Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  I walk into the pink, carpeted hush of the lobby as the first drops of rain begin to splash against the dirty windows. An impossibly thin man in a yellow cardigan sits behind the glassed-in counter and mumbles through the metal speaker.

  “Can I help you?” He has some kind of accent—Indian, maybe. It gives his mumbling a musical lilt.

  “I’m supposed to meet Arlan Green here,” I say. “But I’ve forgotten his room number. Can you tell me which one he’s in?”

  He furrows his brow at me and consults a large, pink ledger. “No, I’m very sorry, I do not see—”

  “Are you sure? Can you check again?”

  He runs his finger down the page very slowly. “Ah, Green!” he says, and flashes me a delighted grin. “I’m very sorry—we do have a Mr. Green. Room twenty-two.”

  “Thank you.”

  I find his room all the way at the tip of the L-shaped building. I knock on the door for a full five minutes before he finally answers.

  There he is, wearing only jeans. He’s bleary-eyed and his hair hangs in damp strands about his face. He stares at me blankly for a moment, and then he covers his eyes with one hand, leaning against the doorway, and looks at me again, as if I might be a trick of the light. “Anna. Jesus. What are you doing here?” I just stand there, unsure of what to say, and he chuckles. “My God. Of all people.”

  “Can I come in?” I ask. “It’s raining.” And it really is starting now, coming down fast and hard. He hesitates, then opens the door wider; I slip past him and hover awkwardly near the bed. As he closes the door, the smell of the place hits me: smoke, dust, the greasy after-odor of fried foods. There are three empty fifths of Absolut vodka crowding each other on the small Formica table, and another one, half empty, near the bed. Two ashtrays filled with twisted butts are on the nightstand. Several empty, industrial-sized bottles of Coke keep each other company on the floor, along with some Chinese takeout cartons and a bottle of aspirin lying on its side, a wad of cotton discarded nearby. He sees me surveying the room and says a little defensively, “You want a drink? Not much selection, but you can have a martini, minus the olive and the vermouth.” He goes to the half-empty bottle by the bed and hands it to me. “There you go. Martini-out-of-the-bottle. It’s all the rage.” I take it, but I don’t drink. He sits on the bed. I take a seat on the pink chair near the table.

  “Everyone’s been worried,” I say.

  “Yeah. Well.”

  “Lucy misses you.”

  He lies back on the bed and gazes up at the ceiling. “You ever been in love, Anna?” He speaks with the queer, distant tone of someone who’s been talking to himself for days.

  I hesitate. “I guess.”

  “No,” he says. “You don’t guess. That’s like saying ‘I guess I was buried alive.’ You know, believe me.”

  “Maybe it’s different for everyone.”

  He fishes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and puts one between his lips. “Maybe,” he mumbles, and I watch the cigarette bob as he speaks. He lights a match and touches the flame to the tip, sitting up on one elbow. “Anyway, I don’t recommend it. It’s not good for your health.”

  “Have you been here all this time?” I ask.

  He looks at me. “What’s it like for you?” he asks, ignoring my question, slurring his words a little.

  “What’s what like?”

  “Love.”

  “Um,” I say. “It’s…” I search the room for the right word. I spot the terrible watercolor painting on the wall and the word springs to my lips: “crushing.”

  “Now see, that’s an interesting choice of words. ‘Crushing.’”

  “Why?” I ask, offended.

  He chuckles. “Maybe it’s not love, so much as a crush.”

  “Don’t condescend,” I say quietly, staring at my hands.

  “Listen…” He takes a long drag and exhales a beautiful, streaming plume of smoke into the sad, dim light of the room. “I’m not trying to be an asshole. I just want you to know what it’s like—what it’s really like, because most people don’t. Lucy’s the only girl I ever loved, so it’s not like I’m an expert. But with her, it’s like living with a cannibal. Every day she cuts out a piece of my heart, just for fun. Then she sticks a wad of chewing gum where the hole is so the blood won’t get on the carpet.”

  “Maybe it’s not supposed to be like that.”

  “Maybe not.” He lies on his back again. “But that’s how it is.”

  I’d like to leap onto the bed and shake him, cry out that he’s got it all wrong, that love should be soothing and gentle, like he is, something to wrap yourself in to keep warm. Instead I sit very still and say in a barely audible voice, “It could be different.”

  He turns to me again, and his eyes are the color of caramel in this light—I can see more yellow in them than I’ve ever seen before. The rain patters steadily against the roof and the windows. “Of course I’ve thought about it.”

  “Thought about what?”

  “You know. You. Me. What we’d be like.”

  I try to sound calm. “And…?”

  He reaches across to the nightstand and crushes the cigarette butt into the crowd of others; a small cloud of smoke rises around his fingers. “You’re not like us. Me and Lucy. We’re like family—haven’t you ever noticed that our eyes are almost identical?” He stares at the ceiling for a moment, then sits up and takes a swig of vodka. “Well? Have you noticed that?”

  “Not really,” I lie.

  “It’s like somehow our lives—Lucy’s and mine—they’re wrapped up together, and there’s no way out. We’ve got a mutual stranglehold on each other—if one of us lets go, the other will…” He pauses, struggling to complete the metaphor.

  “But that’s just it,” I say. “If you both let go, you’ll be better off, won’t you?”

  “I love her,” he says flatly. Suddenly I feel very stupid. “No, don’t look like that,” he says. “I know it seems crazy, and you’re right to talk me out of it. But I love her. I don’t have any choice.”

  We listen to the rain and pass the bottle of vodka back and forth a couple of times. “How the hell did you find me?” he asks after a while.

  “I was just driving by. I saw your car.” We look at each other and laugh at the absurdity of it. “Is that bizarre or what?” I look down at my hands. “I was scared. I had a dream that you killed yourself.”

  “It occurred to me,” he says.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Not yet, anyway.” I look at him in alarm, and he gets up from the bed, paces the room. “Don’t look at me like that. It makes sense.”

  “What makes sense?”

  “She’s in my blood. I can’t get rid of her.” He fingers the stiff brown curtains. “Unless I get rid of my blood.”

  “Oh God,” I say. “Don’t even say that. It’s so stupid.”

  “Never mind, then,” he says. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He stands at the window, and we say nothing. The rain is still falling, but lightly now—just a mist, really—and the soft gray hush that comes sometimes after a hard rain is just beginning to come over us. The aqua bedspread, the floor lamp with its pool of amber, and the watercolor of an exotic beach are even more depressing now that this silence, this grace, has begun.

  “Come on,” I say to Arlan. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” he asks, taking another swig of vodka.

  “I’m taking you home.”

  CHAPTER 16

  One More Dance Before the Apocalypse

  The last week of August, Lucy gets an acceptance letter from UC Santa Cruz for winter quarter. I dance around her wildly as she’s reading it aloud; I squeal with excitement and hug her hard. I’ve pictured this scene in my mind a number of times—her gushing and thanking me with moist, grateful eyes, me modestly accepting her insistence that she couldn’t have done it without me. But now that the moment’s arrived, she gets quiet and stone-faced. She lights a cigarette.

&nbs
p; “What? Aren’t you happy?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “It’s cool that they want me.”

  I hesitate. “I mean, you’re going, right?”

  “Anna. Come on. Where am I going to get the money?”

  “Loans. Scholarships. Financial aid.” She exhales little puffs of smoke through her nose and gives me a skeptical look. “What? We can figure it out. I’ll help you.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not a charity case.”

  “Lucy.” I take a breath, try to clear the hurt from my voice. “This is fantastic! Let’s celebrate—”

  “I’m not going!” She leaps off the bed and stalks to the closet, pulls a leather jacket on and looks at me. “Come on, let’s go. The guys have a gig at Fanny’s.”

  I just stare at her in disbelief. “I thought you wanted this.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Arlan would never move to Santa Cruz.”

  “Why not? It’s a great town—you guys would love it.”

  “We live here, Anna. He’s got the band, his business, and I’ve got Pulp. There’s no way. Why should I let those fuckers brainwash me? I know how to think.”

  “But you told me—”

  “I changed my mind!” She pulls a tube of lipstick from her pocket and gazes into a mirror on the wall. I just stare, mute, as she applies a dark stain to the top lip, pauses for a drag from her cigarette, and then goes to work on the bottom one. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says, catching my reflection over her shoulder.

  “Okay,” I say. “Fine. I guess I misunderstood.”

  She tries to laugh, but it sounds forced. “Don’t be a jerk,” she says.

  “Me?”

  “Oh, Anna. This is just how it is. Don’t make me feel like a shit, okay?” She frees a strand of hair from her eyelashes and turns to me. “I’m not like you,” she says.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It has everything to do with everything, and you know it.” For a few seconds, neither of us says anything, we just stare at one another. She looks away first, pockets her Camels and says, brusquely, “You coming, or what?”

  “Maybe later.”

  She walks to the window and stabs her cigarette out in the coffee cup on the sill. “Okay. Suit yourself.” She touches my arm for a moment, but as soon as I turn toward her, she’s already walking away, moving quickly out the door, calling over her shoulder, “Later.”

  I sit near the window, watching the Land of Skin. The strange fever of late August has set in; there’s nervous friction in the air, mixed with exhaustion. Goat Kid Hovel is pulsating with the sounds of a desperately loud live band; some guys from the halfway house are out on the porch with a couple of anorexic-looking women draped across their laps. I sit there thinking of my father—how much he wanted to be a star. When he didn’t get that gig opening for Dylan, maybe he just started to fold in on himself, like a piece of fruit rotting at its core.

  I think of Lucy, and I feel sad for her. She’s rotting, too, in a painfully slow flirtation with decay. I know she’d hate my pity more than anything, but I can’t deny that’s what I feel. I can picture her here forever, smoking the same cigarettes, staring out the same windows with her dark, restless eyes. Of course, she’s got Arlan, but what good does he do her, when she claims he’s like a pair of socks—all comfort, no thrills? Maybe one day Arlan will leave, or she’ll leave, or they’ll both just explode in a huge, violent mess of drunken resentment. But if they survive each other’s abandonment, won’t they go on to make the same mistakes all over again? Isn’t that how we do things, being human?

  I light a couple of candles left over from the night Grady and I tried to have sex. I take my guitar from its case and let my fingers find their way around the frets. I’ve never known an instrument the way I know this one. After years of living without the gentle pressure of a guitar resting on my thigh, now I have this—the most intimate fit I could imagine, with curves I created and inlay I set with my own hands. I remember how Bender stressed the necessity of a light top, braced strategically from the inside for strength. I can feel it vibrating lightly against the inside of my arm—strong but resonant.

  Though the chords I remember are limited, I manage to string enough together to form a cohesive melody. I play the tune again and again, until my fingertips burn against the strings. After a while I start coming up with words, and I’m surprised at the clear simplicity of my voice. The last time I remember singing I had a pronounced lisp, which always made the adults smile. Once my father recorded me, and I was shocked at how childish I sounded; I guess I always assumed I’d sound like him.

  I lose myself for hours, strumming and singing quietly until the candles I’ve lit are molten pools floating stubby black wicks. I light some more and keep playing, letting my voice get louder in the big, yawning silence of the house. I sing about my father, and love, and ashes. I sing about Arlan and rain and Lucy’s dark, unnerving eyes. They’re not really songs, I guess; they’re more like fragments from an anthropologist’s notebook, knit together loosely by the same three or four chords.

  Finally, around two in the morning, I sit back and gaze out at the street. The band across the way has long since fallen silent, and the couples at the halfway house have abandoned their porch. There are three Goat Kids sitting on the lawn, drinking from cans and smoking. Their faces are angled upward; occasionally I can see their eyes, lit by the glowing embers of their cigarettes. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize it’s me they’re looking at.

  When I walk down to the marina the next morning there’s the faintest hint of wood smoke in the air, and it feels like fall is only days away. Bender and I agreed to take a little break after we finished the guitar. I haven’t seen him since then. I find myself craving the sight of his wild hair, and missing his gruff commands. To my surprise, he’s sitting on deck with a sketchbook in his lap, completely engrossed. It looks like he’s cleaned the boat up a bit. The usual pile of Budweiser cans at the bow has disappeared, and though it’s hardly the model of sanitary living, there is a general aura of tidiness I never thought I’d see.

  “Hey!” I call.

  He looks up, startled. When he sees me a wonderful grin spreads across his face and he gets up, comes over to open the gate. “Well, well, well,” he says. “If it isn’t the devil herself.”

  “What you working on?”

  “Sketches,” he says.

  “Yeah. I can see that much.”

  “I’m thinking about building a twelve-string,” he says. “Something I can fool around with, you know. Keep the boredom at bay.”

  “That’s great!” I nod at him enthusiastically, getting nervous. “So you’re going to keep the shop?”

  “I think so,” he says. “It’s cheap. I didn’t know if you were—”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess we left it up in the air….”

  “But maybe you have other plans?”

  “Well.” I lick my lips. “Something has come up. I mean, I wanted to talk to you before I—”

  “Oh.” He puts the sketchbook down. “You heading out?”

  “It would only be for a month….”

  He coughs a loud, rattling cough. “Sure,” he says, sitting on the ice chest and looking away. “Whatever you want to do—it’s no big deal.”

  “No, it’s my mom,” I say.

  “She okay?”

  “Yeah. Well. She’s going to Amsterdam for work. She wants me—me and Rosie—to go.” I find the old foldout chair and take a seat. “Only for a month.”

  Bender nods, considering this. He stands up and starts to pace. “Hell of an opportunity,” he says. “You ever been to Europe?” I shake my head. “You can’t stick around here forever. I guess you’ve got to go.”

  “But it’s with my mother.”

  “So?”

  “She can be so…” I search for the right word. “Stiff.”

  “Come on,” he says. “Helen?”

  “She’s not like you. She’s no
t fun.”

  “Oh, give her a chance. She might get fun, in Amsterdam.” He chuckles, but it doesn’t sound natural. Then there’s an awkward pause, and he walks over to the stern, grabs a piece of rope coiled into a neat little circle, and sits back on the ice chest, busying his hands with a series of knots. “I wish you could see what your mom was like, thirty years ago.”

  I look at him. “Did you know she was up here?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I guess I should have mentioned it. You’d probably like to see her, huh?”

  He scratches his neck and looks away. “Oh, I don’t know. We don’t have much to talk about, these days.”

  “I asked her about you—she was pretty cagey. She didn’t want to admit you’d been in touch.”

  “Well, we haven’t been, for a year or two.” He unties the knot and starts on a new one, his fingers moving deftly. “We had tragedy in common, you know. That can be pretty strong stuff. But after a while, even that loses its glue.” He looks up at me; his face is tired as usual, but today there’s a quiet calm there too. “You’ll have a blast in Europe. It’s the perfect time for you to see the world.”

  “Like I said, it won’t be for that long.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll meet some bohemian hunk and wander off into the sunset—I know Amsterdam, and it’s no place for a tight schedule.” He examines the rope in his hands with acute interest. “Your dad would really dig it—you going there, like he did. Oh, to be young…” he says.