Cartilage and Skin (24 page)

“Yah. Yah!” I shouted.

I started to run, trusting that the distance between us gave me the chance to get away.

Without looking back, I ran, my heart thumping in my chest, my wound inflamed and twitching, the flat bottoms of my shoes clapping on the blacktop. Just behind me sounded a deep, solitary bark from the Husky. The horrible knowledge that the dogs were chasing me drove me to run faster. Fleeing wildly down the street, I recalled the sensation of pursuing my urban nymph, Celeste Wilcox, which was the last time I'd exerted myself, and how all the while I'd run after her, I'd dimly sensed in the back of my mind some obligation of a silly appointment. Soon, the Husky was running beside me. It circled around the front of me, only to reappear on my side again. The mutt kept pace, its tiny legs flickering at an incredible speed beneath its body, its head turned toward me, and the tip of its tongue hanging out of the corner of its mouth. When I slowed down to a walk, the dogs followed suit. My breathing was hard and painful. My face burned flush, and my underclothes were damp with perspiration. The dogs didn't appear to be affected at all.

I continued to walk, trying to ignore them, but they stayed with me. They occasionally moved in front of me, but always dropped back beside me again. I headed toward the curb, and then the three of us walked down the sidewalk together. When we passed people, they didn't take any special notice of us. I suspected that pedestrians would have been cautious, if not fearful, of the dogs, if the animals weren't walking so close to my heels. I briefly wished for my movie theatre flashlight again, not so much to signal my distress as to dazzle their vision, as if to say, “Can't you see what is going on here? Can't you see?” After a while, it seemed as though I were not so much leading the animals as I were a member of a motley pack.

Shortly, I came to the address that the social worker had given me, and it didn't appear to be a clinic at all. It was a narrow building. Drab yellow stucco covered the walls of the ground floor, but brick, painted the same ugly color, went up the rest of the way for several stories. There was a single storefront window that displayed, on a series of carpeted plateaus, foam heads with long necks. All the heads lacked mouths, noses, and ears, and had slight impressions where eyes should have been. Most of them were a dark, rich color: green, purple, and black. One, however, was a disturbing pink. For some reason, it faced the wall, adorned with long, straight turquoise hair. In fact, all the heads had hair.

“A wig shop,” I said, looking down at the dogs, as if explaining to them.

Of course, this couldn't have been the place.

But then, I saw where I had to go. There was a glass door. When I looked through it, I was able to read a list of names with room numbers posted on the wall. A staircase led upward, not only to the offices of family counselors but also to a law firm and a specialist who fitted people with hearing devices. Although I was uncertain how the system worked, I suspected that the tree-shaped woman must have given up working for the state and joined a private practice. If this were the case, then she'd somehow retained her treatment of the boy, who was supposed to be government property.

Without bothering to look at my watch, I knew I had time before my appointment. I abandoned the idea of sitting down and drinking a cup of coffee. I needed to find somewhere to dry myself off and clean up. Yet, despite the wound on my head, my sweaty underwear, and my soiled overcoat, I felt somewhat carefree, a bit indifferent to how my appearance might be assessed by the social worker. The problem of the boy was somewhere beneath me. The woman would ask me a few questions; I would nod, express my sympathy, but ultimately go home and slip myself back into my uneventful life. The world was going to continue to rotate, and the same stars were going to dot the same night sky. It didn't matter if I lived the life that I'd thus far established or if I went out and started a new one. Of course, deep down, I knew all along that I was going to run away. The imminent threat of Claudia's private pervert was my catalyst. I had no reason ever to meet the man, let alone to confront him in a final showdown. I had nothing to prove to anyone, no score to settle, no relationship to salvage. The prospect of running away put me at ease. Not only were all my burdens going to be lifted from me, but also my future appointment with the social worker now seemed drained of significance. I had no reason to feel intimidation, anger, or anything else.

And so, it was settled: For yet another time in my life, I was going to fix my problems by fleeing from them. Although I tried to convince myself that this was the best solution, part of me knew that I was simply rationalizing.

Suddenly, I realized that I was walking alone. My fleeting membership among the stray dogs had ended; our pack had disbanded as quickly as it had been formed, lasting no more than a few moments. I turned around to see that they were across the street from the wig shop, rooting and pawing for something beneath a squat, blue mailbox.

I continued forward. My body was growing cold as my overcoat began to stiffen and freeze and perspiration chilled my flesh. I quickened my pace. My imminent appointment didn't unsettle me as much as before, yet I still remained curious about what to expect. It seemed like a silly place to set up a practice, for nobody who needed counseling would find comfort going up that dingy staircase, let alone passing all those heads.

“And if the family counseling doesn't work, at least there're lawyers—” I began to say, but abruptly stopped myself, conscious that I had spoken aloud, not even to a pair of dogs. I kept walking and finished the thought in my head:
Well, at least, it's pretty convenient to have lawyers nearby to handle the divorce
.

I rounded the corner and started down a more congested street. The wind felt stronger here, more bitter, and everyone was walking briskly, with faces lowered. I was looking for a store, thinking that I could buy a change of clothes. Thankfully, I had the money from my security deposit on me because I had been cautious about leaving it unprotected in my apartment.

On an awning across the street, I read that somebody named Crowley had two stores side-by-side. One sold new and used CDs. Its front window was plastered over with images of rock stars in seductive poses. The door was covered in a mess of decals, stickers, and scribbled insignias or perhaps messages in the jargon of some particular subculture. I didn't spend any time trying to figure it out because I hurriedly entered Crowley's other store, which sold used and vintage clothing. Warmth and the odor of burning incense permeated the room. Slow instrumental jazz was playing softly. Racks of clothes lined the walls on either side, and above these racks were more racks. The upper ones were apparently reached, not by a step stool, but by tiny wooden chairs that were made for children. Near the back wall sat a low couch. A young couple was lounging there in an attitude of listless indifference, which implicitly conveyed to me that they weren't the salesclerks. The girl was dressed in worn corduroy pants, and reclined, spread-eagled, with one leg crossed over the young man's thigh. Neither of them paid any attention to me as I began looking through the clothes. Strangely, nothing was organized, not by size, make, or style, not even by gender. There were plenty of long, flimsy dresses and button-down shirts from a previous generation. Between a quilted flannel shirt and a denim dress with brass buttons down the side, hung a white nurse's outfit made of leather. At the exact moment I happened to have my hand on the garment, the girl muttered something to the boy and then giggled.

“Is there someone who could help me?” I asked. I felt cold and pressed for time.

“Customer,” the girl called, turning her head toward an arched doorway that was partially obstructed by a stereo cabinet.

“I like the hat,” the young man said as he straightened up and gently pushed the girl's leg off of his.

She whispered something to him, and he responded, “I don't think so.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Out of the backroom came a skinny woman in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt bearing the name Moravian. She smiled and walked up to me.

“Hi there,” she said. “Did you find something?”

“No.”

“Do you know what you're looking for?” She continued to smile and look at me kindly from behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

“Anything dry,” I said.

“Oh no,” she said and actually started to help me remove my overcoat. “You must be freezing.”

“I have an important meeting to go to.”

“What happened?” She draped my overcoat over the counter and then came behind me and took my sports coat off me.

“I fell down.”

“Oh no,” she said again.

I could feel her hand on my back, touching my gray shirt, then moving down to my legs.

“The bottoms of your trousers are frozen stiff. Literally frozen.”

“I know.”

“Poor thing.”

“I didn't see anything formal.”

“Don't worry; I'll set you up.”

She threw my sports coat on the counter too, stepped in front of me, and looked at me carefully, sizing me up.

I watched her as she moved about the store, assembling an outfit for me. She dragged behind her a little chair that was missing chips of blue paint. Most of the garments she selected came from the upper racks. She would place one foot on the small seat and quickly slide the hangers along the bar. Her animation was at a pace anomalous to the mellow mood of the room. When she stretched, I was able to see not only two dimples on her back, just above the waistline of her jeans, but also that she had very small, indiscernible breasts. Occasionally, she turned to me and smiled.

I didn't notice that the music had stopped playing, until the young man got up from the couch, searched through the loose CDs on top of the stereo cabinet, and restarted the music.

The skinny woman came toward me with an armload of clothes.

“Try these,” she said. “I got you several things to choose from.”

“Don't you like his hat?” the young man asked her.

“I love his hat.”

I noticed her eyes focus on my wound, but she didn't say anything about it.

“Come on,” she said, and I followed her under the arched doorway, into the backroom.

I wasn't quite certain what to make of the room at first. It appeared to be a separate store altogether, with glass counters like those in a jewelry shop and shelves on the back wall stacked with various knickknacks. I gave it a cursory glance and continued behind the woman, mainly focusing on her.

“Over here's the bathroom,” she said.

She clicked the light on for me with her elbow and deposited the clothes on a bench across from the toilet. Leaving, she pulled the door behind her, and although she'd left it slightly ajar, I didn't push it completely shut. I doubted, of course, that she would spy on me through the crevice, but, what's more, she had an aura of liberty that was contagious. Strangely, she made me feel relaxed enough not to mind the thin gap in the door.

The bathroom was more quaint and feminine than the rest of the store would have led me to believe. There was a shower stall beside the toilet, and an enormous mirror stretched the length of the wall above the basin. In the corner, on a tripod, burned a large three-wick candle. All the clothes the woman had selected for me were dark, solid colors. I stripped down to my tee-shirt, boxer shorts, and hat, and then I removed the hat and the tee-shirt. I stepped back and inspected myself in the mirror. The normal hue of my skin had become ashen; my flesh cold and clammy. Using a cloth hand towel, I patted myself down and rubbed dry some places on my body that needed to be rubbed dry. Afterwards, I dropped the towel upon my pile of discarded clothes, instead of returning it to the shower rod for reuse. I tried on all the clothes, except for a shirt with wide lapels. In the end, I dressed in a pair of gabardine pants and a black, shiny rayon shirt. I didn't look too bad. I leaned close to the mirror to inspect my wounded head. Apparently, the cold weather had given my skin such a pallor that the wound seemed less hideous and blended better with my overall drained complexion.

With my hat back on my head, I left all the other articles, including my own clothes, and stepped out of the bathroom.

The woman apparently wasn't waiting for me because I found myself alone in the backroom. I went up to one of the glass counters and saw a bunch of brightly colored pipes and silver lighters. Arranged on the shelf beyond it were hollow tubes sticking out of peculiar bulbous bases.

“You're looking pretty sharp,” the woman said behind me.

“Thanks.” I turned around to see her smiling at me.

“I found a jacket for you.” She was holding a muddy green jacket with brown patches on the elbows.

“Thanks,” I repeated and started toward her in the doorway. “It's just around the corner, but I'm running out of time.”

“Well, try it on.” Again, she helped me, standing behind me.

Once I had it on, she pulled lightly on the shoulders, checked the length of my sleeves, and ran her hand down my back twice, brushing the coat smooth.

“You're picture perfect.”

“I left everything in the bathroom. Can I come back for my stuff. I'm just going around the corner.”

“Sure,” she said, moving out of the backroom. “Let it dry out. But we close in about an hour.”

“I should be back by then. If not, you're open tomorrow, right?”

“No problem.”

She went behind the counter that my coats were spread atop, drew out a calculator and a pad, and began figuring how much I owed her.

“I appreciate this,” I said.

“What's the worst that can happen? You don't show up, and I sell your clothes.”

“I'll be back.”

“After tomorrow, they're going on the rack.”

Because she was grinning, I couldn't tell if she was teasing me or not.