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.”
6
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.”