Oh right. Even for them this was going too far, what next, a documentary? “The only feelings I have right now,” I said, slamming out of the b&throom, my stiff jaw still outlined in a sticky ribbon of mingled Vaseline and plaster residue, “you don’t want to know about. And what the hell do you mean, interview me? Interview me for what? Your personal archives? Your diaries? What?” Nobody answered. I could feel in my chest a pleasant bubble of rage, freely mingled with self-pity and an overriding regret that Nakota was not home to chew them the new assholes they deserved, side by side with the drier knowledge that she would far more likely egg them on.
“Either you weren’t paying attention, the other day,” I said, “or you’re stupid, and I would hate to think anybody could be that stupid. Even friends of yours,” to Malcolm, who froze in the act of lighting another cigarette to give me a look less piqued than surprised, as if one of the drying floor-bound blobs of plaster had spitefully bitten his toe, and he their benign creator; fathom for yourself the sheer ingratitude.
’This is not a game,” I said. My hand on the refrigerator door, so angry I could barely remember what the hell I was doing there. When in doubt, get a beer. It can’t help, but what can? “This is not some fucking art-school field trip, this is the weirdest motherfucking thing you will ever see and if you tell so much as one single person about it, if you even tell them where this building is,” and, voice risen, I had absolutely no idea how to follow that one up, I had had no prior experience in making threats that were meant to be taken seriously, so I slammed the refrigerator door as hard as I could, sending a
cracked and empty juice jar and a flutter of outdated coupons to the dust-gummed floor below.
Silence. “Don’t make me tell you again,” I said, and marched back to the bathroom before my traitor face could display the lunatic bray of laughter fighting to blow free. As I closed the door and jammed both faucets to on, a pure continuation of silence, I thought: So of course the first thing they do is run downstairs, right? Which made me want to laugh even harder.
But they were still there when I reappeared, talking quietly among themselves, only Malcolm aloof as he sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to scrape the plaster dust from under his nails; he had nails like a goat’s. No one looked at me. In the face of such excessive casualness I became, true to form, more nervous, tripped on my way to the stereo, almost mashing Malcolm’s black-booted foot.
“Watch it,” and I shrugged, turning on something, loud. My beer was almost gone. Fancy that. To say something I asked the Incubus woman about music, who did she like to listen to. The answer was, as I expected, neatly suffocated by a crash course in modern music theory, which is to say heavy on the bullshit, but I did * find out her name. Doris. She was Doris, and the other one was Ashlee, and the guy was Dave.
None of them drank beer, which figured, but they were at least willing to sit and watch me do
it. As my slump grew more pronounced Doris’s eyes brightened, the gestures of her chapped hands became more animated—she was one of those people who love to be told they can’t talk without their hands—and Ashlee laughed and Dave was even moved to crack a joke, something about the superrealists who froze to death when they went to the drive-in to see closed for winter. Imagine! Levity. Malcolm’s silent sulk blossomed at last into open disgust as the hours passed and no one asked his opinion, studied the mask, or even commented on the new direction it was taking, a sharp spiral downward if anyone was interested in my opinion which they doubtless were not. Unless of course I wanted to talk about the Funhole.
Which I didn’t. Nor would I allow them to, giving them the brick wall stare when they tried (and they did try, especially Doris, she was a regular Nakota when it came to taking no for an answer). I caught them peeking, swift and blind and sneaky, at my bandaged hand, and wondered if they guessed what painful shiny rot lay beneath, wondered if they caught, as I did, its mushy scent on the smoke-dry air, and if they did what images it planted, what dark romantic horseshit they conjured from parched imagination’s empty soil. Because no matter what they thought they knew, I knew they had never seen anything like it. And never would, if I could at all prevent it.
From floor to chair, to bathroom, to refrigerator, letting the door bang with a cold moue of distaste: finally Malcolm’s aggravation overcame him. “I’m taking off,” he said, and with a stare long enough only to show his consuming displeasure with us all took his premature leave, pointedly not slamming the door. His cigarettes lay forgotten on the floor where he had first been sitting, and it took me just a moment to toss them gleefully overhand into the trash.
“I hope they were expensive,” I said, stopping on my way back to get another beer, reflecting as I did how truly bad my hand smelled tonight, was it getting worse or was I growing more sensitive. Ashlee said something to Doris, who shook her head, brisk positive motion, shimmy of ragged hair.
“How come,” sitting back down, my unsteady gaze rolling from one to another, “you didn’t go with him?”
Dave shrugged.
Ashlee shrugged too and looked away, and Doris, the eternal spokesperson, for once had little to say. It was about then when my drunken boredom overtook me, even being persecuted by the Funhole in one of its less indulgent modes was more entertaining than this. I flopped to my feet and told them it was time to go. At first they didn’t believe me, but I was insistent.
“If you hurry,” I said, “you can still catch up with Malcolm,” oh they were a fickle bunch of fucks, I thought, showing them the door, just drunk enough to find it funny. Which Nakota, when she came home, emphatically did not.
“Oh great,” fast and vicious stripdown, tearing at her uniform where it stalled at wrists and neckline, whipping the empty clothes at me. A button struck me softly in the eye. “That’s just what .we need: a fucking bunch of yahoo dingbats coming to sit at your feet. Are you that desperate for company? Isn’t Malcolm enough for you?”
“Get off my ass,” I said, but mildly, still anesthetized and anxious to stay that way. The stink of my hand had metamorphosed into a warm aching smell inexplicably like dirt, soil, the ground outside, an unexpectedly homespun odor that was adding to my idiot sense of well-being, perhaps even a contributing factor in my small but proud erection, which I waggled now at Nakota in an attempt to turn her attention.
“Put that stupid thing away,” she said, lighting a cigarette, mean and naked on the edge of the bed. Why was it that no matter how cold it became in the flat, she never shivered, never showed any visible sign of discomfort? “The thing to do,” dismissing for the moment both my words and her anger, “is get the camcorder again, and make another video so—”
“I am not making another video,” I said, alarmed. “I’d like to trash the one we have.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said, eyes bright with warning, two meanings for the price of one. “If you weren’t so chickenshit,” blowing smoke, “and drunk, you would realize that—”
“Drunk’s got nothing to do with it,” I said, pushing up on my elbows, soft wince as my sick hand brushed the bed. “You don’t—”
“—another one, so we can compare them,” louder than she needed to, angry at my uncharacteristic interruptions, I was getting out of my place again, clown prince of the Funhole and forget that I had my own agenda, forget that I was, according even to her own theory, in some bad way an engine to keep the drive. I was supposed to be bait, and catalyst and straight man, to dispose if necessary of worshipful stray lunatics, and oh yeah, empty the ashtrays, too.