“You don’t take any chances at all, do you,” I said. “You fuck. Do you.”
The skull’s mouth opened, perhaps the mask’s mouth was flexing, too, but the voice came from the dark.
love you
I had known Nakota would be past furious, but as usual I underestimated her.
No screaming, no, she wouldn’t waste her strength, but fighting, so it took Randy and Malcolm, with Dave a helpless observer giving me the blow-by-blow, to drag her away. Vanese came back with a tired report: “Dave’s upstairs sitting on her.”
“Good.”
“Malcolm wants to put the video on.”
“Tell Malcolm—no, tell Randy to break his fucking neck if he so much as touches that video, or even the TV, okay, Vanese?” Stupid absentee general giving orders through the door. I thought of Nakota, rigid with fury upstairs, frustrated hate like a laser frying a hole in the floor —no thank you, there’re enough holes in here already, ha-ha—and made little speeches in my head, little noble declarations of my sterling intentions. When it was really selfishness. Diluted, yes, with worry for her, that was true, but that was selfish too: hurting her hurt me. What had she said? “Nicholas lost it.” Yeah. And would lose it again, no doubt. But now it didn’t matter. Now I was safe. From Nakota, from her geeks, the Dingbats, everybody.
Head against the door, ah, a lovely quiet moment, alone with my empty head. A yawn so deep it reminded me of when I’d actually slept, last, a real sleep possible here on the lip of nightmares? Well. No doubt. Anything’s possible, isn’t it, when—
“Nicholas!”
Randy’s voice. Tight.
“What?” sitting up, eyes open, heart starting up hard. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Shrike, man, you don’t know what she’s doing, Vanese can’t hold on to her—”
“Vanese shit, where the hell’s Malcolm? Or Dave?”
“Malcolm left, Dave, I don’t know where Dave is. I can’t take her with me, I gotta go to work.” Tighter still. “She wants to get a chain saw, she says she’s going to shoot the lock off the door, she—”
“She can’t, it’s—”
And unmistakable, Nakota’s witchy shriek from the stairwell, Randy gone and my scared yelling notwithstanding, that was the last I heard of any of them. I put my head in my hands.
A smell like roses, drenched and bewitching.
“It’s not funny,” I said.
My hand was itching, had been in all my talk with Randy, a horrible bubbly itch and I rubbed it viciously against the floor and felt a lump, something I absolutely did not want to see but I looked anyway: the smell, the rose made flesh. And blood. All over my arm.
“I said it’s not funny, “and I smashed my hand as hard as I could, like swinging a bat, against the door. It hurt so bad it was all I could think of for a long, long time, and that was good.
Not light in the room, but less dark. Scratching, like a mouse, close by my ear and I opened my eyes, my hand like a migraine still. Somebody saying my name.
“What.” Oh my throat was dry. Left-handed I scrabbled for the bicycle bottle of water, drank a little, a lot. “What is it? Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Vanese.” If that was really Vanese, then things were very bad. “How you doing?”
“Fine.” I considered my hand. One of the fingers was definitely broken, or fractured, whatever. It was swollen like a cartoon hand, the hole in the center a cheerful carnival red. “I’m fine. Where’s Nakota?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about you? Are you okay?”
Silence.
“Vanese, answer me.”
The skull was mocking my words, moving its mouth in unison. “Vanese,” I said again, and threw the water bottle at the skull. “Stop it, you shit! Vanese, please answer me.”
“Nicholas?” A deep pause. “I don’t think I want to come back here anymore.”
“What happened? What—”
“She wrecked my car, Nicholas. Drove it right through my mother’s garage.” A slow sigh. “My mother got hysterical, Nicholas. She’s just…” Nothing. The skull winked at me. Something fluttered in the back of the room. “Randy said, I got to go to work. Take her somewhere. Anywhere. So I took her to my mother’s, and she tried to steal my car. I got in it, and she, she just ran right into the garage, I thought she was going to drive right out the other side. She’s crazy, Nicholas, I mean the girl is insane, something’s broken in her head now.” Another pause. “She hit her head. So did I.”
“Is—are you all right?”
“She’s fine,” without bitterness, but without concern. For Nakota, or for me. “I’m fine too. The doctor gave me a couple shots, for pain, you * know,” which went a long way toward explaining that draggy Demerol voice, that emotionless drone. “But I have to get back to my mother’s. At least,” a slow funereal chuckle, “she left the car.”
“Vanese?”
Nothing.
“Vanese, are you still there? Vanese!” The skull rotated, a deliberate motion weirdly reminiscent of an old-time stripper. “Vanese!”
Very very quietly, through the crack of the door: “You better watch it, Nicholas.”
Nothing else.
I waited. I waited a long time, long enough for the skull and its steel armature to come humping across the floor to me, lie at my feet like some “hideous pet, in a grotesque excess of playfulness it even tried to nibble at my feet. I kicked it, hard, sent it rolling and it rolled right back and bit me, not hard but enough to make a point. I left it alone then, closing my eyes when it rolled onto its back, its whatever, to peer up at me. When I pissed I made sure the pot was close enough to splash it, but that was only an opportunity for it to mock me further, basking in the stream, a golden shower for a steel skull, it even sickened me and I thought I had gotten just about sick-proof. Apparently there were levels of unwitting perversion I had never even considered.
Nakota. Where was she. Wrecked cars and cracked heads and it was just the beginning because she was determined, oh my yes, she was the most determined person I had ever seen and
I had very likely been worse than an asshole to think I could keep her out if she wanted in; what I had accomplished, in fact, was at best a delaying motion, at worst a challenge. And of course she had Malcolm. And her goons.
What was the saying? There were new goons born every minute, no silver spoons but hunger, instead, fed by boredom and nurtured by spite? Of course there were. And who held the map for Goon Mecca, who knew the way?
Who had the video.
I was sure of it. What I was most afraid of was what I most suspected: they were showing it. To other people. Recruiting. Nakota needed an army to get in? Very well, she would raise one up. She could do it, too.
But what else to do?
And from outside, the croon, small and faraway, “Poor Nicholas,” the talking head, sweet like poison, the giggle beneath like an acid bubble floating, floating, ready to burst. I had a lot of time to call myself names. I used it all, more when I remembered that Vanese had the padlock key, then: who cares? I thought, watching the skull turn lazy circles around the Funhole like a race car desultorily lapping a track. Who really gives a shit. They’ll get in or they won’t, and nothing I do now is going to matter.
Because they’re out there, and I’m in here.
The next voice I heard was Malcolm’s.
“Hey, Nick,” he said. “How d’you like the mask?”