through the door
and grabbed hold of someone, I felt a headful of hair in my grip and I banged that head, boom, against the door, once again for good measure because I knew just by-the feel that it was Malcolm’s, knew it before his squeal and bucking jerk to escape and I released him, grinning to myself and glad to have hurt him, heard Nakota’s happy gasp and felt, yeah, her touch on mine, felt the strong greasy heat of her greed and “I’ll break your fucking hands,” I said, and squeezed, brutally hard, kept squeezing, increasing the pressure until she finally screamed, till I felt her body, independent of her will, try to get away. And I let her go. With regret. Because no matter what it still felt good to touch her.
“Everybody but Randy,” I said, “get the fuck away from this door.”
A pause, then a timid voice saying, “Randy ain’t here.”
“Then go get him, asshole.”
A longer pause, unsteady shuffling, they wanted to stay but they were scared. The head cleared its throat and I reached up, pounded as high as I could, where I thought the chin might be.
“You shut up too,” I said, and it did.
“Nicholas?” Randy’s voice, shaking. He hadn’t gone far. Maybe he’d been hanging around to watch me rip off Malcolm’s head, a pleasant thought but more effort, etcetera. Had to save my strength, after all. Because it wasn’t after all, not yet, stay tuned.
I was shaking too, I had to sit down, I was sitting down without trying, slipping bonelessly to the floor. I tried to peek under the door since I was down there anyway, but all I could see was the toes of some oily biker boots.
“Nicholas? It’s me. Randy.” A pause. “Shrike said you broke her finger.”
“Good. Next time it’ll be her neck. Are all those assholes gone?”
“Pretty much.” Cautious. Like talking to a. tiger. “What happened?”
“I’m tired,” I said. “I lost my temper.” My hands lay clasped like prayer, dovetailed by my tired face and I looked at them, the maggoty dance of the shine inside and with a snarl of exhausted disgust ripped them apart, one from the other and a gluey sucking sound and one of the fingers of my right hand appeared to adhere to my left and Randy was saying something, I didn’t hear him, I started to laugh from the perfect depths of my revulsion as the motes beneath my skin roiled and dribbled into a living tattoo: NAKOTA.
“Eat shit,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Randy, can you board up the door or something?”
“I’ll be doing good if I can keep the fucking cops away, man. You don’t know what it’s like out here, people are just acting crazy, you know? Just crazy. The neighbors, Shrike’s fucking friends, everybody. I can’t do anything about it, I can only kick so many asses.” His voice still trembled, the vibration of depleted anger, weariness, even tears. The idea of Randy crying was strangely pitiful, maybe because tears were nothing I thought of in conjunction with Randy.
“It’s that goddamned Malcolm,” he said. “He’s worse than she is, you know? Shrike, she’s just out there, you know, like a cat or something, you know how a cat will do when it wants out? Just keeps hanging around the door and scratching and crying till you get tired of its bullshit and just let it out.”
Or in.
“But him, he keeps stirring them up, you know, showing them the fucking video and talking about how the head’s some kind of hotline to the Funhole and he’s the man with the clue. And then he was getting into this shit that you’re dead, you know, since you’re in the picture now, and-”
“What?”
“The video—I saw it too. You’re in it now.”
Dull fear, what was left to be afraid of, now? Faint embarrassment. “What am I doing?”
“Changing, kind of. Getting—lighter. Like you can see through you, you know? What’s the word, transparent, yeah. You’re transparent.”
“Do I say anything?”
“No. You really don’t see much of you,” oh boy, a joke? No. “Just enough to know it’s really you. Shrike freaked, at first. Malcolm was pissed, but now he’s got it all turned around that only he knows what the hell’s going on.” He took a deep, deep breath, like trying to put out a fire from within.
I didn’t want to talk about the video; instead I asked him, “What does Vanese say about all this?”
“Vanese.” Another breath. “She won’t talk to me. I call, she hangs up, or her mother says, Don’t call her no more, she’s upset. I know she’s upset, man! Last time I saw her, she said, Don’t come by me anymore until all that shit’s over with. She said, I don’t need that shit.”
I sat back, silent, at my usual loss, no advice from me, the perpetual fuck-up and wasn’t most of it my fault, anyway? Wasn’t it? Self-pity is a potent luxury but I didn’t have time, maybe I didn’t have enough self left to feel sorry for. Maybe I never had.
I said, “I’m sorry about that,” and I meant it. And the selfish part of me muttered, If only the positions were reversed, if only it was Nakota who would have nothing to do with all of this. Which was of course ludicrous, if she had wanted that she wouldn’t have been Nakota. My love, insatiably drawn to all that was lowest, cruelest, most dreadfully inverted. Like me.
Randy was still talking.
“—outside, right? And Malcolm, you think he’d go along with it just for the crowd control, right? But he won’t. Like he’s a fucking priest or something.”
“Malcolm,” I said, “tempts me.”
“Yeah, I saw the tail end of that, what you did. Wish you’d’ve pulled him all the way inT man.” And then what I had known was coming: “I don’t know how much longer I can put up with him. Or any of this. It’s not, I just want to have some kind of—it’s just too weird, Nicholas. I mean I thought I wanted things to be weird, but not like this.” Half a laugh, so tired. “I mean, it’s been like three days since I even went to work. I’m gonna get fired, if I’m not already.”
“And Vanese,” I said.
“Yeah. Vanese.”
Flexing my palmless hand, head bent and contemplating the fresh jelly of my bush-league stigmata. My roving finger appeared to have reattached itself when I wasn’t looking. Fingers do the darnedest things.
“Randy, maybe it’s—”
“I know,” cutting me off, “I know what you’re gonna say. But you don’t understand, you don’t know what it’s like out here. I mean, Shrike’s pretty weird now, I don’t even know if she’s been paying the rent or what. Maybe the manager’ll try to evict her. The neighbors are getting pretty fucking tense, maybe somebody’ll call the cops. You don’t want the cops, Nicholas, you don’t know what they’ll do to you. They’ll, maybe they’ll, put you somewhere, you know?”
“Somewhere like a hospital ward?”
“Maybe somewhere worse.”
Like a body bag? If I had enough body left to bag, ho-ho and who gives a shit, you’re probably talking to the only one left who does. Except Nakota. Who would cheerfully and in an instant climb over my struggling body to get to the Funhole, or if that was denied her, then vivisect me if they’d only let her make the first cut.
“Randy, who cares about all that shit. Just go.”
7 care!”
Think Malcolm, I thought, think shitty. Better yet, think Nakota. “You can’t do anything about anything anymore,” in my coldest tone. “I’m in charge now.”