Abruptly Malcolm pushed away the kitchen chair he leaned on, shoved it so it skittered, a motion that (as we all knew from the movies) signified a man at the end of his patience. “I don’t know what stupid games you’re playing, what kind of shit,” sparing a glare for Nakota, who ignored him as she continued to smoke his cigarette, “she talked you into, but I am working on an important piece here, I am trying to create something here that is a little more enduring than some fucking two-bit home movie and I—”
“Oh roach,” Nakota said, “shut up.”
It was a gift with her, the ability to throw just the wrong switches at just the wrong times. Malcolm’s face swept red, his overbite fairly bristled with rage as, Doris in the lead, the other three took prudent steps to put themselves at the periphery of the action, while Nakota stood smirking as usual, the center of the blossoming storm, tapping one slim-handled sculpting tool against her skinny thigh as Malcolm, braid swinging, launched into his eruption.
Still faintly plaster-dappled, I rose unnoticed in the general tension, slowly circling back around the kitchen table and quietly out the door, closing click soft behind me and I ran like a bastard, hurry hurry hurry on the stairs and into the storage room, shut the door with a slam and my back to it, saying to myself, Think, think, she’ll be up here any minute, what can you do? What
and whack, whack, her insistent fist already at the door, oh God is there to be no time of grace at all? No. No. “Nakota,” I said, positioning myself in as braced a stance as possible, why wasn’t there a lock on this fucking door, “go away.”
Even I could hear how lame I sounded; she didn’t even bother to laugh, just used Dave to slam open the door, sending me into a balance-less spin across the floor, clumsy polka that left me sprawled on one knee as the four of them trooped in, Malcolm apparently too proud to join the fun. Nakota grinning, the camcorder poised in her arms like a favored pet, the others rubbernecking, awed no doubt by the sheer dusty normalcy of it all, all until you got to the hole in the floor of course, you’re not from around here, are you?
“Go away,” I said again, my hand begun a threatening throb, the Funhole behind me as ominously still, like the calm surface of a midnight lake just before the heralding ripples of the monster. “This is wrong, and worse than that, it’s stupid, look how much trouble we had the last time we—”
and a thought like a sledgehammer: You should have stayed upstairs, asshole, she says it doesn’t work without you why the hell did you tear ass to get in here oh you stupid fuck
and Nakota’s snarl, “Get out of my fucking way!” as the record light went on, idiot glow of the LED, and she advanced on me like an army, her own small cadre of troops almost too excited now as she backed me to the hole itself, an almost inaudibly deep grumble begun that tremored the floor beneath me, oh Nakota am I going to have to hurt you to stop you? Again? I can’t I
and without thinking I grabbed her, left hand a fist in her hair, clenching right hand, hole hand, over the maw of the camera, you want to take a picture of a hole well I got a hole for you take a picture of this, coating the lens with the drift and glitter of my slime, the juicy scum that incredibly began to bubble as it touched the surface of the lens, devoured the hood in swift corrosion, a mobile cancer and still my hand in her hair, grinding, twisting, it had to hurt and at that moment I didn’t give a shit, it was her own fucking fault her fault not mine. Not mine. And still the creeping burn, destroying the body of the camcorder itself, eating away as far as the strap and the useless box dropping now, falling to the floor, a hollow sound as it struck and with one swift thoughtless motion I kicked it down the Funhole, and only then pushed Nakota down, and away.
“There,” I said. Wet all over. Sweat. Maybe piss, too, for all I knew, and shivering in the chill aftermath of anger, Nakota rising furious before me, toxic genie from some unimaginable lamp, snake from a basket: “Oh you stupid motherfucking piece of shit—”
And she hit me, very hard, I was expecting it and it didn’t hurt, really, very much at all, although the force of it jerked my head back, silly drunken wobble on my aching neck, and the ooze of my hand, no longer napalm, down to a timid trickle. Arm drawn back to do it again, perhaps many times, and Doris, incredibly, catching hold of that arm, saying, “Don’t. Don’t, Nakota.”
Looking, as she said it, at me, the same gaze from Dave and Ashlee, a look far worse than any tantrum of Nakota’s could ever be: it was bubbling awe, it was nervousness; it was fear. I turned my head away, Nakota, ugly, saying “I’ll just get another one, Nicholas,” and Doris mumbling something, words that had the effect of an eyedropper on a greasefire, nothing but pops and sizzles and still beneath my feet that earthquake jiggle, like something coming from far, far away.
“Just get out of here, okay?” over my shoulder and I turned back enough to see them staring at me, see Doris and Dave taking Nakota’s arms and walking her out of the room, Ashlee the last to go, wide eyes gleaming like roadkill’s in the instant before the car. And a subterranean undulation as the door swung gently to, I lay beside the Funhole and felt that murmur in the flesh of the floor, felt the shadowless weight of Randy’s twisted ladder lying close beside in an attitude of commiseration as inescapable as my thoughts. I always made it worse, in all my simple strategies, my convoluted acts, invariably I always made it worse.
Why was that?
Why do birds fly?
Why does metal conduct electricity?
Why does wet stinky smelly shit come splattering out of my hand?
Why, it’s nature, isn’t it; isn’t it just.
I didn’t come out of the storage room for a day, almost two, lying guiltily slack, fallow if you will. On reemergence the hall was empty, cold with a damp chill that passed the skin to settle leechlike in the bones. Upstairs, gripping the banister like a ninety-year-old arthritic, creeping into the flat like a burglar, the door closed but unlocked, good thing I had nothing anyone wanted. No: not right: half-slumped at the kitchen table, open beer and chewing bread smeared with ancient salsa, Randy. Smiling a little when I entered, gesturing with the bread.
“Sorry, man, didn’t mean to help myself, it’s just I been waiting so long.”
“Don’t worry about it.” One-handed palm of cold beer can, doubling my shivers going down but I drank, two swallows, four, half the can gone into the grind of my empty stomach and the pleasing small luxury of a solid belch. Looking around I saw full ashtrays, a rectangle of newspaper, Malcolm’s tidied tools, the mask itself nowhere to be seen. “Where is everybody?” I said, false nonchalance, fingers as cold as the can they held.
“Well. That takes some telling,” but he smiled as he said it and some of the stick went out of my spine. “I wasn’t here for part one, but I guess Shrike blew some kind of gasket when you wouldn’t let her make her video—”
“It’s Doris who should be pissed,” I said. Got another beer. “It was her camcorder.”
“Yeah. Anyway Shrike was busy throwing her fit when I got here and Doris says, Doris’s the one who kind of looks like Malcolm, right? Right. So Doris says, Cool off, Nicholas is really onto something important here and it won’t do any good to piss him off, he’s the only one who knows, he has the answers blah blah blah, all this shit like you’re some kind of guru, you know?”
That roadkill look; “I know.”