The Skin Room

by Morgan Fleetwood

  Another frown. “You were waiting for me. Why?”

  “I wanted to see you,” I said.

  She smiled, half-curiously. “Who are you?”

  I looked both ways at the empty road. “Can we talk somewhere quiet?”

  She frowned. “I should be going.”

  “I’d like to talk to you,” I said.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Listen, please, just for a couple of minutes. It’s personal.”

  “What kind of personal?” From the tone of her voice it sounded as though she had taken an interest in my enquiry.

  “About your father. There’s something you should know. This is not the place.” I looked again at the empty street and implored it to be busy.

  “I have to go.” She turned, walked a step or two away, then paused, and turned back with a wry smile.

  “I do like your hair,” she said.

  “And I yours.”

  My hair turned out to be the perfect ice-cracker. Could she not see that I was wearing a scarlet wig? Perhaps she saw right through me from the get-go? So hard to say. It seemed likely, to me at least, that I was passing as a woman. Though perhaps this could be chalked up to my descent into an underworld of delusions.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Sandra.”

  As we walked to the nearest café, I caught a gust of her perfume. It was charming, encharming rather, as it enshrouded me like a mist—a mixture of cool lemonade and cigarettes and freshly cut pears. Was she a smoker? Perhaps, beneath her princess-like exterior, she was a teenage rebel. She walked by my side, observing her own steps, as though to check where they were heading.

  “And why do you want to speak to me, Sandra?”

  “Like I said. It’s about your father.”

  “My father,” she said, looking up, her eyes as clear as sun-streaked windows. “What is there to know?”

  “I think we should wait until we get inside.” I waved a hand at the window of a café, shifted to one side, and propped the glass door open. “Just a coffee—a quick one.” I nodded at her as she approached.

  She hesitated, remained on the threshold.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “A friend.”

  I could see her strands of hair, the color of gold leaf, and I wanted to reach out and feel their texture. Her eyes: swimming-pool blue. Her lips: cochineal. What else? I felt a pinprick in my spine as she passed and paused. The light, evening-toned, made the pallor of her cheeks shine—I could see the hairy down of her cheeks, a blemish the photographer’s retouch would erase. But why? What’s wrong with imperfection? I mean to say, perfection is not always smooth, the absence of feature. The Andes mountains are beautiful, seen from above, but they are not flat and featureless like the face of a magazine model. What’s wrong with down, with lines, with veins? Show me them all, I want the lot. These are the surface stresses of the soul. If I wanted to be more scientific, I should say the insides push out their beauty, like flowers in the bud. If only we could wear our hearts on the outside… Has anybody ever thought this way? I’m for the removal of skin as a barrier to internal beauty, setting free the leaking reds, the swilling pinks, the oozing ochres and folds. Have you ever thought how beautiful the human body is when it’s exposed, its insides revealed? This is true happiness, for me: the body turned outward like a two-way jacket. So show me what I want to see, Natalia. Show me the wandering hair on your neck, the breathing pores and polyps, the wheat-field arms, the wrinkles and freckles. I will wander across that body like a pilgrim, not worried by its surface imperfections but delighting in them, touching and caressing every ridge and God-turned feature.

  Peeling the skin back. Isn’t that all I ever wanted? To peel the skin back. Let the blemishes, the internal organs breathe…

  We entered the café and I kept my eyes focused on her the whole time. I had to make progress now. It was time.

  We sat down at a table. The room smelled of coffee beans and chocolate cake. There were paperbacks on the shelves, hardbacks on the floor. Discounts at ten or twenty per cent.

  Our conversation was stilted, graceless. I looked away; she looked away. What was wrong? There was a tension between us. She seemed to regret entering the café with me. Perhaps the novelty had worn off or she had recognized in my voice the earthy tones of a cross-dressing man. I felt a nagging anxiety. It was one thing for her to be chatting to a lonely woman, another thing entirely for her to be chatting to a lonely transvestite.

  She said, “You mentioned my father.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the part where you’re supposed to explain why you brought me here.”

  “I’m not sure I can tell you everything.”

  She frowned—such a delicate downturn of the lips. “Just the important part, then.”

  “The problem is … you love your father.” I looked away.

  “Who said I loved him?”

  “You don’t?”

  She sipped her coffee. “You see this spoon?” She dipped it into the cup and ladled up a spoonful of coffee, tipped half of it away, half again, till the blackness was just a misty foam in the middle of the spoon. She looked up and said, “This much.”

  I suspected this lovelessness may hinder my cause. What kind of revenge would I take by stealing away your daughter, Inspector?

  “Why?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders, inverted her spoon, stirred the blackness and drank down the dregs from her cup. I watched her throat swell and shrink as she tilted her head back and swallowed. Seeing her hands around the coffee cup reminded me of a nest around a small bird, her skin enclosing the porcelain. To feel that homely pressure for just one instant. The reassurance of it, the soft shell. You could go to sleep in those hands, and die sleeping.

  “It’s a long story,” she said. “You probably don’t have time for it.”

  “I’ve got ages. Absolutely ages.” I folded my arms and looked down at my big hands; changed my mind and dropped my hands onto my lap, under the table.

  She looked up and I saw a flicker of hesitation in her eyes. “I’m not sure I want to tell a stranger.”

  “I don’t have to be one.”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head, her gold leaf hair flicking left and right. “I don’t even know who you are.”

  “I live in Luxembourg. My name is Sandra. I followed you … I wanted to talk to you. I have some information about your father.” I drank the last of my coffee, backhanded my lips, then remembered to be more ladylike, and raised a napkin to pat the corners of my mouth. “More like evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Would you like to see it?”

  A thought seemed to shuffle about in her head. “Who are you?”

  I smiled, displayed some coins, stood up.

  I said, “A friend.”

  I walked beside her as we left the café, trying to smell her hair, trying not to smell her hair. Trying.

  She looked at me as though she was attempting to answer a question. I tried to see myself through her eyes: a deep-voiced woman with broad fingers and fake eyelashes. I could not read her answer. In the end, she dipped her head and spoke down to the sidewalk, her hair lush and fine. “What can you tell me about my father that I don’t already know? What’s this talk about evidence?”

  “You don’t like him. Why?”

  She shrugged and looked down at the dusty concrete. “I don’t trust him.” There was a genuine sadness in her voice.

  “Look, I won’t lie to you,” I said. “I have a special interest in your father. It turns out…”

  Her eyes said, What?

  “It turns out … he’s involved in some nasty business.” I leaned toward her, stared at her neck, chin and lips, admiring their formation, their congruence. I closed my eyes for a second and tried to concentrate. “Tell me, what do you know about the Mafia?”

  She tossed back her head and giggled. “Don’t b
e absurd. My father—”

  “I think, before laughing, you may first wish to see the proof.”

  “Proof of what? That he’s in league with the Mafia? Come on, he’s a police officer. I’m not saying he’s perfect or anything, but I do wonder … what you think you know.”

  “I can show you. Would you like to see?”

  “How?”

  “Come to my place.”

  “Your place?”

  “Yes, I have everything there.”

  She searched me with her eyes. “What for?”

  I nodded. “It’s very important. You will come?”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow, 6 p.m.”

  “I have to be somewhere in the afternoon so…”

  “Later then, 7?”

  “7.30.”

  I wrote Sonia’s address on a piece of paper and gave it to her.

  “I feel like a journalist,” she said, half-smiling to herself. “Is it some kind of scandal?”

  I rubbed my knuckles against my forehead. “Possibly.”

  “I should be going now.”

  “Okay,” I nodded. “Promise me you’ll come and visit tomorrow?”

  She shook her head coyly. “I can’t promise anything. But I’ll try.”

  She backed away, looking quite perfect.

  At home, in Sonia’s apartment, I tried to dispense with my compulsions. I wanted to walk around the divan but managed to stop myself. I pretended not to think about the contents of the fridge—the liquid volumes, the gathering condensation. Instead, I tidied up the place.

  I spent a long time preparing for this encounter in the mirror. I laid fresh white sheets on the bed, though I knew they would later become messy. I anticipated certain scenes in my head and took pleasure from them. The stage was set for a new life. I sprayed Sonia’s perfume on the sheets: the smell of a windswept heath, an afterscent of rosemary. Just imagining the future transformation made me feel happy inside. I could not reverse Sonia’s death, but I could become closer to her in a special way that the world would not sanction. Brother and sister: reunited in the flesh.

  I moved around the room, watered Sonia’s plants, tried not to let them dry out or drown. A happy medium: beyond me. A person of extremes, in head and hand.

  The doorbell rang. I looked over my shoulder at the door. My skin tightened. Could I hear clunking men’s feet? Whispering snatches of sound? I glided closer to the door and peeped through the lock. I saw a pair of enviable hips, tucked into pink pants.

  A beautiful shiver moved down my spine like a big insect in no big hurry. I got a shock when I heard voices, two of them, in conversation. I cocked my head and peeked through the lock at another angle. Natalia had not come alone. She had brought with her—as protection, presumably—one of the other heads of the mythical trio. It was Roxanne or Caroline. I didn’t care which.

  I would have to try to get rid of one and retain the other, while keeping them both sweet and arousing no suspicion. I rotated my shoulders to shake out the tension, stood up, smoothed back a loose tuft of scarlet wig and unlocked the door.

  They stood without smiles in the corridor.

  “I’m here,” said Natalia. “I’m not sure why.” She shifted her feet and raised her hand in an apologetic wave. “I hope you don’t mind. I’ve brought along a friend.”

  “I’m Roxanne,” said the other girl, who observed me with a fair degree of suspicion. Her hair was dark, curved into a bob; she had very long eyelashes, and her eyes were quick to judge. She wore a purple jacket and a pair of blue boots. She had the long delicate fingers of a violinist. I saw in her an unwanted bodyguard and threw her a dagger of a look which I quickly corrected to a smile. Keep them both sweet, remember.

  “Come on in. I’ll fix us a drink.”

  We turned back into the apartment and the girls loitered around, searching for an appropriate stance or pose. In truth, I only had eyes for Natalia. I wanted to see her up close in Sonia’s flat and study her moves and thoughts.

  Natalia was shorter than Sonia, but I cared little about height. The other physical attributes—hair, face, breasts—were close enough and that was vital. Her face I would want to take clean off, but such operations were beyond a simple butcher like me. I was a cut-and-paste merchant, as you will soon see, Inspector.

  Natalia was thin, slim-chested; her hair was authentic blonde. She kept it hippie-length but conditioned it with care. Her eyes, fierce emeralds, could not compete with Sonia’s languid, blue gazes. Natalia’s eyes were stained with pride, a trait I both admired and disliked—she would fend me off with ironic looks. My sister was sympathetic toward others, never high-headed or proud … But, enough of these comparisons, Inspector. Suffice it to say that I had all I needed to complete a living work of art.

  Natalia prowled around the room with growing confidence. Her calves looked well-toned; she was a girl who maybe jogged a lot or played tennis. I tried to imagine her on the tennis court, stooping to a dink ball, the white folds of her skirt flicking up to reveal the clench of her pink knickers.

  Roxanne, too, was adjusting to the territory. I watched her as she stepped forward and back, picking up Sonia’s things with a mixture of curiosity and disdain.

  “What unusual taste you have,” she said. Only her smile blunted her mischief. She was turning out to be a total snoop. She picked up one of my Marlene Dietrich records and tossed it on a table. “Is this what you listen to?” She shot her friend a sly glance.

  Natalia kept her lips shut firm. I sensed that she was trying to stay polite.

  Roxanne turned to stare me down, shaking her bob of dark hair. She seemed to wish me ill with her eyes.

  “My dear ladies…” I started.

  “And those rugs are all wrong.” Roxanne pointed to the floor. “You can’t put pink and green side by side, everyone knows that.”

  Natalia ignored her friend’s sniping and sat down in an armchair, a swivel one, and turned to face me like an interviewee.

  “I do wonder what I’m doing here,” she said.

  My first disappointment, a real arrow through the heart of my ideal, I must say, came when Natalia unwrapped a stick of gum and flicked it into her mouth. From then on, her words were mixed with chomping sounds.

  “I like this chair,” she said. “It turns, it turns.”

  Roxanne glided around the room, no doubt looking for more objects to denigrate. Perhaps she was nervous, and this was her way of taking control of the situation? She reached a corner of the room and bent over a pile of A4 sheets laid out on the desk. I flinched slightly, but stood my ground. I had only just started to copy out the encyclopedia.

  “What’s this?” Roxanne remarked as she lifted the sheets idly and pulled them toward her nose. I sat down on the sofa, my heart drumming. There was too much blood pulsing through my veins. A gust of nausea hit me like a train. Don’t touch those lists. Don’t mess with the order. A bad feeling fluttered in my gut. As I saw Roxanne fingering those sheets, it was as though she was corrupting my insides, clawing at my entrails…

  “What’s this? Aardvark!” she snorted.

  “Put those down,” I whispered.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think sunny, nerveless thoughts. When I opened my eyes, thankfully, she had turned away, leaving those sheets on the desk in mild disarray. It was not desirable, but it was correctable. It took a while for my heartbeat to slow down again to a steady clip.

  “Let’s put on some music,” said Roxanne, “but not that drivel.” She glanced toward my record collection. “Put on the radio.”

  “Any preferences?”

  “Try Eldoradio FM.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know the frequency by heart.”

  “97-something. Just flick till you find it.”

  I meddled endlessly with the stereo.

  “Here, let me do it,” said Natalia’s voice from behind. Her hand touched my back and I felt a warm tingle in my spine, as though it was being heated by a flame. I stood qui
te still and reveled in the afterburn.

  “How about that drink?” Roxanne asked. “I really mustn’t drink too much, though, I go totally off my head. Do you have any champagne? I’m a maniac for champagne,” she laughed.

  Roxanne was a curious chaperone—the same age as Natalia, I guessed, yet more immature in outlook, and far less trusting. I was caught in the crosshairs of those long eyelashes.

  Natalia leaned against the doorframe, smiling as she observed us both. Her make-up was less accentuated today. She did not need to feel emboldened. I noticed very slight blemishes in her skin that she had previously disguised—mild pink patches on her neck and throat, the traces of adolescence or an incorrect diet. I bowed slightly and touched my head. One thought: futility. I was chasing a dream the way lepidopterists chase butterflies. All that struggle just to rob nature of one more specimen. My next thought: how what seems delicate and precious from afar appears lurid and grotesque up close. The wriggling antennae. The bug eyes.

  Looking down, I murmured, “In the fridge, I have a bottle of Prosecco.”

  “Some what?” asked Roxanne.

  “It’s champagne from Italy.”

  Roxanne’s eyes brightened and she clapped her hands. “What a treat!”

  Natalia smiled knowingly and flicked her hair and I saw again her cherished potential. Younger than Sonia, with a more expressionless face, yet, if anything, finer hair: the color of golden sands in Puglia, those beaches down in the heel of Italy. You dip your hands into the warm, glittering granules, raise your palm and feel the sand slipping like grease through your parted fingers. If you have sunk your hands in once, you want to do it again just to experience the same, slippery sensation. Again, again.

  “Well?” asked Roxanne, waving a hand through the air. “Do I have to get it myself?”

  Something of a miracle happened, I must admit, a stroke of good luck, at last. Roxanne’s cell phone buzzed and sang. She flicked it out of her hip pocket with her long, delicate fingers, and started pacing up and down the room, occasionally giving me a caustic glance, all the while muttering into the phone in her incomprehensible Luxembourgish.