She was still talking. “—if any changes have taken place, then we’ll have documentation.” Crushing out the cigarette. Swift swallow of mineral water, as flat and unappetizing as the smell of her body as she leaned across me to set down the glass. “Even you should see the sense in that.”
“You sound like them,” settling back to cradle my hand beside me, silent dirty drip of fluid onto the already-soiled sheets, what did I care. “They wanted to interview me today.”
“Interview you?” and she laughed, reaching for the blanket to wrap herself in, cold cocoon for the insect queen, the reader of buggy runes. What had she done with them, those twisted little bodies? And the mouse, whatever had become of it? “What’re they going to do, start a fan club?”
“Funhole Fan Club,” I said, made faintly nauseated by the change in odor from my hand, from the color of the sheets where the fluid lay discreetly pooled; I moved away, a bare small inch. Outside traffic was exceptionally loud. I lay listening to it as Nakota fell to her own brand of rest, to dreams gashed with smelly wonders, peopled with the strengths of her delusions, what were her new ones going to lead us to? Another camcorder my ass, though in morning’s reality there would most likely be very little I could do about it, there never was, was there? Never had one been so neck-deep in shit and so helpless to reach the flusher. If only I could believe that none of any of this was my business. Or my fault.
Doris had a camcorder.
Of course. And of course Nakota found that out the next day, Day Two, my happy trio over early with McDonald’s coffee and dry muffins, and immediately the pair of them perched knees to knees, chummily on the couch while Dave and Ashlee sat sketching on napkins with Malcolm’s expensive drawing pencils, pictures of what they thought might be in the Funhole. And giggling over it, God. Romper Room for demonics. I was all out of bandages so in dull desperation I sat trying to wind half a T-shirt around my hand after stuffing toilet paper in the hole itself, a process as uselessly messy as the hole itself, too, if you wanted to get philosophical about it, if you wanted to think at all.
“Let me help,” Ashlee said to me.
“Not a chance,” through my teeth as I strained to hear what Nakota was saying to Doris, what was giving her that bright-eyed grin.
“—back around noon,” Doris said. “He said he had some stuff to pick up, you know,” hands shaping a face in the air, “for the mask.”
“We could go there right now then,” Nakota standing with quick energetic grace, pocketing my keys since her car wasn’t running. “At least start on it today, before I have to go to work.”
“Start what?” although I knew, it was the fucking video, she just couldn’t wait to mix whatever brew she’d been scheming on last night, her documentation, a travelogue of the indescribable maybe but maybe just a bigger fucking mess for us all and in particular me, why had I ever left that storage room, why had I even bothered to come out? My clearheaded plan had been just another self-deception.
“Start what,” I said, and stood, still and shaking, to block her exit: an unheard-of defiance, so surprising that she laughed, as the others sat watchful, avid as birds, Doris arrested in the act of standing, human tableau of indecision.
“Get out of my way, Nicholas,” with no more than usual malice, but when I refused, a feral smile as she pushed at me, sharp fist in my shoulder, hard enough to show she meant business, and I pushed back, hard enough to say that I did too. She stared at me the way you stare at Fido when he growls at you over the table scraps, and then without preamble hit me, a brisk and painful punch. Ducking into the blow I reached for her, grabbed hair and shoulders and shoved her hard against the door, held her there and said so only she could hear, “Don’t do this, you hear me? Don’t do this.”
“You are so—” she began, then shook her head, shook off the notion of actually explaining to me my own stupidity, her gesture indicating the inherent waste of time in such an occupation. “You’re willing to go on the same way forever, aren’t you? Just going in there and taking whatever you get, hands out, gimme gimme gimme like a fucking two-bit beggar. That’s your whole style,” glancing around as if to indict me by my own squalid helplessness, so virulently displayed in the sorry way I lived. “That’s you. But it’s not me, and I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you of what an asshole you are, what a cowardly piece of shit not to take what’s being offered, what’s being practically thrown in your face. So if you really want to stop me,” blue-white incredible smile, daring me, daring me, “then I suggest you kick my ass. Otherwise, get the fuck out of my way.”
Who blinked? Who do you think, head down, stepping back, my hands dropping reluctant from her shoulders, trembling up and down my arms with anger unused, the dash of adrenaline useless in my blood. “Well come on,” impatiently to Doris, who leaped up, passed me without a look, maybe Nakota would be her new mentor now. They didn’t close the door so I did, not embarrassed but oh, ashamed, for my weakness, my capacity for defeat, my endless versatility in displaying both. When I got around to looking at them, Ashlee and Dave were pointedly not looking at me. One of the few things, perhaps, they were good for, but now I was in no mood.
“Go on,” I said, “why don’t you go with them?” and with no more invitation they stood, leaving Styrofoam cups, a crumpled bag, their silly scrawled drawings, and Malcolm, his voice as he passed Nakota and Doris in the hall, his miffed surprise as Dave and Ashlee hurried past with artificial smiles. “What the hell,” he said to me, over-shoulder glare and bag in hand, his hair in some new complicated braid, “was all that about?”
I shook my head, shrugged, my two most convincing motions. For once I looked forward to the ritual of the plaster, the cold sealing of my mouth. Malcolm was especially rude, especially when he saw the wasted drawing paper, but even that I welcomed, just deserts, proper punishing scorn for the weakling I was: about that Nakota was essentially right, but about everything else so wrong, immutably mistaken in profound and ominous ways that only I, it seemed, could predict: perhaps it takes a coward to see where the danger really is.
By the time they got back Malcolm’s irritability had trebled, due to some malfunction of material and an unfortunate incident involving half a cup of coffee, and I awash in my own jittering dread making matters worse by twitching every time I heard a sound in the hall. The four of them walked in together, Nakota of course in the lead, the camcorder bag jaunty in her hand, expert sneer of one-upmanship as she breezed past Malcolm to light up one of his cigarettes.
“You look like the cat that just ate shit,” he said, and she laughed.
“Looks like you’re making a mess,” glancing around at the spillage, crusts of plaster, the broken faces of the two discarded masks. “I’m making a movie. Want to watch?”
“What the fuck is she talking about?” looking not at me, naturally, but at Doris, and in the same tone, “And where the fuck were you? I could’ve used some help here.”
Doris shrugged. “We needed to get the camcorder. Nakota’s going to—”
“What’re you, her maid?”
“It’s better than being yours,” Nakota said, and winked at Doris.
“The camcorder was at my house,” said Doris, somewhat aggrieved at his tone but too excited to care much, puppy-bright around the eyes, gestures going a mile a minute. “And we had to stop for tapes, too, we got a three-pack ’cause we’re going to—”