In This Skin (2 page)

    

    

    Benedict West pulled into the empty car lot. The Luxor Dance Hall stood there with all the brooding presence of a monument to the dead. The car's headlights lit the white face of the building with its Egyptian-styled columns. Benedict had not been inside there for five years but he knew every inch of it.

    ”I thought you were taking me to your place.”His date sounded far from pleased.

    ”I am.”

    ”Well, this can't be it.”

    ”No, it's the Luxor Dance Hall. Ever heard of it?”

    ”No, should I?”

    ”A lot of top acts played here right through from Jolson to B.B. King, to Little Richard, Buddy Holly the Four Tops, Black Sabbath, The Ramones, REM…”

    ”It looks derelict.”

    ”Closed down ten years ago.”

    Benedict realized the woman eyeballed him nervously now. ”Why did you want me to see it, Benedict?”

    ”I like to check it out every couple of days.”

    ”What, you mean like you own it or something?”

    ”No. Call it academic interest.”

    ”You're funny”

    ”Really?”He smiled.

    ”Not funny ha-ha.”She shrugged. ”Different. I don't think I've ever met a guy like you.”

    ”Yeah, you're probably right.”

    ”Your smile… you've got a real nice smile, don't get me wrong.”She rested her hand on his knee. ”But you've got such sad eyes.”

    He shrugged.

    ”You're not sad now?”

    ”No. I'm happy to be with you…”He grimaced. ”Sorry?”

    ”You're forgetful, too. I'm Jessica. We met in The Light Out blues bar in-”

    ”I remember that.”

    ”And you drink apple juice on the rocks and nothing else…”

    She leaned close to him. Benedict felt her warm breath touch the side of his neck and smelled beer on her lips. He liked beer, too, when he didn't have to drive, but the tang of it in the confines of the car made him flinch. She ran her fingers up his leg.

    ”Time we went home, Benedict.”

    ”Sure,”he told her.

    ”Or did you want to do something here in the lot with me?”Her eyes were large in the gloom of the car. In this light her lips were nearer to black than the red gloss he remembered in the bar. Hell, he didn't even know this woman. What had made him pick her up in the first place? Okay, she looked great in that short black leather skirt and tiny top that revealed a creamy V of cleavage. But suddenly it seemed so cheesy to chat her up, then bundle her into the car as soon as he could. But he knew it was because of tonight. April nineteenth. The tenth anniversary of his fiancйe, Mariah Lee, walking into the Luxor and never walking out again. So he still pulled into the lot every couple of days. Stared at the shuttered doors for twenty minutes, then went home.

    But always, always staring into the rearview mirror, convinced that as he drove away he'd glimpse Mariah skipping lightly from the building, her blond hair catching the streetlights.

    ”Benedict?”

    ”Hmm?”

    ”You want to do this?”

    ”Huh?”

    ”Do you want me to come back to your place?”

    ”Sure I do.”He smiled.

    ”It's just that you seem to have something on your mind.”

    ”Oh, don't worry about me…”He nearly called her Mariah, but barely missing a beat added, ”Jessica.” He gunned the engine and turned the car in the vast wasteland of the lot, the lights sweeping into the distance to fall on derelict factories behind razor wire.

    ”I know what it is.”She spoke gently. ”You've just split up with someone. You're on the rebound, aren't you?”

    Don't stare in the rearview, Benedict; just drive away.

    ”The rebound?”

    ”Yep,”she said. ”She dumped you-or you dumped her, but anyway you're feeling all chewed up inside. Am I wrong?”

    He glanced in the rearview.

    A figure ran through the near darkness in front of the Luxor, then threw itself down on the steps as if worshipping there. The white marble made the figure stand out. He could have been praying to the Egyptian art-deco jackals that adorned slabs over the entrance door.

    ”Am I right or am I wrong?”Jessica persisted. ”You've just split with a girlfriend? Or is it a wife? Hey! What's wrong with you?”

    ”Stay here.”He stopped the car hard, throwing the girl forward; the seatbelt dug between her full breasts.

    ”Benedict, what's happening?”Now she did sound scared. ”Where are you going?”

    He turned off the engine, then, unbuckling his seatbelt, he bailed out through the door and ran back to the Luxor, which gleamed whitely in the starlight just fifty yards away.

    Christ knew he wasn't thinking straight. He saw the figure on the steps as Mariah Lee. He could see her blond hair catching the distant streetlights. Where the hell had she been these last ten years? But this did make a weird kind of sense; there's symmetry here. Logic-a weird logic at that-told him that if Mariah was going to return it would be one decade to the day after she had vanished.

    He started calling, ”Mariah… Mariah?”

    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.

    

    

    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 her 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?