See her now, hair pulled into some weird new topknot, big fat coat that she no doubt had appropriated from one of her followers, knees bent and dirty shoes up on the edge of the couch. See the hinty smile that whispers of plot, see the glaze of her eyeballs as she watches a scene she’s seen a zillion times and more but she doesn’t care because it’s not really what she’s seeing, oh no, there’s quite a different movie playing in the cold zone between object and inner vision. And so absorbed myself I didn’t notice the new mimicking smirk till it was right in my face, build like a decadent soccer player and blue eyes lined thick like Cleopatra, a smell from the big jacket like cigarettes and too sweet after-shave. A chummy lean, like we were pals.
“She says,” said the face before me, indicating with a nod Nakota, “that you can start that hole up.”
That hole. “You believe everything she tells you?”
“Only when she’s right.” Smirk magnified by closeness, something gummy in the corners of the mouth. “She’s been right all along.”
“So far.”
“Yeah. So far.”
Sudden and startling, a yell from upstairs, the fight invigorated and louder now than the TV, not that there was much of a sound track but the mutters and grunts of the watchers, most of whom turned now to Nakota, interrogatory stares and she said, “It’s the people upstairs” like they were too stupid to figure this out for themselves but in fact they must have been if they needed her to interpret two people screaming “Fuck you” at each other.
“You know Malcolm?” said my new friend, reaching into his jacket to pull out a pack of Kools. I nodded, and he did too, as if this was just what he’d expected. “I saw the mask,” he added, and smirked again, seemed about to comment further when a truly banshee-quality groan from above and Nakota, looking at me, said, “Do something about that.”
I was about to suggest an alternative plan, involving a painfully novel sex act she might perform either alone or with her followers, when I saw one of them leave his comfy position on the floor, out the door and his purposeful feet in the hall, and I thought: Oh. I see, and even if I hadn’t Nakota’s gratuitous smile crystallized the notion: she was showing off. And a tiny chill as wet as a trickle of blood shivered through me, raising my skin to pebbles of gooseflesh, I pulled the dirty blankets closer and the guy beside me said, “You cold or something?”
“It’s just my leprosy,” I said, making the mistake of using my bad hand to adjust the blankets, that jumbled flood of silver leaking firm and shiny across my wrist, across the bedclothes. My earlier bravado evaporated, I tried to hide the mess but no, he was staring at it with a genuinely blank look, as if I had just farted out a cloud of ducklings, or began coughing up hundred-dollar bills.
With my other hand I swept the covers back up, now you see it now you don’t as victorious footsteps and Nakota’s errand boy back, smiling proudly: “I told them to shut the fuck up,” and the others grinning in return and Nakota not grinning at all, just the smallest fold of a smile, pointed at me like the casual tip of a knife. I nodded—touch6—maybe she would be satisfied with that particular hoop, maybe we wouldn’t need to see another proof of what she could make them do.
They were still there when I fell asleep, uneasy at sleeping in that company but unable finally to outwait them. The last thing I remember hearing was Nakota telling them about the jarful of bugs, so very long ago, strange den mother and her troop of devil scouts around the flickering cathode fire.
Even in sleep the cold pursued me, a bloodless feel to hps and fingers as if I lay drained, vampire’s snack, unremembered suicide attempt. In my dreams my hand was a key, a literal key to the storage-room door, and on my breathless chest like an animate gargoyle the guy who had sat on the bed, sawing with a grainy back-and-forth verve at my ramrod wrist and behind him, lips pursed in silent glee, Nakota was busily nodding him on, an empty pickle jar in hand to catch the jiggering spray.
“That’s right,” she was saying, “that’s right,” and I woke, loud startled “Huh!” of sound and the flat was full of drizzly day, it was morning, maybe even afternoon. The blankets were twisted, tight and uncomfortable, around my waist, my wet right hand lay clenched against my sweaty face, and two of them, one the bedsitter, were sitting at the kitchen table. Waiting for me.
Trying to ignore them, I stumbled up, across to the bathroom, washed with one ear wearily cocked, what were they doing? Back out to get a beer, it was going to be that kind of day, I resumed my cocoon as the bed-sitter said, “Those people upstairs are real assholes.”
No reply from me. It was not a statement I could legitimately argue with, but then again he was in no position to call names. They glanced together at me in my silence, and tried again.
“Nakota says you fucked up the video. Copying it.”
I shrugged, the sudden rapid polka of an eyelid tic starting up, idiotic flutter and I rubbed at
my eye, pressed the cold can against it to make it stop. The whole flat stunk like the inside of a bar, that dry generic reek of alcohol and smoke. Maybe they’d had a party, while I’d slept my nightmare sleep, maybe Nakota had been the entertainment. Maybe I had, for all I knew.
“She says you don’t know about the paths.”
“I don’t care, either.” The beer tasted very bad.
“She says,” said the other one, his voice a glottal mumble like he was talking through a tasty mouthful of snot, “you don’t believe about the paths.”
Oh, God. “I’ll tell you what I believe,” I said, with venom born of a restless night, a sorry ache in my head, a sorrier one in my hand that even now began to burble and spit, fat slow silver bubbles and I said it again, “I’ll tell you what I believe. That nobody knows anything about anything more complicated than breathing in and out, and especially not about that fucking Funhole down there, and that includes Nakota, that practically defines Nakota, am I going too fast-for you or what?” and I hurled the beer so it barely missed the TV, one of my rare displays of temper but it pissed me off, it truly did, to wake after such a night to find the palace guard, armed with stupidity and questions, it was worse than having Malcolm there. I had my mouth open to continue in this vein and deeper when knock-knock, who’s there, sudden anxious
fantasy of the irate neighbor from upstairs but no, almost worse: the Dingbats, all three, smiles turning to sudden worry as they saw the other two, the blurt of fresh beer stain on the wall, smelled the ozone of tension and tried to simultaneously discern and assess their effect on whatever was happening fast enough to stop if that was necessary.
All in all they were deeply confused and showed it, so openly that I felt a vast wave of irritable pity, and on that wave threw down the blankets saying “Wait a minute,” and dressed, fast sloppy toilette and grabbed up my jacket, herding them before me out the door. In the dull arctic slysh outside I stood, eye ticcing as I zipped the jacket, and told them I wanted to go out for breakfast.
“It’s almost dinner time,” said Ashlee timidly.
“Not for me.” Doris drove, the four of us squashed into her squatty little Honda, her stick-shift style particularly vigorous and unpleasant, my headache worsening with each slam from first to second, second to third. She cranked the heater till the windows fogged, till I could smell the distinct degree of each passenger’s state of cleanliness, most of all unfortunately my own. Of course at the restaurant we got stuck with a booth; once again I ended up next to Doris, the grit of her eyelashes, the fudgy smell of her perfume.