Free Skin by Kathe Koja Page B

her mouth, still sore. Jerome twitching, bony hands a-flex in sleep's deepest room. "You still want to do it next month?"
        "Before it gets too cold, yeah."
        
***
        
        Next month already December, and snow: Jerome had diddled the electric meter, but they would need more heat soon; Bibi's scattered dayjobs, she was already paying more than her half of the rent, Tess immersed so deeply now in Mme Lazarus and hating more than ever the pickup welding she had to do, on and off, the waste of time worse than anything. It was so hard, this work, this fresh new discipline, that to stop at all-even, sometimes, for the shows-was bare-wire frustration. If not for Jerome, so happy with the scutwork, she could not have done it at all.
        And Bibi, in sudden chime: "You know what, we ought to start thinking about charging. To get in, I mean," and when Tess did not answer at once unique Bibi combination of diffidence and truculence, "Better idea?"
        "No," stretching into a long yawn as if all her muscles woke at once; sharp sunny flare through the window, the ghost of summer's arc. Jerome sniffling into wakefulness in his tattered cocoon and her arm around Bibi, half a smile: "Of course we should charge them. By the pound."
        Bibi: prominent in AntiTrust magazine, black-and-white stare and her theory of tanzplagen, the quote beneath her picture "Chaos must be met with greater chaos." Another photo, she and Tess like the gods of disaster, posing before the ringed rubble of the foundry: Bibi as changeling, heavy wire earrings and sharp new studs bored in either nostril, lips drawn back and Tess austere behind, all in dun gray and chapped cheeks stretched unsmiling against the freshet wind, fist light to her lips like the breath that breathes the secret. Paul bought a dozen copies; Raelynne said they looked like thugs. Jerome cut the picture out and taped it above the worktable until Tess made him take it down.
        The article appeared a bare week before the new show, the last one, they decided, done for free; hard to keep people out of an outdoor show, anyway, and anyway they would need help to start charging, everyone was already pushed, time-squeezed between dayjobs, performances, rehearsals; even Jerome had acquired an assistant, Peter: more silent than he, thinner and taller. They both lived on the first floor now, the dog woman having vacated without fuss or explanation: fast-food wrappers and their own worktable, Tess's contributions and what they could scrounge; they were excellent scroungers. Scrapyard duty, setup and teardown, ran errands, put up flyers; Tess had insisted they become full members of the group, "I can't shit without them," and their wordless shine, Bibi joking in private: our first children.
        Not much private time, anymore, for jokes or anything else. Bibi the demon choreographer, besieging Tess at the worktable to show ideas, ask advice, slumped at last to sleep, Paul sometimes-quilt and Tess still up, working. Mme Lazarus far evolved, now, past her original sketchy persona, become the walking emblem of mastery, Tess's proof to herself of her own worthiness to play this harsh new game; evolution and culmination, she had to be right. Modification: the distorted landscape where function does not follow form but creates it. Centerpiece of the new show, Crazy Brainchildren and perhaps the Madame was in some gray sense an offspring, she had mocked the notion but perhaps: child of her blistered palms, blisters and burn sores, hour after hour behind the mask; deep green goggle-world from which she emerged with a diver's dazed care; surfacing. Even Bibi said she was working too hard, Bibi with her own frantic agenda, more than her share: spreading the word, seeking-what? Inspiration? Sandrine said she always conjured their most stringent costumes after nights in the piercing bars; what did Bibi see, what stringencies did she court from which she roamed home sweaty