Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8

by Jordan Castillo Price

Sandalwood.

  And it was coming from him.

  I grabbed him by the hair and pulled his face down into the crook of my neck, and muttered something about me doing whatever I fucking pleased and him being grateful…but it was all just a ploy to get in a good sniff. Definitely sandalwood. I shoved him away, and this time he obliged and rolled off me.

  I didn’t allow myself to jump to conclusions. Not while I was busy fumbling into my jeans and trying to act like my ass wasn’t on fire. At least, I tried not to—but it wasn’t like I could force my brain to stop thinking. I’d done the deed with Ralph often enough to know he’s got the stamina of a typical mortal. The only way he could piston me for that long was if he’d recently shot his load. And he’d been sequestered with Red in his office for the last part of the day….

  Fuck. I should’ve squeezed his goddamn throat harder.

  For a guy named Crash, I’ve had more near-misses than anyone deserves. Before I could lambaste him for enhancing his game with a warm-up show, a glint of plastic on the floor caught my eye. The torn condom wrapper. Specifically, the brand name printed on the plastic: Endura-max.

  The inside of the fucking rubber was spiked with anesthetic.

  Those things are meant for three-minute wonders, not regular guys. I’d tried one before, just to see what it was all about. Nothing titillating about numbing the tip of your dick, nothing at all. So if he looked smug while he was laboring away between my legs, it wasn’t the sensation he was enjoying. That jerk had planned on hammering me to the point of pain.

  After I’d stayed late and fixed his windbag copy out of the kindness of my heart, too. Fucking ass.

  I pulled on my leather jacket. Ralph was busy primping in the mirror, finger-combing his sweaty hair so it didn’t dry lopsided. “Cab fare’s on the desk,” he said, without bothering to meet my eyes.

  I looked down at the pair of twenties. About twice as much as it would take to get me home.

  In other words, twenty for the cabbie, and twenty for…services rendered.

  I definitely should have wrung his neck while I’d had the chance.

  I probably could’ve walked home powered solely by the steam of my own outrage, but I wanted to get there sometime before midnight. Everything’s a fucking mind game with Ralph, and everything’s a test. If I left the money on the table, I’d be admitting he’d gotten to me, but if I took it all, I’d look like a fool. I’d ended up grabbing just one of the twenties, the proper cab fare. Either it was the smart thing to do, or by splitting the difference, I’d come out on the bottom.

  Not for the first time that night, either.

  I rode home with my phone in my hand and my thumb hovering over Red’s contact. The only thing stopping me from following through was the fact that for once in my life, I couldn’t figure out what to say.

  I was angry on my own behalf, sure, but it was the thought of Red getting spooged on by that loathsome prick that really upset me. I’d already been there, done that. But Red was special. Untainted. Then again, nobody’s body language had seemed particularly alarming when they emerged from the office. Maybe nothing happened between them.

  Yeah, right. That’s why the smell of sandalwood still clung to Ralph’s sweaty hair.

  Hindsight is more than 20/20. It’s a panorama of obvious with a heaping helping of “duh.” Red had been practically insistent about me joining him in his meditation outing. What if his motive had nothing to do with meditation, and everything to do with sharing concerns about Ralph’s unwanted attentions—and I’d gone and brushed him off?

  Or what if the invitation had been precisely what it looked like on the surface, and nothing more?

  Chapter 14

  I tossed and turned all night. I toyed with the idea of staying home and spending the day looking for a new job. In fact, it was tempting to never cross that threshold again. But I’d be damned if I let Ralph know the previous night’s fuck-a-thon even registered. Besides, I couldn’t just abandon Red to that despot’s tender mercies. So I dressed myself in my most badass, head-to-toe, form-fitting black—a long sleeved T-shirt, silver studded belt, and strappy bondage pants—and spiked my hair with precision.

  I was bulletproof. I’d have to be.

  While I wasn’t afraid of Ralph—I could totally take him in a fight—I had the sneaking suspicion he’d somehow manage to screw me again. The next time we crossed paths, what could I possibly say? I’d been trying out and discarding various blasé remarks all morning, but it turned out all my mental rehearsal was all for nothing. Ralph had a meeting all the way out in Rockford and wouldn’t be in that day at all.

  With Ralph thankfully out of the way, I could focus on someone I actually cared about: Red. His morning clientele was business as usual. A striking bronzed copper, some hand-painted highlights, and several regrowth touch ups. My morning was spent wondering how on earth he could handle Ralph’s noxious pawing, what with all his morals and ethics. In mirror after mirror, I searched Red’s body language for signs of distress. Even accounting for the fact that he’s as easy to read as the small print on a toner bottle, he seemed perfectly fine, despite the fact that he’d spent as much time sequestered with Ralph yesterday as I had.

  I came up with half a dozen ideas about the way Red was handling Ralph’s attentions. Could it be that meditation was powerful enough to blot out the experience? Or was Ralph still in the wooing stages, making Red feel as if his talent was valued more than his exquisite ass. No, I finally decided. There must’ve been some kind of contact. That sandalwood smell didn’t migrate on its own.

  During the afternoon lull, I let Matthew think he snatched a walk-in out from under my nose, then lingered in the storage room under the pretense of finding another blow drier. I’d had a peek at the schedule and knew Red was between clients, and I also knew the likelihood of him running out to his car to check Tanngo was nil.

  Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was observant. Red opened the door and said, “Okay, Curtis. You want to tell me what’s on your mind? All day long you’ve been staring at me—and not like you’re picturing me naked, either.”

  Shit. All the thinking I’d done, and no good way to say what needed saying. “So look,” I blurted out awkwardly, “this thing with Ralph…you’re not the only one.” I paused to see how he’d react to that, but in typical Red fashion, he gave me nothing but a cryptic, semi-raised eyebrow. I plowed ahead. “He’s the boss, and so he gets what he wants. And the rest of us have to put out—but, heck, we’ve got nothing to lose. You, though, you’ve got that whole relationship thing going on. It’s not worth risking something so important just to appease him.”

  He frowned. A thinking-frown. Maybe.

  “Skills like yours,” I said, “you can work anywhere. You don’t need him. Sure, he’ll try to blackball you when you leave, but don’t give him a chance. One word: lawsuit. Ralph’s all about his reputation. He thinks about retaliating, threaten him with a big ol’ sexual harassment charge, he’ll think twice about coming after you.” I warmed up to my little fantasy. “After us. And then? Me and you, we find ourselves somewhere else to work…heck, maybe start our own thing—”

  “You’re sleeping with Ralph,” he said.

  The doorknob rattled. A receptionist called my name. I ignored her and she went away. “The point being, I’d back you up, you’re not alone.”

  When Red squared off in front of me and grabbed me by the face, my initial reaction was relief. As much as I was ashamed about the treatment I’d been putting up with, it felt good to finally come clean. Maybe even liberating. It wasn’t until he said, “Ralph and you. Tell me about it,” that I realized Red hadn’t reacted with a sense of solidarity.

  He was pissed.

  “I…guess it started a couple of weeks after he hired me. I thought his flirting was harmless. Just his way of being charming. But then one night after closing things got out of hand, and he was so apologetic afterward I didn’t think much of it. Until it happened again. And
again. And every time, it got a little bit weirder. By the time I decided the only one enjoying our alone-time was Ralph, I couldn’t figure out how to turn him down.”

  Distantly, as I related my story, I heard someone try the doorknob yet again. I ignored it. Because Red was holding me lover-close and gazing deep in to my eyes, and all it would take to bridge the gap between us would be for one of us to lean in. Yeah, he had a boyfriend. But would his boyfriend understand like I did what it was like to be manipulated and used? The fantasy I’d seeded began to blossom, him and me, free from Ralph and doing our own thing. I’d cut, he’d color, and we’d only deal with the customers we actually wanted to serve. Pretty up the Olgas for free, and tell the Julias to go to hell. And afterward we’d close up shop and head home. Together. All in all, a pretty awesome pipe dream. Until the lock turned, the door banged in…and Ralph Maldonado burst through it.

  “How dare you?” he wailed—and it was impossible to say whether he was hollering at Red, or at me. At least until we broke apart and Red staggered back a few steps, and Ralph’s eyes stayed on him. “After everything I’ve done for you—finding you an apartment, paying to move you out here, making a name for you—and this is how you repay me?”

  Red didn’t quail beneath Ralph’s outburst. He squared his shoulders and faced it head-on. “Everything you’ve done for me? I left the only home I knew to bring my talent here—and you’ve got the nerve to act like I should be grateful.” He took a trembling breath, modulated his voice, and said with deathly calm, “And what exactly is it you think is going on here?”

  “Given what I just walked in on?”

  “Curtis and I were talking.”

  “Oh, believe me.” Ralph gestured at me in disgust. “I know this one’s entire vocabulary.”

  “So he tells me. He’s always been truthful, which I can’t say for you. And I won’t abide a liar.”

  Something shifted then, as if the ceiling opened up and epiphanies poured through. I finally pieced together the reason Red hadn’t seemed distraught about spending hours in Ralph’s office.

  He hadn’t been forced to cheat on anyone.

  He’d been with his cherished boyfriend the whole time.

  “You and Ralph?” I couldn’t have kept the dismay out of my voice if I’d tried.

  Ralph, meanwhile, realized Red was way more angry than he was, and decided to switch tactics and play on his sympathy. “So I made a mistake,” he blubbered. His face had gone crimson and his eyes squeezed out crocodile tears. “You’re always going on about forgiveness, don’t I deserve another chance? You said you loved me—was that even true? Are you going to let this whore come between us?”

  “Whoa,” I barked. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m the whore? Me? You’re the one who can’t keep his dick holstered.”

  “Curtis,” Red interrupted, and I bit back a stream of insults that would make even a whore like me blush. “This isn’t about you.”

  Damn straight. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

  I pivoted toward the door, fully prepared to bank Ralph into the wall if he tried to stop me, but then I realized Red hadn’t budged.

  “Get out,” Ralph shouted—not at Red. Just me. “Get the hell out of here, and don’t you dare set foot in this shop again.”

  I looked incredulously at Red. “Aren’t you coming?”

  He gave his head a single, angry shake. “I can’t.”

  “I had no idea the two of you were an item,” I said, “so I’m not the one at fault here. You know that, right?”

  Ralph stopped hemming and hawing, and looked expectantly at Red, who gathered himself, and with grim precision, said, “Every one of us…we are each responsible for our own actions.”

  I imagine it says something about my dubious moral character that I was stunned Red wasn’t willing to tear out the door with me, hand in hand, whooping and laughing and dashing off into our newfound freedom. If he couldn’t see that we were both the victims here, that we owed Ralph nothing, no explanations, no reparations, not one damn thing, then he was blinded by his own fucked up, self-righteous code.

  I stormed out the door, past the receptionist—you’d better believe I wanted to give her something to cry about—and into the stations. I wrapped up my kit and snapped the photos off my mirror. My mother’s dog in a ridiculous sweater. Me flashing my then-new tongue stud, and Pilar with a daith piercing that hadn’t lasted a week. Sixteen-year-old me with my dad and the frumpy used Subaru he’d bought me. All this history, unceremoniously shoved into a messenger bag along with my shears and clippers and flat irons.

  I took a deep breath and finally looked up as I slung my bag over my shoulder. Trevor, Matthew, Pilar. Plenty of history there, too. All of them stared at me in wide-eyed disbelief.

  I’m sure I would be just as shocked, as soon as it really sank in that I was bidding Luscious a final goodbye.

  Part Two

  A Spark of Empathy

  Chapter 15

  Three weeks later…

  “Good mor-ning, my Lit-tle Peanut!” my answering machine chirped. I really needed to ditch that landline. Way too intrusive, and surprisingly pricy. Not to mention potentially mortifying. But thankfully Matthew was in the bath where he wouldn’t hear Maxine over the roar of the oversized showerhead.

  I mashed my face into the pillow and hoped my mother would just talk herself out, but her singsong voice went on and on, extolling the virtues of a spirulina cleanse she’d heard about on the Menopause Channel, or wherever it is she gets her daily dose of balderdash. The less embarrassing shit the junior stylist knew about me, the better. Not that our boredom hookups were in any danger, just that I didn’t want him to give me any shit. Plus my first appointment was scheduled at the crack of nine, so I decided I might as well get it over with and pick up the phone.

  “How’s the new job?” Maxine asked, a little too brightly.

  “Different. Very different.”

  “Getting there isn’t a problem?”

  “Not at all.” Not if I took the bus, anyway. The very first day I was half an hour late trying to park, only to find my sideview mirror knocked sideways and brutally scuffed when I left for the day.

  “And what about the safety alarm I bought you? Did you remember to put it on your keychain?”

  “I think of it every time I handle my keys. And then I think of you.” I also think of the way I pitched it right in the dumpster where it belonged, but I opted not to mention that.

  Satisfied, she brought up the next item on her agenda. “It’s the last day of the month.”

  “Did we have plans?”

  “No. It just occurred to me that rent is due on the first.”

  My mother isn’t a renter. She owns her house. It’s the one I grew up in. As far as I knew, it was paid off…which meant that suddenly, out of nowhere, she’s decided I need to be reminded to pay my monthly bills. “Yup. That’s typically how apartments work.”

  “So…everything’s okay?”

  You gotta love how subtle she thinks she is. “If I was living in a cardboard box, I wouldn’t have answered the phone, right?”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  In my peripheral vision, I glimpsed Matthew shuffling blearily toward the front door in wet hair and last night’s clothes. He gave me a halfhearted wave goodbye, which I just as halfheartedly returned. “I’m not mad, I’m annoyed. There’s a difference.”

  “I need to make sure you’re okay. I’m your mother—it’s my job to worry about you.”

  And apparently her main duty was to add insult to injury by inventing problems that weren’t even there. I’d managed to dissuade her from driving into the city and checking out my new workplace by texting her a few carefully framed pictures. If she ever saw the salon with her own two eyes, she’d be trading in her spirulina smoothies for Xanax.

  Parking aside, I personally dug the new neighborhood. True, there was a dangerous element. But it was way less contrived than Lincoln Square, and the only oompah came
from snatches of bouncy mariachi. It was tempting to linger over my coffee. Instead of boring businessmen and even more boring tourists, I rubbed elbows with students and musicians and artists.

  My own sensibilities had even started to shift. At Luscious, the stylists had been encouraged to look hip, but fastidiously put together, and never too edgy. Clothing with holes in it would earn you a stern lecture—or a bare-assed spanking that was nowhere near as playful as it seemed. But that creep Ralph was no longer the boss of me, and lately more and more casual “bar clothes” were sneaking into my daytime wardrobe. All the mirrors told me I was rocking my edgier look. Not that Red was there to enjoy it. He’d blown out of town after our tete a tete in the storage closet and hadn’t looked back.

  Screw ’im. Plenty more fish in the sea. Plenty of horny hookups on Tanngo, too.

  For the first time since my ill-fated teenage gig as a supermarket bag boy, I didn’t technically have a boss. A pecking order definitely existed, though. There were five stylists altogether, with a collective experience of over thirty-five years. Twelve of those years were on Gail Kessell, a fellow refugee from Luscious. Her entire wardrobe (including her hair) was black and red, her arms were two solid sleeves of kitschy ink, and she could stand for twelve hours in pleather rockabilly pumps with three-inch heels. On paper, Gail owned the indie salon where I now plied my trade, but the stylists working there weren’t her employees. We rented the booths, supplied our own product and equipment, and scheduled our own appointments. It was a lot like being an entrepreneur—other than the fact that I had no control over the name of the salon.

  CUTTERZ.

  That’s right. With a “Z.” And all in caps.

  Maybe one day I’d become inured to it. But right now, the mere thought of the cutesy spelling made my sphincter clench.

  The thought of calling up still more of my clients from Luscious didn’t feel so hot, either. Most of them claimed they’d get back to me just as soon as they had time for an appointment, then blew me off for one of the Juniors. This was not mere speculation. I’d coaxed the info out of Matthew with a hand-job and few pomegranate martinis.