In This Skin (3 page)

    Switching off the shower, she stepped out of the stall to walk through the billowing steam to the bathroom mirror, where she wiped away the condensation.

    ”OK,”she told her reflection. ”Take stock. You're nineteen years old.

    You're solvent. So the office closed down under you last week, crap happens, but you're starting a new job at the end of the month. You've got twenty-twenty vision, you're in good health, all your own hair and body parts, and it's been six days since I even saw a zit or a blackhead on that face… a face I'm learning to live with at long last.” She forced a smile. It was a good face, after all. Even though she'd hated it in her early teens. It had been too angular. The shape of a triangle.

    Back then her eyes seemed too far apart as well, as if they were trying to put as much distance from her nose as possible. She used to stare at her eyes in the mirror and murmur gloomily,

    ”Those damn things are going to fall off the side of my head one day Of course, she'd grown from a gawky bag o' bones kid into an adult. A little more muscle upholstered those bones now. The awkward skinniness gone, to be replaced by womanly curves. Although her eyes were widely spaced they fit in well with a face that had lost its peculiar geometric shape. Its structure had softened. By the time she'd hit her seventeenth, boys were taking a close interest in her. She saw how their eyes were drawn to her face. There was something about it they liked.

    Her lips were fuller, too. With a touch of lipstick they became devastating. By the time she was eighteen she was in love with Noel.

    So what had gone wrong now? Robyn couldn't figure out why she suddenly hated him making love to her. She studied her face as if half expecting it to erupt tentacles or something. It was as if a circuit had burned out inside her head. Whereas before she'd sizzled, hornier than a timber wolf, for sex, now lovemaking repulsed her. Jesus… maybe it was just some hormonal glitch. She hoped so.

    Quickly Robyn dried herself, then wrapped a towel around her head. What she craved now was to vanish into bed and sleep. Maybe everything would be fine in the morning. She slipped on a robe, opened the door, and…

    ”Mom?”

    Her mom stood there on the landing in a glamorous purple silk gown. Her blond hair rolled in extravagant waves down her shoulders. There was hardness in her eyes.

    ”Robyn? Do you know what time it is?”

    ”It's Friday, Mom.”

    ”I know it's Friday, but what made you take a shower? It's past midnight.”

    ”It turned so warm today I feel kinda-”

    ”It might be the weekend for you, Robyn, but Emerson has to be at the office by six in the morning. There's a shareholder meeting. He's been working for weeks toward this. They're planning to merge with a company that tried to buy him out last year.

    Emerson needs to be able to get a good night's sleep before he-”

    ”OK, OK, Mom. I get the picture. I'm sorry Good night.”

    Her mother looked her up and down as if suddenly noticing some change in her appearance.

    ”Robyn.”The irritable edge left her mother's voice. ”Robyn?”

    ”Mom?”

    ”Anything you want to tell me, Robyn?”

    ”No.”Robyn shrugged, genuinely puzzled. ”Like what?”

    ”You haven't argued with Noel?”

    ”No.”

    ”There's nothing else the matter?”Her mother looked at her in that sidelong way as if she were sighting a target along the barrel of a gun.

    ”You wouldn't keep it to yourself if something was troubling you?”

    ”Of course not. Everything's fine, Mom.”

    ”Hmmm…”Her mother looked her in the eye as if reading hidden messages there. ”OK, if you want to keep it to yourself…”

    ”There's nothing bothering me. I'm OK. I'm happy.”Robyn heard the exasperation seeping through her own voice. Jeez, what does Mom want me to admit? ”Obviously I can't drag it out of you, Robyn. Perhaps you'll tell me in your own good time. Sleep well.”

    ”Good night.”

    With that her mother swept back to her bedroom, no doubt to stroke Emerson's troubled brow. Robyn went to her own room. There she lay on her bed. It was too warm to pull over covers. Switching off the light, she lay looking up at the play of shadows on the ceiling.

    So there's food for thought, she told herself. Her mother had seen something different in her. A ”something”that she thought Robyn was deliberately hiding. But could her mother have sensed a sudden aversion to sex with Noel? That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Those kinds of things don't change the expression on your face, do they? It's not as if she suddenly wore a sign on her forehead in big shouting letters: no more fucking, PLEASE.

    Jesus, this is weird Maybe I should see a psychotherapist? Or would it be a sex therapist? ”Good morning, Doctor. I can't take it up me anymore.” She murmured the words aloud, trying to be flippant. As if rendering the problem into verbal sounds would somehow magically expel this weirdly inexplicable aversion from her body She stroked her stomach. The muscles fluttered in the way her eyelid did when she was over-tired or stressed. It felt strange. Almost as if the muscles would go into a spasm but stopped short of a cramp. And with her period more than two weeks away, the sensation couldn't be attributed to that. So what else could have changed inside of her? She hadn't altered her diet.

    She hadn't taken to snacking on narcotics or downing bottles of vodka.

    If it was a hormonal glitch what would…

    ”Oh, God no.”

    The sounds coming through her wall were the last ones she wanted to hear tonight. Emerson was playing hide the wiener with Mom. ”Oh, shit, shit, shit…”

    Not that Mom didn't deserve a healthy love life. She had just turned fifty-five. She'd remarried.

    Maybe it's me. I should get a place of my own and give those two lovebirds some privacy… But it's just that… agh, dear God, I don't even want to think the words… the images it puts into my mind of plump little Emerson making whoopee with Mom. Could Mom take her eyes off that absurd hair weave thatched to his head? And Emerson made it so clear to her (probably to neighbors, too) what lit his flame.

    Emerson and her mother slept on a waterbed, so it wasn't a creak-creak-creak that revealed what Emerson did in the heat of passion.

    And here it comes, right on cue, Robyn thought with a sinking sensation.

    A slow measured sound: crack… crack… crack… crack…

    That was the only sound of sex from the next room. The slap of bare palm on bare buttock shoved mental images rudely into Robyn's brain. And those were mental pictures she didn't want to see. Groaning, she curled into a ball and pulled the pillow over her head. That sound wouldn't stop for a long while yet.

    

    

    Ellery Hann spent a long time in the men's restroom of the Luxor Dance Hall. He'd washed his face in cold water, then stood for an hour or more staring into the mirror above the sink. Bruising from the fists appeared to swell like dark clouds across an evening sky He watched the color of his chin turn from an abraded red to purple with flecks of crimson at the center. Dried blood glued his hair into hard points.

    And all this time Ellery didn't make a move or a sound. His breathing was barely perceptible. Distant sounds from a freeway filled the void of the building with a ghostly whisper that rose and fell to some mysterious rhythm. Electricity to the building had been cut years ago.

    The only lights were the random rays of starlight and streetlight that somehow struggled through dirty windowpanes.

    What Ellery saw was merely the gloomy reflection of his damaged face and the glint of his staring eyes. There wasn't any pain now, just a stiffness, a dead sensation, as if his spirit had already begun to withdraw from his body. In a little while he'd go into the auditorium of the abandoned building. There on the dance floor a single armchair faced the stage. That's where he sat to enjoy the show, the best show on earth…

    Ellery Hann blinked slowly at his reflection, then, leaning forward, whispered the words that meant so much to him. When he spoke there was no trace of stammer: ”We are nothing. Less than nothing and dreams. We are only what might have been.”

    A deep throbbing sounded deep in the shadowed heart of the building. The show would be starting soon.

    

    

    ”Oh… the keys!”Benedict spoke loudly enough to set the dog barking in the next yard. ”The damn apartment keys. They're with the car keys.”And where the car was now was anyone's guess.

    Yep, this was going to be a bad night. Ten years to the day since Mariah vanished into the Luxor. An hour ago the girl he'd picked up in the blues bar had driven his car out of the lot and into the night. Then the long walk home. Now the realization that he couldn't even get through the door because his keys were on the same ring as the car keys. The devil's given me the kiss of had luck today. Benedict shushed the barking dog. It made the dog bark louder. Dogs don't take kindly to being shushed.

    ”Quiet, Butch. It's only me.”

    Suddenly the dog's big, mule-like head loomed over the fence as it stood on its hind legs to confirm his identity.

    ”Jeez. You'll get me into more trouble barking like that.”

    Butch made a yip sound in the back of its throat. Benedict saw the eyes gleam brightly in the streetlights. The hound looked happy enough to see him anyway It made the yip sound again, as if asking a question.

    ”Don't ask, Butch. I've had a bitch of a night. A girl stole my car. I can't get into my apartment because the keys were in… oh, God. And I'm standing talking to a dog in the middle of the night and I'm not even drunk.”The dog tilted its head, its mouth open as it panted. ”What am I going to do, Butch?”

    A voice came from the house beyond the yard. ”Butch? What's there, boy?”

    Benedict put his fingers to his lips. He whispered, ”Don't get me into trouble with Old Man Gartez.”

    The dog's head disappeared as it ran across the yard to its owner, who had started to grumble. ”It'll only be a bunch of cats, Butch. Quit your barking; you'll wake up the whole fucking street.”

    Nice turn of phrase Old Man Gartez employed. Benedict moved off to the apartment steps. He lived in what had once been an old whisky distillery The iron staircase ran outside the building to connect with an exoskeleton of iron walkways. Smart money had come along to convert the red brick building into four floors of apartments with four units to a floor. Only now, of course, Benedict's home might as well have been tucked away on the dark side of the moon. Those hundred-year-old doors were tough cookies, too. He didn't see any chance of knocking the door open with his shoulder. When he reached the top floor he walked along the iron platform that formed a walkway along the outside of his apartment. It stopped with the end of the wall. He leaned forward against the safety railing and looked alongside the building. In the distance the skyscrapers of Chicago were shining, dusted with thousands of tiny lights. Above them stars burned bright on this unseasonably hot night. What drew his eye was the window to his kitchen. He'd left it open after grilling a meal of pork chops earlier. He liked to crisp the fat with a lick of raw flame. It gave them a great flavor but it also blued the air with smoke. That's why the window was ajar. Benedict looked down into the shadows below, where solid earth lay fifty feet beneath him. Surely, bad luck wouldn't dog him all night. He put his leg over the railing. In the yard he caught a glimpse of Butch running out of his kennel to see what the crazy homo sapien would do next.

    Keeping a healthy gap of fresh air between me and the dirt is what I'm aiming for, thought Benedict. He saw that a line of bricks molded with a fossil ammonite pattern ran around the building three feet below the windows. These decorative bricks protruded a good four inches from the otherwise smooth wall. He saw that if he could support his weight on those with his toes while facing the wall, he could reach out to grip the supporting bracket of the satellite dish, then work his way along for a couple of yards, before gripping the frame of the open window, and hauling himself through. As theories went, it was faultless.

    Benedict gripped the satellite-dish bracket as he settled his feet onto the protruding lip of brick. He looked up as he did so. Big mistake. A shower of rust from the bracket cascaded into his eyes. Instantly he was blinded. He couldn't use his hands to wipe his eyes because he was hanging on for dear life fifty feet above the ground. Hell…

    He snarled with frustration. Below him, the dog sympathized with a loud bark. Through a smeary veil of tears he saw lights flicker on in Old Man Gartez's house. Great. He'd probably come thundering out into the yard with his shotgun.

    Gritting his teeth, Benedict shuffled blindly along while facing the wall. Behind him, fifty feet of warm night air waited for him to back-flip into its embrace.

    Damn, the rust was even in his mouth. It grated against his teeth. Maybe he'd sinned in a past life to suffer this kind of bad luck. Hell, he must have been

    Herod, Stalin and the IRS rolled into one to deserve this. Panting hard while sweating a river of moisture down his spine, Benedict thrust out his arm where the window should be. By chance, his knuckles rapped the windowpane. Below him the dog barked louder. Still unable to see, he worked his hands inside the open window until they found the lip of the sill, then gripping so hard he believed his fingers would crunch through the timber, he side-shuffled along until he reached the opening.

    Now leaning in through the window, he risked freeing one hand to wipe the rusty dirt from his eyes. The aroma of his own home, and even the cold grease smell from grilling pork, seemed like the warmest of welcomes. His head and upper torso were home even if the rest of him wasn't. After he'd taken a moment for a breather, he wriggled forward through the open window, just as Old Man Gartez came through his back door into the yard in his pajamas.