Free Skin by Kathe Koja

also final, as if Crane had ceased existing in the instant of his departure. There was talk about replacing him, mainly from Sandrine and Raelynne, both of whom believed the group needed another male presence:
        "For balance," Sandrine said.
        "For balance and to fuck me," Raelynne said, "and to carry the heavy shit, right, Tess?"
        Hot-wiring under surgical light, brief distracted nod; Jerome blushing beside her; he was learning not to, learning a lot. Jerome had found the buckets of bearings, had showed Tess where she could acquire a surplus army smoke machine, other toys less obvious, one's greasy guts now delicate before her like an anatomy lesson. Hungry, Jerome, hungry all the time, what does this do? What's this for? How many amps, how sharp, how fast? He found her workspace endlessly enticing: the cardboard cartons of welding rods, menagerie of files, solder pencils, chipping hammers, double-sided filter masks like twin insectile snouts, even the endless sound of the ventilator a flat bassless music, work's own harmonic voice. Living on air, sleeping, when he slept, on a pallet-bed on the disused second floor-the show floor-so he could be close, and need not take the long trudge back to wherever he was squatting these days from his rapt tutelage with Tess.
        Who found him more than useful, in many ways, not least a bright protracted shield when she needed it; Bibi's infrequent immersions in Paul, for instance, or now, let them talk to each other, she had work to do. Anyway dance was Bibi's preserve: who, what, how many; though scrupulous, always, to inform Tess of her choices, ask opinion, ask advice and often take it: "You don't think like a performer," Bibi would say. "That's invaluable."
        Their talks: Bibi coiled loose on her broken-down bed, sucking tonic water through a red straw, and Tess, legs drawn up and a handful of bent hinges, telling them like rosary beads, one by soundless one. Before even the shows themselves was the intricate fun of this; there was no one like Bibi, no one who could speak so sharply, listen so full. Partner in the best way, right hand and left, each what the other was not. So many ways a joining like this could fail, and they had avoided them all.
        So. Tess was content to leave dance to Bibi; if she needed another body she would get one. Meanwhile Jerome would move the sculpture, splice wires, ask a million questions and apparently be satisfied to sleep on splinters for the privilege of working with the Surgeons; already, a reputation.
        It was true-renown both antic and frantic, anything, said the buzz, could happen at a Surgeons show. How far, in such a short time; once started, the buzz went under its own power, obeyed its own acceleration. Fed by the wet excesses of Infections and Their Uses, its slippery near nudity, its buckets of costume-shop blood splashed wild counterpoint to the strangely foodlike odor of smoking rosin solder, by the ominous theatrics of Hysterica's mimed balletic cannibalism beneath a swaying frieze of plastic masks made to mimic the dancers, features heat-gunned to distortions too gross for mere caricature, as if those huge twisted faces were the outward manifestation of souls too ugly to contemplate for long: each show brought louder crowds, larger crowds, word of mouth urged by more and less than truth, rumor running like too much current until Slave to the Burn , where for the first time they had to turn people away, had to pay with beer two steroid cases to hang on the crashbars until the show was ready to begin. Even Bibi's ambitions had not prepared them for this.
        Nervous in a new way, cold outside but the room already too hot and half-whispered curses and quick bickerings as if unwilling to be overheard by those they heard outside: in the hall, against the door, their susurrations endless as a cage of moving snakes: skin against skin. Bibi reminding everyone for the tenth time that this one