Cartilage and Skin

by Michael James Rizza

  “Hopefully,” Dr. Bruce Ferguson said, “this is a misunderstanding. You can go home now and relax, though my men should be there right now.”

  For some inexplicable reason, I thanked the man.

  I stepped past the social worker and into the hallway. My body felt disproportionately large as the walls and ceiling seemed to swell and press in on me. When I entered the reception area, the secretary’s mouth moved and emitted a sound, to which I responded with the sound of my own voice. I picked up my muddy green coat from the chair and left the room, with my dying sound lingering behind in the room and the corridor now leaning in on me. Feeling constricted and smothered, I descended the narrow staircase, pushed open the glass door, and stood on the sidewalk, in the cold rawness of twilight, sensing in the air that another storm was coming. Although I could see people walking along the sidewalk and hear cars traveling on nearby streets, the city seemed devoid of human life. Behind the wig shop’s window, the heads were shaped against the interior darkness of the closed store, their distinct colors dissolved into the colors of silhouette, their lack of features effaced by the failing light. I hurried away from the building, trying to distance myself from the place, from the people within it, and from the appointment, which now loomed stark, definitive, and irrevocable—despite the progress of time. My mind shuffled and reshuffled the details and the words, in an attempt to manage the meaning of the conversation. My life was permanently damaged. Although I had told myself that I no longer cared about Morris the man, his quaint little sister, and all the other people in my social circle, I now dreaded the idea that for the past few months, behind my back, the investigation had most likely wormed its way under their flesh and turned their hearts to stone against me. I wasn’t quite certain where I was walking, only that I couldn’t go home, not to my ransacked apartment, not to the possible ambush that the pervert had waiting for me. I felt as though I had been rooted out into the open, and the air was aswarm with pestilence. I was vulnerable and exposed. The thousands of pieces of Claudia Jones were still fresh on my computer, let alone my winding search through a carnival of bodies.

  VI

  I found myself standing under Crowley’s awning. My encounter with the skinny woman seemed to have happened a long time ago, and although I was already beginning to forget her face and the sound of her voice, something within me was being lured back to her, and this had nothing to do with the clothes that I’d left behind. In fact, I didn’t want them back. At the moment, I preferred the vintage outfit, which to some degree protected me from the madman who wasn’t looking for a man in gabardine pants and a putrid, bulky coat with patches on the sleeves. Uncertain what I actually expected from the woman or what I was going to say to her, I tried to pull the door open, but it was locked. Even so, I knew she was somewhere inside. Not only was a light burning in the backroom, but also the music was playing. I knocked on the glass, waited a moment, and knocked again. Because I was now standing still, rather than walking, I noticed that the evening seemed to have grown darker and colder, making the streetlights appear somewhat puny and ridiculous against the expanse of barren sky. After a moment of waiting alone on the sidewalk, I had a strange sensation that the sky itself was in the act of settling upon the world, in an attempt to suffocate it.

  When I knocked on the door again, I peered into the store and saw the lighted doorway that led into the headshop. The skinny woman emerged and stood in the arch. I couldn’t tell what she was doing, until I saw her squat and I realized that the music ceased. I knocked again. Just as a new song began to play, the woman straightened up and started toward me. When she came to the door, she stopped, crossed her arms, and faced me. Although I knew that she was looking at me, I couldn’t read her expression in the dusky light. Her glasses obscured her eyes. For an instant, I thought she was going to leave me outside, to simply watch me from the other side of the glass. However, shaking her head, she reached forward with a key in her hand and unbolted the door.

  “What a poor creature,” she said, holding the door open. “You’re shivering.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Crowley.” I stepped inside, forgetting that Crowley was just the name of the store. “I’m sorry to bother—”

  “Call me that again, and I’ll put you back out.”

  “I’m sorry. Really. I’m—”

  “Relax. I’m just teasing you. Come in,” she said and took hold of my sleeve. “Come on. I have your things. Let me lower the radio.”

  I stood beside the counter. The racks of clothes loomed dark and still, and the empty couch seemed abandoned to the shadows. She stood in the lighted doorway, bent down, and lowered the volume of the music. She came toward me again.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, her voice soft and mollifying, her eyes tenderly searching my face. “Relax. You look like you’re going to—”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You look upset.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good.”

  She then retreated into the backroom, from which I could smell the burning incense, the jasmine.

  She called to me:

  “They’re not quite dry yet.”

  I stepped up to the doorway. My clothes were hanging from the back of the bathroom door, and she was feeling the hem of my pants.

  “You want to take them like this?” she called again, even though I was only a few paces behind her.

  “Not really.”

  She turned and looked at me.

  The possible impropriety of following her into the backroom never occurred to me, and neither did she seem to care. Rather, she had such a look of concern on her face that I suspected my expression revealed my frayed emotions.

  “Do you want to sit down and warm up a bit?”

  Walking past me, she motioned to a set of stools at the end of one of the glass display cases.

  “I was just drinking a glass of wine. Sit down.”

  Behind the counter was a little cart on wheels, which had a coffee maker on top and glasses and mugs on a lower shelf.

  “You know, I was waiting for you,” she said. “I told myself that I would give you twenty minutes.” She brought two glasses to the counter; one was partly full.

  “Pinot grigio.” She showed me the bottle. “I love pinot grigio. Santa Margherita is the best.”

  As she filled both of the glasses to the rim, I took a seat.

  “You put the idea in my head. You had that slip of paper in your pocket with that name on it. That sounds good, I said, so I had my niece watch the store while I went out and bought myself a bottle.” She handed me the glass and continued talking. “Oh, I’m sorry. I emptied your pockets. I don’t know why; I was afraid something might get ruined.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  She set the bottle of white wine beside my elbow on the counter and walked back around. With the hood of the sweatshirt gathered behind her head, I couldn’t tell the length of her blonde hair.

  “You know, I gave you twenty minutes, but then I was sitting here, drinking a glass or two of wine, listening to the music, and reading that book you had. I don’t really read books. I had no idea that people write like that. That’s good writing, right? When people say a book is great, that’s what they mean, right?”

  She took the novel of out her purse, which was on the floor by the doorway, brought it over to me, and then picked up her glass of wine.

  “I was going to take it home,” she said.

  “Keep it.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s the best writing can get. That’s what they mean by great writing.”

  She smiled as if I’d just complimented her.

  “I like that part about kissing his mother. What a poor kid. He fell into that ditch with the rat in it.”

  “I remember.”

  “I knew you were smart when I first saw you, a person who reads hard books. You’ve got that kind of distant look, like you’re watching everything.” She was stand
ing in front of the counter, scanning the back cover of the book as she spoke. Her voice lowered a little, becoming almost apologetic. “Not now, though. Now, you look like somebody passed away or something.”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing as sad as that.”

  “Well, that’s good.” She continued to inspect the book, turning it over in her hands, as if she’d never seen it before. After a moment, she set the book on the counter. When she took a sip of wine, she peeped at me over the rim of the glass.

  “Don’t make much of me; that’s just the way I am,” she said.

  “Sure,” I responded, although I didn’t know what she meant.

  “The wine is good though.”

  “Yes,” I said and tasted the wine for the first time.

  She pointed to the cart behind the counter and said, “I would have offered you coffee, if I was drinking coffee.”

  “I like the wine.”

  “Me too,” she said, with a complicitous, little smile. “Margherita knows what she’s doing. Strange thing that you had that name in your pocket.”

  I discerned in her tone that she was fishing around for explanations, perhaps not so much about the name in my pocket but about why I had looked upset. Although she seemed to be somewhat quirky, a little too friendly, the woman exuded such a sense of comfort and simplicity that I almost felt obliged to talk. Of course, I was still cautious enough not to become too beguiled by her voice, her smile, and her eyes. I wasn’t going to reveal to her that officious men, at that very moment, were rifling through my belongings, looking for evidence of a moral cripple, nor was I going to explain that a pervert was circling around me, closing in, waiting for the opportunity to dive in upon his prey.

  “Do you know who Margaretta is?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “She’s Martin Luther’s mom.”

  “Really?”

  Although the woman didn’t seem to know who I was talking about, I continued my babble, perhaps out of nervousness. “She used to believe that gnomes and elves lived in the woods outside her house, and they would steal eggs from her.”

  “Really?” The woman put her hand on her stomach.

  “Chicken eggs,” I clarified.

  “Well, she may have been a nut, but she makes good wine.” She raised her glass to her lips but then set it on the counter without taking a drink as something else apparently caught her attention.

  “Do you know what?” she asked. “Speaking of elves and gnomes.”

  She moved behind me and walked around to the other side of the display case. When she reached up toward a shelf that contained the tubes and other contraptions, I was able to see a slight sliver of pale flesh just beneath her naval. She took down a shiny brown figure that appeared to be made of polished glass.

  “This is the wizard,” she said, placing the thing before me. It was a sculpture of a long-bearded man; he was standing beside a tree that had several limbs cut off. A hole was in one of the stumps, and the trunk, which went straight up along the wizard’s back and reached higher than the fold of his drooping hat, also had a hole at the top.

  “People use this to smoke?” I asked.

  “Only serious people.” She smiled. “Or maybe people with friends. He’s been on the shelf for a while. I sell a lot more bats.”

  “Bats?”

  I partly imagined that she was going to pull down some leathery winged creature to accompany the wizard on the counter.

  However, she pointed through the top of the glass case to a row of little metal cigarettes displayed on a green felt mat.

  “A bat,” she said. “A one-hitter. A dug-out.”

  “Those are bats?” I asked.

  She smiled at me, as if I were a young, unworldly boy. “They don’t write about stuff like that in your books?”

  “None that I’ve read.”

  “Everyone buys them, which is kind of sad. If you’re going to smoke, I think you should do it with a group, you know. These are made for people to smoke by themselves.”

  “And that’s sad?”

  “Yeah. Smoking is supposed to bring people together. But these here.” She tapped on the glass. “They remind me that people are lonely and they want to get high alone. Isn’t that sad?”

  “I suppose. Why do you sell them then?”

  She shrugged, looking at me, smiling slightly.

  “Don’t mind me; that’s just the way I am,” she said for a second time, and I still had no idea what she meant by this expression. I suspected that it was simply meaningless padding to her conversation.

  “You look better,” she said. “More calm.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “A glass of wine is good for the nerves. I hope it wasn’t serious, whatever was bothering you before.”

  “Nothing really.” I looked away from her, down the length of the glass counter. “I like the smell in here; it makes the place feel warmer.”

  I knew she was still looking at me.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said after a moment.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “I just lost my home, that’s all. I have to move.”

  “Not out of the city, right?”

  “I don’t know. At least, out of my apartment.”

  “You have no place to stay?”

  “I’m not officially out. All my things are there, but I can’t really go back anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice filled with sympathy. She leaned nearer and patted the back of my hand. “I understand.”

  Her fingertips left a trace of warmth upon my skin.

  “It’s a rough situation,” she said. “When I divorced my ex-, it was hard. I didn’t realize how much I’d grown with him until afterwards, but then, you know, I knew I made the right decision. Deep down, it didn’t feel right staying with him.”

  Her gaze settled on my eyes, reading me. My countenance must have been so pathetic that it evidently confirmed for her whatever suspicions she had about me, and to some extent, she had guessed correctly: I was a man with a broken heart.

  “We were supposed to operate a horse clinic together,” she said, “but instead, we ended up in the city. All this time goes by, and I gradually started thinking. I was just sitting there, you know, and I had no idea where I was.” She turned her head and glanced around the room, as if it pained her. “Fifteen years, and I’m still sitting here.”

  She laughed, and she briefly touched my hand again.

  “Isn’t that funny? I actually argued for this place, and I paid some short, overweight lawyer, with hair growing in his ears, to make sure I got this place. Don’t mind me. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Like you said, it was the right decision. I know that.”

  “That’s good.” She scooped up the wizard and returned him to the shelf.

  Watching her, I felt invigorated. Here was a woman who perceived me in a way that was far different from how I perceived myself. This woman actually assumed that I was someone who had been living with another person, that I had been able to stir up love in another’s heart, and, in short, that I moved in the arena of normal human relationships.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she corked the bottle and slipped it somewhere beneath the counter.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I didn’t know. I feel like a fool.”

  “Why?” I got off the stool.

  Oddly, this woman’s meaning eluded me again, and I had a sudden suspicion that it was my fault that I didn’t completely understand her. If her gestures and words had a further implication, my brain was probably too stunted and sterilized to apprehend it. Her language was part of society’s regular discourse, but I moved on a different, perhaps more subterranean, level.

  She began to bustle about, preparing to close the store for the evening. Watching her made me feel guilty for some reason. I drank a large swallow of wine.

  “I don’t know why you feel like I fool,” I said.

  “Was it a hard
breakup?”

  “No. It was the easiest thing in the world.”

  “What about for her?”

  “It was even easier.”

  She was standing by the door, stooped over her purse, in the process of putting away the novel, when she lifted her head and smiled at me.

  “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  “Well, you made me feel better,” I said, beginning to sense what was going on.

  Still smiling, she straightened up and pointed to my clothes hanging on the bathroom door.

  “Are you going to come back for those tomorrow?”

  “Unless you think they’re worth something.”

  “No,” she said, “but I’ll buy your hat.”

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Oh,” she said, and her expression suddenly became more serious. Gesturing to my head with her eyes, she asked, “She didn’t—?”

  “No,” I said. “I tripped over a bag of salt.” I touched my temple with my finger. “A sidewalk did this to me.”

  “You fall down a lot, I suppose. You don’t have to rush,” she added as I took another big gulp of wine.

  “No, I’m ready.” I set my glass on the counter beside hers, which she’d already emptied.

  I walked past her in the doorway, while she reached down and shut off the music. Then, behind me, she clicked off the light, and the room with the used and vintage clothes fell abruptly into deeper shadows. I went and stood by the front door. The darkness outside in the street had a hint of blue, like the color of exhaust fumes. The skinny woman was attending to something behind the counter, and I had to wait for her because she had locked us in. Although the keys hung from the lock, I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to touch them. I could faintly see the woman getting herself into a long coat.

  Something in the woman had an unusual effect on me. She made me feel stronger. Maybe it was her casual manner, as well as her assumption that I was a better man than I actually was, that made me sense my ego vaguely shaping itself around her image of me, conforming to her perception. Apparently, she had waited for me to return from my appointment because she had wanted to see me again. I didn’t know what I had done to provoke her interest. Perhaps when I had purchased the clothes, she had noticed the wad of cash that my landlord had given to me. Perhaps she had interpreted my request to leave my wet clothes behind as a signal of my interest in her.