The Cipher (31 page)

I sat back, silent, at my usual loss, no advice from me, the perpetual fuck-up and wasn't most of it my fault, anyway? Wasn't it? Self-pity is a potent luxury but I didn't have time, maybe I didn't have enough self left to feel sorry for. Maybe I never had.

I said, "I'm sorry about that," and I meant it. And the selfish part of me muttered, If only the positions were reversed, if only it was Nakota who would have nothing to do with all of this. Which was of course ludicrous, if she had wanted that she wouldn't have been Nakota. My love, insatiably drawn to all that was lowest, cruelest, most dreadfully inverted. Like me.

Randy was still talking.

"—outside,
right? And Malcolm, you think he'd go along with it just for the crowd control, right? But he won't. Like he's a fucking priest or something."

"Malcolm," I said, "tempts me."

"Yeah, I saw the tail end of that, what you did. Wish you'd've pulled him all the way in
_T
man." And then what I had known was coming: "I don't know how much longer I can put up with him. Or any of this. It's not, I just want to have some kind of—it's just too
weird,
Nicholas. I mean I thought I wanted things to be weird, but not like this." Half a laugh, so tired. "I mean, it's been like three days since I even went to work. I'm gonna get fired, if I'm not already."

"And Vanese," I said.

"Yeah. Vanese."

Flexing my palmless hand, head bent and contemplating the fresh jelly of my bush-league stigmata. My roving finger appeared to have reattached itself when I wasn't looking. Fingers do the darnedest things.

"Randy, maybe it's—"

"I know," cutting me off, "I know what you're gonna say. But you don't understand, you don't know what it's like out here. I mean, Shrike's pretty weird now, I don't even know if she's been paying the rent or what. Maybe the manager'll try to evict her. The neighbors are getting pretty fucking tense, maybe somebody'll call the cops. You don't want the cops, Nicholas, you don't know what they'll do to you. They'll, maybe they'll,
put
you somewhere, you know?"

"Somewhere like a hospital ward?"

"Maybe somewhere worse."

Like a body bag? If I had enough body left to bag, ho-ho and who gives a shit, you're probably talking to the only one left who does. Except Nakota. Who would cheerfully and in an instant climb over my struggling body to get to the Funhole, or if that was denied her, then vivisect me if they'd only let her make the first cut.

"Randy, who cares about all that shit. Just go."

7 care!"

Think Malcolm, I thought, think shitty. Better yet, think Nakota. "You can't do anything about anything anymore," in my coldest tone. "I'm in charge now."

"Oh nice try," I could almost see him shaking his head. "But I'm not that stupid."

"Then don't
be
stupid. Go home."

"How do I even know if it's you talking anymore? How do I know anything?"

And he cried, I could hear it in his voice, and something in me wriggled and cracked, bleeding like broken skin, tears leeched from me and falling to lie in minute and glossy circles on the floor by my face. "Randy," I said when I could talk, "go and get a mirror. A little mirror. Okay? Okay, Randy?"

No answer but I heard him walk away. In the silence, wondering if he would come back, the miserable wriggle of my billboard skin spelling things I refused to read, words or bullshit runes or whatever nasty jokes could scrawl and spin in glyphs I could not help but understand if I looked. If I looked.

So I didn't, sat instead eyes closed and waiting, and finally Randy's voice. Maybe it really was as long as it seemed.

"I got the mirror," he said.

"Okay. Lay it down, under the door—right, like that, a little more. Now," positioning myself, careful now, "look at me."

Silence, then, with hesitation: "'S too dark, man. I can't see anything. Turn the light on, if it still works."

It did.

Randy's wordless sound. And it hurt, oh it hurt to hear that sound and know what I really looked like, what I
was
like now, so far beyond any kind of fringe that even someone like Randy, neck-deep from nearly the beginning, could still flinch, could still turn away like a gawker who'd suddenly seen more than he'd bargained for: I mean I don't mind a good wreck but did you
see
that guy with half a head, I mean
shit

Did you see that guy who'd turned into a walking hole?

"Nicholas," shakily, a little farther back from the door now and I doubted he knew he'd done that, stepped away, it was a visceral move. "Are you okay?"

"No."

"Does it hurt?"

"Does what hurt?"

"That—
stuff.
All over you."

"No."

He was quiet. My skin prickled, itched as more fluid gurgled down my legs, I could feel its jaunty ooze. I waited, riding the silence between us, the pause before good-bye, thinking of so many things to say.

Finally, "Well," I said. "Tell Vanese I said hi."

"I will."

"Don't tell them you're taking off, okay?"

"No,
hell
no."

And no more farewell than that—what exactly did you expect, I asked myself, mocking my own letdown: a manly exchange of fluids, a glorious speech at death's door? "I will always remember you, brave Nicholas"?
Shit
Gone. Back to Vanese, and work, his art and his beer and watching TV at night and driving his tow truck too fast. Back to the real world, the one place I wanted, now and belatedly, most to go, the norm and the safe thing denied me and as I mourned in silent envy I was glad he had. In any good disaster there are always at least a few survivors, and now the both of them could tell that story, back and forth in all its gaudy bleakness, and be certain of at least one other's sure belief.

And me, alone now. With Nakota, her ruthless single-mindedriess, idiot Malcolm and their hair-trigger delusionist cadre. And the talking mask, one face for them and its secret one for me. And the skull on the doorknob and the bubbling fluid eating me more than alive, turning me into the world's ugliest ambulatory chrysalis, far less than human but still feeling like one.

And the Funhole, never forget it, wellspring of all situations and the pivoting center around which this dark circus revolved, drunken orbit of ferocity, fear and hunger, simple stupidity and desire.

But I'm so tired, I thought.

Time, going by, and sounds. In the hall. And I closed my eyes and thought I smelled meat, roasting. Burning.

And as if on cue, Malcolm's triumphant voice, so loud that I twitched, weak nervous startle: "We're takin' the door off now, Nick," excited, grinning no doubt that special dipshit Malcolm grin, staying prudently out of reach. And Nakota, cold in the background and directing somebody, a bunch of somebodies, the brains behind the motion which was no big surprise, crazy or not she was still the only one out there who had any brains at all.

Talking, mumbling, voices as confused and bumbling as their owners, Nakota's commands and Malcolm's dumb forever override, do this do this no don't do that. Get another board. Put that thing down. Everybody listen to me!

"Nakota," I said, from the depths of my exhaustion. "Leave it alone, okay?"

Malcolm, yelling back: "Shut up, asshole! We're comin' in!"

And I was
tired
of Malcolm, you know? That excuses nothing, I realize that, but I was just so tired of the endless yammer that was Malcolm, a voice with legs, and I put one arm, right arm, through the door and caught at something, sohieone, wriggling and squeaking and I turned it loose again, hunting, the way you feel around without looking into a bag or a drawer, you'll know when you have what you're after.

And I did.

And I
squeezed.

Screaming.

"Let him go, Nicholas!" Nakota's voice above the yelling, babble and confusion and something sweet between my fingers, "Nicholas! Let him
go
!" but I didn't. No. Scaling up more octaves than you'd think the human voice could handle. Jerking and bumping up against the door, less screaming now, just a kind of low-pitched gagging sound that went on and on, annoying as a running toilet in the middle of the night, gurgle and burble and finally it stopped.

Silence. My head hurt, and I felt awake, suddenly, and as suddenly ashamed, another stupid temper tantrum. And then Nakota, enraged: "Oh good work, dickhead, I think you just broke the asshole's neck."

Oh, God.

Deep fundamental nausea as I snatched back my hand, heard through the door the hurricane sibilance of her curses, the thump and stutter of her drag-away disposal, letting my own body droop in closed-eyes shock as behind me not a sound but a blossom as fragrant as a good solid belch.

And on the wall above the door, a confusing swivel of light and the mask turned inward now, purpose served perhaps and free now to follow another agenda: looking down, facing me with the face from the video, full-blown and absolute, all nothing, all mine.

Well, his neck wasn't broken. But he was plenty pissed off, and scared, which made him more pissed off, and it didn't help when Nakota laughed through the door to me, "Hey Nicholas, you know what? He shit his pants! His expensive leather pants," ^giggling her dry endless giggle, even I felt sorry for him. Though I snickered too, which didn't help and so on.

But shaken or not, pissed or not, he still had theories, he still had words; even death couldn't take words from Malcolm, I was convinced of that. Not that I had a second engagement in mind, oh no, I had promised myself I would never touch Malcolm again. Or anyone else if there was any way,
any
way, I could help it. The way I had felt, the terrible sick shame, was deterrent enough; I never wanted to feel that way again. Even though, as Nakota said later/even if I had killed him it was "just Malcolm."

Just Malcolm had, during an accelerated daylong nurse of his throttled windpipe, developed a new theory concerning me and my walk-on role in the video. "It's a portent," he told me through the door; as he spoke I had the impression that he stood on the balls of his feet, poised and fleetly nervous; maybe our brief choke festival was just what the doctor ordered; still I was out of the doctoring business for good. Let someone else improve his character.

"A portent," again, and portentously, just to make sure I got it. "You're fading, Nick, no pun intended."

"I really don't want to talk about this, Malcolm," I said, in my new, polite way, distractedly eyeing the monochromatic fireworks going off in my left knee as the mask sneered down at me like a mocking mirror. "I really don't have anything to say."

"I wish you would both shut the fuck up," said Nakota, not even brusque, "especially you, Malcolm. Nicholas, I'm only going to say this once." Silence from the gathering of idiots, ringing her like scum. "We all know it's me who should be in there. You even say it yourself, in the video. I'm a perfect candidate for a change. A becoming."

"This," I said, suddenly aware of my own anger, not hot but warm and chafing, an itch in my mind, "is like every stupid philosophy book I ever read in college, only worse. Next you'll be saying it's a big existential garbage can," and I turned my back on the door, on the mask. "Why don't you people go home?" I said. "And speaking of home, Nakota, when's the last time you paid the fucking rent?"

"The rent?" Honestly perplexed. "Who cares about the rent?"

"I do."

"If you care so much, why don't you come out of there and do something about it?"

Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin, and you're not as smart as you think you are, either. "You can sleep in the streets if you want, but won't that impede your access, a little? Cramp your style?"

She ignored that, ignored me, began to talk again, rapid-fire histrionics and an offhand direction to somebody else, not Malcolm, do this or get this, just another in her unlimited supply of demands and I just stopped listening, I turned my face away and shut her off in my head. I'd rather remember you the way you were, Nakota, back when I could still stand you.

Leaning back, my changing body so much weaker now, bumping gently into an empty Ritz cracker box, the filmy plastic skin of a package of cheese, had I eaten those things? When? Was I still eating? Maybe the Funhole was feeding me, like a raven in the desert, maybe I was eating myself. Consuming myself, to feed the change? That would make sense, wouldn't it.

So much sense, in fact, that the whole idea made me feel like puking, I didn't want to think about it anymore. Lying flatter, in the dirt and sticky dust, my ear nudged by something pointy and soft and I saw the bear pad, and I smiled.

Empty pages. Better that way. I had had some ideas, hadn't I, of writing more poems, sharp and deliberate prod to the reanimate corpse of my zombie talent, had I imagined a topical application of the bizarre might succeed where sheer bent-browed struggle had failed, who was I kidding? Not even me. So why deface the simplicity of a little bear pad with my bargain-basement angst, why try to describe the indescribable when I had completely failed to explicate even the known? Known, shit, even the
boring.