Skin the Cat

by R Sean McGuirk

  “You were surrounded.”

  “Yes, by medical charts.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “What?”

  “All that attention.”

  My gut flinched. There is no way he saw those boys trying to get their hands on me. No way. This was just withdrawal. Paranoia. Greymore ordered the security guard to call ahead anytime Svidi showed up. It was protocol. There was no way my husband knew shit. “Look, I don’t have time to get weird with you.”

  “But I saw you with my own eyes.”

  “I’m not discussing this with you.”

  “They were trying to get at you Carlina.”

  “You know I love you, baby.” My voice wavered, a little flash of fear hitting my throat. Man, he was good. The bluffing. Me forcing my voice to calm. “But you’re being unfair.”

  Whispering now, “Are you taking drugs?”

  I knew it. He hadn’t seen shit. He’d already moved on from sex to pharmaceuticals. I came on a little stronger, my confidence growing. “Now you are accusing me of substance abuse? Svidi, please baby, this is becoming ridiculous.”

  “Where have you been this morning?”

  “At work seeing patients.” Shit this means he already called clinic and knows I’m not there.

  “Where are you now?”

  “The Daffodil Tea Room, sitting outside. Having lunch.” I pumped my purse, thinking of my injection kit, and the dope inside.

  “But you just said you were seeing patients.”

  A flash of exasperation, and I shouted into the phone, “Look Svidi, just stop it. This isn’t India. I’m not wearing a Burka. This is like living under house arrest. Why isn’t it enough to know I love you? Can you just tell me that?”

  “You are making a fool of me.” His voice was cold and far-off, like he wasn’t standing anywhere near the phone. “You mock our marriage. Acting like a slut. I don’t want you at Chumley’s anymore by yourself. I don’t want you to speak to Greymore again. Do you hear me?”

  Gut punched. Slut. The insult ricocheted around in my head. Tears burned my eyes. “How dare you.” I couldn’t hear my voice in receiver, and stuck a finger in my ear. “Hello? Svidi?” The line was dead. My stomach flopped. What did he know? I placed a quick call. A dark whisper answered.

  “Hello there, my sweet piece of ass.”

  “Hey Charlie,” my chest flushed, breasts tingling. Greymore had that effect on my body. “Did the security guard ever call in last night? Svidi swears he was there. At the club. Watching us.”

  “Svidi,” he laughed. “You know, you should let me take care of that little problem for you.”

  “Seriously Charlie,” I sucked in a fast breath. “No call from the guard?”

  “There was no call,” his voice rose, getting irritated. “Your husband wasn’t there. Monty wouldn’t risk his job. He doesn’t miss anything. Especially your husband prowling about.”

  I bit my lip. “Svidi said he saw us”

  “Do you want me to check the security cameras?”

  “No,” I sighed.

  “You are wound tight, aren’t you?” he chuckled.

  “Charlie.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m low.”

  “Well, well my poor thing.” The tentacles of his voice seemed to creep through the phone. “We just have to fix that now. Don’t we?”

  “Fixing it” with Greymore meant another very specific encounter with him and the boys. So they could try again. But that also meant I could do the shit in my purse right now and get more later on. Still upset from last night, I wanted to proclaim myself the victim. I wanted to scream attempted rape, but I knew better. I would just keep holding them off. That’s what I told myself anyway.

  “Hello,” he growled. “You want me to fix it? You getting low?”

  “Yes,” I smiled wiping a tear away. “I’d like that a lot.”

  “You almost gave it up last night,” he snickered. “All Mighty God, how many more times until me and the gang get it right?”

  Gang. The other husbands now involved playing with me. A rhetorical question. He just wanted me to understand what was coming. That I wasn’t catching a break. I’d worked so hard to become a part of their society, a professional amongst the wealthy, and here I was negotiating the potential for a backroom orgy with a cocaine nose-job and the promise of more heroin. A real druggie. The trailer-park slut. I felt cheated. I hated these people. Especially Greymore’s wife, Cynthia. A total bitch. She was on to me. No thanks to Charlie wanting to get down my pants and not bothering to try to hide it from her. My story and my history were airtight to the world. Except for snooping Cynthia. She knew better. Since day one, she smelled a rat, and went on the hunt. Always peppering me with questions regarding my history, my family name, and constantly asking me about people in Lexington. All which led me to believe she knew I’d lied about growing up there instead of two counties over in the trailer-slums. Over time, her suspicions only deepened, the fervent speculations turning to hot gossip in our little society of wealthy wives who all turned on me. The dark whisper came back.

  “Carlina did you not hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chumley’s, seven pm?”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you hold out until then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wear something tight, but easy to get into.”

  “Charlie.” I said it like a light protest. But the phone went dead. This was good. Real good. I was deepening my potential supply, getting some decent quantity lined up. The junk in my purse, I could shoot that now. Plus I had a hit and a half in my the bottom vanity drawer at home. Making it until tonight would be no problem. Charlie would stock me for the week. I only had to fend off the sexual advances. Which was becoming increasingly problematic, always involving more men, more groping. The hands grabbing inside my skirt no longer enough. Sitting here, thinking this over, anger tightened my fists. Stone-cold broke. Adding insult to injury, Svidi recently locked me out of all the bank accounts, inadvertently locking me into a cage to play sex-slut in Greymore’s three-ring circus freakshow. Hard-headed man. Stubborn. Stupid. I pounded the table. If I had my own cash none of this would be happening. This was all Svidi’s fault. Wasn’t my husband supposed to give me more? What ever happened to have and to hold? I startled when Scott the waiter brushed by. I sprang up from the table and made a beeline for the bathroom. A flash later, inside the commode stall with my kit out, cooking the spoon against flame, pulling the juice through a scrap of cotton, I sank the syringe between my toes…

  and tumbled

  head-first

  into oblivion.

  13

  Bury the truth

  “Luke.” I smiled. “You realize Shade killed a guy, right?” I reclined against the cold fabric of three stacked pillows, staring at my husband lying beside me. He didn’t respond. The kids were tucked in for the night and Shade taken off to attend a late AA meeting. He was spending more time than usual at the meetings held at the Tenacity Truth Church. I’d asked him why and all he said was that he couldn’t get too sober. Luke slid off the bed, switched on the wall mounted air conditioning unit, inhaled chilled air from the vent and looked at me with hay fever eyes. He stripped down, setting free the flabby middle-aged paunch, the pale muffin-top easing over the plaid elastic waistband of his boxers. He sneezed hard out of nowhere.

  “Come here hubby,” I said patting the sheets. “Let me rub those allergies out of your face.” He rolled into bed beside me, stretching out on his back with a groan, his orange body fuzz making a tangerine-tinted haze across his stomach and chest. I massaged his eye sockets while he moaned.

  “Freakin’ pollen,” he muttered.

  “Poor thing.”

  “Hell,” he snorted nasally. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for
Shade.”

  I stopped the sinus rubdown and propped my head on my elbow. “Shade?” I tried to stay chilled-out, not let the defensiveness catch my throat.

  “C’mon Van.”

  “No, you go ahead Luke.” I bit my thumbnail, not wanting to hear it. “I want to hear your side of it.”

  “Just forget it.” He rolled away from me.

  “You think I’m being cruel.”

  He rolled back over facing me. “He killed that guy twenty years ago. Twenty years. And you’re digging it up now? For what? To feel better about kicking Shade and his kids out of our home?”

  I threw my legs sideways, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Luke, I resent that.” I took a deep breath. “I’m not kicking them out. I told him they could stay.”

  “Right after you asked him to leave?” Luke laughed. “I’m sure he jumped at the chance.”

  “You’re being selfish.”

  “Selfish?”

  “Entertain me for a moment here.” My tone was tight, my determination growing. “Imagine what it’s like to keep house for four kids and two grown men. I’m one wife divided over two families. The effort involved? None of you seem too concerned about the workload. To top it off, my books just came today for my real-estate classes this fall. How am I supposed to juggle everything?”

  “Hey,” Luke said. “It’s not easy to move an entire family in and care for them. But Van, why didn’t you realize this before you invited them to come live with us? You sort of jumped in feet first.”

  “I was never sure I could pull it off Luke.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What?”

  “You said you could handle it. Remember? That school would be starting. That the arrangement was temporary. Maybe just a year. That you’d do anything for your sister’s family. I mean, you designed this entire thing. Single-handedly.”

  “But that was before they actually got here.”

  Luke pulled a pillow over his face and moaned. I watched his chest rise and fall.

  “That’s not all, Luke,” my voice broke. “Things are going on in his room.”

  Luke pulled the pillow off his face and shot me a ridiculous smirk- which in combination with bloodshot allergy eyes made him look insane. “Oh my God. Now you’ve been sneaking around the poor bastard’s room?”

  “It’s not his room.”

  “Oh yes it is.” He rubbed his allergy eyes. “You gave it to him. Remember?”

  I ignored him and continued, interlacing my fingers, squeezing my hands together. “Haven’t you noticed the smell? Something faint, like smoke, incense, or burnt wax. What if he’s in there smoking weed?”

  “Pot?” Luke laughed so hard, he caught his breath and sneezed. “Now that’s a good one.” I punched my husband in the bicep as he kept chuckling.

  “You know what I’m beginning to wonder?” he said. “I wonder if you might need to talk to somebody. Like a professional.”

  “Luke, that’s not funny,” I protested.

  “Oh, I’m not trying to be funny. I’ve never seen you act bipolar like this. All on, all off. It’s a hard act to follow, Van.”

  I grabbed Luke’s cheeks, making him do fish-face. “Listen dude, he’s up in his room all night long, talking to himself. The nightmares? Stumbling around in the middle of the night. Don’t act oblivious. We both know he’s never been poster-boy for sanity to begin with.”

  Luke’s face suddenly animated, nostrils enlarging and he flipped over, sneezing hard twice in a row. I shielded my eyes. “You snooping around,” his voice going sharp. “It’s creepy, Van. Besides, who gives a shit? We just lost your sister. Who cares about candle smoke? So what? You light candles in the bathtub. And I haven’t committed you. Yet.”

  I noticed my hands trembling and braided my fingers together to quiet my inner, rising, tide. I didn’t want to turn my dead sister’s children away, or deface her memory, but I would do whatever it took, and I do mean anything, to get Shade the fuck out of my house as soon as possible. Silence fell into our bedroom. Luke’s breathing was still uneven, so I knew he was still awake. I heard a fire truck siren wailing in the distance, maybe a county over. “What if he falls asleep with candles lit. And burns down our house?”

  “I’ll discuss fire safety with him in the morning,” Luke grumbled into the pillow.

  What had I been thinking? Shade was everywhere, always so near. Standing behind me in the kitchen, on the swing on the back porch, his smell in the bath towels no matter how many times I washed them. The guy was everywhere. I shook Luke. “What is that thing under his bed?”

  “What?”

  “That case he has locked up under the bed? What’s inside that thing?”

  Luke adjusted his weight and rolled toward me until he was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I wondered about that too. It’s an ammo box.”

  “Oh, now I see.” I hit him playfully with a pillow. “Been snooping around lately?”

  “Cut me some slack,” he said reaching for a tissue on the bedside table and blew his nose. “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like, Luke?”

  “Okay, okay,” he snorted. “I thought the case was weird too. But it turns out, it’s really nothing. It’s just an antique ammunition box from World War II. You know, they came in different sizes- all with locks. They used to store mortar rounds, hand grenades, belts of machine gun ammo, dried food rations, shit like that.”

  “Well, it’s locked.”

  Luke propped himself up on his side, staring at me. “I know. It’s fastened shut with one of those cheap combination locks.”

  “Cheap, like easy to break into?”

  He flopped back down. “No Van. Not cheap like that. I’m not going to haul off and break into Shade’s shit like some psycho. It means whatever he’s got in there- it can’t be that horrible. If it were, he wouldn’t have it hiding in plain sight with a child’s lock.”

  “What do you think’s in there, then? Drugs? Alcohol?” If I could build enough of a case with my husband, I could have Shade kicked out of the house once and for all. Luke stared at me unblinking.

  “Does he look like a guy that’s currently using drugs and alcohol? For God’s sake Van, he’s at an AA meeting as we speak.”

  My heart toppled like a kite falling out of a stalled wind. I was making no progress with my husband. Luke saw my face and sat up and brushed my cheek. “Look, I know you’re freaked out. And yes. Something seems off. Last week in the middle of the night, I heard him mumbling to himself in a one-sided conversation. Candlelight was flickering in the crack beneath the door. It was weird shit. But do you know what we have to recall, Van? His wife just died. His life was just upended. He’s a widower struggling to raise two motherless children. In a strange town. While battling a substance abuse problem. So yes. The poor bastard is guilty of being in excruciating pain. And attending AA meetings.”

  I saw my chance slipping away. I blurted it out. “I want Shade out of here, Luke.”

  “You know,” Luke sighed. “Based on what you said about your conversation with him in the kitchen, I say the guy’s out of here. He’s a gentleman. I can’t imagine him staying after you put it to him like that. You already took matters into your own hands and met your objective. No matter how selfish I think it might be.”

  “Luke, I wasn’t looking for your permission. I just need your emotional support on this one.” This was a lie. In our marriage, we collaborated on every major decision and I needed him to formally reach a decision with me. When it came to his brother-in-law Luke could be a real wild card, the rational man turned into a little boy. He got up, turned the air conditioner up a notch and stood in front of it, sucking in deep nostril breaths.

  “Van, I don’t get it,” he spoke into the air conditioning vent. “You’ve always adored the guy. He was just what the
doctor ordered for your sister. The cat’s meow. How did you and Emily put it back in the day? Treacherously sexy or some shit like that? Now you want to toss him out? What am I missing here?”

  I went hot and cold, my face tingling. I twisted around, reached for the lamp and clicked it off. The bedroom sat bathed in blue moonlight. I wiggled back into place and yanked the sheet up to my neck. Outside the window a curtain of a galaxy of stars shimmered like sequins, and in the horizon the rumpled, black silhouette of the Cumberland Mountains stood guard over the night. Standing there, Luke’s skin glowed blue-pearl like hand-shined marble.

  “You’re not missing anything.” I murmured. “I love Brant and Lilly. I was doing this for Emily.” He sat back down and a spring thrummed somewhere inside the mattress.

  “What’s with the notes all over the place?” he shrugged. “Don’t touch this. Don’t touch that? He’s done nothing to you. He deserves to stay.

  “You’re not listening Luke,” I stammered. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done with it.”

  Luke shot me a look of confusion, climbed into bed and flopped over like a fish. He was reaching his limit. But I wasn’t done making my case yet. “Doesn’t it bother you? I mean, he killed that guy. Mowed him right down with his car. Now all this? With Emily gone? What’s he capable of now?”

  “Van,” Luke moaned. “Seriously please tell me you are not going all the way back there with this. Park the time machine. That was a hundred years ago. We were college students for God’s sake. Shade was found innocent on all charges. The manslaughter charges were stupid. That’s why everything was dropped. Leave it in the past. Where it belongs.”

  “We both know he ran that guy down with his car. On purpose.” Luke shifted on the mattress, rubbed his nostrils vigorously and shook his head at me.

  “The guy was drunk, Van. Scorched. He jumped right out of the bar and into the path of Shade’s car.”

  “Eyewitnesses put Shade a half block down the street for hours, doing what? You know what he was doing. He was waiting for him.” Luke cleared his throat, his voice growing tired.