The Skin Room

by Morgan Fleetwood

  “But you brought me all the way back here…” I was just trying to delay it because I had nowhere to go, and her flat was cozy and I liked the smell of her Indian joss sticks and the feel of the frayed red sofa. “If I sit over here, can’t we just kind of talk a while?”

  “Kind of talk?”

  I was coming across as odd again but I couldn’t do much about it.

  She shrugged. “The thing is, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a shower.”

  “I can wait here.”

  She scanned the room. “You might run off with something.”

  I rubbed my hands together, feeling a sense of disgust at my own lack of hygiene. “Okay, then, I’ll get out of here. But do you mind if I just wash my hands before I leave?”

  “Help yourself.” She pointed to the white sink. There was a little green bar of soap on the side.

  I rubbed my hands under the tap, smelling the scent of her chamomile soap as I turned the green bar between my fingers, over and over, trying to make enough foam.

  She had a small red towel in her hand and held it to her chest carefully. “I’d rather you didn’t use my towel,” she said.

  I stood in a weary, boxer-like pose, my fists raised, the water dripping off my wrists onto her Kilim rug. I could have made a scene but I kind of liked the girl and you had to admire her good sense. Who would want a stranger to mess with their towels? I wiped my hands on my pants and sat down again on the sofa.

  “I’d like to see your face,” I said.

  “My face?”

  “Yes, properly.” I waved a hand to show her what I meant.

  She nodded slowly. “My shift is over, for now. But if you want me to do anything, anything at all, you’d better give me back at least fifty.”

  “Just to watch you wash off your make-up?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK.” I frowned. “Go ahead.”

  She did not use the same bar of soap, but stooped under the sink and pulled out a fluffy orange make-up bag with cotton circles, tubs of cream, and ointment.

  I wanted to stand closer to her to see how she did it, but I remained sitting, thinking: If the skin is about right, maybe I can come back later in the night, if I can sneak in unnoticed. I was mulling this over, watching her slow-armed movements, the way she scrubbed and almost grated off that paste.

  She turned to me with a clean face. It took me a while to analyze the skin tone. In the end, it wasn’t right. Wasn’t worth it. It looked blotched, hair-ridden, neglected: a big disappointment.

  The doorbell rang and I guessed that her protection, her friend or guardian, or one of her habitués, had arrived.

  “I should leave,” I said.

  She went to answer the door, putting less weight on her injured foot, limping slightly again.

  I did not see the man but I heard his voice. She told him to wait awhile.

  “So,” she said, smiling. “Was it worth the fifty?”

  I didn’t want to look at her face anymore. It wasn’t her fault. She just wasn’t the right one. I said nothing and shrugged and stood up slowly.

  I said, “Thank you,” and handed her back one fifty. I looked past her shoulder at the black-and-white photographs of Manhattan, the city charged with light, those tall cribs bleeding white into the dark.

  I turned and left her flat and made sure to keep my head down so as not to see the other man. I didn’t want to see the impatient look on his face. That shy, needy grin.

  By the time I arrived back at the Gare de l’Est, I was suffering from an eerie fatigue. It felt as though my bones were coming unstitched. My skin hurt all over. There were no benches to lie on (Paris is no home sweet home for the homeless) and so I slouched down in a corner between a closed shop and a newsstand and tried not to show my face. I hunched up, sank my face into my knees, and fell asleep.

  I woke up to grayness and a headache. A suitcase was wheeled past me, pulled by a passing hand.

  I saw the world as though sitting at the bottom of the ocean, squinting through liquid eyes: the iron-rafted deep-sea station, the slow-motion shoals of feet, the coral screens, the flickering jelly-fish faces.

  I stretched out my legs that ached from the previous day’s running, put one hand on my flank, and tried to stand up straight. I checked my watch: 6 a.m. Only another twenty minutes to go till the first train. I tapped my jacket pocket. The bag of Sonia’s nails was still there: a keepsake, a kind of lucky charm on my journey north.

  I moved toward the platforms.

  8

  I dozed in the carriage and woke up to the sound of rain sizzling against the windowpanes. A young businessman croaked into his cell phone. My ear itched from the scratchy upholstery of the headrest after a shallow nap. I smelled filter coffee and the odor of plastic train tables. Looking out of the window of the carriage as it swayed and jolted sideways, I banged my head against the cold glass. I touched my forehead and rubbed the smarting skin. Further down the rows of seats, there was a boy asleep, his head nodding forwards then jerking back, again, again.

  The young businessman in front of me clapped his phone shut and crossed his arms. He wore a gray suit and red tie. He was shaven and I was not.

  His phone buzzed again on the table, ringing a disco tune.

  I whispered, eyes down, “You don’t have to answer it.”

  He gave me a cool stare, opened the phone and yapped for about ten minutes. My brain felt hot and I wanted to step out for some fresh air but was afraid of being seen, so I sat still, trying to block out the man’s incessant air of usefulness. My God, couldn’t he go elsewhere?

  I gave him the foulest stares I could manage but it seemed to make no difference. He was a top-level communicator, international standard, a fucking world-record-holder.

  Finally the conversation ended and he slipped the phone into his pocket.

  He must have seen the daggers hanging from my eyelids because he leaned forward and asked, “Is there a problem?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact….”

  He cocked his head, in anticipation of a stinging remark.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  There was no point in antagonizing him. I just had to sit quiet.

  “You look as though you’ve been through the wars,” he said lightly.

  I turned to see my reflection in the rain-prickled window. I looked a treat: a trick or treat. I sat back in my seat. The guy was watching me closely for some reason.

  “The wars, yes.” I attempted a vacant smile. “My face is … not what it was.’ I probed for a convincing explanation. “A dog got the better of me.”

  “A dog?”

  “In a park.”

  I regretted my choice of explanation, feeling I had scored low marks for verisimilitude, but it was too late now, I had to sink or swim.

  “How big?” he raised one eyebrow.

  I rubbed my stubbled chin.

  “Actually it wasn’t a dog at all,” I said.

  “Oh no?”

  “More like ... a bitch.”

  His face turned red and he looked down and then out of the window. Sometimes, the truth, or a milder version of it, is good at shutting up people. This time it had the desired effect. The man did not speak to me for the rest of the journey. He only muttered a cold “Au revoir” as we pulled into Metz station. He grabbed his coat and briefcase. And off he went.

  The end of the journey, from Metz to Luxembourg city, is always a drag. For some reason the train runs slower here. Perhaps the Luxembourgers were reluctant to let the French rip up their countryside to build new tracks. The carriages trundle, slowing down to a machine crawl. Outside the window: a scrolling picture of raindrops, green shadows, cows swishing their tails, the odd gray farmhouse with slack roof tiles.

  It was Luxembourg, all right, and I was back, wedged into my seat, smarting all over with impatience. It felt like some invisible acupuncturist was piercing me with hair-thin needles.

  Sonia, are you safe? Can you hear me?
/>   I’m coming to get you. Everything will be OK, I promise.

  Nobody can touch you now.

  Ah, nobody.

  Not even you, Inspector Sin.

  PART THREE

  Female

  1

  I think of my mother and her untimely death. I think of her a lot nowadays.

  My mother…

  Two years ago, when I returned home to Catania after receiving the note from Sonia, “Mother dying. Come home soon,” I was shocked at what I saw. She was already on her death bed, and I had only just been informed of her terminal illness. The doctors said it was pancreatic cancer. It smashed through her with the force of a tornado. She could not be saved.

  Her hospital room smelled of failed medicine and clipped flowers. The tops of the pine trees were blurring against the blue sky outside her window. I slipped a fresh bouquet of red roses into a vase on the windowsill, knelt at her bedside and looked into her whitened face. Her hands were thin and she kept them as straight as sticks by her sides. Any movement seemed to hurt her. She could hardly speak. Her lips were dry and cracked. I was amazed by how gaunt she looked, as though she had spent the last few years living in a concentration camp. She wore a pink turban on her head and I stroked it a few times, feeling the cool silk under my fingertips. It was a long time before I was able to whisper the word, “Goodbye.” She didn’t say anything in reply. But after a while they closed her eyes, and I never spoke to her again. The doctor pulled me back and nodded.

  I do not think she was ever proud of me. She never said she was, or anything like that. And I was so anxious to receive her love, perhaps, Inspector, I don’t know … That’s why all this started…

  Note this: I had something important to do in Luxembourg. I wanted to find my sister and check that she was unharmed. There was no one to greet me. How could there be? I’d told no one about my arrival. I was sure my name was on a list at Interpol by now. I had no passport, no credit card, and I was travelling under an alias, if asked. Little Luxembourg would be my next hideout. My dad would just have to fend for himself back in Sicily, as I could not risk a return there.

  I crossed the main road in front of the station and strode under the dark blue rain, heading through the mini-red-light district, past the druggies who shivered and bawled at one another in broken doorways. I was heading to the part of town called Hollerich, the home of Sonia—not the best of districts, just a drab road with a couple of gas stations, a church and a roundabout. There was no point trying to call her cell now. What if the police had tapped her phone? Maybe her apartment was under observation? Or maybe it was just my paranoia sprouting wings?

  The rain peppered my neck, slid under my collar, iced my spine. I had the impression that I was being followed, and turned to look over my shoulder to see the cars speeding down the road, a couple of grandparents pushing a baby carriage along the sidewalk. Nothing suspicious, yet still I felt unsafe. Surely Carlo’s men couldn’t have followed me this far? Maybe the police were shadowing my movements, keeping me on a string which, one day, they would cut?

  I crossed the road, stepped over the silver puddles and pressed my fingertip onto the pad next to the name of Sonia Melville at the entrance to her apartment block. It buzzed. I waited but nobody came. I buzzed again. No answer: no worry. I knew how to let myself in—the spare key was hanging on a string inside her mailbox. I dipped a finger through the slot, felt the dangling weight, and fished out the silver stub.

  Home, James. For some reason I felt too claustrophobic to enter the elevator and opted for the stairs instead. Three flights in a damp suit. It was a mistake as my body was in no fit shape for the ascent. I staggered up the last flight, one hand clamped on my stomach, the other clutching the banister. There was the smell of the Portuguese neighbors’ cooking wafting along the corridors: sardines or bacalhau. The lights were a degree too dingy, as though half the bulbs had failed. It felt like fall, not August. But then, I remembered, this is what Luxembourg often felt like: the wrong season, the wrong air.

  Now I have to describe Sonia’s dive, her dump, for these really are the most appropriate words. Beer bottles lined the floor—have I mentioned that she was an alcoholic? She’d never passed her driving test (perhaps a safer result for all of us), yet it meant that she was always behind on the recycling. Or perhaps it was laziness? Or a combination of the two? Anyway, her flat was a dive, a dump, yes, let me replay that phrase. The mere act of walking across the floor would send beer bottles skittling in all directions. For some reason she drank only Diekirch, a national brew. It tasted unpleasant to me. We were not the same, we were never the same, Sonia and I.

  She had a lot of plants. Now, I was always terrible with plants. I think I managed to kill almost every single one. But Sonia? She had the knack, the gift of knowing what they needed: how much water, how much light. The plants never spoke to me. After a few weeks they either dried out or drowned. But Sonia knew just how little or how much they needed. She had not just green fingers, but green eyes and a green heart. You may find it unusual for a druggie, an alkie, to care so much about plants. But she had a tender side, our Sonia. And yet here I couldn’t help noticing, even with my untrained eyes, a phenomenon best known as “wilting.” It seemed as though some of her treasured plants hadn’t been watered in weeks. I dipped my fingers into one of the plant pots and touched the earth: bone dry. She had not been here in a long time. Where was she?

  I swiveled. My eyes adjusted to the decorations in the room, the gray-and-white curtains that looked worn and unwashed, the sweat-smelling mattress low on the floor, like a DIY futon. She still lived like a student, as if she had never grown up. I reacquainted myself with the smell of Sonia, her trinkets and tastes. I could stay here and live alone, but for how long?

  The first thing I did was wash myself thoroughly. I tossed my clothes into a basket and took a shower. My back felt like wrought iron hammered. I wanted to take off my bandages and check my wound, but the lady at the pharmacy had done a good clean job, and I was afraid of spoiling the healing process, so I washed my hands, face, arms and legs, and took care not to spray the swathes of fabric around my midriff. Bending forwards to shower my feet and shins, I dipped my head and felt the cramps rising again like long-nailed fingers clawing at my insides. I felt faint, dropped the shower head, and sat down on the edge of the bath. I wanted to cry. It was all so damned sore. I must have reached the point of burnout because I wept slowly. The tears brought a dose of relief.

  Afterwards, I went to the mirrored cupboard and found some painkillers. I took a couple too many, swished them down with water from the tap, and lay out on the bed, hoping to feel milder, becalmed. I must have dozed for about an hour, lying like a “Z” on her mattress. The room’s colors swirled as I tried to stand up; the furniture oozed toward my eyes. I went to open her wardrobe and her smell came wafting out in a perfect rush, all the elements that made up her body scent: raspberry jam, sweat, marijuana, and cherries. I breathed in her smell and closed my eyes. It took me back, way back.

  Now, I needed a disguise, and a good one, if only to keep a low profile while in Luxembourg. I touched Sonia’s silk blouses, her thick dark jeans, her raucous T‑shirts, and saw her socks lying scattered about in unmatched singles. It was hard to see what her wardrobe could offer me; she was at least five inches thinner at the waist. I’ve always been a lean and lanky fellow, with longish legs and not too much fat, but Sonia was a waifish girl. I searched through her clothes and in the end I chose a neutral get-up, consisting of a baggy jumper and beige slacks. It made a welcome change after my damp and bloody clothes. At any rate, it was a choice of attire required only for a foray, a shopping trip, and then I would return with everything I needed to create a proper disguise.

  While I was going through her chest of drawers, searching in vain for some larger pairs of socks, I found several wads of cash, knotted with elastic bands, trapped in cellophane. I weighed them like gold bars in my hand, puzzled by such a discovery. It was g
ood luck, certainly, but where the hell had Sonia picked up the loot? Was it drug money she was storing, the income from her cocaine trades, or had she provided services of a physical kind? I was afraid they had pimped her or used her in honeytraps—the immaculate bait, dressed up to the nines, a heart-burner. Further searches of her apartment revealed additional wads of dough, not just under the mattress or in the drawers, but also underneath the toaster and buried in the soil beneath her plants. She really had stashed the cash. At least now I had the money to go out and make my purchases.

  I wanted to shave off all my hair—it was one of the quickest ways to alter my appearance—but a quick examination of Sonia’s bathroom revealed several shortages. I would have to buy razors, waxing strips, foam, cleansers, the lot. The main problem, though, was not my appearance, it was Sonia. How was I to go around searching for her? Where to start? I sat down in an armchair and waited for an idea to jump to mind. My brain was open and ready, but the thought would not slip in and click.

  Where does one go to find a missing person? I’m surprised I didn’t come up with this answer much sooner: the police, of course. But could I just walk into a police station? Perhaps I could telephone first, and pretend to be someone else, a worried cousin? Yet I knew, at some stage, there would be forms to fill out. They’d need a signature, perhaps, or a statement. Tricky territory. Perhaps I could use an alias? The concerned friend. Sonia’s been missing since Monday, no, for two weeks, no, let’s say she’s been gone for a month. Yes, that should get them panicky and searching. I’d have the whole police force out looking for her.

  And when did you last see … your sister … no, your cousin?

  Ah, here I’d have to make up an answer. She left her flat in Hollerich one morning and never returned.

  Is there anything you can think of that might help us with our enquiries? Did she have any enemies, any personal problems, anything that might make her want to run away?