In This Skin Read online

  Then the figure turned to glare at him, half crouching in an ape posture on the steps.

  Benedict stopped. His stomach muscles hurt like someone had rammed a fist into him. He could hardly breathe. The figure opened its mouth and cried out. A raw animal sound that turned Benedict's blood cold.

  ”Wh-war-wuu-or! I! I-I-I!”

  The figure wasn't Mariah. Didn't even look like Mariah. There on the steps, dripping blood onto white marble, was a young guy A young guy who'd taken a hell of a beating. His nose had become a bloody mass. His lips and eyebrows were cut. One eye had closed up into a glistening strip that sickened Benedict to even look at it. The guy lacked the energy to climb to his feet. Benedict leaned forward, his hands out at either side to show that he meant no harm.

  ”Wha! N-n… doh-don't! I-I-I can't t-take any m-more. Y-y-you…

  M-m-wurrrr-”

  The guy's stammer had the rapidity and violence of a machine gun-fragments of words exploded from his bloodied lips. The guy was a wreck; panting, trembling, hands shaking. And that stammer? There was a brittle energy that made you think it would rise into a wailing scream.

  ”Hey, take it easy, buddy. You need someone to take a look at those cuts.”

  The guy put his hands up over his face as if to protect himself from a fresh assault.

  ”My name's Benedict. My car's just across there. I can take you to-”

  ”Sh-shur-rayyy!!”

  Benedict reeled back as the guy twisted around to scramble on all fours up the steps before rising to two feet. He ran with a furious energy, arms working as if to claw himself through the air with his hands.

  ”Hey wait!”Benedict called but the man was gone, running down the side of the Luxor and into bushes that choked the bank of the river as it cut a glistening line behind the building. He listened for a moment, but the crash of bushes as the guy pelted through them soon dwindled to silence.

  Benedict stood alone in silence on the old Luxor steps. The implacable face of the building stared him down. Above, the night sky burned with stars. The breeze that played across his face was unseasonably warm; it did nothing to ease the sick sensation oozing up from his belly. Who could beat a guy until his face looked like raw beef like that? Even to recall the appearance of the man's grossly swollen eye tightened Benedicts throat. Shit. Like you could guarantee the stars to shine at night, you could guarantee man's inhumanity to man.

  Benedict shook his head. He had taken three paces in the direction of where his Ford stood on the blacktop, its rear lights still burning, when he noticed the engine was running.

  ”I switched it off; I know I did…”His heart sank. ”Hey!”he called.

  ”Jessica, it's cool. Don't-”

  All he got was the perfect view of rear tires spinning as the girl he'd met just two hours ago took off in his one and only car.

  ”Damn.”Suddenly it was as if his knees could no longer hold him upright.

  Walking back to the marble steps, he chose one that hadn't taken a spattering of the boy's blood, sat down, and stayed there as he shook his head and marveled at how a night he knew would be painful had just gotten a whole lot crappier.

  ***

  For a whole quarter of an hour Ellery clung to the trunk of a willow at the river's edge. Night birds called across the water. The stars burned over downtown Chicago; he could hear the hum of the city from here.

  Mostly his face emitted a numb, dead sensation, as if it had become a thick rubber mask. If anything, it was his neck that ached where full-blooded punches had whipped his head from side to side with such severity the muscles were strained. As he waited there his upper teeth came to the pain party, too. He pushed the double molars with his tongue. They were still there but loose. When he rocked them with his tongue his mouth filled with blood. At school Ellery had been on the first rung of the gang ladder. If you beat him up you'd be promoted from just a regular school kid to junior gang member. Now it looked as if his school days had just come back to haunt him. He couldn't even bear it when the guy had tried to help him back there on the steps. All he needed right now was to hide away. Humanity sucked.

  Spitting blood into a river that rolled by like grease, he walked back to the white building. Painted on its flanks were the words Luxor in letters six feet high. Moving quietly as a cat, he reached the door marked artistes entrance. The bottom door panel could be slid aside a few inches, just enough to allow his body (his scrawny body, his brother would taunt him) into the building.

  This was the place he could be alone. It was also the place where he could unleash his dreams.

  ***

  After a few moments Benedict had to confront reality. Jessica's not coming back with the car, he thought. And you've got a long walk home.

  Standing, he brushed dirt from the seat of his pants. Once more his eyes were drawn back to the drops of blood spilled by the stammering teen.

  The round spots revealed themselves like a scattering of coins on the steps. Poor kid. He'd really soaked up someone's aggression tonight.

  Probably a tough guy didn't like the sound of the stammer. Yeah, this was the world where shit grew legs and walked and talked like a man, but it was still shit on the inside through and through.

  The hour's walk in front of him focused his mind now. There was no point in standing here gazing at the drops of blood on the steps, especially when there'd…

  Now. He hadn't noticed that before. At the far end of the step amid the round splotches sat a dark, square object. He picked it up.

  The kid's wallet. It had to be his. It hadn't been dumped earlier by a thief because dollar bills, credit card and driver's license were still there. He checked the name in the wallet. Ellery Hann. So the kid with the pounded face and the stammer had a name now. A slip of card showed a pale edge against the compartment for credit cards. An address maybe.

  Benedict checked.

  Nope. A neatly handwritten line. A proverb maybe? Benedict angled the card so it would catch the faint streetlight. We are nothing. Less than nothing and dreams. We are only what might have been. The words haunted Benedict West all the way home.

  CHAPTER 2

  At the same time Ellery Hann slunk into the Luxor Dance Hall and Benedict West headed back to his apartment on foot, Robyn Vincent took a midnight shower. Normally she loved to sleep with Noel's semen inside of her, its warmth nourishing her contentment. They'd been together for almost a year, and they trusted each other, so she'd been the first to tell Noel that she planned to take the pill. Those rubbers might only be a few microns thick but when they made love there might have been a brick wall between them rather than a sheer membrane of latex. For the last few weeks she'd return home from making love with Noel and she'd curl up in bed feeling his come warm inside her, its heat spreading through her stomach to the tips of her fingers.

  Now was different. Robyn wanted it out of her. She'd taken the jets of water from the shower as hot as she could bear. It turned her skin red.

  Her back burned. She'd soaped herself between her legs with such force the lips of her vagina felt too tender to even touch.

  Get that come out, Robyn told herself as she showered. I want it out of me. Its smell sickens me. I don't like the slippery feel of Noel's semen on my thighs or my fingertips.

  ”Get out, get out, get out,”she repeated as she burned her skin under the blazing jets.

  But what's gone wrong with the relationship? Nothing. I love Noel more than ever, but… but-God, it's crazy really-I don't want him to fuck me. As simple as that. She ached to hold his hand, or feel his lips touch her cheek. But the prospect of his cock inside her made her want to scream out loud in disgust.

  But why?

  Why?

  The question rolled around inside Robyn Vincent's head with a ferocity that nauseated her. Her sudden change of feelings toward physical love bewildered her. Noel had said nothing to upset her. Certainly he'd done nothing. He was as sweet and as considerate as ever. Today Noel had even bought he
r a delicate pewter bowl in the shape of a rose that he'd found at an antique fair. He'd watched her fiddling with a cruddy plastic box that she'd used for hairpins and silently filed the information in his mind to buy her something both pretty and useful. So why the sudden revulsion over him making love to me?

  Switching off the shower, she stepped out of the stall to walk through the billowing steam to the bathroom mirror, where she wiped away the condensation.

  ”OK,”she told her reflection. ”Take stock. You're nineteen years old.

  You're solvent. So the office closed down under you last week, crap happens, but you're starting a new job at the end of the month. You've got twenty-twenty vision, you're in good health, all your own hair and body parts, and it's been six days since I even saw a zit or a blackhead on that face… a face I'm learning to live with at long last.” She forced a smile. It was a good face, after all. Even though she'd hated it in her early teens. It had been too angular. The shape of a triangle.

  Back then her eyes seemed too far apart as well, as if they were trying to put as much distance from her nose as possible. She used to stare at her eyes in the mirror and murmur gloomily,

  ”Those damn things are going to fall off the side of my head one day Of course, she'd grown from a gawky bag o' bones kid into an adult. A little more muscle upholstered those bones now. The awkward skinniness gone, to be replaced by womanly curves. Although her eyes were widely spaced they fit in well with a face that had lost its peculiar geometric shape. Its structure had softened. By the time she'd hit her seventeenth, boys were taking a close interest in her. She saw how their eyes were drawn to her face. There was something about it they liked.

  Her lips were fuller, too. With a touch of lipstick they became devastating. By the time she was eighteen she was in love with Noel.

  So what had gone wrong now? Robyn couldn't figure out why she suddenly hated him making love to her. She studied her face as if half expecting it to erupt tentacles or something. It was as if a circuit had burned out inside her head. Whereas before she'd sizzled, hornier than a timber wolf, for sex, now lovemaking repulsed her. Jesus… maybe it was just some hormonal glitch. She hoped so.

  Quickly Robyn dried herself, then wrapped a towel around her head. What she craved now was to vanish into bed and sleep. Maybe everything would be fine in the morning. She slipped on a robe, opened the door, and…

  ”Mom?”

  Her mom stood there on the landing in a glamorous purple silk gown. Her blond hair rolled in extravagant waves down her shoulders. There was hardness in her eyes.

  ”Robyn? Do you know what time it is?”

  ”It's Friday, Mom.”

  ”I know it's Friday, but what made you take a shower? It's past midnight.”

  ”It turned so warm today I feel kinda-”

  ”It might be the weekend for you, Robyn, but Emerson has to be at the office by six in the morning. There's a shareholder meeting. He's been working for weeks toward this. They're planning to merge with a company that tried to buy him out last year.

  Emerson needs to be able to get a good night's sleep before he-”

  ”OK, OK, Mom. I get the picture. I'm sorry Good night.”

  Her mother looked her up and down as if suddenly noticing some change in her appearance.

  ”Robyn.”The irritable edge left her mother's voice. ”Robyn?”

  ”Mom?”

  ”Anything you want to tell me, Robyn?”

  ”No.”Robyn shrugged, genuinely puzzled. ”Like what?”

  ”You haven't argued with Noel?”

  ”No.”

  ”There's nothing else the matter?”Her mother looked at her in that sidelong way as if she were sighting a target along the barrel of a gun.

  ”You wouldn't keep it to yourself if something was troubling you?”

  ”Of course not. Everything's fine, Mom.”

  ”Hmmm…”Her mother looked her in the eye as if reading hidden messages there. ”OK, if you want to keep it to yourself…”

  ”There's nothing bothering me. I'm OK. I'm happy.”Robyn heard the exasperation seeping through her own voice. Jeez, what does Mom want me to admit? ”Obviously I can't drag it out of you, Robyn. Perhaps you'll tell me in your own good time. Sleep well.”

  ”Good night.”

  With that her mother swept back to her bedroom, no doubt to stroke Emerson's troubled brow. Robyn went to her own room. There she lay on her bed. It was too warm to pull over covers. Switching off the light, she lay looking up at the play of shadows on the ceiling.

  So there's food for thought, she told herself. Her mother had seen something different in her. A ”something”that she thought Robyn was deliberately hiding. But could her mother have sensed a sudden aversion to sex with Noel? That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Those kinds of things don't change the expression on your face, do they? It's not as if she suddenly wore a sign on her forehead in big shouting letters: no more fucking, PLEASE.

  Jesus, this is weird Maybe I should see a psychotherapist? Or would it be a sex therapist? ”Good morning, Doctor. I can't take it up me anymore.” She murmured the words aloud, trying to be flippant. As if rendering the problem into verbal sounds would somehow magically expel this weirdly inexplicable aversion from her body She stroked her stomach. The muscles fluttered in the way her eyelid did when she was over-tired or stressed. It felt strange. Almost as if the muscles would go into a spasm but stopped short of a cramp. And with her period more than two weeks away, the sensation couldn't be attributed to that. So what else could have changed inside of her? She hadn't altered her diet.

  She hadn't taken to snacking on narcotics or downing bottles of vodka.

  If it was a hormonal glitch what would…

  ”Oh, God no.”

  The sounds coming through her wall were the last ones she wanted to hear tonight. Emerson was playing hide the wiener with Mom. ”Oh, shit, shit, shit…”

  Not that Mom didn't deserve a healthy love life. She had just turned fifty-five. She'd remarried.

  Maybe it's me. I should get a place of my own and give those two lovebirds some privacy… But it's just that… agh, dear God, I don't even want to think the words… the images it puts into my mind of plump little Emerson making whoopee with Mom. Could Mom take her eyes off that absurd hair weave thatched to his head? And Emerson made it so clear to her (probably to neighbors, too) what lit his flame.

  Emerson and her mother slept on a waterbed, so it wasn't a creak-creak-creak that revealed what Emerson did in the heat of passion.

  And here it comes, right on cue, Robyn thought with a sinking sensation.

  A slow measured sound: crack… crack… crack… crack…

  That was the only sound of sex from the next room. The slap of bare palm on bare buttock shoved mental images rudely into Robyn's brain. And those were mental pictures she didn't want to see. Groaning, she curled into a ball and pulled the pillow over her head. That sound wouldn't stop for a long while yet.

  ***

  Ellery Hann spent a long time in the men's restroom of the Luxor Dance Hall. He'd washed his face in cold water, then stood for an hour or more staring into the mirror above the sink. Bruising from the fists appeared to swell like dark clouds across an evening sky He watched the color of his chin turn from an abraded red to purple with flecks of crimson at the center. Dried blood glued his hair into hard points.

  And all this time Ellery didn't make a move or a sound. His breathing was barely perceptible. Distant sounds from a freeway filled the void of the building with a ghostly whisper that rose and fell to some mysterious rhythm. Electricity to the building had been cut years ago.

  The only lights were the random rays of starlight and streetlight that somehow struggled through dirty windowpanes.

  What Ellery saw was merely the gloomy reflection of his damaged face and the glint of his staring eyes. There wasn't any pain now, just a stiffness, a dead sensation, as if his spirit had already begun to withdraw from his body. In a l
ittle while he'd go into the auditorium of the abandoned building. There on the dance floor a single armchair faced the stage. That's where he sat to enjoy the show, the best show on earth…

  Ellery Hann blinked slowly at his reflection, then, leaning forward, whispered the words that meant so much to him. When he spoke there was no trace of stammer: ”We are nothing. Less than nothing and dreams. We are only what might have been.”

  A deep throbbing sounded deep in the shadowed heart of the building. The show would be starting soon.

  ***

  ”Oh… the keys!”Benedict spoke loudly enough to set the dog barking in the next yard. ”The damn apartment keys. They're with the car keys.”And where the car was now was anyone's guess.

  Yep, this was going to be a bad night. Ten years to the day since Mariah vanished into the Luxor. An hour ago the girl he'd picked up in the blues bar had driven his car out of the lot and into the night. Then the long walk home. Now the realization that he couldn't even get through the door because his keys were on the same ring as the car keys. The devil's given me the kiss of had luck today. Benedict shushed the barking dog. It made the dog bark louder. Dogs don't take kindly to being shushed.

  ”Quiet, Butch. It's only me.”

  Suddenly the dog's big, mule-like head loomed over the fence as it stood on its hind legs to confirm his identity.

  ”Jeez. You'll get me into more trouble barking like that.”

  Butch made a yip sound in the back of its throat. Benedict saw the eyes gleam brightly in the streetlights. The hound looked happy enough to see him anyway It made the yip sound again, as if asking a question.

  ”Don't ask, Butch. I've had a bitch of a night. A girl stole my car. I can't get into my apartment because the keys were in… oh, God. And I'm standing talking to a dog in the middle of the night and I'm not even drunk.”The dog tilted its head, its mouth open as it panted. ”What am I going to do, Butch?”