I said. Wet all over. Sweat. Maybe piss, too, for all I knew, and shivering in the chill aftermath of anger, Nakota rising furious before me, toxic genie from some unimaginable lamp, snake from a basket: "Oh you stupid motherfucking piece of
shit—"

And she hit me, very hard, I was expecting it and it didn't hurt, really, very much at all, although the force of it jerked my head back, silly drunken wobble on my aching neck, and the ooze of my hand, no longer napalm, down to a timid trickle. Arm drawn back to do it again, perhaps many times, and Doris, incredibly, catching hold of that arm, saying, "Don't. Don't, Nakota."

Looking, as she said it, at me, the same gaze from Dave and Ashlee, a look far worse than any tantrum of Nakota's could ever be: it was bubbling awe, it was nervousness; it was fear. I turned my head away, Nakota, ugly, saying "I'll just get another one, Nicholas," and Doris mumbling something, words that had the effect of an eyedropper on a greasefire, nothing but pops and sizzles and still beneath my feet that earthquake jiggle, like something coming from far, far away.

"Just get out of here, okay?" over my shoulder and I turned back enough to see them staring at me, see Doris and Dave taking Nakota's arms and walking her out of the room, Ashlee the last to go, wide eyes gleaming like roadkill's in the instant before the car. And a subterranean undulation as the door swung gently to, I lay beside the Funhole and felt that murmur in the flesh of the floor, felt the shadowless weight of Randy's twisted ladder lying close beside in an attitude of commiseration as inescapable as my thoughts. I always made it worse, in all my simple strategies, my convoluted acts, invariably I always made it worse.

Why was that?

Why do birds fly?

Why does metal conduct electricity?

Why does wet stinky smelly shit come splattering out of my hand?

Why, it's nature, isn't it; isn't it
just.

* * *

I didn't come out of the storage room for a day, almost two, lying guiltily slack, fallow if you will. On reemergence the hall was empty, cold with a damp chill that passed the skin to settle leechlike in the bones. Upstairs, gripping the banister like a ninety-year-old arthritic, creeping into the flat like a burglar, the door closed but unlocked, good thing I had nothing anyone wanted. No: not right: half-slumped at the kitchen table, open beer and chewing bread smeared with ancient salsa, Randy. Smiling a little when I entered, gesturing with the bread.

"Sorry, man, didn't mean to help myself, it's just I been waiting so long."

"Don't worry about it." One-handed palm of cold beer can, doubling my shivers going down but I drank, two swallows, four, half the can gone into the grind of my empty stomach and the pleasing small luxury of a solid belch. Looking around I saw full ashtrays, a rectangle of newspaper, Malcolm's tidied tools, the mask itself nowhere to be seen. "Where is everybody?" I said, false nonchalance, fingers as cold as the can they held.