Skin by Kathe Koja Page A

Asylum's, somebody at Asylum's already asked where he could get tickets." Standing over Tess, now, hands on her shoulders: "Come with me tonight," and intercepting her shrug, "There's always work to do, that's what we do. Come on, you can take one night off. Besides you ought to see this guy, he's in that fou music thing, remember I told you? Just come on," dragging her arm like a little kid and Tess's long rare smile, briefest nod in counterpoint to the fresh-begun banging, big and hollow, from the three downstairs; for once, she thought, let someone else work while I play.
        
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        Asylum's smelled like a gym, mold and old sweat and the hundred secret stinks of working bodies. Rows of cheap folding chairs, some broken, some incongruous-new against the tired laminate of the floor, the stage where various instruments were being manipulated with varying degrees of violence and success.
        A sawed-off cello. A drum kit played with the body. Two wildly out-of-tune bass guitars used inexpertly by a pair of blond women who looked like mother and daughter. And a long glittering stream of bells, silver, gold, cracked, split open to show clappers huge and bare as swollen knobs of flesh, the protruding tongues of the dead: played by a man, young man, eyes closed, lips pliant in choirboy half smile, the bells' dirty tethers hooked horse-collar and winding around his bare chest to hang down past his thighs as if extruded anew by each deliberate motion, each quick and shuddering jounce.
        "His name is Michael," Bibi in her ear, warm breath and Tess barely nodded, caught by his motion, he was so obviously the only thing worth watching. The performance was as badly done as the lighting, cheap gelatinous primaries, it was all pretty worthless.
        But not him, the bell ringer; see him now in his spastic crouch amidst the shrill tribal ring, sweat, he was sweating, the muscles of his legs bunched in effort and the bells in his hands like the jingling scales of lizards, descending sounds as the guitar-flogging women rolled like cannonballs ("Hedgehogs," Tess in Bibi's ear) and the body-drummer used his elbows to thump to a flat finale.
        No applause, but de rigueur comment, instant and earnest and Bibi pushing past it all, Tess a step behind to follow her over the stage. To corner the bell ringer, hand out, smiling: "I'm Bibi Bloss," shaking his hand and Tess remembered Bibi's hand in hers back in her party-store workspace: first hard handshake, the one that did not seem to test. "And this is Tess Bajac. We-"
        "I know who you are." Close up he was very beautiful, strange haughty overbite in the long shy smile, long hair pulled back in messy plait, half-curled, half-straight, bright tarnished color of the silent bells. "You're the Surgeons. I've seen one of your shows-it was incredible." His hand hot on Tess's, fingers blunt and strong. "I'm Michael Hispard."
        Bibi invited him out for coffee, a drink, but he declined, he had to clean up, there was work to do. Nodding to the Surgeons flyer, already scrolling at the edges: "I'll see you there," speaking carefully to both, diffident good-bye and gone, faint trickling jingle in his wake and Bibi's grin: "Pretty, huh?"
        Very pretty. Tess glanced once more in the direction he had gone to see him, bells gathered careless against his bare chest, watching them leave. And then caught, abashed, ducking away this time for good and they both smiled, at him, at each other.
        Out into the dark, moist wind and Bibi, nudging her: "Well? Aren't you glad you came?"
        The only one worth watching; hair like summer and hot fingers, strong on her own. I'll see you there; will you? I'll see you, if you do. "Yeah," Tess said. "I think I am."
        Spring heat, again unseasonable, sweating first thing in the morning and Paul's dramatic curse, bounding naked out of bed-he had a muscular ass, Paul, and shiny gold piercings newer than