Sleight (23 page)

“I think you know why. He’s talented, he’s a force. And he’s not afraid to say things with his art.”

“It’s easy to say things when you’re a psychopath.” Byrne looked at the ceramic cock. It was garlanded with hand-painted flowers, white and pink. He added, “When you’re not strangling on words.”

“Your brother understands color, and I’ve known color was needed from the beginning. He just gets this, Byrne.”

Byrne flinched. “You’re shitting me.” The waiter had come with a bottle but didn’t approach the table. “Marvel, get sleight? He’s always hated it.”

West motioned to the waiter. The pomaded youth leaned in, made a trembling display of the label. West nodded, and he poured.

“I’m sure he still does.”

“Then, what …”

“Do you know how to manipulate someone?” West waved the waiter off, swirled his apéritif. It looked like piss. “You find out what they want to do, and then you make it possible for them to do it.”

“Genius. You
do
know Marvel wants to cut people up?” Byrne’s rock rested on the table. He usually kept it down at his side when he was out, but the year was ending, and his arm was tired. “What is it you think I want to do?”

“You? You want to atone.” West lifted his glass, toasted the air. “Here’s to it.”

“I don’t know what Marvel told you—I had nothing to do with Gil’s death.”

West wouldn’t put down his drink. His arm was extended toward Byrne, his eyes fixed on Byrne’s glass. Finally, Byrne raised it, clinked.

“You didn’t stop it.”

“No.” Byrne didn’t drink. He set down the glass and began to study the short, price-less menu.

“And now you’re thinking about fatherhood, but don’t know how to fall in love.” West was amusing himself with Byrne’s discomfort. “That doesn’t make it impossible, mind you, just awkward. And Lark not only is—I’ve heard—but has, a remarkable child.” When West said this, Byrne’s rock hit his water goblet. Water sloshed onto the rooster, dripping off its wattle onto the black toile tablecloth, but the goblet remained upright. “So, Byrne, is it that you think—if she’d just let you into her little family, maybe you could make up for Marvel?”

“Marvel?”

“For failing him. As a father.”

“I was his brother.”

“You
were
his brother?”

“Am. What the hell are you trying to prove, West?” Byrne raised his voice. “With me, with this sleight? I see two troupes, I see the new architectures, painted bodies instead of webs, I know you want me to be literal, I know you brought in Marvel to hurt me. It’s all fucked up. You want all of us to work from some tortured place, but sleight’s not therapy.”

“I don’t offer therapy.”

“Clearly. It isn’t goddamned witness either.”

The waiter surveying the room from the corner glanced toward them nervously. West’s voice took on the hushed tones of placating nurse to the fever-muddled.

“So not therapy. Not witness. I should be writing this down. Tell me Byrne—what, do you think, is sleight?”

Byrne allowed himself to be calmed, lowered almost to a mumble. “It isn’t anything. It’s nothing. That’s why it’s beautiful. You keep trying to make it hold things. It doesn’t work that way. You’re stripping it of emptiness. You’ll kill it.”

“You think the navigation’s not working?” West’s voice was wet with concern.

“It’s working, West. It’s dark and full of everyone’s entrails. Mine, Lark’s, now Clef’s. T’s. Shit—it’s Sleight of the Living Dead. I’m just asking, what’s left?”

West took another drink. He put the glass down, then moved both his hands out over the table and took the rooster from its perch in the center of the farm-stitched linen. He turned the bird to face him and clucked gently to it, and Byrne felt suddenly shut out. West gave his answer to the cock.

“What’s left? Cluck. What should always be left. What never seems to be, cluck, left … aftermath.”

³¹
Sleights begin with all sleightists on the stage. During a sleight, no sleightist leaves the stage until the last few moments. It is the empty stage that marks the sleight’s completion, not blackout, not curtains. After the sleightists have left the stage, usually one by one, they do not return. There is no bow. All the elements of a sleight are meant to be constant throughout the body of the sleight, except of course during the wicking. When sleightists go “out,” it is not to be speculated that they simply left the stage. A sleightist’s presence, in this way, becomes a guarantor of the nature of his or her absence.

³²
Architectural links are accomplished by one of the following methods: a) looping one architecture’s fishwire through another’s (spider-point) or b) keeping the fishwire untouched and sliding one tube against another with continual pressure (whet- or passion-point) or c) catching a tube from one architecture in the joint of another (cradle-point). For obvious reasons, only the most ambitious links have more than a single point of contact between any two architectures. Complexity in linking is often referred to, pejoratively, as “wit” or “cunning.” As in: “Now, there’s a
cunning
structure—trading on wick for wit.”

³³
In sleight, as in many disciplines whose continued life depends on mentor-to-student transmission, certain anachronistic behaviors have outlasted their efficacy. “Girls” is a term used by directors and instructors no matter what the age or level of maturity of the female sleightist. Similarly, even if they begin their training in prepubescence or in childhood, male sleightists are “men.”

³⁴
Female and male sleightists keep themselves, except for the head, completely hairless. The practice is customary, a nod to decorum, originally conceived as an attempt at desexualization. In the early seventies, when it first decided to discard all stagewear except for webs, the International Board insisted that sleight directors distinguish their troupes from the burgeoning au natural culture with stringent hair removal, heavy and stylized stage makeup, and impeccable personal grooming outside the theater.

THE OTHER QUARTET.

SETTING: 
A party. Ballgowns and masks. A small child on the top steps of an offishly kept Victorian, a Victorian painted wrong colors. A spurned lover in the kitchen. A brother, loose-cannoned, on the couch. Against a far wall, petals drifting down, an open-faced woman. It’s snowing. There are exactly one hundred thousand snowflakes, each falling. The small child has counted them. They are all the same.

NENE: It is late and the adults are mostly stumbly, except the ones who didn’t get that way and so are annoyed or gone. These adults are unlike other adults in that they are all beautiful in every way. They are
animalia.
You can see it in how they move. It is you who thinks this, you, the small child.

MARVEL: The girl Nene came to the party, and her daddy Drew. Byrne wants to be ground down and spat out—don’t know why. But he’s clearly elected himself. Everyone knows.

KITCHEN: I am in the kitchen. It’s a joke we used to do.

MARVEL: I know. He’s my brother. West and Clef know. When Lark looks at him, it’s pity or nothing at all.

T: Sometimes I have regret.

KITCHEN: I am waiting, Kitchen in the kitchen, waiting for Clef to ask me back.

NENE: You see how they flow from room to room, like lovely grazing things.
Subsisting.
And you notice these adults, unlike other adults, touch.

T: I think Marvel was a mistake. He just sits on the divan, watching his brother, the sisters.

MARVEL: Those bitches. It’s the most fucking annoying thing in the world—to be ignorant of your talents.

T: In bed, he was sweet. That should’ve told me something.

NENE: They touch each other and they touch walls to steady themselves and because the wallpaper is like letters Mommy wrote and sent to Fern, who was named after but before one of your Souls. They touched you when you came in, touched your braids—not many people do—touched your hand and one kissed it. That was like a prince, you thought, and
excessive.

MARVEL: Byrne the clown, dancing with that little girl like some precious uncle.

T: He wasn’t desperate in the honest way sex should be desperate, especially the first time. Desperation of discovery, of encountering the new. Instead, he watched me.

NENE: They all look like a show, which is what Daddy said they do, but who are they showing now? Maybe you, maybe you’re meant to be shown, stealing up from night, meant to be seeing them this way so waltzingly. Daddy cannot stop touching Mommy, but you see she is like she is sometimes.

(Lark is made of falling. She has snow in her hair. In the crux of her left elbow, in her fingers. Between her legs—snow.)

MARVEL: Then Byrne laughed with Drew even as Drew rubbed Lark’s shoulders. Byrne the slug.

T: I see it now. He was dismembering me, even then, I wasn’t new to him.

MARVEL: Where’s the fucking salt? Lark’s in a silver slip and I’ll give it to him, tonight she’s the moon—and he’s the moon’s slimy trail.

NENE: She looks more like them than before, and talks like one. She hugged and kissed you and it was her, but then she asked you if-you-are-mad-why-are-you in one of their voices, you don’t know which one.

MARVEL: I hear she’s been flashing out more than anyone, Byrne said, more than three anyones.

NENE: You met so many tonight, and one who wasn’t, who was Byrne’s brother. Byrne twirled you, then Aunt Clef took and Rapunzeled you into a room if your hair did, but it doesn’t.

KITCHEN: I will not beg her. This is my exercise in ridiculous and pointless dignity.

NENE: Byrne had been sad from watching all the others touch you and a little angry and then thinking. Maybe he was allowed too, and there was a song he knew and asked you to dance. You liked that. He didn’t hurt your back with the rock like he was afraid.

KITCHEN: Dignity is even harder and smaller than the ridiculous and pointless rock that boy carries around. Shame—there can be no other reason to carry a stone through the world. And now, Clef is carrying a stone.

MARVEL: Then Lark goes to the motel to moon over her sister, who’s looking like hell, like three hells.

KITCHEN: My stone. I swear, I would love it if she asked me to.

(
The weather inside is enchantment: its extra, unverifiable weight like a bullet or a bomb hidden in the body.)

NENE: Of course there should be ballgowns now and masks and feathers …

KITCHEN: It’s not difficult to love the ridiculous. The pointless.

NENE: … but instead West was
sinister
and gave you a candy cane on the way up, though you aren’t supposed to after dinner. This is his house and the walls feel pretty and the bed in the room is deep but you can’t go down into it like a spoon through marshmallow. You aren’t tired.

KITCHEN: Lark is as good as Clef, and it’s killing Clef.

NENE: Aunt Clef held you and sang at the corner and cried she didn’t know you, but you knew her.

KITCHEN: There. I’ve said it. I still love Clef. Her sister is taking the place she doesn’t want to want anymore, except that she does.

NENE: Newt showed you Clef a hundred times.

KITCHEN: Clef won’t tell me it’s killing her, and the navigation is, because she thinks I don’t want what she wants, except that I do. If she’s going to want it, I want it.

NENE: She’s older than how Newt showed her, but so like Mommy when Mommy is there.

KITCHEN: I will want it.

MARVEL: Byrne-the-fool says the sleight loves Lark, but I won’t even try to take color to her—I’m waiting for Clef.

NENE: And she’s red.

T: I was another woman to dismantle, another in a series, nothing differentiating us except the way he takes us apart, the color he adds.

MARVEL: What would I do with Lark?

T: West gave me away. Byrne won’t look at me. I want so much to be whole tonight, and the bourbon doesn’t.

MARVEL: Lark’s sort of gristle-pretty, I admit. Can’t really look at her without thinking of her inside my mouth.

T: The sisters, they’re loved. I don’t want to be jealous—a hateful, spiteful emotion. I’ve never been, not like now. West did this.

KITCHEN: Clef is doing exactly what West wants, what Lark’s drawings demand. Require. It’s mesmerizing. There has never, never been another sleight. She is the only woman who could be pulled so hard in so many directions and maintain perfection …

T: West’s watching, but he’s not watching me. He’s rolled up his sleeves to grease the wheels of his party …

KITCHEN: … and take perfection and map it onto others.

T: … filling mugs with too-strong cider, adjusting the music to counter the mood, control it.

NENE: This is Christmas, is love …

MARVEL: But tonight, Lark’s soft …

T: “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”

KITCHEN: There has never …

NENE: … is dark …

T: “Night and Day”

MARVEL: … a thirty-watt bulb.

KITCHEN: … never been another …

T: “Bluebird of Delhi”

KITCHEN: … woman.

NENE: … is peppermint is snow outside like everything is already over …

T: “Clap Hands,” “Take Five”

NENE: … and stealing up from night is the way they are …

T: “All Along the Watchtower”

NENE: … at the bottom of the stairs like fish, all beautiful fish glimmery sad and
veering
and …

T: West knows what to do, what people want before they want it.

KITCHEN: I went behind Clef up the stairs to watch her tuck Nene into bed.

T: Byrne followed Lark all night with his eyes.

MARVEL: What would it be like, I wonder, to dissolve that kind of light, Lark light, on my tongue?

T: What was I doing with Marvel? Was it revenge?

NENE: … it would be perfect …

T: Sex has turned. It hardly helps, and the bourbon doesn’t.

MARVEL: How would it taste? What color?

NENE: … and you wouldn’t need any more words …

KITCHEN: Nene is no child—she’s Lark’s daughter. And that, I think, requires suffering.

NENE: … if she would just touch Daddy back.