Skin, page 3
"Yeah, they want somebody here at night," turning left past a glassed-in foreman's booth, no admittance on the door. Jumble of clean-up tools in a corner, fat mops and raveling cloth pushbrooms like the wigs on old-fashioned clowns. "They think if we're here no one will break in and rip them off. Besides they don't use all the space anyway." The radio louder, more space between the cardboard drums, waist-high pyramids of sacks and a few of them ripped to spread fine bluish grit like beach sand across the floor. Scent in the air like warm bleach. "What kind of chemicals are they?"
"Soap. Industrial detergents and cleansers, stuff like that-I checked. Believe me, I checked. They have another building, it's a lot bigger but the stuff they keep there can give you cancer just looking at it." One more turn and now the music was very loud, the space empty; two women in sleeveless T-shirts and spandex shorts sharing water from a bicycle bottle, a bare-chested man in a blue bandanna perched on a hi-lo. "Hey, baby," the man said, sliding upright from his seat to come nodding to Bibi; on his chest a black tattoo as stylized as an Aztec glyph; one of the women was tattooed as well, fat black bull's-eye circles on her left biceps. The man came to Bibi, kissed her cheek. "I thought this was a closed rehearsal."
"This is Tess Bajac," Bibi said, an unsmiling gravity that stilled them: may I present the queen; it startled Tess. "Tess, this is Sandrine, and Raelynne, and Paul. They're the only decent dancers in the troupe."
"Troupe, shit," said the shorter woman: Raelynne. Sandy hair, pure frizz in a ponytail; her accent was all Tennessee. Both ears lined with little rings, slim and shiny as needles in the garish overhead light; the other woman had one ear multiply pierced. " 'S more like a dance club for people who can't dance."
"It's a mutual masturbation society," Paul now. "For jerkoffs." Rubbing Bibi's neck, the hard muscles of her shoulders, his stare as much as his touch said Hands off. Bibi did not seem to fully notice he was there, turned to Sandrine-dyed red hair chopped chin-length, ragged T-shirt reading genital combat in scissored sans serif-saying, "Flip that," and to Tess, "You watch, okay?"
"You can sit over there if you want," Raelynne nodding helpfully toward the hi-lo. "It's not really clean, but at least the seat's padded."
The plastic beneath her still warm from Paul, Tess settled to watch their formation, Raelynne's swagger, Paul's humorless grace; he was very beautiful, Paul, maybe he was Bibi's lover. Sandrine changing the tape and now the music began, a spare rhythm, simple drum beat slow but somehow unsettling, a moment's close listening to discern why: deliberately uneven, it ran 3/4 then skipped, a stuttering but no pattern even in that. Bibi in front, the others scattered triangular around her, all four heads down, arms hanging bonelessly loose. Tess saw a muscle moving in Bibi's thigh, was she consciously keeping time and how could she, there was no time to keep. And a keening, for a startled moment she thought it was coming from the tape but no, it was them, all three of the women in the same painful note, only Paul silent and then it was Bibi moving forward, still keening, still bent and now crouching, half her body frozen like a stroke patient, like a corpse, the other women swaying silent on their feet, arms like wind-cracked branches and Paul crablike, mouth open in Kabuki grimace as he crept sideways to Bibi, still in her terrible stasis, still keening like the warning of disaster unavoidable and then as Paul's outstretched arm reached the barest periphery of her skin, the flat landscape of her belly, she struck him, not in pantomime, not with an actor's false violence but truly hit him hard, Tess wincing instinctively at the dull meaty sound. Struck him on his tattoo and again, still that keening but louder, air-raid whine joined now by the other women mimicking the circular sound of the drums, off kilter, off balance, almost pain in the ears and it grew louder, louder, Bibi striking again and again, full punches, uh, uh, little whuffing grunts of effort, she was putting everything into it, uh uh uh and all the rhythms increased at once, the keening grown to screams and the sound of Paul being beaten and the hideous boneless sway of the women's arms, uh uh uh and Paul's body jerking, now, like electroshock, the hooked-fish leap of a cardiac jumpstart and Bibi's face contorted, spit in the corners of her mouth and uh uh uh and from Paul a horrifying sound, a cry as primal as that of a murdered baby, it took Tess by terrible surprise and she found herself half on her feet, one hand pushing instinctive on the hi-lo's greasy skin to launch herself to the rescue and the uh uh uh become the sound of the drums and the wave of the women's arms like the undersea sway of drowning grasses and Paul's cry, cry, Bibi's relentless battering arm and Paul fell to his knees and then onto his face, Bibi striking now at his head, his back, the two women beside her, the movement of their arms mingling with hers, fearful grace and ferocity and the cry again from Paul, but much muted, as if the infant was now dying, dying under the savagery of Bibi's beating and she struck a tremendous blow to the back of his neck, as if she would decapitate him by sheer force; his body bucked once and then the cry tiny as a tear, informed with a nauseating gelatinous undercurrent as if the infant had finally strangled on its own blood. The keening dwindled to a hum, a whistle, stopped entirely. The women's arms stopped moving, lay like the empty skins of snakes across Bibi's torso, her shoulders and breasts moving strongly, hungry for air. The drums leapt into a dreadful sprightly beat, almost a march beat, and then abruptly stopped.
Silence. Bibi's fierce breathing.
And then everyone relaxed, Paul pushing up, seemingly unhurt but groaning, a little, Sandrine bending to help him stand upright. Bibi took one last big breath, let it out, and then turned expectantly to Ifess.
"Well?"
Raelynne in pirouette-"I can tell it's good, our director would've hated it"-and to Paul Tess said, "How in God's name did you make that sound?" to the brief endlessness of his silence, deliberately turning his back and Bibi's narrowing stare: "Oh, Paul can do all kinds of stuff, he used to be an actor."
Paul's body tightening as if being beaten again, this time with weapons more shameful and Bibi, loud cruel cheer, "Yeah, Paul used to do dinner theater, Kiss Me Kate revivals. The Music Man. Didn't you, Paul?" and then swiveling in dismissal, back to the others who stood passing the water bottle: their fast dancer's argot meant nothing to Tess who instead was watching Paul, very busy now by the tape player; rewind, fastforward, rewind, useless busywork so he would not have to turn around.
Bibi clapping, "Okay, okay, listen you guys, once more," and, incredibly, again: the same keening, beating, the same hideous infant-cry but this time Tess held herself on the outskirts of drama, watched each, component and individual: Raelynne's back muscles taut as pulleys, Sandrine's thin lips twisted crooked in a snarl unconscious, the deliberate closed-eyed concentration of the slack and beaten Paul. And Bibi, more dervish than ever, eyes so wide and white all around, the enormous energy of each action, the perfect structural economy, her moving body precise and precisely there in each motion as the picture lies entire in each splinter of a sundered hologram. At this ending Tess applauded instantly and hard, Bibi's little chorine highkick and bouncing to a stop before her. "You want to go get a drink with us?"
"Are you-is it over?"
"For tonight, yeah." Wiping her sweaty face with the hem of her T-shirt, hair stuck straight up in corona above her wet forehead as if even at rest she continued to move. "Hey," louder, "you guys coming?"
"Bar H?" and at Bibi's nod Raelynne nodded back, yeah, she was coming. "Gotta go easy though," sitting to pull on her shoes, unraveling hightops that had once been red. "I have to work tomorrow."
Sandrine off to meet her boyfriend and Paul said nothing, gathering up tapes and tape player, pulling on a black mesh muscle shirt that enhanced rather than hid his tattoo. All at once fast toward the exit, Raelynne calling out to him but Bibi raised a warding hand, shook her head.
"Leave him," she said. "If he wants to be an asshole let him go. He'll probably show up there later anyway," and they were walking past bags and the dry scatter of soap, crashbar bang and outside the day's heat gone at last into night's fetid humidity, street moist and Bibi had to open the car door for her, battered blue subcompact with the passenger side bashed in. Tess watched her drive, greased bearing roll of her ankles, the way she toed the brake. Looking up to the slam of physics, forward and back abrupt against the seat and Bibi saying, "Here we are," bar hernandez in ice blue, graffitied brick and the whole building smaller than the cleared area in which they had danced: twenty tables, dry smoke and scuffed linoleum a bare square yard for jukebox dancing. Raelynne instantly feeding change and Bibi at the bar, asking in pantomime What do you want?
"Any beer," and finding miraculous a table, man and woman bickering their way to the door, spilled drink and one soggy lime wedge speared on a tiny red plastic pirate's sword. Bibi back, one beer, one shot of sour mash, one clear lime-wedged glass: Tess guessing vodka, Bibi shaking her head.
"Tonic water," and Raelynne's solemn drawl, "That's a fact. She doesn't need no mood-altering substances 'cause she is one."
"Fuck that altered-mood shit. I have a good enough time on my own," and nodding toward the door, "See? Didn't I tell you?": a dispirited Paul, yelling his order as one of Raelynne's selections came on and she out of her seat at once, dancing alone on the dirty linoleum. Bibi took a drink, Paul forgotten, and said, "Well? What did you think of us?"
"I liked it." The beer strangely sweet in her mouth. "I don't really know enough about dance to-what?" to Bibi's vigorous headshake, bright eyes rolling, no no no.
"Don't give me that. You have eyes. Tell me what you saw."
"I- all right. All right," and what had she seen? Not even grace, first, but action, motion, the pure violence of a body through space subsuming the lesser, more showy violence of the beating, the aural violence of the keening and the shrieks and the tempoless drum, the whole not even testament but document, one moment enacted with rigor and pain. And Bibi's judicial nod, so.
"Have you ever heard," big pale eyes bright, bubbles in her drink in tiny upward formation, minuscule spheres like drops of blown glass, "of kinetic theory? Kinetic theory states that the particles of all matter are in constant motion. All matter. Did you know that the origin of the word kinetic is kinetikos, Greek for ‘putting in motion'? Did you know that when I was ten years old I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but the skin of my toes wouldn't harden, it was constantly bleeding, and my father said no more lessons? And I heard him, and I sat down on the back steps with a kitchen knife and cut off the tip of my right big toe and I carried it back inside and threw it on his dinner plate, right when he was eating and I said if he cut off my lessons I would cut off my toes. One by one."
For a moment Tess was silent, knuckles light against her lips as if to silence spoken thought, Bibi half-smiling as though at a pleasant memory. "Well?" and irrepressible, strange dry smile welling up, "then what happened?"
"Nothing. He kept on paying for the lessons. I didn't really have an aptitude for ballet, though; I quit the next year. -What's so funny?"
"Nothing," shaking her head; picturing Bibi, bloody blackmail knife in one hand, knob of flesh in the other. Quitting ballet the next year. "Then what?"
Then modern dance, "whatever that is," two years of it before a move to Seattle with friends of the family-"it was beautiful there, but I got really tired of the rain"-and a long time spent in the South, New Orleans, Nashville, slowly moving upward like mercury in the heat. Dancing, always, or performing in some way: "I used to do street theater, like acting out people's poems at art fairs, or just improve, playing off what people were doing or saying." Guerrilla theater for a while, but that proved too harsh for too little return: "People used to stone us, can you believe it? And plus most of the stuff we did was shitty, just rants, how can you perform a rant?" North again, living with a loose shifting partnership of friends and sometimes-lovers, a particle in random motion and now, for the past two years, here. In a loft for a while with Crane, who had swiftly become very boring-"Do you know what it's like to live with someone who uses himself as his only frame of reference? All the time? Plus he can't cook"-and dancing now with this larger troupe for rent and gas money while time-off rehearsing with Paul and Sandrine and Raelynne.
Who plopped down, legs stretched sweaty and "Whoo! You'd think I'd get enough dancing, wouldn't you, with the Marquis of Queensberry here? Shit, I got to get another drink," pushing as if to rise and Bibi motioning her back, "Same again?" and Raelynne nodded; Bibi out of earshot and Raelynne turning at once to Tess: "You smoke?"
"No," and Raelynne sighing, "Shit. I love to smoke, but Bibi throws a fit when I do, says it cuts my wind. Which it does. Smart bitch," with obvious affection, sipping a little of Bibi's tonic water. "She's really something, isn't she? Have you known her for long?"
"We met yesterday."
Raelynne's pleased nod, a notion confirmed. "I thought she was showin' off a little tonight. Must be for you," and waving a finger, no no to Tess's protests, she doesn't chew that much ass usually, "especially not on a night this hot. Shit, I'm from Tennessee and even I can't stand it," and
Bibi back again, Jack Daniel's and water and another beer for Tess who was beginning to feel the first and Bibi telling Raelynne about Tess's sculpture, saying they ought to have a show around it and a thought in Tess's head, inarticulate, trying to swim for it through the twisty maze of beer and heat and no dinner, saying something half-aloud and Bibi's voice, "-incredible textures. You ought to go down to the Isis, see her piece there. Actually you ought to go to her place, she lives in a rathole, too," showing those little teeth, "all this sculpture crammed into a tiny little space like half your place, Rae."
"She can have my place," drinking down her drink. "I'm movin' next week, I can't stand those dogs anymore, yap yap yap all the time."
The idea in motion, eluding her still: something about Bibi, the image of her violence, swath of metal like the endless edge of a knife. Posturing steel, the notion of her last piece in secret dance: something there. What? With it under her hands she could tell, or grow at least closer to the knowing.
"Listen, excuse me," pushing away from the table, "I have to get back. No, no," as Bibi rose, "you stay, I'll just grab the bus or something."
"Buses've already quit running." Keys out, moving through the puzzle of tables, past the bar and Tess watched Paul's head turn, tracking, staring at Bibi with a look so bare she felt shamed in the seeing; Bibi did not see, was already pushing outside. A rain as fine as pure humidity, distilled on cars and skin and the sullen lights so dim the insects would not dance in their weak lumination. Dancing insects, Bibi dancing. The sculpture in motion. What?
Speaking only in directions, eyes inward in the timed swipe of the wipers and they reached her place more quickly than she knew; still thinking hard when Bibi hit the brake, swerved to the curb beside a rusted black Jeep with peeling oil decals and the motor running. Stinky gray smoke, the store's double door pushed open and two teenagers on the threshold kissing in the drift of the rain. Bibi's strong hand forcing the broken door.
Tess through the window, half-apology and Bibi shaking her head, forget it. "Just let me see it when it's done," and smiling. And gone. Up the stairs double time, banging the door behind her and she worked till morning, till noon, burning, burning, Grace downstairs screaming up about the smoke, you can smell it in the cooler for fuck's sake Tess! Big new burn on her right arm, close to the old scars, hair clubbed back in a filthy knot and the heat monstrous under the mask, breathing her own sweat like some rare vapor. The new piece disassembled before her, plastic throat slashed vertical to her surgeon's fire, inserting in the running melt the corkscrewed filigree of metal strips as falsely bright as chrome. She left the throat hinged open, worked next on the Lexan eyes to ladder them blind with the broken brown glass of an empty beer quart stolen weeks before from downstairs. Now the arms. Steel sharp against the scarred palms of her gloves, the fleshy reek of burned plastic beneath pale gray smoke like the breath of ghosts, the rod in her hand burning, burning, white at the core like the beating heart of a star. The arms twisting under her assault, running, running metal, one drop on her boot burning into the leather, round black instant scar. So hot. Light-headed, sick-hungry; keep going. Keep going.
When she was done the piece stood spraddled, rough hard bubbles of spatter from her hurried weld, flayed throat and sightless eyes, rusty steel arms rich with a menace not before possessed, not only suggestion but the active threat of motion, not only motion but violence black and pure and ultimately irresistible in its surety. Pulling off her gloves one finger at a time, slumped hard against the worktable and too tired to shower or even think of eating, too tired finally to do anything but sleep, stretched out on the couchbed, burns and boots unlaced and dry eyes closed at once to small and instant dream as outside an afternoon storm formed and broke, heavy rain on chicken wire puddling tiny on the floor amidst the other shines and slicks, the smell of wet wood and captured mist suspended ephemeral in the empty air.
Sandrine had a pierced nipple and eight holes in her right ear and was more than happy to show them all to Tess. Cross-legged on the couchbed beside her, Bibi guiding Raelynne quiet among the pieces, Sandrine smelled like cigarette smoke, like hair mousse and damp perfume. The three of them had appeared, black cotton and beer and heavy cream pastries making grease spots on the bag, Raelynne hollering up the stairs with a voice bred to summon the Valkyries: "Hey Tess! You home?"
***
Tess awake less than an hour, pop-pop-pop outside her window, something sharp as firecrackers or gunshots, the rimshot of a car. Shaking in the shower, hands unsteady on the soap; too long this time without eating. Hurried downstairs and out to avoid Grace, found the first kiosk still open to eat hugely, big sloppy fried-pepper sandwich and two bottles of soda, hurrying back and Grace's big-haired daughter like statuary in the wait: "My mother says," long red claw fingernails around the helpless shaft of a broom, "that you're a fucking fire hazard. Hear me? You're gonna burn the whole store down, we're gonna wake up and the whole fucking building'll-" Closing the door, taste of peppers under her tongue, in her nose like some folk medicine.
