And Ashlee, of all people, loud and tremulous in the center of the room, looking at me, to me, “Nothing happens without Nicholas. Nothing can happen without him, so you just better stay out of his shit, all right?” and the three of them, my dingbats (and when, a cold snide voice blossomed to ask inside that three-story brain of mine, just when did they become your dingbats, when did you become some cheapshit stand-in god?), turned to me with an identical look between them, three faces with one emotion, and the naked responsibility I saw there making me almost frantic for escape but when you put the key in the lock, when you crank up the magic box, why then what happens? And who, who, I ask you, is ultimately responsible?
Frozen in my private sick tableau, half-conscious of the merry fluid, brisk and faintly odoriferous, looking past its snail-trail glimmer to the twist of Malcolm’s face as he said, unnecessarily loud, “I’m going to do what I came here to do. You can come with me, or fuck off, or whatever you want.”
And he marched out like a marine, Nakota’s yahoos half-inclined to follow at once, as if, mindless as radkr, they must track any kind of movement, my—the others, Doris and Ashlee and Dave, looking to me. Me looking away, to meet the warm shock of Nakota’s gaze, very close, how had she managed to get so close? In her voice a thrumming sound, was it really her voice? The phone rang again.
“Coming?” she said, leaning even closer to brush her speaking lips against my skin and for me a grateful shiver, it had been such a long time since she had deliberately touched me. She kissed my cheek, an action at heart so brutally calculated that I should have been sickened by its falseness, but how could I be when it was so essentially Nakota?
Quietly, “It’s your show,” another calculation and I knew that, too.
“Go if you want to,” I said. “Just leave me alone/’
A venomous smile, I was balking her again. “You might be surprised,” she said, even more quietly. “You might be sorry, too.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m already sorry.”
“Tell me about it,” and gone, not even bothering to close the door behind her. The thrumming I had heard before, thought it the underpinning of her voice, some fault of my hearing, showed itself to be neither; Funhole music; of course. Of course. Lassie come home. I put my hands to my head, fingers in my ears like a stubborn child, looked up to see Doris bent, hand aborted in a gesture, peering into my face. I took my fingers away from my ears, the better to listen to what I didn’t want to hear.
“Are you going to let them do this?”
“I’m not letting anyone do anything,” I said, very very tired. “I’m just staying the hell out of the way,” and then cold air and Randy, through the open door.
“Funny customers,” he said at once, getting himself a beer and one for me, at least you could always trust Randy to do the right thing. Ignoring Doris, who joined the worried cluster of Ashlee and Dave, he sat beside me, saying again as he handed me the beer, “Funny customers. Shrike’s bunch, you know, they’re big-time fuck-ups, I don’t know if you want them anywhere near that room.”
“I don’t see any way of stopping them.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” abrupt and out the door, my trusty right-hand man. Good thing for him he wasn’t. I put my right hand to my head and sure enough, the thrum echoed there as well, remote speaker, broadcasting live. As live as it gets. Above that sound I could hear noises from downstairs, noises too from above, neighbors. Bitching. But not at each other. I caught the words “punker assholes” and thought, Uh-oh.
Doris asked, “Should we go, too?” and at a loss I shrugged, my usual cheap response to any situation. They took counsel together and with an over-the-shoulder glance, the three of them weirdly like swivel-necked dimestore toys, left. And left the door open.
Hallway cold and I pulled the blanket up around my neck, cementing the seal with the glue from my hand, and closed my eyes. A calmness I had not felt for days, weeks, drifted warmly over me; I felt almost good. Must be the solitude, certainly a rare commodity these days. The thrum became a lullaby, God knew I needed rest. Not just sleep but rest, a breathing space, a place in which to forget. From upstairs I heard a shout, again, but this time I felt no warning pinch, felt nothing too, at some garbled groan from below. They said it didn’t work without me? Very well, I was doing my part, I was doing nothing. The role I was born to play. More yells, and in the ringing echo of their wake I felt myself slipping off to sleep, what a lovely pleasant thing to happen, what a fine idea. Warm, under the covers, and my hand smelled so good. Good enough, in fact, to eat.
“Nicholas!”
Fuck. “What is it?” opening one cross eye, how had I gone so deep so fast? Exhausted, that’s what it was, and always somebody to wake me when I wanted it least. In this case Doris, bug-eyed, hands a mile a minute, “Hurry!”
“What?”
“They’re all yelling, Randy and Malcolm are pushing each other, Malcolm’s got that mask nailed up and everybody’s going weird, they—”
“I don’t care if they kill each other,” which at that moment was absolutely true, all I wanted was the benediction of unconsciousness through the good offices of sleep, it did not occur to me to wonder why I was so easily able to sleep at a moment when I should have been scared shitless. Yes, a small part of my brain said, professor-bright and pointer in hand, why is that? And that was what frightened me, finally, scared me awake and Doris taking instant advantage of my renewed consciousness grabbed my arm to haul me upright, it must have been like dragging a dead man, a big wobbly sack.
Out the door and from the stairwell I could hear it, Randy yelling, “Let go of me, motherfucker!” and Malcolm’s screech: “Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!” and Doris in desperation at my inadequate speed pushed me, hands in the back and I stumbled, I wasn’t going fast enough, I almost fell.
Hands on the newel post, swinging around like a child does in play, an actor in a movie and I saw a babble of motion, heard a sonorous tone that seemed to be emanating from somewhere close by the storage-room door, where Randy tussled now with Mr. Bed, another of Nakota’s goons pushing Malcolm who was yelping like a pig and somebody’s head above the door. Hey, I thought, that’s my head.
Plaster white and blind-eyed, frozen face not in peace but in ice, the coldest place of all. The mask.
From which the sound issued. Twin to the sound of my hand. Twin to the sound of the Funhole, so loud it seemed from behind the door and a pull like gravity, I pushed without effort through the crowd, Malcolm’s yell directly in my ear, Nakota at my elbow, the others lost in swirling babble, the Brownian motion of a hopelessly unchoreographed fistfight, what the fuck were they fighting about anyway and someone, some guy I didn’t recognize, the upstairs neighbor presumably, wild-eyed and bellowing “What the hell is going on!” with such enraged and poignant confusion that at another time I might have felt sorry enough to explain.
But not now. Nakota hanging on me like the leech she was, I could feel the pant of her excited breath, and again without effort I pushed her away, shook her off, pushed in the door and a great vast scream of heat, like throwing open the door to a blast furnace, like Shadrach in the fire I advanced, careless, welcome, I could dance like Vulcan in a cindering flame, I could dance with Randy’s sculptures and one advanced upon me now, its metal limbs flung wide in fractured greeting, where had I been for so long? The leak of my hand gleamed, I understood the motif of silver now. Pressing my hand to the melting metal, a hissing sizzle like the boil of steam, but this steam was molten, this steam was iron. Fusing me to the metal. Pulling me like a magnet to the Funhole where the heat burned so delirious that I thought it would burn me alive, the ancient suns rising about me like a mantle, my arms reaching to embrace the fire as they embraced the sculpture’s living metal and through the burn an echo, the bubbling thrum, thrice loud: the mask. My hand. The Funhole.