Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “If you really think it would affect your score,” my mother said, “maybe you should try again.”

  “Even though I bombed the kiddie-test too?”

  She waved the concern away like it was nothing. “That was ages ago. You were just a child. Mattie always said you had a feel for people, but you told me they made you play with blocks. How could anyone possibly test for empathy with blocks?”

  True. Unless someone had a pretty hardcore block fetish, I’d have no reason to notice.

  “I’m sure those old-fashioned screenings were nowhere near as good as they are today,” Maxine added.

  My mind reeled. She wouldn’t bring up the subject of re-testing unless she was willing to support it. Financially. I’d been so sure the door to psychic certification was closed for good, I hardly knew what to make of another chance. I was scrambling to make heads or tails of my own feelings on the topic when a Vibe nailed me right between the eyes…one I hadn’t even needed to see to pick up on.

  I pinpointed the source from halfway across the room, a clean-cut, middle-aged gay guy with expensive clothes and thinning hair. He was staring at me like he’d just had an epiphany, though he looked away just as soon as I met his eyes. But not before I knew exactly what he wanted to do with me…or, more precisely, what he wanted me to do to him.

  “Testing standards change all the time,” Maxine said. “Like they found all kinds of bias in IQ testing and they’re scoring that differently these days too.”

  “Hold that thought,” I murmured, as I set my napkin on the table and stood. The guy who’d twanged my radar was looking fastidiously at his plate now, but I knew he could feel my eyes on him. I was sure of it. Like me, he was having a Sunday dinner out with the family. A sister. Her teenage kids. I crossed the room and marched right up to his table, and he looked up with a hunched, sheepish eagerness.

  The wanting spiked. I embraced it, and more details flooded me. His fascination with cleanliness warred with the desire to be utterly debased. Somehow, somewhere, he’d taken a shine to musky astringency of urine, and he wanted it now. Desperately. To see it? Smell it? Or feel it splashing across his bared chest? Yes, yes, and absolutely, yes.

  I leaned in and casually said, “You look like you’ve been here before. A guy who knows the lay of the land. So tell me….” I leaned in farther. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  His pupils dilated. While his family looked at me a bit strangely for choosing him in particular as the one to answer my perfectly generic question, they had no idea that in his mind, I was baptizing him with my piss. He stammered something about going past the bar and behind the kitchen door, and I thanked him and rejoined my mother, who was looking at me just as strangely as the guy’s surly teenage nephew. I re-settled my napkin and said, “Thought I knew him.”

  And if the impression I’d just received was correct, in a way, I did.

  “I want you to take that test again,” Maxine said. “And don’t worry about the cost. Anything I can help you do to get ready for it, just let me know.”

  My phone buzzed and I snuck a quick look at it under the table. Another text from Jacob. We need to talk.

  Says the guy who couldn’t even bother speaking to me to stand me up. In fact, I hadn’t heard a peep from him since the screening….the one I bombed. If I had an official certificate to wave under his nose, I bet he would’ve had plenty to say. In fact, I knew he would. Working or not, he would have at least fucking called instead of just texting his nonexistent regrets.

  I supposed I was psychic enough to know all along he wasn’t much into me—not without that piece of paper. I just hadn’t yet been forced to confront the knowledge so bluntly.

  “Once you’re certified,” my mother said, “all kinds of opportunities will open up for you.”

  Sure. And Jacob would come running right back to me, too. The thought of which pissed me off to no end.

  Our server started clearing the appetizer plates to make room for our main course, and the sight of the half-eaten canapes made me feel nostalgic for my soirees. I didn’t need a certificate, I realized, to recapture that feeling. And maybe I was just being contrary, but if Jacob’s approval hinged on me being certified, then the official piece of paper was the last thing I wanted.

  “You know how much the screening costs?” I asked. Maxine nodded. “Well, if that money’s on the table…what would you say if I used it to start a business instead?”

  Chapter 35

  Maxine and I hoarded our table by lingering over our meal long after the dessert plates were cleared. Normally I’d be more sympathetic to the hovering waitstaff, but fuck ’em. It wasn’t every day you got stood up and lied to, then rounded out the evening by planning your own business. Every decision branched into a dozen more details that needed to be sorted out, and when Maxine dropped me off in front of my apartment, I had a list of stuff as long as my arm that needed research and planning. But as I headed for the stairs, I spotted a handful of flyers on the vestibule floor—an ad for one of the trendier nearby bars. Sunday night was two-for-one well drinks and no cover charge. And since I’d been drinking bottom shelf liquor so long I hardly noticed the vile aftertaste, it would be a shame for all that conditioning to go to waste.

  Hitting a bar isn’t just about the drinking. I was perfectly capable of making a watered down screwdriver myself. Barhopping is about seeing and being seen. Brushing up against other people. An attempt at socialization, connection.

  Even with the drink special, the Sunday night crowd was lackluster and thin. I was considering finishing my drink and heading on home when I recognized my old friend Matthew peeling out of the bathroom and doing a quick scan of the crowd. I raised my glass to him and his face brightened at the promise of juicy gossip and a satisfying bitch session. “Look who decided to grace us with his presence,” Matthew exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you in any of your usual haunts lately.”

  Too true. “I’ve been keeping myself busy.”

  He must’ve known I was at ClipLand these days, but he didn’t seem eager to prod that particular wound. “Well, you got out of Luscious while the getting was good. Red’s gone, Trevor’s gone, It’s just me and Pilar and a bunch of annoying little babies fresh out of school.”

  And Matthew thought he was oh-so-experienced. Well, maybe he was. He’d endured a lot over the past year to keep his prestigious job. Maybe he wasn’t quite as naive as I’d always suspected.

  Poor Pilar, though. I would’ve thought she’d have figured out how to move on by now. All her planning, all her hopes and dreams. I might never thank Ralph for the way he treated me, but at least I wasn’t stuck at Luscious.

  Matthew trailed a lingering glance over my body. “Look at you, all angular and pissed off.” Yeah, a diet of ramen and disappointment will do that to you. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Everyone else here is so phenomenally boring.”

  The minute Matthew deems the situation boring, someone’s about to get their rocks off. And I supposed it would be easiest to suck each other off in his car. I’m not sure why I didn’t suggest we adjourn to the backseat. After all, it would’ve been more comfortable than my shitty apartment.

  Maybe I wanted him to see it. Maybe I wanted everyone to know I’d really scraped bottom, so that when I rose from the ashes, they’d know what hardships I’d had to overcome.

  Maybe I wanted to make sure Jacob knew.

  It wasn’t extrasensory perception that told me Mr. Perfect would put in an appearance, it was good, old-fashioned common sense. Carolyn wasn’t able to resist letting him know about our conversation. Not from any desire to stir the pot, but her compulsion to expose the truth. And Jacob, well, he’d need to set the record straight.

  We weren’t exactly dawdling on the way back to my place, but we weren’t in any hurry, either. We were within a block of my building when the black sedan idled up and started pacing us. I felt it, felt him, lurking there in my peripheral vision long before Matthew did; he was still chattering away
about the latest blowup at Luscious when I stopped and turned toward the street, and the tinted passenger window powered down.

  “We need to talk,” Jacob said.

  I crossed my arms and gave a one-shoulder shrug.

  He put the car in park right where it was and strode out onto the sidewalk. He can do shit like that because he’s a cop. He can do whatever he damn well pleases and never has to answer for any of it. Well, not anymore. I was done.

  “Who’s your friend?” Matthew asked. His overly casual tone dripped with eagerness to witness some drama unfolding, and I had the feeling he was about to get a pretty good show.

  Jacob gave him half a glance, then said to me, “What are you playing at?”

  I slipped my hand into Matthew’s back pocket so there was no doubt as to my intention. “Getting reacquainted with an old colleague. Care to join us?”

  He didn’t dignify that with a response. “I miss one date and that’s it, you move on to the next guy?”

  “And there you go, spinning the situation to make me sound like a tool. Not that I had any doubt you would, seeing as how you’re so perfect.”

  “You called Carolyn to check up on me. That’s a huge violation of my trust.”

  “Is it? Or are you just embarrassed you got caught?”

  “Do you seriously think—?” He planted his hands on his hips. “I can’t believe you’re so phenomenally immature.”

  He worked his jaw so hard that sinews leapt in his neck. But while he looked pretty pissed, I wasn’t getting an angry vibe off him, just an icy chill. “Look,” I said, “you don’t need to pull the age card, or to play up the melodrama like you’re oh so hurt. We’ve got nothing in common, and I’ll never live up to your standards.”

  “That’s bullshit. And we have plenty in common.”

  “What, we like to eat and fuck? So do sponges and cockroaches. Here’s the deal, we had some fun and now we’re done. As simple as that. I’ll put it in a way even you can understand.” I disengaged from Matthew, pulled out my phone, thumbed in a single word and texted it to Jacob.

  Goodbye.

  Part Three

  Sticks and Stones

  Chapter 36

  It was just as well Jacob and I called it quits when we did. Since I overlapped my ClipLand job with the brick and mortar version of Sticks and Stones until the last possible moment, I had zero time for deep dinner conversation and naked desert. For weeks on end, I stayed up until the wee hours, not between the sheets, but parked in front of the computer. I had to grind through a mind-numbing array of forms and fees required to open a retail shop in Cook County. And then there was my inventory software to set up. And my website. And advertising. And…well, you get the idea.

  Not that I’m complaining. Admin work is dull as dirt when you’re doing it for someone else, but seeing as it was my baby being patched together? I got a charge out of it. Even if I was only clocking four hours of sleep a night.

  I hadn’t realized exactly how sleep-deprived and crabby I was until Maxine showed up to “help” me paint…with one gallon of semigloss acrylic. I sized up the can and said, “What, pray tell, is that?”

  “Sultry Amethyst.” She looked at me expectantly, then said, “Don’t you like it?”

  Sure, the color was great. But… “Where’s the rest of it? I gave you forty bucks.”

  “And I spent it.” She handed me the receipt. Thirty six dollars. Plus tax. Shee-yit. “One gallon of paint? One gallon?” I gestured at the disgusting stairwell. The ceilings were nine feet in the shortest part, taller than that as they came up the stairs. And the whole thing was covered in graffiti and filth. “We’ll run out before we even hit the first step.”

  “I talked them into free samples of Sun-Kissed and Cerulean Dream, too.”

  “Samples? Wow, that changes everything!”

  “Don’t yell at me. I’m trying to help.”

  “This isn’t your suburban breakfast nook, Maxine, it’s a public hallway. I’ll be painting it over and over again. I don’t need a designer color—a bucket of thick white generic paint will do.”

  She gave petulant pout. “Fine. I’ll take it back.”

  “Don’t bother. It wouldn’t be right after you had it custom mixed.” I crossed my arms and took in the wall in all its ugly squalor. “Even if I could afford to paint the whole thing purple, what difference would it make? It’ll be covered in gang tags before the week is out.”

  “In that case…use this paint for your focal point. Your front door.”

  Grudgingly, I let myself warm up to the idea of dropping such a big chunk of change on the color of my door. After all, folks pay all that and more to color their hair, and that grows out. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to have a focal point.”

  We had the bright idea to paint the front door yellow, but partway in, realized the sample wouldn’t stretch to cover. No problem. We added blue stripes. The doorframe, we did in purple. And as it came together, I had to admit, it looked pretty sharp.

  While Maxine had a great eye for color—you’ve gotta figure I inherited my own good taste from somewhere—manual labor wasn’t her forte. Despite my best efforts to tape everything off and contain the spillage, she somehow managed to wear more paint than she applied. When a whopper of a spider squeezed out from the behind the molding and startled her, she tottered back and stuck her hand to the wet can lid. And while a normal person might’ve wiped it off, Maxine somehow flailed against the wall instead and left an arc of Sultry Amethyst fingerprints behind.

  “I’m so sorry.” She grabbed for the paper towels and sent them rolling down the stairs. They unfurled to the halfway point, and then the paper core detached from the end and bounced the rest of the way down.

  She made a grab for the roll, and I caught her by the shoulder before she went tumbling down the stairs behind it. Only then did I realize something was seriously wrong. “Hey.” I tugged her around and made her look at me. “What is it?”

  She smiled brightly, but I saw right through it, even more than usual. Not just because she was blinking away tears.

  “Is someone sick? Are you okay?”

  With me unwilling to play the everything’s fantastic game, her façade slipped. “No one’s sick, honey. I’m just worried.”

  “About who?”

  She laughed then, a genuine laugh that was really kind of a sob, and the dam broke, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “All I ever wanted was for you to be happy.”

  “I am,” I said. And then I checked myself…. Was I? “Sure, I’m stressed out, and no matter how careful I try to be, I hemorrhage money. But the whole experience of setting up this business was amazing, even the boring parts. I can’t deal with working for some power-hungry boss. I won’t. Cruising along and playing by someone else’s rules was killing me. And if that means living on the cheap and putting in long hours, so be it. Stuff is just stuff. Now that I’m tasting what it means to live on my own terms, I wouldn’t trade it for all the material possessions in the world.”

  I reeled in the paper towels, mashed them into an unwieldy bunch, tore off a random hunk and handed it to her. But instead of wiping off her own hand, she attempted to scrub off the purple fingerprints she’d left behind on the wall.

  Too late. The prints were already drying, and all they did was smudge.

  I didn’t see Maxine’s precarious optimism plummet…I felt it.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I announced briskly, and stuck my hand in the paint can. If I know anything, it’s confidence. And the best way to bluff your way through a mistake is to make it look deliberate. I daubed a dozen more fingerprints next to hers.

  Maxine chided me with a stern, “Curtis,” but her mood stopped tanking.

  I was only half listening anyhow, because I was in the midst of an idea—a way to draw customers up the stairs. “I think I’ve got an easier way to camouflage this graffiti.” And an interesting way to stretch out that single gallon of Sultry Amethyst, and the dregs of Cerulea
n and Sun-Kissed.

  I owned plenty of colors. They were meant for hair, not walls, but as anyone who’s tried to tint their own hair knows, they’ll stain anything they touch. Flame Red, Fuchsia, Indigo and Green Apple—I let my potential clientele know I was a gay-owned business by leading them to my door with a pointillism rainbow. And once Maxine saw it start coming together, she was absolutely delighted. So much so that when she whipped out the hot glue gun and stuck a bunch of twigs and rocks to a salvaged hunk of wood to spell out the store’s name, I didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no need to be so literal. I guess part of being an entrepreneur was knowing when to accept collaboration.

  By the time the paint fumes dissipated, I was ready to spring my venture on the world.

  My grand opening event wasn’t terribly eventful—I hung flyers on neon colored paper and cranked up the huge coffee urn. But soiree folks came. And if they were surprised to see my mother in the helper role rather than Jacob, they kept their comments to themselves. People didn’t linger quite as much as they had when a big cozy conversation pit dominated the room, but there was a decent stream of customers. Lydia was in and out several times, and Pilar put in an appearance. Carolyn, too. She didn’t mention Mr. Perfect. Neither did I. Still, it wasn’t lost on me that Jacob would’ve really got off on setting up the store together. Hell, maybe it would’ve even fulfilled his burning need to set up house.

  Oh well, I thought. What’s done is done.

  It was a long, grueling day. There was a lot left to do after the doors closed, but Maxine looked like she’d been through a marathon. I took the broom out her hands and said, “It’s okay, Mom. I got this.”