So of course I went to see Nakota.
She didn’t smile when I came in, artificial dark of Club 22, some weepy fake country tune on the jukebox. But she nodded, a grave almost formal gesture, and raised an empty beer glass with another nod.
“No thanks. Just a Coke,” and that was free, too.
“Randy come over yet?”
“First thing this morning.”
She smiled, little snarl of amusement. “He was hot to get that piece to you, Dead End, right?” I nodded. “He sure was impressed with you last night. What’d he do, ask you to lay hands on it?”
“No.” It was ludicrous, I had to smile, and her smile, her real one, joined mine, Nakota-Shrike, is there nothing you can do that I won’t forgive? Please, stop trying. “I don’t know about you,” I said. “I just do not know.”
“Know what?” Too much syrup in the Coke. Too rriuch, suddenly, in her smile.
“I don’t know why you bothered giving Randy that bullshit story. And all that about me levitating, I mean come on,” but I wasn’t smiling anymore and she wasn’t either, her whole face so careful that I felt the fear again, rich as vomit, the flicker behind her eyes all at once the birthing flicker of the figure, the video-thing; I pushed the Coke aside. “What is it with you?” I said, leaning not forward but back, away, gibbering in me that same feeling as when I must turn away from the screen. “Why does everybody have to be as crazy as you are?”
“I’m not the crazy one, Nicholas. Or would you rather use the word ‘possessed’?” I didn’t answer. Tilted head, and the smile she gave when she -was particularly delighted by something gone badly wrong: “You really did it, you know. Whether you believe it or not.”
“You,” ,my shaken whisper, “are out of your fucking mind. Leave me alone, all right? Just leave me alone,” sliding off the stool, pushing out into the ice and dazzle of the afternoon, skittering on the sidewalk but not falling, no, maybe I could just fly home. Stop it, are you going to go to her for sanity, she’s crazy as a shithouse rat and always has been. Stop it. I leaned against a newspaper box, a pain in my chest, the cold air too cold in my lungs. I was three blocks east before I remembered my car.
Barely working the key, the engine whispered several times before finally starting, maybe I could call my good buddy Randy for a tow. My right hand, my “bad” hand, curled in my lap like a dying pet, all at once an ache unbearable, like a burn, a fresh and agonizing burn and I ripped the bandage away, to do what, don’t know; staring, I sat there, watched as a structure of crystals as fine as beach sand grew of its own accord from the wound, minute ziggurat that filled up like a beaker with blood, my blood, and suddenly I began to scream, a soundless and infinite howl as I beat my hand, whipped it over and over against the steering wheel, again and again until the muscles of my arm tightened with exhaustion’s heat and I let my arm, my hand fall limp to the seat; it had absolutely no feeling at all, not least in the wound, and I was glad. Crying and glad and I drove home one-handed, went upstairs, wrapped the whole thing in a towel and sat to watch the news, drinking a crusty glass of ancient Tang scrapings. By the time the weather came on I had stopped crying.
Why, though, didn’t it hurt?
I had hit it hard enough to break bones, certainly I had tried my best. But there was no pain.
Look at it.
No.
Go on. Look at it.
No,
Conscience, arguing for or against? Curiosity is a horrible thing. I pulled off the towel all at once, one big scared conjurer’s whoosh, and there, ladies and gentlemen, is the rabbit in the hat, is a hand, perfectly normal and uninjured, with a hole in the palm the size of a quarter and black as its big-daddy namesake, for God’s sake say it out loud you’ve got a goddamn Funhole of your own growing right out of your body yes you do oh yes you do and that’s why
and in my panic I found myself walking, back and forth, holding my arm at a ridiculous stiff angle, keep that thing away from me and back and forth before the windows, I must have been going for quite a while because the news was long over and a sitcom was on. Laughter. A commercial for an airline. Pet food. At least put a bandage on the fucking thing, that way you won’t have to look at it. if I can’t see you, Mr. Hole, you’re not really there.
But at least it was constructive action, at least it wasn’t pacing like a psychotic rat, and at least I didn’t have to look at it anymore. It was hard to do, I was shaking pretty much all over, and when I heard knocking for a minute I thought, auditory hallucinations. Then: no, stupid, it’s just your new disciple. And that made me laugh, and got me to the door.
He had beer, good beer for a change, and he was alone. No grinning bitch in tow to mock my festering disintegration, to remind me by her crooked shine of everything I wanted most not to know, and that in itself was worth the price of admission. Plus now I didn’t have to sit alone thinking crazy thoughts.
“Sit down,” I said.
“Cold fuckin’ weather,” he said.
The weather. We talked about it, he told me what a bitch of a day he’d had, every car battery in town must have gone dead overnight, one call after another. He wasn’t Aristotle but he was a live human being and he could tell a decent story and pretty soon we had the stereo on and he was telling me about his art.
“Seems weird, you know, I always hated art class in school, bunch of shit. But I love working on my sculpture. I’ve shown ’em, some of them, at the Incubus. You been there, right?”
Killer clowns, and a pocketful of bugs, those were the days. “Couple times.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not much of a place but it’s a start, right? It’s not like I’m actually makin’ any money,” and he smiled, a surprisingly shy smile. Drank more beer. “I wouldn’t be driving a tow truck, you know, if I was.”
“Well, I don’t work at Video Hut for the intellectual stimulation either.”
Dead End was one of a series, he told me, some of the pieces incorporating more than metal— “One’s got a skull,” Dead Set and a hairless headful of curlers, of course—and Dead Reckoning, that was a metal eyeball attached to a telescope; I didn’t have the heart, or the balls, to bring up the fact that dead reckoning meant navigation precisely without the use of a telescope or any other device. Call it artistic license.
“Dead Dipping, that’s got an acid beaker, it’s a kind of process, right, and this new one, Dead End, it’s like a ladder, it’s like all the way to the bottom—”
“I noticed that.” My voice was pleasantly slurred from Randy’s good beer. I liked Randy and his good beer too, I liked the way they both distracted me from things I would rather not have.to think about. I liked the way I was getting empty-stomach gutfuck drunk on Randy’s good beer, as far as I was concerned he could talk about his art all night long if he had a mind to and even if he didn’t I did.
All the sitcoms were gone and so was the news and so was everything else, some kind of cut-up movie buzzing on the TV and Randy’s beer was also gone and he was standing up, in fact two of him were standing, saying something about going out to get more. And I was agreeing that this was a fine idea, and there we were, on the stairway.