The Skin Room

by Morgan Fleetwood

  I wrote out the final decoded message. I kept checking the sequence of numbers I had written down on the napkin, just to make sure. But the final message was self-explanatory:

  S M terminated

  My blood ran cold.

  I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. You had killed her. You had sent the message to Carlo Riccio to confirm the execution. She could no longer speak of what she had seen. And what had she seen? The children shipped north from Africa to serve as prostitutes or slaves?

  I couldn’t know what she knew. Only that she knew too much.

  I needed order, truth, calm, and lapsed into some odd routines.

  I took four yoghurt containers out of the fridge and waited exactly fifteen minutes until they were the right temperature. I was afraid to leave them in case they moved, so I sat watching them. Once the time was up, I collected them and emptied their contents into the bin. It was important to clean out the insides. I washed each container separately, twice over, and put them on the sideboard to dry. I stepped into the living room and walked around the divan. I made several circles, tight orbits, clockwise. Occasionally, I peered into the kitchen to check if the containers were dry. After a while, I went over and touched them: still wet. I dried them with tissue paper. I dumped the tissue paper in the bin, and put the yoghurt containers—empty—back in the fridge.

  I stayed indoors for several days. The compulsions got worse.

  I put on a pair of latex gloves, but didn’t like the clinging sensation on my fingers. I put on a pair of latex gloves, but didn’t like the clinging sensation on my fingers… I sat in a chair, walked around the divan, unable to find a comfortable position. To calm down, I drank one tablespoon of red wine every five minutes. I set two places at the table for dinner—one for me, and one for Sonia. Would she come?

  I thought I heard Carlo stalking me behind the door, talking about how he would kill me. I opened the door: no one.

  I shouted at my mother a few times. I picked up a knife and threw it at Carlo.

  I tried meditating and said my new mantra: Sonia, Sonia, Sonia.

  On Saturday (I think it was a Saturday) I walked the streets and felt nestled between two rows of days, two rows of buildings; in the street, in the weekend. Upon return home, I tried to recreate this impression. The nestling. I took two cups from the sideboard and put one inside the other. Because of the handle, the top cup leaned out at an angle. I tried to calculate roughly the angle of incidence between the rim of the top cup and the straight lines of the cup it slanted over. Sixteen or seventeen per cent. I had nothing to measure with—only my mind.

  I slipped into a nervy state, tried compiling lists again but they had no positive effect on me anymore. My one source of relief was my ability to converse with Sonia through the mirror.

  I spoke. She spoke. We spoke.

  My next intention, in a long line of intentions, was to convince the Luxembourg police of your salient guilt, Inspector. This was a tough ask. I toyed with various approaches: a signed statement, an open letter, a face-to-face accusation. What would turn the trick?

  I wrote, not to the police, nor to its chief, but to the Ministry of Justice. Why not go to the top if action is required?

  I scribbled down my broken French on a red-lined sheet ripped from Sonia’s notepad. I acknowledged the good work done by the police in general matters—the reduction in violent crime, the increase in the number of paid-up parking fines—yet I accused you, Inspector Ferreira, in a direct way, of the most despicable crimes. I denounced the whole lot of you: Carlo, the two chuckleheads, Frank Weis, the entire Androstar S.A. operation.

  I expelled the acid of my mind.

  As I posted the letter through a yellow mailbox on rue Michel Rodange, I felt a certain inner calm, of anticipated justice, of things becoming right, or moving toward order. I had pointed to a trail of evidence leading to you, Inspector. Now the authorities would have to take up the case.

  Then the urges started again. It started as a series of flushes and then became a fire. Condemning you was not enough. Procedural justice would be slow, unspectacular and unfulfilling. I had to go my own way, Inspector, just as you went yours.

  Raped a girl in custody? You foul beast. To think that your semen entered my sister, pulsing inside a plastic condom.

  Your daughter would fulfil all my cramped-up ambition.

  I saw the possibility of reaching a state of nirvana with her: the ultimate union.

  8

  I found an address for Natalia Ferreira on the Internet by surfing the White Pages.

  I stood outside her apartment block one evening in the fizzing rain. I waited for ages, shivering, hoping, not knowing what I was hoping for.

  Out she stepped, a leggy girl. She wore bright shades of make-up: red-hot lips and palladium eye shadow. She strutted along the sidewalk with long, impatient strides. As soon as I saw her I felt unnaturally excited.

  The rain stroked across the street in diagonal lines. Her blonde hair was straggled in the downpour as she fought with her umbrella, waving it like a powerful fire hose.

  I had everything prepared in Sonia’s flat: the knives, the bed, the candles, even the fingernails—the plastic pouch with its carmine crescents, a human potpourri.

  She approached, head bowed in the rain. I saw her face which looked rather like Sonia’s: a warm, buttery skin tone; hair that blossomed round her cheeks. I felt a shiver between my shoulder blades. She even had the same pink ears as Sonia. I stood, perforated.

  Her pace slowed down as she passed by.

  “Good evening,” I said, smiling through the rain.

  She stopped. Her gaze assessed mine. Rain thudded down on her umbrella like handfuls of scattered gravel.

  “You’re wet,” she said.

  I shrugged. I must have looked horrendous, pitiable. It was the case. She fished in her jacket pocket and reached out to give me a one-euro coin.

  “I don’t need…” My voice failed.

  Our fingers touched: a frail contact.

  “Go somewhere dry,” she said, “and soon.”

  Because I stood with lips parted, unable to speak, she added, “Are you OK, Madame? Do you understand?”

  I whispered, “Oui.”

  She nodded and walked away, the raindrops pelting her umbrella, her silver heels tapping out concentric circles in the puddles.

  I followed her at a distance. She did not turn around. Our bodies were twenty or thirty feet apart. I was waiting for a quiet lane, a dark street, any place where I could sweep her up into endless obscurity. When the time was right, I moved in slowly on the corner of rue de Strasbourg. Had she heard my footsteps? It was true, my own heels were clicking. She quickened her pace, not looking back, as though hearing me on her trail.

  She strode on.

  I followed her under the rain: a moving scarecrow. Seeing the onrush of a car’s headlamps, I halted and backed against the wall, dipping my face as the car drove by; its wheels churned the gutter, irrigating my shoes.

  The car flashed past and vanished. I looked up the road. Natalia was gone. I hurried after her, my ankles chilled and wet.

  Had she gotten away? She had. I saw her moving through a bar, a blonde-haired figure behind honey-colored windows. There were arms and beer bottles and laughing faces. The bar jumped with loud R&B music. She was in a public place, safe for now. I haunted the sidewalk for a while, shivered, clubbing my arms across my chest. The rain trickled down my nose into Sonia’s bra. The tissue paper inside turned thin and gluey. My chest soon deflated. Trembling in the dark, my make-up sliding, I decided the pantomime was over for one night. Angry with myself for having come so close and failed, I traipsed home.

  It was harder than I thought to stalk a woman while dressed as a woman.

  I was a fucking failure, all over again.

  The joint seemed to light up my insides. My brain felt bright, dry and heavy, like a candlelit pumpkin. I put on a Marlene Dietrich record and killed some ghosts in my he
ad, singing à tue-tête, at the top of my voice, while pacing up and down Sonia’s bedroom in her bathrobe, feeling warm, alive, the silk caressing my crotch.

  I drifted around the divan a few times, trying a new angle, a wider ellipse. I was trying to find my center; I was circling, like a careful hunter, the target of my self. At one point, I stopped, eyes wide open. I wanted to have a better mental image of my inner morphology, so I let the bathrobe slip off my shoulders, took a black felt-tip marker and drew lines along my bones, marking out the phalanges, ribs, and femurs. Now I could better see my outline in the mirror. The markings showed my underlying solidity. It was reassuring. But then I realized I had compromised my female disguise, and took a shower and tried to wash away the lines, scrubbing ferociously. The lines went gray and eventually—thank God—disappeared.

  I drugged myself till 4 a.m., lay down on a rug in a daze; my arms at twisted angles.

  I needed sleep. My unconscious had work to do. A kidnapping seemed beyond my capabilities; I had no transit van or chloroform. I would have to go for the difficult approach and try to befriend her, become close. I would play Sally Shoulder. If only I could win her trust, enter her aura, then maybe I could use her as a vessel for change. Better still (I cried when I thought of it): a resurrection.

  I stood waiting outside the university faculty in Limpertsberg at 5 p.m. The sunshine was the color of Chardonnay. It was fall now and the heat of the day was spent. At 6 p.m. I saw the onrush of students: long legs in jeans, jewelry, cell phones, T-shirts, rucksacks, all smiles, all young folk scuttling toward me in loose ranks. I was the rock around which they spread like a shoal of mackerel. They split either side of me, some staring, others ignoring, some laughing, others screaming.

  Lectures were over: a newfound freedom.

  I caught sight of her in a triumvirate of bright, headstrong girls. They locked their arms around one another—Charlie’s Angels of the first year. Your daughter, Inspector, stood in the center, the high priestess with the whipcord body and the blonde hair shining white in the late afternoon light. Her locks bobbed in time to her crisp strides. Jeans, sandals, a light shirt, too baggy to reveal anything about her breasts which I guessed to be thin-cupped and taut.

  There was a broadening in her eyes when she saw me: not so much a recognition as a reaching out. Perhaps she thought I needed help. I was the mad woman in the street, murmuring to herself, the outcast.

  And yet I had dressed smart today as I had wanted her to revise her first impression of a drifter. I wore a beige suit, bought with another wad of Sonia’s cash. I even had a new wig—a burning shade of red. The scarlet curls were more convincing, in my view, and instilled in me a new confidence in my get-up. I was trying to correct my male proportions through a radical diet. I ate very little, only out of obligation—midday, a salad, midnight, a snack. Most of the time I drank St Emilion and smoked hash. Occasionally I dipped into a bag of potato chips to stifle the munchies. The rest of the day my stomach rumbled with disquiet.

  I really wanted to pass as a woman. I had to pass, or Natalia might flee.

  Ich bin die fesche Lola.

  I said nothing to the center of the approaching trio. My game was to be seen, that was all, to register as a blip on her radar.

  Perhaps she found me changed and was surprised? She had shown sympathy to a homeless lady who now stood before her in the attire of the manageress of a small enterprise, a fashion outlet, perhaps, or start-up travel company.

  Yes, there was first a reaching out in her eyes—a recollection of her sympathy perhaps—followed by a phase of gradual recall. She knew me as someone else. Had her memory played a trick on her?

  What counts is that I registered.

  The trio drifted past, conspiring, heads close: a three-headed mythical beast with long limbs and waving hair. Needless to say, I followed them. I did not shadow them but hung back and kept them like dogs on an extendable leash, now shortening, now lengthening, depending on the terrain. I followed the nucleus of three carefree, tight-jeaned teenagers down the road toward the Place de Glacis. I was often happiest in these moments, heart apound, all thoughts blotted out, moving in the train of some blonde.

  I followed her to the bus stop.

  Two heads departed. Bye, bye, Caroline. Ciao, ciao, Roxanne. Bisous.

  Natalia stepped onto the bus alone.

  I got on, head down, and sat several seats behind. It was a pleasure just to be ghosting along like this, on the edge of her consciousness, a face in the crowd, recurring.

  We crossed town. The bus throbbed as it headed down the street between the cubic office buildings. I was ready to step off and follow her at any moment. I kept my eye on her sloping shoulders, pink ears, and sun-swept locks. Perhaps her hair was dyed? I stared at the roots of her hair—they were golden like the rest, without dark shoots. What would her perfume be like when I slid up close? I relished the prospect of entering her aura, perhaps even touching her shoulder lightly, sensing the hard bone, the immaculate structure beneath.

  Eventually, the bus veered into the district of Merl and I saw Natalia stand up, one palm on the metal pole, wavering on her heels as the bus came to a halt. I waited just a second till she stepped off the bus, and then marched between the seats and touched the same metal pole, just for luck, before hopping down a few steps behind her.

  I took a deep breath and approached. I had no concrete plan as yet, but hoped to show her my face again and start a conversation, if possible. I wanted her to know that I was not after her, but alongside her, with her. It was nearness I was after. I touched her lightly on the shoulder as she walked away from the bus, heading toward a smart neighborhood lined with silver beech trees. She looked around in semi-shock. It was a frown, no more, no less. Her gaze iced up my body’s circuits. Beating, my heart stopped.

  “Don’t I know you?” she asked.

  Perhaps she had forgotten me—the woman in the rain—despite our unforgettable encounter. I was always amazed at my capacity to appear invisible, even to people who had smiled at me in acknowledgement of my presence. Did they forget? Perhaps that was the problem. My face just didn’t register. It had no purchase on their brain. It bounced off them like a ray of light, weightless.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  I met her gaze as she tried to work out who I was. I was stunned by the impression of being held in her gaze, cradled, kept. It was another one of those fleeting glimpses of paradise, like the one I had experienced with Valentina outside the sweet shop in Catania. Natalia had a precursor; Valentina had a sequitur. I saw in one face the fatal double of the other. They stood as twins before the hellish backdrop of my soul.

  “Then … Can I help you?” She stood in front of me, her head tilted to one side. Her voice was sweet and calm.

  “Well, it’s complicated.”

  Suddenly, she smiled. “I remember you.” She pointed, for some reason, at my throat. “You’re the woman in the rain.”

  I nodded. “Guilty.”

  “You look better today.” She straightened her neck. “Less unhealthy.”

  “You mean healthier.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” She leaned forward and enquired with her eyes. “Did you want to speak to me?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I wanted to offer you a gift.”

  “I beg your pardon?” She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You don’t have to thank me. I just thought you looked a little lost. But today…” Her gaze rose and fell as she studied my new clothes.

  I had gone to a lot of trouble today, perhaps too much. Maybe she found the sudden change too disconcerting? I didn’t want to put her on the back foot, so I said, “About the gift, you know, it’s just an idea.” I shrugged.

  “What kind of gift?” she asked.

  “That depends on you really. I’m not sure what you would like best. Some clothes maybe?”

  “That sounds kind of funny.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I don
’t see why you would want to buy me clothes.”

  “Listen, maybe you’re right. A gift would seem over-the-top. After all, we don’t know each other.” I smiled. “But listen, I would really like to talk to you, just for a while.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  She turned away from me, unexpectedly, and left me searching for words. Her sandals made a clip-clap sound as she strode away along the concrete. I didn’t want to rush after her and sound desperate or crazy, so I stood still and watched her depart.

  I knew there would be other times, other conversations. All I needed was patience.

  I watched her slowly make her way to the end of the lane and enter her apartment block. Her student pad, her rooms, or so I assumed. It was good that she had her own place, it was fitting. I half-expected to see her appear at a mid-floor window and wave. But I did not see her face again. I waited five minutes longer, taking in the angle of the road and the flowers and the temperature.

  Then I left.

  9

  Our next meeting took place on a day in late September—muggy, too close, the clouds draining the light out of the horizon, the smell of damp grass in the air.

  I knew her routine by now. The day was losing its color as I waited outside her campus. Students flooded out of the building. I saw your daughter, Inspector, alone this time, ambling forward. She bore it all with indifference: the routine of submission and escape. Her head was down, her hair twisting about her face. What was she doing? Dabbing her fingers into her cell phone, texting her nearest and nicest.

  I stood in her path. A looming, semi-female obstacle. She looked up to greet me.