The Cipher

3

Nakota as nurse. We both needed nurses, she more than me, though my bitten hand was already outrageously swollen, “What kind of germs you got anyway?” weak joke that got less than a smile, lips twitched around her cigarette. Black smoke, stinging in my eyes. Her motions were slow, crippled grace, she moved about the flat like you drive a wrecked car, even her hair looked wounded, dirty looking and dragged back in a twist-tie bow. We had taken all the aspirin in the house and were starting in on the Nyquil.

It was almost morning, overcast dawn, sure to snow again today. Me in bed, Nyquil in one hand, beer in the other, Nakota bent shivering over the stereo. On her bare back, just above her ribs, was a disconcertingly heart-shaped bruise. You only kick the shit out of the one you love.

“Hurry up,” I said, “you’ll freeze.” She found what she was looking for; it took some looking: loud kickthrash music, fitting obbligato for our little dance; ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Funhole Waltz. Back across the room and it hurt to watch, bruises like clouds, massed and banked all over her but especially on her arms, where I had gripped her hardest; the memory of my tyrannical panic made me wince, but I knew for once I had been purely and unarguably right. An odd feeling. Not pleasant. You can get used to being wrong all the time; it takes all the responsibility out of things.

Climbing into bed, into the warmth; we had piled on every blanket in the house, we needed that heat. I cuddled her with careful arms, gentle of her pain, offered her a sip of Nyquil. “Pleasant bouquet,” she said. Her speech was slurred.

When she handed back the bottle I flinched in the taking, and she turned her head, slow. “I thought it was the other hand,” she said.

I did too, but there on the right palm, a hole, a definite hole, and an ugly scared suspicion rose like dizziness: oh God please, not a souvenir. I did my duty. Please don’t do this to me.

1 compared hands. The left one, the bitten one, was puffy, purpling, you could see it had been torn. The right one had a puncture in the palm, a round wound with round gray edges. As we looked at it a minute drop of clear fluid, thick as syrup, welled up but did not drip.

“Did,” her voice sharpening now, sitting up straight oh you sick bitch, she was excited, “did something—hurt you?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

My voice was shaking. I wanted to hit her again, turned away instead. Eyes closed, remembering only the fear, possessed by fear at the lip of the Funhole, so great and the feeling of clenching, then hearing her distant moan and pushing myself back and away, crawling to where she sat still against the door. Crying without tears. No new head to present to her, but her own seemed to be working okay at that point. Back upstairs to a burning shower, it seemed we couldn’t get enough warmth, enough different kinds of medicating, Nurse Nakota pushing pills in my mouth. Now back to normal, cheering my contamination.

“Did something down there—”

“I said shut the fuck up!” and I slammed my hand down on the bed, quake of covers and the Nyquil splashing green as chartreuse and a pain that made my eyes spring to watering, oh God that hurts, Nakota subsiding but with shiny eyes, I closed mine so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

“Leave me alone,” I said. And she did. But I felt her thinking.

Old saw proved right: it was better in the morning, bruises, swellings, aches and all.

All but my right hand.

Alone in the bathroom, back against the un-lockable door, examining my hand in the weak fluttering light: like checking a bite from the devil, yeah, almost scared to touch it, and sore? Oh it was. I ran cool water on it, then warm; the skin there reddened a little under heat, but otherwise there was no change.

Nakota knocking, “I gotta get in there, Nicholas.”

“Wait a minute,” pressing a little harder against the door. I held my hand close, close to my eyes, small sloping grayish wound like a miniature, scale-model

don’t say it

“I gotta pee, Nicholas!”

Stepping away from the door, letting her in, holding my hand close to my side. As she pissed I dressed, hurried in absurd uneasy fear to grab keys and get out, yelling “Bye,” over my shoulder as I slammed the door too hard. In the hall, panting too hard. All my motions on cartoon speed, revved up, I forced myself to walk very slowly down the stairs and I did not want to stop at the Funhole door, of course I most certainly would not be stopping there because the handle felt so good, so good in my sore hand, and inside

it was warm, warmer than the hall, warmer than my flat even, the heat seeming to emanate, of course, from the Funhole itself and why wouldn’t it, hmm? Why wouldn’t it Murmuring to the darkness. “What did you do to me?” Warm. A tension I had not fully noticed seemed to drop from me all at once, my shoulders slumping in relief, so warm. My hand was wet, soft sweet dribble of fluid, it too was warm. “What’s going to happen to me?” No answer, no oracle. Just the mouth of the Funhole, warm breath rising, I noticed in a dreamy kind of way that its smell was stronger today, a rich and complex odor, maybe it was a kind of incense, a spice smell, maybe it was

maybe it was happy with the taste of my blood, you fucking asshole get away from there, get away!

Out. Out and hurrying down the hall, no tension in me but the tension of fear, good clean healthy fear, all the way outside where I teetered and slipped on the snowy pavement, ice beneath and instinctive hands outstretched to save myself, slamming down hard enough to knock out my breath, both my hands hurting so that I felt instant tears dripping instantly cold. It took me fully half a minute to even sit up, and when I did I saw the crows, big black wings in thoughtful telephone-wire posture, apprentice urban vultures. It seemed just as my glance found them they flew, not toward me but up, mobile clouds before the weak and desultory sun.

I stopped at a drugstore, sat in my car applying careful Band-Aids to my lovely new hole, and was in fact only twenty minutes late to work, a circumstance pointed out to me with exquisite scorn by the manager and as gratefully received by me. Let the day begin, I thought, and my hand throbbed in damp cool agreement.

No more video, I told her.

Imagine the scene. But I did it anyway, threatening her with a calm authority I definitely did not feel, inside I was shivering but I told her no, no, you want it, you take it somewhere else. “I don’t want what happened to happen again,” I said.

“It won’t.” Sullen soft-voiced rage, eyeing my wounded hand—the right one, of course; she had no eyes for the one she’d bitten, no, that was too normal for her—her own hands shaking so from temper that she could barely light her cigarette. “I’m not scared.”

“I am.”

More sullen still, “You know I don’t have a VCR.”

“That’s tough.”

At a loss as to how to adequately punish me, cigarette clenched between her teeth and hands tightening, untightening, far more angry at my calm than she would ever have been at my anger: “You’re absolutely spineless, you know that? Worthless spineless gutless”—extensive litany of my crop of failures, and as she tolled them all I thought of the deeper failures, things she did not and never could know, things she might—would—consider unworthy of memory, things that to me carried with them regrets with edges still so bitterly sharp that even the thought of them brought the same bright instant shame; watching-that mean little mouth moving, moving, cigarette burning unnoticed and silent splash of ash, knowing that oh, yes, I had done banal and infinite wrong, but this time, for once, I had not.

Finally, frustrated: “I’m taking this,” shaking the tape at me like a fist.

“Go ahead.”

And gone, ash fragments left behind, spoor that I swept into my palm and dusted out into the cold night air, imagined I saw it settle on the snow below to form patterns like the runes she always said she saw, insect wings, all the insects buried now in peace under this selfsame snow.

Nursing my hand, sitting at night—alone, did you have to ask?—and examining its growing soreness, the way the, what, infection seemed not to spread but to deepen, the gray edges of the wound now blackened. All my other, transitory souvenirs of that night had healed, even Nakota’s bite marks, all of me good as new or as good as I was going to hope for. But not my right hand.

It wasn’t getting better, either.

I kept it covered, no sense displaying the war wounds now is there, graduating from Band-Aids to gauze and tape for as it grew worse, it just plain grew: its circumference widening as gray went black, the skin there slick, now, as plastic, expensive plastic, nothing but the finest rot for me. Fluid still came from it; that was the part I hated most, goddamn fucking drippy stuff, mostly a dribble but at times such gush that it soaked the cuff of my shirt, and me sometimes at work and trying to make like I spilled my Coke or something, I mean how many Cokes can you spill? And it smelled, yeah, but not like you’d expect: a changeable odor, sometimes so garbage-rank it turned my stomach to change the bandage, sometimes so sweet it almost smelled—tasty. Even Nakota, on her cold infrequent visits—I caught her looking, nose wrinkled like a cat’s, but too proud, certainly, to ask.

Which was another, much larger problem, far more painful than my stupid artificial decay, far less curable. She had left me: for punishment, of course, over the video, which she was assiduously watching elsewhere, had to be since I hadn’t seen it, much less watched it, for over two weeks. (And where was she watching it? Had she actually gone out and bought a VCR? Not a chance. Then with whom? And how did she explain it, if she bothered at all? Swallow those questions, I thought, swallow till you choke but don’t ask.) God how I missed her, and not when you would think, no lonely nights spent snuffling into my bachelor pillow, yanking at my stiff bachelor dick. Instead it hurt most at the times she was there, wrapped in the ratty sport coat she now affected constantly, pipestem jeans and -too big Keds jammed with men’s ankle socks and always wet, her hands always cold looking, lips chapped past red to a nasty-looking ash color; occasionally they would split, I saw blood in the cracks. It made me want to cry, I realize that sounds ridiculous but that’s how I felt.

She would sit back on the couchbed, knees crossed, staring at me and my constant prattle and me staring inwardly, wondering too at my own transparent jabber, all of it saying so clearly Come back. Come back and don’t be mad anymore.

But still I couldn’t give in.

Even though I knew she had to be watching it elsewhere, knew I was saving her from nothing and in fact maybe making it worse for her without me to watch her, then what? I was a pretty shitty guard dog but I was something anyway, to stand between her and her, own recklessness, I had kept her from so much already. Maybe that was the problem, too, or the backbone of it, my veto of the video the last straw for her. God who knew. All I knew was that even if it kept her from me, I had to keep saying no because I could not stand, could not stand to have to watch her constantly, wondering if tonight would be the night she would sneak off and me have to chase her, maybe hurt her, to make her stop. Or worst of all she might get away from me entirely. Kill yourself, Nakota, if you have to; I love you but I never could stop you, really, only slow you down. But I reserve the right not to have to watch. Anyway—trying to comfort myself, wretched notion but—anyway, she seemed much less zombified now, as if the hours (I supposed) of unsupervised addictive repetition had cost the video some of its cold hypnotic charm, what were once vices etcetera. Stupid—I keep saying that, don’t I?—but a necessary fiction for me to keep going. If I failed her—again—if there was no way out of it, it was at least not as an accomplice.

This reasoning worked until she would stand, not smiling, and say, “Let’s go.” And she leading, me trailing, off to the Funhole.

She came, of course, not for me but for the Funhole, and this was maybe the most mystifying; I was sure there were many times, most times, she visited without me, her schedule could easily permit this, she could have rented a flat in the building for all I knew. For me the wonder was why she bothered taking me along at all. No questions from me, though. See her rarely, touch her never, but if that was all I could get, then I was going to take it and be, if not glad, then sorry, but in silence.

Down the hall. Staring into that dark mouth, closer now, both of us, she hands in pockets or on her knees (always, always a chill for me to see her do that, remembering) and me behind her, her knight in twisted armor, awkward picking at his bandaged hand as his lady fair beheld her grail.

In silence, always, and always parting at the stairwell, she hurrying off brisk and wordless, me to trudge upstairs to try to concoct a distraction, something, once I even pulled out my pathetic roll of poems. Beer, too, but you know? I didn’t want to drink it. Instead I would sit at the window, eyes closed, breathing cold air until I fell asleep. Waking with cramped shoulders, piss-full, my hand hurting, hurting.

Nothing got better.

The doctor’s office, faint bleachy smell, nervous on the red plastic sofa and reading a Redbook: “Is Your Mate A Workaholic?” No, but my lover—ex-lover has an annoying habit of trying to stick her head where it doesn’t belong. Or is that more of a Cosmo article? Ho, ho, ho.

“Mr. Reid? Nicholas?”

Follow the nurse, his ass round and womanly, his uniform baggy and blue and clean. Blood pressure, pulse, temp. “I understand you’re having a problem with infection? A hand wound?”

“Yeah.”

Reaching for my clumsy cover-up job, bandage palimpsests and I shook my head, pulled my hand away, hiding it like a little kid behind my back: “I’d rather, you know, if the doctor just see it. I mean,” lame little smile, “it kind of hurts, to touch it.”

“Fine.” It wasn’t but I got my way, which is what counts. If I had to put on a one-man freak show it was going to be by invitation only, thank you very much.

The doctor, skinny hands the color of weak coffee, grizzly gray hair. Bluff and bored, let’s get this over with. Cheer up, doctor, I thought, peeling at my bandages, this ought to make your day. A medical marvel.

He didn’t say a lot, at first, asked questions a little then a little more, touching my hand with those bony fingers, pressing my knuckles, the meat below the thumb.

“Hurt here?”

“No.”

Press, press. “Hurt here?”

“No.”

“How about here?”

“No.” I felt I was disappointing him. On the wall behind him was a calendar, peaceful winter scene brought to you by Searle: Please Buy Our Dope.

“How—”

The pain was so unexpectedly blunt that I jerked my hand away, tears in my eyes; some of the wound’s fluid splashed him, honey-colored drops on his fresh white coat. Cradling my hand against me, unconscious soothe of outraged flesh, and he asked me again, “How did you say this happened?” Not, note, how did it, but how did I say it did. A distinction, but I pretended not to make it and patiently told my lie again: a puncture wound from a very dirty metal rake handle. Why I said rake, living in a flat, I don’t know, but it was my bullshit and I stuck with it.

“Uh-huh.” He wasn’t buying it but wasn’t going to call me on it either. “Well. This is a very unusual infection, Nicholas. It has to be kept very clean. I’ll have the nurse give you some instructions for care,” as if my wound was a temperamental tropical pet whose very rarity demanded my attendance. He gave me a prescription for something, cephlasporin, sent me on my way. I paid cash, which made me further suspect, wandered off like a criminal with my spandy new bandage and my guilty pain.

It snowed all the way home, dull relentless flakes, more and more against my windshield and my wipers not up to the job, driving through a landscape smeared and troubled and my sore hand aching, aching against the wheel. Back home I tore off the new bandage, let my hand sit palm-up on the open windowsill to touch without catching the steady reach of snow. I slept there, and when I woke, in the early dark, my hand instead of being cold stiff as the rest of me was a lustrous pink, the flesh pliant and warm and I touched it, wonderingiy, and as I did a spurt of fluid as thick as jelly burbled out on the iced inner sill and in its yellow clot I thought I saw swimming a bright and winking eye.

Listless afternoon checkout at Video Hut, bandaged hand clumsy and cold, somehow, at the fingertips, was my circulation going or what. Learning to use the laser pen with my left hand. Learning to drink coffee with my left hand. Learning—it cost me some pinpricks—how to pin my badge on. My fellow grunts past asking now “what happened,” ignoring me and my wound with equal nonchalance. Just the way I like it.

No snow today but cold, oh yeah, I could feel it coming off the big front windows, feel its demand every time the door opened. Beside me, new grunt in short brown braid and badge askew, asking under his breath, “What kind of dumbshits come out on a day like this to get Booby Prizes?”

“Or Mommy’s Little Massacre.” Ignore the faint ooze beneath my bandage. Open door and “Look at this one,” I said, clandestine nod at a definite damage case, big guy in cracked brown leather, pale all over, pale like a corpse. “Bet he’s not here for the H&R Block tape.”

“Scary looking,” and just as he said it the guy turned, he couldn’t have heard but he turned, came walking straight toward the register, closed stride, and my new buddy melted backward, me left alone with my laser pen and my fucked-up hand, saying, “Can I help you?” in a less than forceful tone.

“Are you Nicholas?”

Flat, flat voice, not especially deep, and when he leaned hands on the counter I saw the pitted skin, hilly nails with years of black grease beneath. Up so close he was paler still, so white I thought Albino, though his eyes were a watery gray. Weird long lashes. He blinked a lot.

“Yeah, I’m Nicholas,” I said. “What can I help you with?”

Closer still, dull gas-station stink off the leather as he leaned down to me to say, “The Funhole.”

I stared. I think my mouth was open, requisite dummy stance but I couldn’t help it, I kept staring and he said, more flat and quiet still, “’S okay. Shrike told me all about it.”

“Who’s Shrike?”

Faint impatience now, which I suppose I can understand, here he was with his great mystic password and I was reacting as if he’d just stolen my brain. “You know, Shrike. You don’t have to be nervous, man. She showed me the video.”

Well. It wasn’t a bad name for her, Shrike. And she’d showed him the video, had she. So: this must be my replacement. Talk about eclectic. Looking more closely, “Randy” stitched in that lumpy universal red on the shirt beneath the leather, a tiny bisected skull, gold-toned and grimy, hanging from one grimier ear. White-blond hair, very clean, the cleanest thing on him.

“So,” I said. “What’d you think of it?”

“Oh man,” leaning even closer, and now that flat voice had passion, “what a fuckin’ trip, I couldn’t believe it. We must of watched it twenty times. Shrike says the more you watch it, the deeper it goes, goes in you, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I watch it and I think, Now this is God, you know?”

“God. Yeah.” Lord of the fried. I smiled, involuntary sour twitch and—man of many moods— Randy laughed. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew I’d like you, man.”

What an accolade. Shut up, I advised myself, he can break you in half. We stood there smiling at each other for a few more seconds, me wondering what the hell to add to this surreal bonhomie, but Randy had no worries, he knew exactly what he was about. Leaning even closer, one more inch and he’d be right in my face, con-spiratory murmur: “So when can I see it?”

“See what? The Funhole? Haven’t, hasn’t Na— Shrike taken you there?”

“Oh yeah, we saw the room.”

What the hell? “But you didn’t go in?”

“Yeah, we went in, but you know what happens.”

When absolutely cornered, I reach, always, for the truth. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, I really don’t. You went in the room, that storage room, but you didn’t see it?”

Slightly affronted, leaning back and his gaze suspicious, was I fucking with him or what? “It’s like Shrike says, you have to be there.”

We stared at each other, this was making no sense at all to me when suddenly my mind translated his words into something even more senseless: not “you have to be there” but “you have to be there,” meaning me, which meant nothing. What did I have to do with seeing the Funhole, and why would Nakota say I did? She was a liar, sure, a twister, but what could she possibly get out of such a silly story, and what exactly had she said to convince Randy that what he saw would somehow improve with my presence?

“So.” Randy crossed his arms. Big arms. “When can I see it? Tonight?”

The sensation of being boxed in, trapped in a cusp moment of purest choice, warred with a weird diluted glee, what the hell, right? What the hell. It’s not my goddamned hole anyway now is it, not my personal property, it doesn’t have my name on it. Whatever happens won’t be my fault.

“Sure,” I said. “I get home about six.”

“All right” Randy’s smile restored, I thought he would actually shake my hand but instead he punched my shoulder, lightly, a gesture so adolescent that for a minute I misunderstood and stood, my own grin fixed, waiting to get smacked again but this time less tenderly. “I’ll give Shrike a call. See you later, man,” and gone, cold air blowing in his passing, and watching him all the way to his car, wondering, still my stupid grin until my friend the deserter came up to me, tapped me on the back.

“Friend of yours, Nicholas?”

“Guess so.”

I reached, seemingly without my own consent, for the phone: call Nakota. Then: no. No I won’t. Let her find out from him. Still grinning, put the phone down, and as I did I saw my bandage, soaked and bubbling, a rich reddish gravy leaking fresh across the counter and I blotted it, fast swipe with my sleeve, went at once to the bathroom to peel free the clotted gauze and rinse the wound, the hole, the running water not as fast as the leak, drainage they call it, this was drainage all right. “Look at that shit,” I said to myself, finally not even rinsing but just letting it run, run, if it was blood, I thought, I’d be bleeding to death.

It went on so long it got embarrassing: somebody, the new guy knocking at the door, “You okay in there?” and me watching the flow, mumbling something; at last he went away. Finally, without slowing, it just stopped. With my left hand, clumsy but getting better, you know what they say about necessity, I extracted my little Band-Aid tin of gauze and preclipped tape, made a new bandage, watched a careful moment to make sure it wasn’t going to start up again. Nothing. Nothing but the white innocence of the gauze, the crisscross tape, my sallow flesh.

The rest of the day dragged. Was I actually excited about my new job as ringmaster, hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry, step right in to the greatest hole on earth, you betcha. For once exercising my bullying rights as assistant manager, I made the new guy close up, drove home too fast for the weather, slewing and skidding, arriving a little before six.

Cold enough, in the entryway, to see my breath, cold enough to stiffen my normal hand as it tried to work the key, lumpy feel of my fingers and impatient, I used my right hand, ignoring the pain for that moment, sorry I had the next. Boom, boom, migraine throb in my palm and I had to sit down, right hand cradled in left, coddling my cut-rate stigmata and the knock on the door, loud and brisk, already?

“Come on in,” I said, too quiet, had to say it again but by that time they were, big ol’ Randy eager enough to slobber, and Nakota, cheap black windbreaker, hair in disarray, surlier than ever. She went to the refrigerator, came back scowling, no mineral water of course. That idiot grin was back on my face. It felt great.

“You’ve met,” Nakota said, as if that were somehow my fault.

“Want a beer?” I asked Randy. “Let’s take ’em with us.”

He got two Old Milwaukees, had his half-drunk before we got downstairs. Nakota, no dear, I will not let you lead, this is my dance. You made this bed, so lie in it. Buddy buddy down the hall, and my hand on the door, no flourish, it didn’t need one: “After you,” to Randy, and—am I smooth?—a quick step in front of Nakota, cutting in, cutting her off, I almost stepped on her. Grinning over my shoulder.

“Fuck you very much,” she said, less than a whisper; I winked at her.

My beer can was empty. I tossed it in the corner, heard its faint metallic rattle, nudged Randy. “Should’ve brought a couple,” but he wasn’t listening, no, he was on his knees, humble worshiper, saying—I had to get closer to hear— “Look at it, man, look at it, look at it,” his jacket’s shoulders hunched and damp with melted snow, white hair hanging down like tattered fringe.

Me on his left, and Nakota of course between us, her face, what, peaceful? Sort of, or as peaceful as she ever got; “fulfilled” might be a better word. Bending low as if at a water hole, ignoring both of us, drinking in the smell and it was truly staggering tonight, an almost liquorish reek. Was it a taste in the mouth, for them as for me? Did they feel my rich foreboding, my sudden nervous itch?

“Look at it!”

Nakota’s breath, in and out, in and out, I could see, even in the dimness, the tiny quiver of her breasts beneath the windbreaker. There was new blood at the corners of her mouth, not even dry yet.

Breath going in and out.

“Look at it.”

In and out.

My hand hurting, irritating, like a beating heart, in time almost with Randy’s rhythmic exclamations, shut up, I felt like shouting, shut up you stupid bastard, in and out and “Look” and all at once it was funny, funny in a way it had never been before, in fact hilarious, and beneath its influence, in a gleeful spasm of lunatic bravado I stood, flexed my knees in runner’s burlesque and began to jump, fast and then faster, back and forth across the Funhole, Jack be nimble, back and forth and sweat ripe on my forehead, what fun, back and forth, “Look Ma,” yelling, “no hand!” and back and forth now in slowing pirouettes and Randy’s arms grabbing me, his grip on me much like mine must have felt to Nakota, her face now pointed toward me, and I saw, with a clarity that calmed me, that she was frightened.

Randy’s face was blank, but his eyes were wide, so wide I saw the veins, and I laughed, a descending little chuckle because I was realizing I had just made pretty much of an inexplicable dick of myself and wanted to salvage something of it with a joke, in fact I had no idea exactly what had been so overwhelmingly funny just a minute ago.

“You were floating,” Randy said.

“You should see me dance,” but I saw he meant it, no metaphor, Randy would not reach for a metaphor, now would he? No. No, he would say what he saw.

“You were, you were, what’s the word—”

“Levitating,” Nakota said. Her voice was very dry.

“No no,” weak josh, “I’m just very fast,” but they weren’t buying, they were barely listening, they were staring at me.’Finally Randy turned to Nakota.

“You were right, Shrike,” he said. “Boy were you right.”

I looked at her, but she was looking at Randy, and then they both looked at me and Randy said, with a peculiar inflection, “You better lay down for a while, man. You don’t look too good,” and the fact was I didn’t feel too good either, so back we went, me lying on the couchbed with a fresh beer balanced on my stomach, Randy beerless across from me, Nakota running tap water in fruitless hopes of making it cold.

“Just drink beer,” I told her.

“What’d you do back there, man?” said Randy. He took a big swallow of beer. His earring jiggled. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” I was embarrassed now, I wished they would just quit looking at me and talk to each other about the Funhole, the weather, their curious tastes in sex partners, my curious taste in sex partners. Anything. “I was just acting stupid, okay?”

“You were levitating, Nicholas.” Nakota, sudden appearance over my head, looking as if she too had mastered the trick but no, she just took a seat on the couchbed back, looming down from there. “You were hanging in the air over the Funhole for at least thirty seconds. At least.”

“Bullshit.”

Randy said, “More like a couple minutes,” but she shook her head, how often had I seen that dismissive shake, used exclusively when she knew she was right, absolutely knew it, and I was scared, now. Scared of the way they kept looking at me. Scared of the way I couldn’t exactly remember exactly what I had done.

“You were right about him,” Randy said to her. He drank off his beer, reflexively crushed the can. “Gotta take a leak,” he announced, distracted politeness, shaking his head still in private wonder and moving off unerringly in the direction of the bathroom, maybe his bladder had a homing instinct. Door barely shut before I heard the vast luxurious stream, and I said quietly to Nakota, still above me like a gargoyle, “What’s all this shit you fed him, about you need me for the Funhole?”

“It’s true,” she said.

“My ass. For God’s sake, you’ve been coming Here yourself for weeks, you know you—”

“I can come here all I want,” she said, “but nothing happens.”

“What do you mean, nothing happens?”

“I mean,” with cold emphasis, “nothing happens. It just sits there. It doesn’t have a smell, it doesn’t—it’s not active without you, Nicholas. You’re a catalyst. You’re—”

Alarmed, I tried to sit up, to speak away her words, she was scaring the shit out of me and she wouldn’t stop: “Would you like to see our video, Nicholas? Randy’s and mine? We did it with his friend’s camcorder. Fifty minutes of pure static.”

“Come on,” grabbing at a straw, the merest twig, anything, “I wasn’t even there when—”

“You got the camcorder the first time. You sat with me to watch it. You said for you it never changes, it’s always the same image.”

Heart beating in time and I could feel my hand itching, itching hard under the bandage. “So what?”

“So it’s not like that for anyone else. Me, Randy, Vanese—”

“Who’s Vanese?”

“His girlfriend. We all see something different, all the time. But not you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.” And then, leaning down so her hair brushed mine, “I didn’t want you to know. Ever. I didn’t even believe it myself at first until the first time I tried it alone—”

“When was this?”

“Few months ago.”

“A few monthsT

“Nothing happened. Nothing happened with Randy, either. I could bring an army in there and it wouldn’t make any difference. That’s the point, Nicholas. Nothing happens without you.”

Randy, beer in either hand. “Here,” and he even opened it for me, put it in my hand but I didn’t want it, I didn’t want them there, either of them, maybe Nakota most of all. I felt tired, almost sick, and I didn’t want to hear any more bullshit, I just wanted to nurse my hand in silence and be left well enough alone.

“Go home,” I said, closing my eyes. “Shrike. Go home, Shrike.”

I heard Randy stand, heard the subtle creak of his boots. “Ask him if I can bring one,” he said to Nakota, who bent to me again.

“Nicholas, Randy wants to bring one of his pieces.”

Still eyes closed, “Pieces of what?”

“Sculpture, he’s an artist, a metalworker. You saw his stuff at the Incubus, remember? He wants to set one up by the Funhole, is that okay?”

“Why are you asking me?” I sat up, staring at th’em both, the beer toppling, splashing cold against my ribs. “Why are you asking mel It’s not mine, I’m not in charge of anything here. Do whatever you want. Just do whatever you want!”

“Listen,” Nakota to Randy, gaze still on me, “we better go.”

“I’ll bring that piece by, man,” and they left, then, finally, closing the door with an odd gentility and me left alone with my new terror, the rest of the night spent talking myself out of what Nakota had said, talking myself as far away from it as I could get.

When I woke my pillowed arm was numb, sticky-slick and, blinking, I saw my hand coated to the elbow with fluid as neat as a glove, a coy pink with tiny clots of deeper color spattered in some pattern which in my overwhelming disgust I chose not to decipher; I ran to the bathroom, literally ran, as if my arm was on fire, plunged it into the sink and turned the hot water on full blast, head averted like a fastidious driver past a smoking wreck, till I could feel the water on my plain bare skin, a plainly painful heat. I shut it off, toweled my arm, and found all of last night’s beer rushing willy-nilly up my throat so, bending, I had to take care of that, too.

Wiping up, back to the couchbed and without a voluntary glance tearing off the sheet—pink, too, and wet, that much I had to see—jumbled ball and straight to the trash, no thanks, I puked once already this morning. Deeply grateful to discover it was Wednesday, my day off, my content evaporating when knock-knock at my chamber door and Randy’s hesitant behemoth voice: “Hey, Nicholas? You up, man?”

Shit If I could have broken his neck I would have, just for the pleasure of the silence after the snap. “Yeah,” rubbing my frowsy face, vomit breath and less than half a phony smile. He carried something metal, silver and black and about two, two-and-a-half feet high. Looked something like a ladder as seen on the verge of a whiskey pass-out. Or maybe that was just my woozy perspective. Say what you see.

“Dead End,” Randy said, nodding at the metal thing, and I remembered in a halfass way the bit last night about bringing over a piece of his art, apparently this was it. Actually it was almost interesting—a ladder, yes, but crooked, twisted, the rungs less stepping spots than dirty tricks, descend at your own risk was the first-glance impression, but I was really in no mood to critique anything, so I tried to indicate this by what I was hoping was an innocuous nod. I did it a couple times for good measure. Randy didn’t say anything, just stood there, so I said, with another nod, “It’s really nice. Really.”

“Should I just put it in there?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

* By the time he came back, I had had time to wash my face, drink some water. He stood in the doorway, shook his head to my offer of coffee. “Gotta get back to work.” He was wearing the “Randy” shirt and a pair of jeans that I saw at second glance were not actually black but black with grease. “I got my truck outside.” My all-purpose duh look; “Tow truck, man. All-Star Towing. My day job,” and he smiled, shrugged. “Gotta eat, you know.”

“Me too. Every day.”

“Well. I’ll see you, man. Maybe later on tonight? Shrike said something about it.”

Maybe in hell, Randy, you and Shrike both. “Sure.”

When he had gone I sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and trying again to convince myself that all Nakota had said was worse than bullshit, just her own weird little way of fucking with my brain, and Randy, why Randy was obviously suggestible. By the time I was through with my coffee, I felt much better, and after a shower I felt almost good. Out, I said to myself. Climb out of this rathole and go do something.

Very cold but no wind, that kind of winter calm where every step is magnified, my friends the crows in bleak formation and me crunch, crunch, through the bitter crust beneath; it felt good to walk, hands in pockets, head down and breath leaking in thready white through my reddening nose, walking in a winter wonderland. Very few other people out. I stopped and got a newspaper, took it to a Burger King where I sat with a large coffee and read, feeling the peculiar unhappy serenity induced only by the steady perusal of disasters too remote to do anything about but feel wretched; it put all my stupid petty worries to rest. No, I am not Funhole Messiah, I just know too many weird people.

So of course I went to see Nakota.

She didn’t smile when I came in, artificial dark of Club 22, some weepy fake country tune on the jukebox. But she nodded, a grave almost formal gesture, and raised an empty beer glass with another nod.

“No thanks. Just a Coke,” and that was free, too.

“Randy come over yet?”

“First thing this morning.”

She smiled, little snarl of amusement. “He was hot to get that piece to you, Dead End, right?” I nodded. “He sure was impressed with you last night. What’d he do, ask you to lay hands on it?”

“No.” It was ludicrous, I had to smile, and her smile, her real one, joined mine, Nakota-Shrike, is there nothing you can do that I won’t forgive? Please, stop trying. “I don’t know about you,” I said. “I just do not know.”

“Know what?” Too much syrup in the Coke. Too rriuch, suddenly, in her smile.

“I don’t know why you bothered giving Randy that bullshit story. And all that about me levitating, I mean come on,” but I wasn’t smiling anymore and she wasn’t either, her whole face so careful that I felt the fear again, rich as vomit, the flicker behind her eyes all at once the birthing flicker of the figure, the video-thing; I pushed the Coke aside. “What is it with you?” I said, leaning not forward but back, away, gibbering in me that same feeling as when I must turn away from the screen. “Why does everybody have to be as crazy as you are?”

“I’m not the crazy one, Nicholas. Or would you rather use the word ‘possessed’?” I didn’t answer. Tilted head, and the smile she gave when she -was particularly delighted by something gone badly wrong: “You really did it, you know. Whether you believe it or not.”

“You,” ,my shaken whisper, “are out of your fucking mind. Leave me alone, all right? Just leave me alone,” sliding off the stool, pushing out into the ice and dazzle of the afternoon, skittering on the sidewalk but not falling, no, maybe I could just fly home. Stop it, are you going to go to her for sanity, she’s crazy as a shithouse rat and always has been. Stop it. I leaned against a newspaper box, a pain in my chest, the cold air too cold in my lungs. I was three blocks east before I remembered my car.

Barely working the key, the engine whispered several times before finally starting, maybe I could call my good buddy Randy for a tow. My right hand, my “bad” hand, curled in my lap like a dying pet, all at once an ache unbearable, like a burn, a fresh and agonizing burn and I ripped the bandage away, to do what, don’t know; staring, I sat there, watched as a structure of crystals as fine as beach sand grew of its own accord from the wound, minute ziggurat that filled up like a beaker with blood, my blood, and suddenly I began to scream, a soundless and infinite howl as I beat my hand, whipped it over and over against the steering wheel, again and again until the muscles of my arm tightened with exhaustion’s heat and I let my arm, my hand fall limp to the seat; it had absolutely no feeling at all, not least in the wound, and I was glad. Crying and glad and I drove home one-handed, went upstairs, wrapped the whole thing in a towel and sat to watch the news, drinking a crusty glass of ancient Tang scrapings. By the time the weather came on I had stopped crying.

Why, though, didn’t it hurt?

I had hit it hard enough to break bones, certainly I had tried my best. But there was no pain.

Look at it.

No.

Go on. Look at it.

No,

Conscience, arguing for or against? Curiosity is a horrible thing. I pulled off the towel all at once, one big scared conjurer’s whoosh, and there, ladies and gentlemen, is the rabbit in the hat, is a hand, perfectly normal and uninjured, with a hole in the palm the size of a quarter and black as its big-daddy namesake, for God’s sake say it out loud you’ve got a goddamn Funhole of your own growing right out of your body yes you do oh yes you do and that’s why

and in my panic I found myself walking, back and forth, holding my arm at a ridiculous stiff angle, keep that thing away from me and back and forth before the windows, I must have been going for quite a while because the news was long over and a sitcom was on. Laughter. A commercial for an airline. Pet food. At least put a bandage on the fucking thing, that way you won’t have to look at it. if I can’t see you, Mr. Hole, you’re not really there.

But at least it was constructive action, at least it wasn’t pacing like a psychotic rat, and at least I didn’t have to look at it anymore. It was hard to do, I was shaking pretty much all over, and when I heard knocking for a minute I thought, auditory hallucinations. Then: no, stupid, it’s just your new disciple. And that made me laugh, and got me to the door.

He had beer, good beer for a change, and he was alone. No grinning bitch in tow to mock my festering disintegration, to remind me by her crooked shine of everything I wanted most not to know, and that in itself was worth the price of admission. Plus now I didn’t have to sit alone thinking crazy thoughts.

“Sit down,” I said.

“Cold fuckin’ weather,” he said.

The weather. We talked about it, he told me what a bitch of a day he’d had, every car battery in town must have gone dead overnight, one call after another. He wasn’t Aristotle but he was a live human being and he could tell a decent story and pretty soon we had the stereo on and he was telling me about his art.

“Seems weird, you know, I always hated art class in school, bunch of shit. But I love working on my sculpture. I’ve shown ’em, some of them, at the Incubus. You been there, right?”

Killer clowns, and a pocketful of bugs, those were the days. “Couple times.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not much of a place but it’s a start, right? It’s not like I’m actually makin’ any money,” and he smiled, a surprisingly shy smile. Drank more beer. “I wouldn’t be driving a tow truck, you know, if I was.”

“Well, I don’t work at Video Hut for the intellectual stimulation either.”

Dead End was one of a series, he told me, some of the pieces incorporating more than metal— “One’s got a skull,” Dead Set and a hairless headful of curlers, of course—and Dead Reckoning, that was a metal eyeball attached to a telescope; I didn’t have the heart, or the balls, to bring up the fact that dead reckoning meant navigation precisely without the use of a telescope or any other device. Call it artistic license.

“Dead Dipping, that’s got an acid beaker, it’s a kind of process, right, and this new one, Dead End, it’s like a ladder, it’s like all the way to the bottom—”

“I noticed that.” My voice was pleasantly slurred from Randy’s good beer. I liked Randy and his good beer too, I liked the way they both distracted me from things I would rather not have.to think about. I liked the way I was getting empty-stomach gutfuck drunk on Randy’s good beer, as far as I was concerned he could talk about his art all night long if he had a mind to and even if he didn’t I did.

All the sitcoms were gone and so was the news and so was everything else, some kind of cut-up movie buzzing on the TV and Randy’s beer was also gone and he was standing up, in fact two of him were standing, saying something about going out to get more. And I was agreeing that this was a fine idea, and there we were, on the stairway.

And there we were going the wrong way, going down the hall instead of down the stairs, and a very small part of me was banging its head in frustration and terror against the furry walls of my great and perfect drunkenness, and we were shushing each other like giggling idiots, which in fact we were and wasn’t it fine, though, wasn’t it fun} And my unsore hand, my good bad hand, on the doorknob, and inside the sweetest smell in the world, a siren smell like heaven and beer and open pussy and summer all the time and Randy beside me, did he smell it too, saying something and” I nodded at him, yes, yes, working at my bandages and I couldn’t quite get them off, the tape snarling on the gauze and it was pissing me off so I ripped and worried them with my teeth, spit them down and off, oh what a kind relief and I stuck my hand down the Funhole just as far as it could go, as deep as it could get, down that sweet-smelling friendly hole and did it feel good? Oh God you know it did. And I wiggled it around, yeah, and I didn’t really feel anything because it was feeling me and it was a wonderful thing, I couldn’t imagine why I’d been so scared before, it was just what was meant to happen, what wanted to be.

“—please—”

Not my voice, no. Was there someone here with me?

“—on, man, listen to me, you got—”

Oh my yes, Randy, my good friend Randy, and we’d come here for him, hadn’t we? Yes. Yes, don’t be selfish, at least listen to what the poor son of a bitch is saying and boy is he sweating, is it hot in here or something?

“—Dead End.” Yes indeed this boy was sweating. “Look at it, man!”

He sure likes to call me man, doesn’t he, and the idea made me smile, a lazy smile and I turned my head but it was sort of hard to see so instead I turned my body, slow one-eighty rotation and my arm was the axle, the dear hole the fixed point around which I spun, feet in the air and graceful as a swimmer and sure enough, Randy’s sculpture was doing something very strange. No wonder he looked so scared.

“Is it melting?” I asked.

“Don’t touch it anymore, okay, Nicholas?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. “Did I break it or something?”

“No.” Everything about him was shaking. Even his voice. “But every time you touch it, part of it—melts, okay? So don’t touch it anymore.”

He was right, I saw that he was right: where my hand had presumably been, on the crooked metal rungs, were somehow indentations, melted to resemble the footsteps of something very strange indeed. And down its length, he must see it too, that greasy nacreous shine, that signature video light. What next, the figure itself? Climbing?

“Nicholas?”

“All right,” I said—I was nothing if not agreeable—but all at once I started to feel very weird and I realized it was the beer, it was being so drunk, I was going to throw up and for some reason this struck me as hilarious. Pukin’ down the Funhole. Even Nakota couldn’t match that. But if I did then I would have to throw up on my own arm and I didn’t really want to do that, so I reached out my free hand to Randy and asked in my agreeable voice, “Would you please pull me the fuck out of here? Because I think I’m gonna barf.”

I did, too. It was amazing.

Alone.

Cold.

On the bathroom floor, my head very near the toilet bolt, its rusty crusted sharpness pressing with a kiss’s delicacy against my left ear. All of me aching but in particular my right arm, my nose full of snot and all the light in the room wrong, somehow, too bright and too pale.

Why was I lying on the bathroom floor?

The memory did not come in pieces but all at once, and when it did I retched, sorry little sound, there was nothing left in me to void. More than anything I did not want to look at my hand, no, I don’t think I can do that. No.

“Nicholas.”

She scared me so much I whacked my head against the toilet, she was the last person I wanted to see, I was so glad she was there. She

squatted, tilting her head, and reached to gently turn my face toward her.

“Big night last night,” she said.

Tears. Isn’t that just what you would expect from a fucking self-destructive self-pitying derelict and she was getting them, I wept as I rose from floor to knees to standing slouch, she tried to lead me to the other room but I resisted. Hot water, rub the whole bar of soap on my face, hold it with your left hand if you please, please.

“Randy called me. He was here till about six, six-thirty, he would’ve stayed longer but he had to get to work. He said—”

Palm up, left palm: the universal gesture for “save it.” She left me there to wash, and I scrubbed at my face. God how I hated myself. Look in the mirror, you dumbshit.

I looked at my hand.

Half-dollar hole. At least.

There are no words to tell how I felt at that particular moment. I used up the rest of the gauze, quick and clumsy, found Nakota making instant coffee. She stopped to watch as I dressed, goose bumps and my cold legs stepping like a nervous dance, and then she was beside me, motioning my clothing away and down, unbuttoning with sure fingers her own baggy dress.

Warm skin beneath the comforter and the heating motions of her flesh, Hps against my throat, teeth tugging at the hair on my chest, nipping a line down my belly and then taking me, still half-soft, into her ovaled mouth. I rubbed with one tender fingertip the skin around her lips, my eyes closing in pleasure and dumb-animal relief, and held her head against me gently, gently till I came. In silence then I lay beside her as she used my left hand, my thumb, to come herself, then lay in that silence with me, her head almost on my shoulder.

Finally into my near-placid near sleep, her in-sectile voice: “Randy said you melted his sculpture.”

I didn’t answer.

“It’s steel, Nicholas. Do you know what the melting point of steel is?”

Wearily, I knew what was coming: “No, Mrs. Science, but I bet you do.”

“Three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Give or take a degree.”

Well.

“He said you levitated again. With your arm in the Funhole.”

I didn’t speak. I had nothing to say. “Nicholas,” urgent, sitting up, and I saw the cold wash stippling down her skin, she didn’t notice, “there’s something so big happening to you, why do you have to get fucked up to let it happen? I wish it was me,” and that, of course, was the whole camp follower’s crux. Which made everything she said suspect, not that it wasn’t suspect enough, but then again at least she wasn’t running screaming away from the freak I was becoming, at least she could still blow me for old time’s sake or why ever the hell she did it. Not love. Probably wanted to suck off the hole in my hand but was too shy to ask.

“I’d know what to do with it.”

Ah, God. And I had almost gone in headfirst to save her. I put my right hand deliberately on her face, squeezed with my painful fingertips her bony cat’s chin.

“I.don’t want any of this to be happening,” I said.

“It’s a little late for that.”

“I want it,” as deliberately, “to go away.”

“The Funhole’s not going anywhere,” and the way she said it, the calm gloat of her gaze, gave me an intense urge to smash her face straight through to the back of her skull and horrified, I almost jumped out of bed, somehow feeling the way her skin would split, her caving nose and lips blown back by the force of my fist, my right fist. “Leave it alone,” I said. My voice was shaking.

“You can—”

“I said leave it alone!” and without wanting or meaning to I had her by the hair, pulling her face close to mine like a caricature of a bully, “Leave it alone!” and I watched her face go careful and blank and I cried out, wrapped both arms around her and held her tight, tight, saying over and over into her hair, “I don’t want to go crazy, I don’t want to go crazy, Nakota. I don’t.”

“You’re not,” she said. “This is really happening.”

Of course Randy had his own interpretation of the whole circus, none of which I was interested in hearing, but there he was at quitting time, tow truck idling as I counted out my drawer, his whole manner so eerily respectful that seeing him was worse than listening to Nakota’s coldhearted rant. He stood, one arm on the counter, the other jingling his keys. Blink, blink, those pale gray eyes.

“Sorry I had to leave the other morning, man.”

“No problem.”

“I had to get to work, you know? Otherwise—”

“Randy, really, it’s no problem.” I lost my place and had to start counting again, out loud, keep your conversation to yourself. Patient, yeah, with my impatience, waiting me out.

“Hey listen,” hulking diffidence, “you doin’ anything tonight?”

“No, and I don’t really feel like doing anything either, Randy, all right?” Suddenly I was angry, mad enough to show it. Sorry We’re Closed, no sideshow tonight. “I feel like shit and my fucking hand hurts and all I want to do is go home and take a shit and go to bed, okay? Is that okay with you?”

In the following silence my anger shriveled. I looked away, out the window into the ten o’clock dark, shifting wind but not as black as it gets, no. He pulled you out of the Funhole, you dumb ungrateful piece of shit, remember? Sat by you and watched you puke. Talk about only a mother.

“Hey.” I turned back, wanted to put out my hand but, embarrassed, couldn’t decide which one—there’s a unique dilemma for you—and settled for a stupid shrug. “I’m, I’m just—shook-up. If you want to stop by later, come on ahead.”

“No big deal,” he said. No smile, but not pissed either. “I wanted to check on Dead End mostly.”

Oh yes, that’s right, the art they said I melted. By my fiery touch. Shit. “Sure.” I felt so incredibly tired all of a sudden. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a prick. I just—”

“Don’t worry about it,” with a great and sudden gravity. “If all this shit was happening to me, I’d be plenty worried about it too.”

Whatever else he said lost me, but those words went all the way home, in the flat and sitting in the dark and thinking, thinking. Worried, yeah. A simple idea but a good one. I thought of myself weeping to Nakota, loose-mouthed and sloppy and sick looking, and I was swept with a

feeling of self-disgust so intense that I had to leave ray chair, stand and pace it away, away. But it wouldn’t go away. So I did.