Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan (Volume One)

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  There must be speakers he can’t see, because suddenly there’s sound, a painful eruption of sound, instant as the light, feedback whine and an arrhythmic clatter like chains against shattered glass. Sound to make him wince, to make them all wince, the audience creature rediscovering forgotten and instinctual reactions, but not smart enough to run, not smart enough to cower or hide. And the sound climbs an octave, gouging its way deeper into Elgin’s head. He thinks there may be a voice somewhere inside the cacophony, more than one voice, perhaps, mumbling words he can almost hear, subliminal current of words that could be threats, that feel like whispered threats overheard, or that could be casual perversities, or both, or could be nothing at all. His mouth is dry, and the beer sits forgotten on the bar.

  On the stage, the mound of bones seems to shift, rearranging itself subtly, an almost imperceptible sort of movement, and Elgin squints through the glare and cigarette smoke and noise to be sure. And yes, they are indeed moving, each bit of skeleton independent of the other, flexing or contracting somehow without sending the whole precarious thing clattering over. It makes him think of the hide of some great armored reptile – impossible, warped alligator or crocodile hurting or dying or waking up. He writes that down, as well.

  Violin-string squeal that melts by grating slow degrees into a scream or piercing howl, something calling out in pain so terrible it can only be expressed in this endless, agonized lament. And past that, within that, an audible cracking, then, fracturing shell-brittle pop, loud enough that it manages to pull free, achieving singularity, and Elgin feels it hit him, a fist driven against his chest, an invisible cudgel that almost knocks the breath from him. The audience creature seems to lean slightly forward, expectant, impatient for its extinction, an end to their boredom, their jaded enlightenment. Elgin knows that whatever’s happening, it can only end in disappointment for them, that no revelation is even half equal to their need.

  And then the bones do break apart, a silent tear or slit in the side facing him, jagged mouth or vagina; thick liquid squirting out, dark and syrupy gouts like a punctured carotid, and two or three people sitting right up front move back a little, wiping at their clothes or faces or hair with fingers reluctant to touch the substance, yet curious to know, disgusted and excited by disgust. The howl is fading now, growing distant or imploding, and it leaves behind a dull-heart thump-thump-thump that’s more metal than flesh, steam-hammer pound in air raped into stillness, into vacuum, by sound.

  The slit grows a little wider, and Elgin can see something membranous inside, pressing itself outward, a glinting surface slimy with whatever a mound of bones can bleed. The thumping is getting louder, steel slammed against steel, and he wants to close his eyes, wants to look away, but he doesn’t do either. It’s not his job to look away; his job is to watch, no matter what, to watch what they have to show and then put it into words.

  The crowd gasps collectively as the membrane bursts, rips wide, and spills its huge fetus onto the stage. Hesitant motion inside a caul the raw color of living viscera, and he can see the winding umbilicus leading back inside the slit, back inside this writhing thing’s dead and fleshless mother. The smell of rotting grows stronger, and he can see maggots squirming in the lights, hundreds or thousands of them, and now the audience creature is breaking up, losing cohesion as more and more of its constituent parts back away from the stage.

  The mechanic heart crashes, pumps train collisions and the inevitable collapse of skyscrapers, steel and concrete, as she tears herself free, hands and arms as pale as skin that has never seen the sun, that cannot imagine warmth or light, thrust towards them all. The caul heaves once, slides heavily to stage right, heaves again, and she’s free and ripping at the cord leading back into that appalling, dead womb, tearing at it with vicious teeth, furious, grinding jaws; her long hair flails and slaps wetly from side to side, slinging drops of liquid and maggot afterbirth into the crowd.

  Elgin doesn’t remember getting to his feet, standing, defeated, but he’s pushing people aside, roughly shoving his way through the press of bodies to the door, out into the south Manhattan night air that has never before smelled so clean, never half so pure. He climbs the cement stairs leading up to the street, then leans gasping against a brick wall, trying to force the cloying sweet decay smell from his nostrils, and when Elgin Murray glances down at his stenographer’s pad, there’s hardly anything written there at all.

  “You’re Murray,” the girl says, doesn’t ask but says it like an order, like he might have ever thought he had some choice in the matter. “The guy that wants the interview.”

  He nods, yeah, dropping the butt of his cigarette to the sidewalk and crushing it out with the toe of his boot. The girl’s hair is the color of pomegranates, and she’s wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt stained with streaks of something that might be oil or stage blood.

  “C’mon then,” she says, a hint of irritation or displeasure in her voice, and he follows her around the corner, away from SubAllegory.

  “She doesn’t talk to a lot of people,” the girl says. “Not just anybody, you know. You gotta understand that. You’re lucky, man, getting to interview her.”

  “Yeah,” Elgin replies, and the girl leads him down a flight of stairs, dark burrow below a porn shop, no light at the bottom and the February air like soup down here, the cold that condensed,

  that gelid.

  “Watch your step,” she tells him. “There might still be some ice.” The girl hammers on a door with her fist, blam, blam, blam, and in a moment there are voices from the other side.

  “Who’s there?” one of the voices asks, and the girl hits the door again, punching the wood for an answer.

  “Fucking ConEd, motherfucker,” she growls. “Who the hell do you think? Open the door. I’m freezing my ass off out here, goddamnit. It’s just me and the guy,” and the metal sound of locks being turned, then, entrance being reluctantly granted, and Elgin hastily combs at his hair with his fingers.

  “Sorry,” the girl says to him as the door opens. “We have to be careful, you know. Since that show in Jersey. Man, that was a total freaking shitstorm.”

  And a big black man lets them in, finally. There’s someone smaller standing directly behind him, but, for now, this man is all that matters, muscles like a threat beneath ragged clothes; he glares at Elgin, suspicious eyes paid to be that way, and then the girl is towing him forward, out of the night into a narrow hallway painted glossy tangerine. Not much warmer in here, and that doesn’t surprise him, but at least they’re out of the wind. She takes him past doors with numbers that seem to have been assigned at random, no perceptible order, metal numerals nailed to orange doors, 8 and 21 and 3, and the air smells like dust and mildew and someone cooking curry.

  “I didn’t see her come out,” Elgin says, watching the doors, part of him still looking for a pattern to the numerals, and the girl says, “There’s a back way in, straight from the studio. There’s all sorts of shit down here, man. It’s like a goddamn rat maze under these buildings.”

  “Oh,” he says as they stop at the door numbered 12, fifth in line but it gets to be 12 anyway, and there’s a pencil-thin junkie sitting on the floor outside, flipping through a tattered Hustler magazine.

  “Is she ready for us?” the girl asks him, and the junkie sniffles loudly and wipes his nose on the back of one hand. “He’s the guy?” the junkie asks, rheumy eyes on Elgin, and the girl says, “Yeah, he’s the guy. Is she ready or not?”

  “Ready as she’ll ever be,” the junkie says and smiles, uneven, rotten yellow smile, and he goes back to his magazine, the gaudy nudes spreading themselves on shiny paper, and the girl says, “You know you’re just wasting your time, Willy. How many months now since you had any kinda hard-on? You know you’re just torturing yourself with that shit.”

  “Hey, baby, I do remember, okay? I haven’t forgotten what it feels like, so it doesn’t hurt me to look.” The junkie gives the girl the finger as she knocks three times and turn
s the knob to door number 12.

  “I don’t know why she keeps that piece of shit around here,” the girl confides to Elgin, as if the junkie can’t hear. Willy mumbles something obscene, but doesn’t bother to look away from his magazine.

  The room is small, almost warm and not the cultured squalor he expected at all. Rather, unanticipated mix of scruffy Victorian and Art Deco, a clutter of antiques ruined by time and neglect and the places that they’ve been. Pleasantly muted incandescence after the hallway from fringed table lamps and stained-glass torchères; a framed Erté print on one wall and a Beardsley on another, something he remembers from a book of Poe or Wilde; a chaise lounge upholstered in burgundy velvet beneath a makeshift canopy of scarves and lace, a dressing table nearby, and Elgin and the girl look back at themselves from its wide, revealing mirror.

  “Does she carry all this stuff around with her?” he asks, and the girl’s reflection nods. She points him to a chair, dark scrolled wood scuffed, mother-of-pearl inlay, and more patched velvet the color of spilled wine, so he sits down and opens his stenographer’s pad again. The girl closes the door behind her, leaving him alone, and Elgin stares at the almost-blank page that he should have filled with notes during the performance, hoping that what he remembers about the show is anything like what really happened.

  From the next room someone says “Just shut up about it, Jimmy, okay? Jesus, just shut up about it,” and Elgin sits up straight, didn’t even realize there was another room, but now he can see a door past the chaise, a dog skull hung there, its snout pointing down towards the floor and a filthy Turkish carpet he notices for the first time.

  The door swings open then, and she steps into the room, final heir to a great grandfather’s lost fortune, lost great granddaughter of the Gilded Age, his first sight of her outside photocopied art zines and then that fetal thing that she became on stage. “Breathtaking,” he will write in the interview, though after an argument with an editor he’ll cut that word and substitute “disarming,” knowing that it doesn’t really matter either way because neither word is any closer to the truth. Salmagundi Desvernine: blonde, blonde hair still wet and dark from a shower, bare feet, and her maroon bathrobe something cheap to pass for silk, her face like porcelain that might break at the gentlest touch, like ice or porcelain, and she stops and squints across the room towards him.

  “Hello,” she says, lips the palest pink not smiling, and the voice to match the face exactly, voice like crystal chimes tinkling in underground winds.

  “Hello,” he says back.

  “Did I keep you waiting?” and he shakes his head, no.

  “I just got here.”

  “Good,” she says. “Would you like a drink?” and then Elgin sees the man behind her, still standing in the doorway, closer to a boy than a man, really, but tall, taller than her, paler than her, and his eyes hidden behind black wraparound shades. He chews nervously at one black fingernail and stares past Salmagundi, black-plastic stare towards Elgin that makes him feel nine or ten years old again and facing the rat bastard of all schoolyard bullies.

  He glances back down at his notepad. “That would be nice,” he says. “A drink would be nice.”

  “Jimmy, pour Mr.…?”

  “Murray,” Elgin volunteers at once. “Elgin Murray.” She smiles for him, painful soft smile and perfect sapphire eyes.

  “Pour Mr. Murray a drink. Is brandy okay? We have brandy and cognac.”

  “Brandy’s fine,” Elgin says, smiling back and watching her, carefully not looking at her ashen-skinned companion in black leather and a ripped up T-shirt, black jeans and lizard-skin cowboy boots.

  “Brandy’s fine,” the tall man sneers, mocking him; there are a couple of decanters on a small table nearby, cut glass half filled with liquid amber, and the tall man pours Elgin a drink from one.

  “They told me that you don’t like tape recorders,” Elgin says to Salmagundi, and she nods, sitting down at the dressing table only a few feet away from him, and she stares at herself.

  “I dislike hearing my voice that way,” she says. “Knowing that someone can push a button and make you say things you might not mean anymore. Things you might never have meant in the first place.”

  “But it’s okay if I take notes?” Elgin asks, holding up the pad so she can see it in the mirror, and yes, she nods, smiling again, but not such a welcoming smile this time, as if the mirror’s distracting her.

  The tall man walks across the room and hands Elgin a big snifter of brandy, the glass

  badly chipped around the rim and the initials S. D. engraved on one side like etched frost.

  “Thanks,” Elgin says, accepting the drink, but the man’s face is blank, blank disregard for this polite intruder, and Elgin can see himself in the black sunglasses. He doesn’t like what he sees there, as if he’s seeing someone else’s disapproving impression of him times two, and it’s better to focus on the questions that he’s spent a week putting together.

  Salmagundi picks up a tarnished silver brush from the dressing table, pulls it carefully through her long wet hair.

  “That was an amazing performance tonight,” he says to her, and the interview begins.

  She removes an old tin box from one of the drawers as she talks, all dents and the gold paint flecked off in places, rust like a skin disease; Elgin recognizes the portrait on the lid, the perfect profile at the center of an intricate mosaic of color like Muslim tiles of paint for ceramic. If the design isn’t actually one of Alphonse Mucha’s, then a clever enough forgery, and the beautiful Nouveau face close enough to the woman sitting at the dressing table to give Elgin a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. salmagundi printed in blocky red letters underneath the portrait, stylized “Whitman’s” in the lower left-hand corner and “chocolates” in the lower right.

  “Then it is true?” he asks, trying not to sound surprised and failing. “About your name, I mean.”

  Salmagundi Desvernine pauses, the lid of the box already half open, and she glances sidewise at him, not using the dressing mirror as a middle man this time, but looking directly at him, instead. Then she glances back at the box as if she hasn’t really looked at it in a very long time, and maybe it’s not only a tin box after all, but something more that she pretends is only a tin box.

  “It was my mother’s,” she says. “It was my grandmother’s, and she gave it to my mother.”

  “And that’s where she got your name, off that tin?”

  “It used to really make my sister laugh, that I was named after a box of candy.”

  And then she opens the box the rest of the way, and he can see there’s a small plastic baggie of white powder inside, a razor blade, and a samll mirror that might have been popped out of a compact. Other things too, crammed in there, but she closes the box before Elgin can see what they are. She untwists the rubber band holding the baggie closed and carefully pours cocaine onto the little mirror, minces it with the razor blade. Elgin looks down at his notepad, trying hard to remember what he was going to say next.

  “You were asking me about the film project,” she says, and “Yeah,” he replies, “…Between the Gargoyle Trees, why didn’t you finish it?,” embarrassed but relieved to be reminded, relieved to get on with it. The tall, pale boy in leather and sunglasses is watching him now, and Elgin imagines the kind of eyes those glasses might hide, intent and predatory eyes, jealous eyes the color of jade idols or a stormy autumn sky.

  “I saw a clip last year in Montreal, a very brief clip, but it was definitely – ”

  “It was bullshit, Elgin,” Salmagundi says quickly, finishing his sentence for him, and she’s made three neat lines of the coke. She uses a shortened bit of straw to snort the first two. She closes her eyes then, fists clenched, jaw clenched and a hint of her white teeth. Thirty seconds, forty, and “It was a mistake,” she adds and wipes her nose with a Kleenex from a box on the dressing table. “A lumbering, pretentious mistake. I’m just glad I figured that out before I wasted any more time
on the damned thing. “Tt was worse than the poems. I thought maybe I could explain these ideas with film, explain them visually, since they’ve killed poetry.”

  “Who’s killed poetry?”

  She looks at him a long moment, wry hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth like fishhooks; Salmagundi shakes her head, and her sapphire eyes sparkle.

  “They, Elgin. They. Everyone since fucking Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Jesus, whatever all these fuckers call themselves today. They. The ‘poet-citizens.’ You can’t really touch people with poetry anymore, because it’s been taken apart, deconstructed, eviscerated, and no one even half remembers how to put it back together.” And then she snorts the third line and closes her eyes again.

  Elgin nods uncertainly; he wants a cigarette so badly it almost hurts, thinks about lighting one, but there are no ashtrays anywhere in the room. “The stuff that you’re doing now is so reminiscent of Mark Pauline,” he says, instead, and tries not to think about the boy named Jimmy.

  “Yeah, I saw Male/Female Relations last August, and then I talked with Mark afterwards. He showed me how to build a lot of the things I’m using, got me thinking in the right direction, anyway. Organic machines, reanimation.”

  “But you’re still dealing with the same fundamental issues you were speaking to in …Between the Gargoyle Trees, right? The post-industrial landscape.”

  She puts one hand to her forehead, one finger pressed between her eyes, “Jimmy, put on some music, okay?”

  “What do you want to hear?” he asks her without moving from his chair in the shadows.

  “Anything. Anything at all. I can hear the cars. Anything so I can’t hear the goddamn cars and the people talking upstairs.” So Jimmy gets up and goes to an old reel-to-reel on a shelf near the door leading back out to the tangerine hall, hits a switch, and the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” blares from the speakers.