“Nice purse,” she said, with a wry smile.
“It’s my sister’s.”
“I see.” Her hands delved into the nest of coins at the bottom of the register. “Your change.”
It was painful just slipping the money into my pocket. I felt dizzy again, put my hand on the counter, and moaned.
“You need help,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Would you?” I raised my eyes.
She pointed behind the partition. “We can’t have you fainting in the store.”
She led me into a back room and had me sit down on a chair.
It was star-bright in this room, and I was glad I was still wearing the shades. There were hundreds of white drawers everywhere, the kind that slid back a long way, like body-trays at the morgue. The smell in here was of antiseptic, and it suddenly reminded me of my mother. She used to rub an ointment into my scratches and scrapes. I longed for one of those simple acts of kindness. They had grown increasingly rare over the years, perhaps due to her gradual recognition of my true nature. No; that was wrong, she had always preferred Sonia. Her darling.
“What happened?” she asked, raising my blood-soaked shirt.
“Ow.” I extracted my arms from my clothes.
“Well?” she asked.
I looked at her green eyes. They looked younger than the rest of her face, which was tired out with lines.
“I was attacked by a gang, in the park.”
“Have you told the police?”
“Not yet.”
“Why didn’t you go straight to the hospital?”
“Like I say, I’ve a train to catch.”
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
“It’s … personal.”
An arrow of pain pierced my side. I felt like Saint Sebastian, only I was no saint, more of an evil sinner. My eyes started closing, and I wondered if I would soon enter the dark.
She dabbed at my flank with damp cotton wool. “You’ve bled a lot,” she said. “Your pants are soaking.”
“I feel … OK,” I said, eyelids flickering. The room changed color from white and green to silver and gray.
She slapped my face. “I’m calling a doctor,” she said. “You nearly passed out.”
“No.”
I looked down at her work. She was wrapping a thick bandage around my waist, once, twice, binding me like a mummy.
“Thanks,” I said, nearly choking.
“It will feel tight for a while,” she said. “But we have to stop the blood flow.”
I nodded.
She stood back. “Can you stand up?”
“… Let me see.”
I put one hand on the back of the chair and tried to stand. Couldn’t. Looked at her sadly and shook my head.
“Sit here for a while, take your time.” She turned, overhearing voices in the shop. “I have to go and serve some customers. Will you wait here, s’il vous plaît? Just wait.”
I nodded and attempted a smile. It seemed to work. She smiled back.
I waited a few minutes for the woman to return but she was busy working. I heard her speaking with customers in the store, the cash register opening, the ping of coins in the till, the rustle of plastic bags.
I rolled my head in its socket, loosening my tired neck, and saw that the back door had been left ajar.
I made my decision quickly and tried to stand. The pain had eased a fraction.
I hobbled across the white tiles till I found myself out under the night air and the brittle unmoving stars.
I discarded the purse, keeping only the cash and the shades.
I climbed up the long steps toward St. Charles station. The city of Marseilles sparkled below me in the darkness. I heard ship horns echoing from the harbor. I turned and gazed at the silver jewelry of it all: the white lights twitching beneath the turquoise moon, the streetlights fading to a greenish glow as they diffused upwards into the sky. Was the Sant’Agata still at port? I remembered Carlo’s last words on Sonia: “A difficult case … Some trouble with the police.”
With a wad of cash clenched in my fist, I moved up the remaining steps, shuffling as fast as I could.
I was just one face in the milling crowd. The station was a place of echoes, the voices crisscrossing the halls. I thought I would be harder to recognize here, tougher to find. Did they have security cameras? I tried to keep my head down.
“One adult fare to Paris, please.”
“Returning when?”
“No return.”
“Aller simple.”
Yes, my dear, one-way.
Her hands moved quickly like a butcher’s slicing meat. She punched the numbers and stripped the ticket from the machine as though pulling white skin from a carcass. In her eyes: tedium. Yes, this is what I do for a living. I punch and strip. Why are you staring?
I looked away. The hall was as noisy as a busy indoor swimming pool. A couple of Arabs in tracksuits sold drugs by the door. I was almost tempted. The pain in my side was as strong as ever, despite the tight bandages. I felt the cramps rising, pricking my ribs.
“Are you OK?” she asked, betraying more suspicion than concern.
I nodded but said nothing.
I swiped the ticket from the plastic trough beneath the perforated glass and turned toward the platforms. My train was possibly the longest I had ever seen; I kept walking past the first-class carriages waiting for a chance to hop into second. I stepped on and found a single unoccupied seat. The seat opposite was reserved from Aix to Paris. I hoped that person would fail to show up. I didn’t want to be in full view, observed, feeling ugly and nervous behind my Audrey Hepburn shades. Were the police or Carlo’s gang still on my tail? I huddled down with my head pressed against the window and looked out at the pigeons on the platform as they fluttered in bunches, nodding mechanically at crusts of baguette.
I saw a security guard on the other side of the platform; he caught my eye. I turned away from the window and looked along the corridor of the train. Kept my eyes dead ahead, afraid to look back. Had I adjusted my gaze too quickly and attracted suspicion? I shut my eyes and waited a few seconds. Turning slowly, I peeked out of the window again: the guard had moved away. I sighed and leaned back. There were rows of equidistant seats, a stained red carpet, gray folding tables; I smelled the odors of paper coffee-cups and leftover sandwiches.
I begged the train to start moving. Minutes passed and the screech eventually came; the carriages wavered and rocked together as they trundled out of the station.
Block-letter tags were sprayed on the low walls exiting the station. Even the suburbs were splurged and flowered with graffiti. Soon, the greenness swelled and zipped past, the utility poles and power lines dipping and rising in rhythmical waves. The speed was hallucinatory. I had been a passenger on a TGV before but never felt such an unceasing rush—we were sucked forwards as if through a spatial wormhole.
Half an hour after leaving Marseilles the train stopped at Aix-en-Provence. A girl stepped onto the train and sat in the unoccupied seat in front of me. It was the last thing I wanted. I pushed my sunglasses closer to my eyes and turned to stare out of the window. People shuttled up and down the platform in the clouded darkness.
“Aren’t they a lady’s glasses?” asked the girl.
I took them off, checked them out, pretended I hadn’t noticed. The lenses were overlarge and a floral pattern embellished the temple arms.
“Are they?” I said.
The girl nodded.
“They’re my sister’s,” I said.
“Doesn’t she need them?”
“It’s nighttime,” I said, “nobody needs sunglasses.”
“Then why are you wearing them?”
“Because I’m famous.”
“You don’t look famous.”
“I am and I don’t want people to recognize me, so please…” I waved my hand at her.
She settled down and opened a book.
I tried not to look at her for the rest of the
journey. Her hair was the right color, so was her skin, but too much had happened, Inspector. I needed a safe place to hide, to recover.
7
I arrived in Paris late at night, half-asleep. It was too far to walk from the Gare de Lyon to the Gare de l’Est, and besides, it was raining. I took the escalator down into the metro and sneaked through the turnstiles without paying. My stomach jolted as I squeezed through the gate—resurrecting the pain of my wound. I stepped onto the underground train alongside the slick coats, damp shoes and umbrellas. A warm, moist odor came off the surrounding bodies, all pressed together and swaying as the carriages rocked and thundered forward beneath the city. I was glad to get out of the underground and step onto the grubby escalator rising outside Gare de l’Est. The rain was spectacular: a theatrical drenching. I followed the unwritten rule of urban escalators: stand still on the right while people stomp past on your left. I entered the shelter of the station, stopped outside a café, bought a ham baguette, and checked out the timetable for trains to Luxembourg. I’d missed the last one and would have to wait till morning.
I bought my ticket for the TGV East on a touch-pad screen and used up half of the Renault Clio woman’s cash. I felt safer here in Paris and doubted if the Italians had followed me this far. Catania seemed a long way away, as did Marseilles. I had a few hours to kill and some cash left in my pocket. Having been cooped up on the boat and stabbed in my getaway, I felt as though I had lost sight of my goal. Now I had time to right that wrong. It must have been the sight of that last girl on the train that started something in my darkest blood…
I knew Paris. And I remembered a street where you could find anything you wanted.
I felt the urges. The sickness, maybe.
I walked down Boulevard de Strasbourg, past the green trash cans, low stone bollards, smelling the warm Nutella pancakes being sold by Mauritian-looking street vendors. By the time I arrived near the rue St-Denis, the night had closed in like a slick black tide above the city. The sky was pasted with stick-on stars. Paris was crackling like ice in a vodka glass, tinkling and swimming in its own artificial light.
I peered in a shop window and saw the reflection of my suit—I could have looked much smarter. I crept into a perfume store and spritzed my neck and clothes with a free Calvin Klein sample. At least it smothered the sea odors.
Out in the street, it was easy to see the girls and nobody stopped you looking. The only problem was the shady men who tried to lure you into their hovels. I never looked them in the eye. They took you indoors and made you pay a fee and buy a bottle of champagne and made you sit and watch some lousy striptease. I’d been trapped like that once. I preferred to be alone with a girl, and there were dark places you could go where people left you alone.
This time I had little money. Or not enough, anyway.
So I decided to start looking.
It wasn’t easy to find a girl, the right sort, straightaway. Some of the red-light studios were kitsch and I avoided those. You needed somewhere quiet and professional. I walked past the designer boutiques with their legless mannequins, past the sex-video booths, the shops closed with corrugated blinds, and turned into rue Sainte Foy where I saw the kind of place that had potential. You would have thought it was a normal house if you had no prior knowledge of this district. You walked up one step and entered a dark corridor that smelled of after-rain.
There was a buzzer by the door. I pressed the top one, marked with a little heart and the name Suzanna, because that was the way it often worked. Besides, it was a pretty nice name: Suzanna.
A man’s voice answered, and I had half a mind to turn back. I always preferred the girls to be on their own with no middlemen or masters.
“I’m a new client,” I said.
“Fourth floor.”
I waited for the buzzer to sound as a signal that he had unlocked the door. There was only silence.
“What’s wrong?” I spoke into the interphone.
“Take off your glasses,” said the voice.
I leaned back and adjusted my gaze. I saw a glint in the small black window. I slid the glasses off the end of my nose and stared into the camera.
“How much?” I asked, looking at my own vague reflection, the messy hair, the haunted cheeks.
“Three hundred.”
I stepped back from the window and slid my glasses back on. Fuck this. I wondered if I could kid my way through. With girls, sometimes, it was possible; less so with these men. I turned and strode out of the corridor. Dashes of neon light flickered in the puddles, yellow and blue, the color of gas flames. Moving fast across the sidewalk were drunkards, dogs, tourists, strippers and pimps, like multicolored pool balls speeding across baize.
There were no cars here. Pedestrians only.
It was then that I saw her and I realized just how easy it was. Anybody could have seen her. You just had to be in the right street at the right time.
Her hair was long, straight, cocaine-white, utterly fake. She wore a fur skirt and showed too much of her breasts in a low-cut, blue cardigan. Her boots were red leather and stopped at her shins. There were buckles on them that jingled as she strode.
I pulled my jacket across my chest, breathing in the cool night air, and feeling self-conscious about my flank. I hurried in her wake and eventually caught up with her. She was looking dead ahead and not paying attention to passing strangers, at least not to this one.
“Excuse me…” I started, feeling my courage kick in a little slowly.
She turned and looked at me. Her face was heavily made-up, broad-lipped, with black eye-shadow. Her cheeks were whiter than I liked. It reminded me of an actress’s make-up in the silent movie era. She looked as though she had been on the job for a few hours already, and was hoping to get home soon and sleep it off.
“You want something?” she asked in French. Her voice was not impatient but not kind either, her accent Eastern European, Ukrainian, maybe.
“Can we go somewhere? Maybe I can buy you a drink.”
She turned to face me, square on. Her eyes, I noticed, were a terrific blue. She was even a little taller than me. I didn’t mind looking up at her.
She leaned toward me and I saw up-close the pastiness on her white cheeks, and wondered if the color of her skin would be more of a natural pink underneath. Perhaps I could ask her to go somewhere with me and wash it off, so that I could get a better look. These were questions you could ask in your mind, but not always to a girl.
“How much have you got on you?” she asked.
“That’s the thing,” I said, trying not to shrug. “I’m down to my last hundred.”
“Only a hundred?” She opened one eye wider than the other. She was making the decision, not me. I still smelled of that damned boat and I hoped she wouldn’t notice.
“You have a room?” she asked.
“I was kind of hoping…”
“Right.” She nodded. “I’m on my way home. If you like, we can walk together while I decide.” She lit a cigarette and I listened to the sound of her tinkling buckles as she walked. “I need a drink, anyway. Do you drink?” she asked.
“A little.”
“I drink a lot. It makes sense.” Her French was good, though a little halting. “There is nothing else to do, really. You either sleep or drink or get bored out of your mind.”
She walked at her own pace. Her stride was slightly loping, uneven, almost limping. I stared hard at her face and wanted to ask her about her skin (the cleaning rituals, the moisturizing methods) and her hair (the brand of dye, the frequency of washing) but wondered if these questions were too personal, too soon, too weird. Too everything.
“How did you do your hair? The color. It’s very pure.”
Her steps slowed and she veered away from me a little.
“A hundred, you say?” She smiled a fake little smile. “Not tonight.”
I tried a new tack. “You’re very beautiful.”
“You don’t give up, do you.”
“Rarely.”
She took a long drag from her cigarette, sucked in her cheeks, blew out some smoke, and laughed a little metallic laugh. “This way, then.”
We made it back to her flat, probably her rented office, not her real home. It smelled of Indian joss sticks and massage oils—almond and eucalyptus. Black-and-white photographs of New York street scenes decorated the walls. It was a one-room studio, improbably small, but it had a snug feel. I sat down on a frayed red sofa and watched her closely as she leaned over and stepped out of her boots. Her knees were yellowish, her shins were amber. The zips at the back of her boots split all the way down to her heels, so the buckles were purely for show. She was wearing a white bandage on one ankle where the skin was faintly blue. I stared at this ankle, the source of her limp, and found it hard to look away. She had been recently injured somehow. Accident or attack?
“You’d better give me your hundred now,” she said, looking across sternly.
These encounters were rarely romantic.
I passed it to her and our hands touched, but she didn’t react at all. She just turned away and tucked the two fifties in the top drawer of her desk.
“You want a drink now?” she asked.
“Actually, I’m okay. Why don’t you have one? I’ll just watch.” I saw her starting to frown. “I mean, no thanks,” I added.
She sidled up to me and put her hands on my shoulders. In the lamplight, I could see a little fuzz of suppressed hair on her cheeks and upper lip. I saw why she wore that thick white paste on her skin now. She leaned in but then leaned away again. Her face twitched.
“Man, you stink.”
“Sorry.”
“Take back your cash, and get the fuck out of here. Putain, quel connard.”
She said a word in another language too, Russian maybe, but I was glad I hadn’t understood. She flicked back her long hair and glared at me with those mean blue eyes.
She turned and opened the drawer and reached out her hand.
I took back the two folded fifties she handed to me.
I could have done anything to her and maybe she realized that because she stood there, head on one side, knuckles against her hips, scowling. She’d sure changed her mind fast.
The Skin Room Page 12