Prototype. Part 20

Her voice sounded hurt all of a sudden, and angry, and where was this coming from?

"And you tell me I have trouble making up my mind?"

"I -" Adrienne tried. Anything she could say would be wrong, but silence would be worse. "I never pretended to be something I wasn't. It's the way I am. My inclinations just didn't fall exclusively one way or another."

"Oh, that's so a.n.a.lytical," Sarah groaned. With her hair still in those braids, she looked feral and wounded. "You know, there are times you seem one step removed from your life."

And it didn't bear arguing about, for there was no right or wrong here. Each of them was what she was, and true to that; made differently, and perhaps only half-compatible, and it was that other half that could potentially bring so much pain. Pain over what one might long for, that the other could never be.

As quickly as she had launched into it, Sarah drew back out. With downcast eyes and creased forehead, she squirmed in closer to Adrienne's side, radiant with body heat and sheer presence, one arm thrown across Adrienne's shoulders, one leg draped across Adrienne's knees. She might have no words left; her body would say all. That was the thing about arguing naked: There was nothing behind which to hide, only raw truth.

So Adrienne lay in her possessive embrace, even returned it, but felt alive with questions. What will happen to us? - this was the big one. How will we see each other in a year, or two, or five? It could work between us, always, but will our hormones let it?

They left the bed later. When neither felt like cooking, Sarah volunteered to go for Chinese take-out. A peace offering, it felt like, her suggestion made almost sheepishly, I know how much you love Chinese.

The condo suffered for her absence, some vitality missing, and Adrienne tried to fill the void with music, turning the stereo louder than it needed to be.

She sat on the sofa with one leg folded beneath her, holding the rainstick that was supposed to remind her of San Francisco, and had when at first, but no longer did. New meanings had supplanted old. She turned it end to end to end, listening to the delicate showers. Whether or not Sarah had covertly intended it, the sound now conjured up her more than anything, from her wide knowing eyes to her peasant feet, and everything between. The gift had become the giver.

And what might the giver become? Adrienne had been worried at first by this evolving Sarah, with the whiplike hair and the navel ring and the penchant for new friends more pessimistic than those she had at home. But these were only affectations. She was the same Sarah, just doing what she had been schooled to do: live amongst the savages, and take them to her heart.

It was entirely possible that the fear on display in the bedroom had manifested itself backward, that her own issue was not whether this was the same Sarah or some darker twin. Perhaps fear of abandonment lay in both their hearts, and only one of them had courage enough to admit it.

She's so alive and absorbs so much more than I do. There, it was good to admit it. In a year's time, or two, or five, will I seem like enough for her? That's the question.

But n.o.body could answer it now, and sometimes the best anyone could do was sit and listen to the rain. And in lieu of the real thing...

Make her own.

Twenty-Four.

Word spread fast: Graham announced that not only did he plan on unveiling a new piece - his largest and most complex yet, he promised - but tonight would be a first. Tonight he would actually confer a name on something.

Adrienne and Sarah both thought it significant. All those paintings and not a one of them named ... like illegitimate children he might have been ashamed of and would rather have forgotten. Perhaps he was entering a new phase. Like Pica.s.so and his blue period, maybe Graham was leaving his b.a.s.t.a.r.d-offspring period behind. Although they might as well offer Vegas odds on what lay ahead. Nina thought it had something to do with whatever he was keeping locked in that storage room, and was being so secretive about.

Graham said he didn't want to do it until everyone could be there, which included Uncle Twitch, so that meant they would have to wait until he got off work. From there it was a short hop to the suggestion that they all pa.s.s the night at The Foundry.

Did she really want to be here? Adrienne had yet to decide, every decision borderline these days, it seemed, not necessarily to be trusted. Ulterior motives might be veined beneath their surfaces.

The Foundry was the same, always the same, claustrophobic and smoky and dank, thudding with enough force to twitter the stomach, and packed with Sarah's tribes of discontent and disillusion. The wall screens dished up one silent, ghastly image after another; at the moment, one was flashing excerpts from what appeared to be an old precautionary film on industrial accidents. The camera zoomed blandly in on the hand of an ashen-faced blue-collar worker being treated at a first-aid station. One finger was flayed to the bone, as if it had been ground down in a pencil sharpener.

"I put in a special request for this tape tonight," Graham was saying. "Twitch told them it was my birthday."

"How many birthdays does that make this year?" Nina asked.

"Five. They never remember."

"They would if they gave free drinks on your birthday," said Erin.

Sarah leaned forward, elbows on the table, too far away for anything less than a shout. "Any significance to this particular tape?"

He slid back in his chair and watched, eyes either reverent or half-drunk, it was difficult to decide. How did he view this? More carnage, a twisted leg broken in at least three places, the bends agonizing to contemplate. The screen was the mirror of the soul? Maybe that was the key to Graham's fascination.

"It makes me think," he said. "I always wonder what the accidents sounded like. You know how bone conducts sound? I always wonder what sound these poor dumb f.u.c.kers heard that n.o.body else around them could hear."

"Well, I'll tell you what they heard the next day," Erin said.

"What's that?"

"Weeping insurance agents."

Most of them laughed, a good mean chuckle at the expense of State Farm and Prudential, which suddenly struck Adrienne as a telling moment. They liked tragedy and misery because of the purely random element inherent in them. Suffering was a great equalizer, respecting no money or status. If they could never aspire to the success they saw flaunted around them, what perverse comfort it must be to see that success was no insulation from life's cruelties.

This they'd understood long before she had.

Adrienne found her eyes returning over and over to Nina, who had undergone another of her metamorphoses. Gone were the red dye and scarves and flamboyant gypsy skirts. Her thick hair hung straighter now, black, and she wore a flowing sari draped about her chunky body. A tiny, jeweled bead glittered at the side of one pierced nostril. She looked like the world's palest Hindu.

"How does she manage to pull this off?" Adrienne asked Sarah, discreetly, once Nina had gone to the bar. "She should look ridiculous but she doesn't."

Sarah beamed. "It's the weirdest thing, isn't it? Don't you think it must be that deep down she adopts something of whatever it is she takes on? She never seems to be playing a role."

"A serial multiple personality."

Sarah frowned, c.o.c.king her head. "That's a bit severe -"

"I'm joking."

When Nina returned with drinks, she toasted to celebrate resuming her creative endeavors with mutant children's literature.

"I know what I was doing wrong with the first ones," she said. "I really was writing for kids and trying to be as honest with them as I could be, and that's why it never went anywhere."

"Better the little brats learn the awful truth now, huh?" Graham perked up with a c.o.c.keyed laugh. "That'll teach you the value of honesty."

"Right, right!" Nina squeezed his arm, delighted. "See, he gets it! So what I decided I should do is write satirical children's lit for adults who know better now."

"I like this," said Clay, laughing. It was the closest thing to enjoyment she had seen in him for too long. "You've already started one, haven't you. I can tell."

Nina's head bobbed with excitement. "It's a sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic fantasy on the high seas. The Slave Ship Lollipop."

Even Adrienne laughed at the idea; and Sarah, well, forget it: Sarah was howling.

"You can publish a whole line," Adrienne told her, inspired, or maybe it was the gin, "and call the series Crib Death."

Definitely the gin, but maybe she had needed that for a while. Two parts gin to one part anxiety, then stir. Things did feel better now, looser, and it didn't even seem so sad to think that Nina's latest scheme was surely doomed to failure, like the rest. How undaunted she seemed, something n.o.ble in the way she flung herself headlong into new ident.i.ties, new projects, without a trace of bitterness over the past. If only she could hang onto that. Seeing Clay more comfortable than he had been since Fort Collins made her wonder if being around Nina was actually therapeutic for him.

He sat on Erin's right, Graham to Erin's left, she between the two of them like a mediator. Clay had told Adrienne there hadn't been anything much between him and Erin since that pathetic Friday night, neither one mentioning it since, skirting the matter like a secret shame. He had confessed maybe it was better that way, maybe she would gravitate toward Graham and they both would be happier for it. And himself?

What's a little more solitude to an emotional hermit? he had said. She'd told him to can the self-pity and take a risk.

She was starting to feel the slightest bit unsteady in her chair when Erin leaned over to touch her arm, a moment Erin looked as if she had been waiting for. She scooted across a seat Adrienne realized was now empty, Clay and Graham having disappeared. Erin waved toward the dance floor, where things had turned tres savage.

"Whenever Twitch plays anything by Skrew," she said, "they can't resist." Watching for a moment, the two of them out there, underfed and only partially visible, colliding repeatedly with each other while the stale air was rent with shreds of growling thunder. "It's like those nature films they shoot up in the Rockies, with the bighorn sheep b.u.t.ting heads."

"Over you?" Adrienne asked.

Her smile was a shy flicker. "It'd be flattering to think so. But they probably would anyway." Erin tried to laugh and it came out very wrong. "I wanted to ask you something."

Adrienne nodded, blinking to clear her eyes. This sounds serious and I have no business hearing serious right now - Erin checked beyond their huddle to make sure it would go no further; Sarah and Nina were in their own little animated world.

"If," she said, "if I can convince him to do it, do you think you might, like ... talk to Graham? You know ... privately? Like you do with Clay?"

"I suppose I could spend a little time with him," she heard herself saying. "But it would be better if I helped him get with someone who could be more impartial. With that triangle between you and him and Clay, I don't know, Erin." Wait, why was she even asking this now? Adrienne leaned in and hoped her eyes would not betray her fallen sobriety. "Is something going on that might have an impact on Clay, that I should know about?"

Erin's forehead creased as she folded her arms, stick arms over an enviable chest, shaking her head. "No, it's just Graham, I'm really starting to worry, he's getting more like Clay in one respect, he's holding things in more than he ever used to, and I'm afraid for him. Last week..." A steadying breath. "Last week he asked me to marry him and I said no, I wasn't ready to marry anybody. Can you imagine? I can't even get the hang of monogamy."

Adrienne shut her eyes a moment. The pounding from the speakers felt as if it were thickening her brain with scar tissue. "How did Graham react?"

"He spent maybe twenty minutes talking about hanging himself. I don't know how to deal with this. He finally quit and said he was just kidding, but..." She could not finish.

I don't know how to deal with it either, Adrienne almost told her, but said she would have a word with Graham, as long as she could make it appear that she and Erin were not conspiring against him - but really, they should discuss this later.

"And that little room, where he's been sculpting whatever the h.e.l.l it is," Erin went on, "even I don't know what's going on in there. It's been like an obsession for him the past week or more. He's burning something in there, you wouldn't believe the smell."

Adrienne supposed that this was when what had started out as a promising evening really began its dive. Such a precarious balance this group walked. Ten minutes could make a difference that almost defied belief. Their whole lives were one bipolar mood disorder.

When Clay and Graham came wobbling back from the dance floor, she saw that Clay was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and Graham looked glumly sheepish, kept rubbing his elbow. She thought of Lady Macbeth, rubbing, rubbing, out, d.a.m.ned spot.

Another hour, two, and Sarah tried to get Adrienne to dance when the motion was less frenzied, but by now the last things she trusted were her feet and her balance. Only perception seemed unimpaired. If anything, it had amplified, the grim subterranean world of The Foundry roaring around her, inside her.

Then someone staged a whipping, a special treat for the night - Nina had mentioned this happened occasionally, but Adrienne had yet to see it, had only once noticed two pairs of handcuffs dangling from one of the chain link part.i.tions.

Garter-belted young woman; scarred male plaything stripped to the waist and cuffed in place, barebacked; the crowd made room as the coil of black leather rose and fell, stretched and recoiled; some cheering and others watching, glazed and mesmerized, the crack of the lash just audible over the hushed sensual throb of whatever music Twitch had cued - And the worst of it was, this was taking place not fifteen feet away, and to her coagulated reasoning it really had begun to seem normal, perfectly normal behavior for a Wednesday night.

Why else would she have gone streaming away from the table with the others for a closer look?

Beside her, Sarah watched without blinking, and soon lifted one hand before her mouth, two fingers at her lips as she idly pushed her tongue tip back and forth through the cleft between them, as distractedly content as a toddler sucking its thumb.

I'll lose her someday, Adrienne thought, I won't be enough, and it didn't even seem as sad as it should; just another given.

"You want to be over there doing it too, don't you?"

"I might have to someday." Sarah nodding, an automaton. "I might have to know. How it feels. From either side. I might."

She broke from her trance, dropped her hand with a grin as if only now realizing what she had been doing. She reached out to bury that hand in Adrienne's hair and kissed her deeply as Adrienne left her eyes open, peripherally aware of the flicker of the lash. Sarah tasted of some exotic liqueur, sweet and spicy-bitter, or maybe it only seemed exotic because it was Sarah. It felt as one of those moments of great revelation, understanding why she sometimes wanted to die so happy, and why, at rare other times, she wanted only to run.

"Who loves me?" Sarah breathed into her mouth, with heavy-lidded eyes.

"Everyone," said Adrienne. "Everyone does."

Graham's door at 3:00 A.M., and there were too many of them to stumble through at once. That was the way it felt to her, all of them like parts of the same body, divided by severed nerves. The usual suspects, now that Uncle Twitch was free, plus a couple of others who had tagged along. Young, the both of them: a slim, breastless girl who looked no older than sixteen; her boyfriend, who obviously idolized Graham and clutched to his chest one of the charred-and-spiked baby dolls he had ripped from The Foundry's ceiling, periodically asking to have it autographed. He'd said he had been here late one night last year, with friends, though Graham did not remember.

"I'm, I'm an artist too," the boy confessed at one point. It appeared to have taken great effort.

Graham nodded. "How nice for you." He rolled his head about to loosen his neck, and stroked the girl on her bare shoulder; she seemed to shrink a half step away. "Well if you're an artist, you really have to learn to share things, foster a sense of community. You knew that already, didn't you?"

The boy stood looking younger and younger, newly mute as he watched Graham knead the girl's shoulder. She had not made another move to retreat, but her eyes were sick and confused, back and forth. Her arms folded into a fragile shelter.

Adrienne watched from a chair, slumped in and holding tight. It seemed the most solid ground she could find. First impulse was to say something, knock it off, Graham, but she reconsidered: Why should it be her responsibility? If they lived this way it was by choice.

"Don't," the boy mumbled, finding his voice, pleading to the floor, "don't do that, please don't, don't."

Erin came in from the bathroom and quickly sized things up, stomped over to yank Graham by one arm, what the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing, and he stumbled away with a groaning laugh that held no mirth, nor even cruelty, only emptiness.

"Just my luck," he said, "my first protege and he's a Quaker or something. I wonder what he does for talent."

I want to go home, Adrienne thought, this was all to see some painting or sculpture and I bet it never even happens now. Too far gone, she dared not drive, and dared not issue Sarah an ultimatum for fear of the choice she would hear.

After hours, midway between midnight and dawn, this chilly bas.e.m.e.nt apartment felt like a speakeasy. It had ceased to be fun a long time ago but they were still trying. Clay channel surfing at the TV, Nina at the stereo, Twitch raiding the refrigerator and bellowing for beer that wasn't there.

Then Sarah laid one hand on Graham's shoulder, one on Erin's, to quell whatever vicious discussion they were having in a corner. After a moment he grew calm, seemed to take it as a restoration of purpose. Sarah walked away but Adrienne kept watching - nothing like the perspective of distance. She was as omniscient as a voyeur. Graham reached out, as timidly as if he had been beaten, to hold Erin. Over her shoulder his face seemed to sag and flow like a melting candle.

You'll always have my heart, Adrienne thought he said as they broke. That's the problem.

"Well, s.h.i.t," he then said, loud enough to be heard by all, "let's get this done."

Graham called them together and led them over to the least-used corner of the bas.e.m.e.nt, around a door that was secured by a stout padlock. His eyes grew distant as he fished a key from beneath his shirt, on a chain around his neck.

"Shazam," he murmured, and opened the door.

Twitch's bobbing head was in Adrienne's way, but even if it weren't, she doubted she could discern what was in there ... just some staggeringly solid shape beyond the door. The smell was freed, dense and acrid, an acc.u.mulated stink of scorched metal.

Graham was first in, and flipped on the overhead light.

The word monolithic floated to mind, but she quickly decided it wasn't right. It implied aloofness, the timeless indifference of something that measures centuries the way mortals measure seconds.

This? This thing? It was unnatural and grotesque and malevolent.

It reached nearly to the ceiling, and three-quarters of the distance from wall to wall, a jagged conglomerate of more small machines than could be counted, more than could even be identified at first glance, or second. One ab.u.t.ted another that flowed into the next, like jumbled refuse that had only partially survived a holocaust's meltdown; a slag heap left in the declining wake of progress and ambition.