Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  “We both have to pee, okay, so get out of our—”

  “Yes, yes…I feel your bladders—very full. But you must not venture into this abode just yet, or evil will befall your every step.”

  “Come on!” Lucy whines. “Jesus!”

  “Ladies, ladies, come with me. I will show you to my priceless toilette, where you will empty your bladders with great comfort and ease.”

  “I don’t want your fucking toilet,” she says. “I want my toilet.”

  “No, no, I assure you. My toilette will please you beyond compare.”

  Lucy tries to squeeze past him, but he grabs her arm and guides her toward the stairs to his place, linking his other arm in mine.

  “What’s going on?” She eyes him suspiciously. “You’re stalling or something, aren’t you.”

  “I assure you, the toilette to which I lead you is vastly superior to any toilette you have known. You will urinate in golden waterfalls; your bodily functions are my command.”

  “What is this? Arlan has a chick over, huh?”

  “Chick? I know not what you mean—what is this ‘chick’?”

  By now we’re both laughing as Grady goes on and on in his terrible accent. We arrive at his apartment, where I wait patiently for my turn to pee.

  “But wait,” he says, as I come out of the bathroom. “I am sensing…yes! I sense a sign will soon be clear.” He stomps on the kitchen floor three times. We wait a moment, and three little taps become audible through the floor—it sounds like a broom handle against the ceiling. “Gracious God, there it is! A sign from below.” He crosses himself and nods soberly. “Yes, and now we go. Come, come!” He gathers us up again, and leads us arm in arm back to Lucy and Arlan’s, jabbering nonsensically the whole time.

  As we open the door, the smell of roasted chicken is overwhelming. The apartment is toasty; I’m peeling off my sweater as we walk down the hallway. I hear Lucy gasp, and as I free myself from my sweater I see why. The whole apartment is shimmering with candles—hundreds of them—on the tables, the speakers, the stereo, the windowsills.

  Persisting with his accent, Grady spreads his arms out, palms up. “You like, no?”

  “Holy shit,” Lucy says.

  “Oh my God,” I say, touching her fingers.

  “And now,” Grady tells us, “I sense there is a—how do you say?—a big bird on its way to you.” Arlan, who looks a little embarrassed, pulls the chicken out of the oven. It is a perfect, golden brown; it glistens in the candlelight, moist and steamy. “And gin—” Grady produces from the freezer a huge bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin with such arm-waving theatrics I suspect he’s already had his share. “Let the night begin!”

  Of course, we all drink too much. We stuff ourselves with roasted chicken, baby potatoes and Greek salad until we can hardly move, and then we lie around with John Hammond on the stereo, drinking some more. By midnight we’re downright sloppy drunk. Arlan looks so good in his white T-shirt, his skin an even deeper tan from working all weekend out on Lummi Island. He and Lucinda kiss every five minutes, it seems, and I can’t take my eyes off them. His dark hand on her white-white cheek makes me reach for my gin and tonic every time.

  Whether it’s out of drunkenness, exhibitionism or bliss, they don’t even bother to close the bedroom door tonight. Grady and I find ourselves alone in the living room, surrounded by the debris of our hedonism: chicken bones, greasy napkins, empty bottles of tonic, plates strewn with bits of potato and flecks of rosemary swimming in butter. He clears his throat and reaches for the hulking bottle of gin. I’m sitting on the floor by the doorway, and as he kneels near me I can smell a trace of aftershave, something tasteful and expensive. He pours at least three fingers into my glass, and though I protest meekly, I drink it down anyway, without tonic this time. I stand up—I’m not sure why, it just seems like the thing to do—but as soon as I’m on my feet I want to sit down again, since the room is flashing by me with alarming speed.

  Grady stands, and the next thing I’m aware of is his body pressed up against me, pinning my hips to the wall. His hands grope at my breasts and his mouth fastens on mine. When I turn my head away, confused, I’m looking through the bedroom doorway at Lucy’s naked back rising from a disheveled quilt. Her hair is blue-black in the flickering candlelight. Arlan lies beneath her. He pulls her to him, gripping her just below the rib cage; his fingers look so enormous on her tiny waist, it seems he could break her.

  Now Grady has one hand down my jeans, groping between my legs. I start to breathe heavily as his fingers find their way inside me. I keep my eyes the whole time on Arlan’s hands and Lucy’s back swaying like a reed caught in a current. Grady is watching them, too. Dimly, I’m aware of how pathetic we are, feeding off the sight of them, but I’m too excited to look away.

  When Grady tugs me toward the front door, I only resist for a moment. I don’t want to go anywhere; I want to hear them call out, watch their bodies shudder. I can hear Lucy’s words ringing in my mind, “Watching is a form of rape,” but I wonder—isn’t watching also love? Still, somewhere in the distant corners of my brain I know that I can’t stay here, so I let Grady lead me out the door, down the steps, across the dewy lawn toward his place.

  Grady’s kitchen is egg-yolk yellow. On one wall there’s a rack with twenty different kinds of spices, alphabetized. In his bedroom there’s a woodblock print of Fidel Castro, a poster of some obscure jazz trio, another advertising an Italian movie from the Cannes Film Festival. In the corner is a fish tank where he has allegedly hatched several generations of sea monkeys; now it’s dry and contains a collection of tiny, meticulously trimmed bonsai trees. There’s an old-fashioned secretary’s desk near the window, and he’s got track lighting, which he dims so low that the room is bathed in a warm gold.

  As soon as I walk through the door I’m strangely calm and sober. His apartment is so precise and tasteful, the messy scene we just left seems like nothing more than a drunken fantasy. We sit on his bed and start to giggle. He takes off my shirt and kisses my breasts. I wait for something to happen. Nothing. I try kissing him softly and running my hands through his hair, but it’s all in vain—there’s no heat between us. We struggle another five minutes or so, faking it halfheartedly, and then we just give up. He lends me a pair of flannel pajamas, strips down to his boxers and turns off the mood lighting. We lie side by side in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

  “What’s wrong with us, Anna?”

  “We’re obsessed with other people.”

  “Never stopped me before.”

  I laugh at this. He flips over onto his side, looks down at me intently. “You dig Arlan, don’t you.” His face is lined with the shadows from the venetian blinds.

  “I guess it’s obvious,” I say.

  He nods. “Everyone wants Arlan.”

  “I’m such a cliché….”

  “Yep. Get used to it.”

  “What about you?” I whisper. “You like Lucy?”

  “Lucinda?” He laughs. “She’s cute as a button, but not my type. No, I’d take Arlan over her any day.”

  I sit up. “What? Really?”

  “Don’t look so surprised.”

  “You mean you’re— I didn’t know you were—”

  “I’m not,” he says. “Not really. But every once in a while, someone comes along who’s—” he searches the dark for the right word “—inspiring. Arlan’s like that.”

  I lie back down and stare at the ceiling again.

  “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it,” he says. “Believe me. They’re never breaking up.”

  “You think they’re good together?”

  He considers this. “Not really. I think they’re just equally fucked-up and scared. That goes a long way these days.”

  Later, when Grady’s fallen asleep, I get up and go to the window. From this high up, you can see all the way down to the bay, and the trees between here and there all seem to be waving their leaves in the moonlight. There’s a woman leaning aga
inst a truck parked on Purgatory Corner; she’s staring at the front door of the halfway house, not moving. I wish suddenly and urgently that I had my binoculars on me. I can almost feel the grooved dial under my fingers, turning a blurry mess of light and shadow into a sharp, clear moment: a woman’s face. Her hands. Her body tense, waiting for a door to open.

  Quietly, I slip out of Grady’s pajamas and put my clothes back on. I try to ignore how thirsty I am as I creep out his door, down the stairs, down the gravel path and back into Smoke Palace, concentrating as I slip into Arlan and Lucy’s apartment, trying not to make any noise. As I’m passing their bedroom, I pause and look in. One candle is still burning in a jar on the dresser, though it’s melted down to little more than a disfigured lump. Their bodies are curled against one another, with one of Arlan’s hands resting limply on Lucy’s hip. His face is serene and looks somehow noble, even with his lips parted slightly in sleep. Her expression is obscured by her hair, which has spilled down onto the pillowcase in a dark, chaotic mess.

  My backpack is wedged between the wall and the couch; I dig in it until I find my binoculars, and hook them around my neck with the thin black cord. Then I slip back outside, across the lawn and, taking a deep breath, begin to climb the long, rusty fire escape ladder that leads up to the roof. Twice, I almost turn back around, as the yard and the Land of Skin grow smaller and smaller beneath me; instead I fix my eyes on the misshapen moon above me and keep pulling myself skyward, one rung at a time.

  When I reach the sloping, shingled plane of the roof, I pull myself up onto it, heart racing, and sit hugging my knees near the rain gutter, looking out over Bellingham. As my breathing steadies, I inch my way slowly toward the crest of the roof, until I am perched near the very top. I stare at the world that spills out in all directions below: the decrepit mill still hissing clouds of smoke into the navy-blue sky; the inky Sound, glimmering below the moon with pools of silver light; the proud, weathered houses dotting the hills, announcing their victory against all those years of rain.

  I raise the binoculars and peer through them; there’s the woman, still leaning motionless against the truck, her eyes fixed on the front door of the halfway house. She is lit up by the streetlight, caught in a yellowish wash that makes her face look slightly sallow and ill. I fine-tune the focus until I can see every detail of her profile. She is young, somewhere in her early twenties, and it’s clear that she’s been crying. I think she’s probably pretty, though her face looks sunken with exhaustion, almost skeletal. I wonder who or what she’s waiting for, watching that door with such intense scrutiny. Occasionally her hair moves gently in the breeze, but other than that she’s perfectly still.

  Suddenly she turns her head and, tilting her face upward, fixes her eyes on mine. I catch my breath and nearly lose my balance, pulling the binoculars away jerkily. There she is, in miniature now, watching me from the sidewalk with one hand on her hip, having abandoned the statue-like pose of her vigil. She raises her other hand into the air in a gesture I can’t quite decipher. I look through the binoculars just in time to catch a glimpse of her, eyes squinting angrily; she’s giving me the finger.

  As she drives off in her truck, I sit there, my binoculars hanging heavily around my neck, and it seems a great weight is pressing me down into the roof, crushing me with the force of all those stars and all that sky. I can hear Lucy saying, “Oh, so you’re one of those,” and before I know what I’m doing, I’ve yanked the binoculars off and thrust them in a high, arcing trajectory that sends them sailing out over the street and down the three stories until they crash against the pavement in a final, surprisingly audible explosion of parts.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Garden of Earthly Delights

  A couple of weeks after our chicken feast, we’ve turned the corner into August, and the light is changing from the harsh glare of July to the more liquid tones of almost autumn. The summer moves into a slower, more sluggish rhythm, like a dancer going through the motions halfheartedly. Bender and I meet at the shop just about every day around ten and work until evening. I savor the sweet exhaustion that washes over me at night. Life at Smoke Palace is a lot less frenetic than usual. Bill’s got some hot little sixteen-year-old he’s been taking to the movies a lot, so he’s hardly ever around. Grady’s been trimming trees six days a week, and he mostly keeps to himself in his off hours. He plays with the band for their usual gigs, but doesn’t hang around so much after, like he used to. Lucy and Arlan are as they always are: she’s loud, he’s gentle. They drink and smoke and sex themselves to sleep at night, while I pray that the hard work of the day will sweep me into unconsciousness before their soft moaning starts in the bedroom.

  One morning I wake at dawn and go to the truck to retrieve my father’s letters. Then I walk through the neighborhood until I discover a path that winds its way above the university, through a gorgeous, whispering arboretum. It’s a steep climb, but before long I find myself at the top of a lookout tower, alone with the sun rising at my back and the Sound before me, glossy and still. I carefully unwrap the leather bundle and take the next letter from its envelope. The postmark says it’s from Death Valley, California. I feel a little shiver along my spine.

  August 30th, 1977

  Look, man, I’m going to make this as brief and uncomplicated as possible. You don’t need to know where I am. I’m fine. I just had to get away. I’ll be back to finish that job for Kleinzahler. Even if I have to work twenty-hour stretches I’ll get it done, you know I will. I couldn’t share a bed with Helen even one more night, so I’ve gone someplace where I can be alone, listen to the sound of my own breathing and try to piece together the thoughts littering the floor of my brain.

  What do you take me for—a drooling idiot? I know the signs of love. When she looks at you with her cherry lips laughing, parted wide, inviting, her eyes spitting light at you, how could anyone miss it? You both willfully refuse to acknowledge plain fact. You deny the undeniable; no one can look at you together and miss it. Sheila pretends not to notice, but I don’t have her gift for oblivion. You love Helen the way I loved V—with a furious need, the kind of longing that scorches the throat, sends tendrils of smoke into the eyes.

  There’s nothing to be done, but I do wish to God I’d never touched her in the first place, so you could be together and our lives could make themselves whole. As it is now, even I’m realistic enough to know it’s too late for that. Maybe if Anna didn’t exist, we could try to go back in time, but her life is too delicate and important for such radical experiments. Years ago, when everything seemed more like a game, we could play at anything—it was all the same to us. Hell, with Nam going on and half the guys we grew up with six feet under or (worse) watching their own brains rotting slowly inside their skulls, who could take anything seriously? We were lucky just to be alive, so who’s going to cling to the rules when your number might be up any second and you could find yourself at the business end of an M16? But I’ve lost some of my wild abandon post-Anna. Suddenly, the world’s fucked-up death wish isn’t just an excuse to get high and get laid, it’s a real time bomb, and the ticking is always audible in my heart. Even worse is my own ability to fuck up, which is a constant, gnawing danger that keeps me awake at night, sweating under the sheets.

  But I digress. I guess brief and uncomplicated was never my style.

  If you want to know the truth, I’ve listed our choices and they’re all equally fucked-up. In fact, they’re so repugnant I had to puke twice before I finished jotting them down. Finally, I threw the I-Ching. All things being equal, I’ve let a few pennies determine my course.

  I’ll go back to Helen. I’ll be a father to Anna. I will never mention any of this again. What I want from you is respect for my family. I know you can’t stop wanting her, but I ask that you stop displaying it. We will live a charade, carefully choreographed, and we will be polite about it. No one knows better than me the price for such pretending, but as I said, I’ve reviewed our options until I’m sick and empt
y; this is no more or less evil than the others.

  Of course, you can refuse. I might even be relieved at such a refusal. At times I’ve fantasized that you two would escape, run off to some tropical locale and never resurface. But if you accept, you’ve got to keep your word. Don’t show the slightest twitch of affection. Keep your hands in your pockets and your eyes on the floor. What can I say? It goes against everything we ever believed in, but it’s possible, and it’s necessary. Living by what we believed has only gotten us here.

  Give me a sign,

  Chet

  I read it three times and then fold it up carefully, place it back in its envelope. I stand there for a long while, staring out over the treetops. I feel like I’ve been dipped in ice-cold water, and any second my teeth will start to chatter, but for now I have the brief blessing of no feeling whatsoever.

  I walk slowly to the shop. As I near downtown, an image jumps out at me every block or so: my mother, young and radiant, her hair in two flirtatious braids, laughing playfully with Bender, who stands just an inch or two closer than expected. His wife, Sheila, looking the other way. My father in some lonely Death Valley diner, making a list.

  When I get to the shop, I let myself in. It’s still early; Bender won’t be in for at least an hour or two. I study our guitar, still just pieces getting ready to make themselves whole. We’re working on setting the braces just right so the soundboard will be strong but resonant. Bender keeps harping on how important that is. The braces remind me of a woman’s corset, pulling the curves into some kind of order. They gather close together at the waist and fan out along the hips. I trace them with my fingers lightly, barely touching them, trying not to think about anything except the shape they make.

  I want this guitar to be beautiful; I wonder if this anxious need and worry is how a bride feels about her wedding dress. I’ve imbued the materials with mystical potential. If these planks of wood, these bits of abalone and ivory can come together in just the right way, something alchemical will happen, and I will be someone new. And yet right now I’m tempted to break everything with my bare hands, listen to the wood we’ve labored over splintering and cracking like frail bones.