“Oh nice try,” I could almost see him shaking his head. “But I’m not that stupid.”
“Then don’t be stupid. Go home.”
“How do I even know if it’s you talking anymore? How do I know anything?”
And he cried, I could hear it in his voice, and something in me wriggled and cracked, bleeding like broken skin, tears leeched from me and falling to lie in minute and glossy circles on the floor by my face. “Randy,” I said when I could talk, “go and get a mirror. A little mirror. Okay? Okay, Randy?”
No answer but I heard him walk away. In the silence, wondering if he would come back, the miserable wriggle of my billboard skin spelling things I refused to read, words or bullshit runes or whatever nasty jokes could scrawl and spin in glyphs I could not help but understand if I looked. If I looked.
So I didn’t, sat instead eyes closed and waiting, and finally Randy’s voice. Maybe it really was as long as it seemed.
“I got the mirror,” he said.
“Okay. Lay it down, under the door—right, like that, a little more. Now,” positioning myself, careful now, “look at me.”
Silence, then, with hesitation: “’S too dark, man. I can’t see anything. Turn the light on, if it still works.”
It did.
Randy’s wordless sound. And it hurt, oh it hurt to hear that sound and know what I really looked like, what I was like now, so far beyond any kind of fringe that even someone like Randy, neck-deep from nearly the beginning, could still flinch, could still turn away like a gawker who’d suddenly seen more than he’d bargained for: I mean I don’t mind a good wreck but did you see that guy with half a head, I mean shit
Did you see that guy who’d turned into a walking hole?
“Nicholas,” shakily, a little farther back from the door now and I doubted he knew he’d done that, stepped away, it was a visceral move. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
“That—stuff. All over you.”
“No.”
He was quiet. My skin prickled, itched as more fluid gurgled down my legs, I could feel its jaunty ooze. I waited, riding the silence between us, the pause before good-bye, thinking of so many things to say.
Finally, “Well,” I said. “Tell Vanese I said hi.”
“I will.”
“Don’t tell them you’re taking off, okay?”
“No, hell no.”
And no more farewell than that—what exactly did you expect, I asked myself, mocking my own letdown: a manly exchange of fluids, a glorious speech at death’s door? “I will always remember you, brave Nicholas”? Shit Gone. Back to Vanese, and work, his art and his beer and watching TV at night and driving his tow truck too fast. Back to the real world, the one place I wanted, now and belatedly, most to go, the norm and the safe thing denied me and as I mourned in silent envy I was glad he had. In any good disaster there are always at least a few survivors, and now the both of them could tell that story, back and forth in all its gaudy bleakness, and be certain of at least one other’s sure belief.
And me, alone now. With Nakota, her ruthless single-mindedriess, idiot Malcolm and their hair-trigger delusionist cadre. And the talking mask, one face for them and its secret one for me. And the skull on the doorknob and the bubbling fluid eating me more than alive, turning me into the world’s ugliest ambulatory chrysalis, far less than human but still feeling like one.
And the Funhole, never forget it, wellspring of all situations and the pivoting center around which this dark circus revolved, drunken orbit of ferocity, fear and hunger, simple stupidity and desire.
But I’m so tired, I thought.
Time, going by, and sounds. In the hall. And I closed my eyes and thought I smelled meat, roasting. Burning.
And as if on cue, Malcolm’s triumphant voice, so loud that I twitched, weak nervous startle: “We’re takin’ the door off now, Nick,” excited, grinning no doubt that special dipshit Malcolm grin, staying prudently out of reach. And Nakota, cold in the background and directing somebody, a bunch of somebodies, the brains behind the motion which was no big surprise, crazy or not she was still the only one out there who had any brains at all.
Talking, mumbling, voices as confused and bumbling as their owners, Nakota’s commands and Malcolm’s dumb forever override, do this do this no don’t do that. Get another board. Put that thing down. Everybody listen to me!
“Nakota,” I said, from the depths of my exhaustion. “Leave it alone, okay?”
Malcolm, yelling back: “Shut up, asshole! We’re comin’ in!”
And I was tired of Malcolm, you know? That excuses nothing, I realize that, but I was just so tired of the endless yammer that was Malcolm, a voice with legs, and I put one arm, right arm, through the door and caught at something, sohieone, wriggling and squeaking and I turned it loose again, hunting, the way you feel around without looking into a bag or a drawer, you’ll know when you have what you’re after.
And I did.
And I squeezed.
Screaming.
“Let him go, Nicholas!” Nakota’s voice above the yelling, babble and confusion and something sweet between my fingers, “Nicholas! Let him go!” but I didn’t. No. Scaling up more octaves than you’d think the human voice could handle. Jerking and bumping up against the door, less screaming now, just a kind of low-pitched gagging sound that went on and on, annoying as a running toilet in the middle of the night, gurgle and burble and finally it stopped.
Silence. My head hurt, and I felt awake, suddenly, and as suddenly ashamed, another stupid temper tantrum. And then Nakota, enraged: “Oh good work, dickhead, I think you just broke the asshole’s neck.”
Oh, God.
Deep fundamental nausea as I snatched back my hand, heard through the door the hurricane sibilance of her curses, the thump and stutter of her drag-away disposal, letting my own body droop in closed-eyes shock as behind me not a sound but a blossom as fragrant as a good solid belch.
And on the wall above the door, a confusing swivel of light and the mask turned inward now, purpose served perhaps and free now to follow another agenda: looking down, facing me with the face from the video, full-blown and absolute, all nothing, all mine.
Well, his neck wasn’t broken. But he was plenty pissed off, and scared, which made him more pissed off, and it didn’t help when Nakota laughed through the door to me, “Hey Nicholas, you know what? He shit his pants! His expensive leather pants,” giggling her dry endless giggle, even I felt sorry for him. Though I snickered too, which didn’t help and so on.
But shaken or not, pissed or not, he still had theories, he still had words; even death couldn’t take words from Malcolm, I was convinced of that. Not that I had a second engagement in mind, oh no, I had promised myself I would never touch Malcolm again. Or anyone else if there was any way, any way, I could help it. The way I had felt, the terrible sick shame, was deterrent enough; I never wanted to feel that way again. Even though, as Nakota said later/even if I had killed him it was “just Malcolm.”
Just Malcolm had, during an accelerated daylong nurse of his throttled windpipe, developed a new theory concerning me and my walk-on role in the video. “It’s a portent,” he told me through the door; as he spoke I had the impression that he stood on the balls of his feet, poised and fleetly nervous; maybe our brief choke festival was just what the doctor ordered; still I was out of the doctoring business for good. Let someone else improve his character.