The Skin Beneath

by Nairne Holtz

  When he finishes his hot dog, Sam offers him some of her fries. He shakes his head. He is waiting for her to talk to him, a time-honoured modus operandi, which she knows because she has watched the same television cop shows as he has. Understanding what he’s doing doesn’t alter the effectiveness of his method. She pushes away her half-eaten yellow carton of fries and asks him if he sent her a letter.

  He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know you. How could I have sent you a letter?”

  She says, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I moved to Montreal because someone sent me a typed, anonymous postcard, which said my sister was investigating a political conspiracy when she died. The postcard suggested my sister was murdered.”

  Francis slips his hand into his breast pocket, removes his handkerchief, and begins to wipe his fingers one at a time. When he finishes cleaning his hands, he folds his handkerchief into a precise square and tucks it back into his pocket. Only then does he respond; he asks her if she brought the postcard with her.

  Sam bites her lip. “No, but it’s at my place. If you want, we can go get it.”

  Francis nods. “It’s okay, I believe you. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I never sent you anything like that.”

  Sam turns away to watch the cars race along the highway. The noise of the wheels has a repetition that can be mistaken for rhythm. The difference is rhythm has purpose, rhythm ends up somewhere.

  Francis clears his throat. “Chloe and I shared a world view. Detractors would call us paranoid, but I prefer ‘justified suspicion.’ She believed, and I still believe, that all the facts of any event are never known, that some information is always being withheld, that what we see isn’t all there is. What we see is only a reminder of what we don’t know.”

  Sam tries to laugh but makes more of a choking sound. “I don’t know anything, that’s for sure. Until I got the postcard, I thought my sister died of a drug overdose. My father lied to me for years about how exactly my sister died. If I can’t trust him, how can I believe anyone?”

  Francis offers her a sympathetic grimace. “If I had my mother’s Bible here, I would place my hand upon it and swear to you I didn’t send you that postcard.”

  Sam wants to believe him. After all, he believes her. And he doesn’t seem to care whether or not she likes him. When she first met Omar and Romey, they wanted her to like them. Their friendliness felt a little like flattery, was too shiny somehow. Sam asks Francis if he thinks her sister killed herself or was murdered.

  He rubs his chin. “I don’t know. The last time I saw Chloe, she told me, If anything happens to me, don’t believe it’s an accident.’ When I heard she overdosed, I assumed she’d been telling me she intended to kill herself. But murder is within the realm of possibility.”

  “Why do you say that? Do you know if she was investigating something?”

  “She was, but she wouldn’t tell me much about it. Just that it was off the radar screen of the usual political conspiracy theories, and she needed to find another source. I guess she wanted corroboration.”

  Once again, it seems as if the author of the postcard is right. Is opening a secret like opening a wound? Because Sam feels a new pain wrap around the old. Omar claims not to know anything. Fine, he’s lying. But Romey? How could she live with Chloe and be her friend and not know what was going on in her life? Is Romey lying as well?

  Francis says, “Was your sister murdered? You have an anonymous letter and her statement that if anything happened to her, it wouldn’t be an accident. What are the chances that both the letter and her statement are a joke? How likely is coincidence as an explanation?” His question is rhetorical, but he pauses to hold his hands together as if in prayer. Sam catches a glimpse of his palm, pink as a cat’s tongue. He continues, “To claim that events occur by chance or by error rather than design is an ideological position, one of denial. In conspiracy theory, a coincidence is usually meaningful, a link, a revelation.”

  Sam wonders how such an obviously educated man came to be living in a dumpy apartment with his mother. Then again, believing the universe to be at the mercy of inscrutable, corrupt, and all-powerful forces means you are a victim with all the hopelessness that implies. Taking action for social change requires an optimism absent from the ram-blings she has found on the conspiracy theory websites she recently trolled at work—a computer station with Internet access has just been installed on the second floor. The websites have the same strident tone as the left-wing ones, but there are no calls for mobilization, no petitions being signed, no anti-authoritarian protests being held against the puppet masters, no marches with people yelling, “One-two-three, smash the Illuminati!” In the conspiracy theory mentality, there is a disengagement with the world, a nihilism. Was nihilism at the core of her sister’s outrage? Sam wants to believe her sister investigated a cover-up to expose injustice, but Chloe was, as their father said, a girl who liked to toss tables.

  Sam realizes Francis is asking her a question.

  “Do you believe your sister was investigating a political conspiracy?”

  Sam shrugs. “I think she was sticking her nose into something.”

  “Ah.” Francis shakes his finger at her. “You’re not a believer. But you see, for a hoax to exist it has to imitate something genuine. Take psychics for example. For most of them, it’s a sham act, a scam, but a few are the real article. If there weren’t any that were real, how would the fakes know what to fake?”

  Sam doesn’t follow his argument, but she thinks she sees where he is going. “You think something happened to my sister?”

  Francis nods. “Six weeks before Chloe died, we went to Paranoid—that’s a conference for conspiracy theorists. She met this fellow there, and they started seeing each other. I thought he was a racist, but Chloe said the fact that he fought in the Gulf War and developed Gulf War syndrome justified some of his attitudes. We had an argument about it, and Chloe stayed with him. If I recall correctly, what she was looking into had something to do with the Gulf War. Perhaps he sent you the postcard.”

  Sam reaches over the picnic table as if she is going to grab Francis by his lapels. “What’s this Gulf War vet’s name? How can I find him?”

  “His first name’s Bernie, but I couldn’t tell you what his family name is. He’s a big guy, handsome, although who knows what he looks like now—as I mentioned, he claimed to be suffering from Gulf War syndrome. He lived in Detroit, which is where the conference was held. I have a good friend who runs an alternative bookstore down there; he might be able to help you.”

  Sam’s brain begins to churn out, collate, and staple various considerations. She has a credit card; she can rent a car. She might not be able to get time off work, but on the other hand, what was the worst thing they could do? Fire her? She could always find another job as a dishwasher. “Would you come with me to Detroit?”

  “I wouldn’t mind visiting my friend,” Francis says. “But I don’t think I can help you with Bernie. He was part of some kind of militia organization, and they aren’t too fond of blacks.”

  “A militia organization?” Her sister’s politics were messy and punk rock, not skinhead. “Was she serious about this Bernie guy?”

  “He was pretty taken with her, but, frankly, she seemed as if she was trying to convince herself she liked him.” Francis lifts the lid on his drink, puts his napkin and hot dog carton inside, and then reseals it. “I wouldn’t be able to go for another month or two. I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now.”

  Sam wonders why he always has to sound so mysterious. “What did you mean on my voice mail about the hawk and the mice?”

  “Oh, I was just kidding around.” His head is ducked down and his tiny ears are tucked so close to his skin that he reminds Sam of a mouse. He doesn’t seem to have any problem hearing, but she suspects he hears differently from, well, everyone else. A gust of wind buffets their table and his empty cup rolls onto the grass. Sam gets up and retrieves the container for him. They di
spose of their garbage and walk back to the metro in a not-uncomfortable silence.

  As Sam is pushing against the swinging doors at the metro station, trying to open them against the hard suck of the wind, she hears Francis yell her name. He jogs over to her and she steps back from the door.

  He’s panting a little as he speaks. “The person who sent you that postcard obviously knows something. He or she could even have killed your sister. That card is evidence, and, if I were you, I wouldn’t show it to anyone. I would put it in a safe place.”

  Sam nods. If Chloe was murdered, the postcard probably was sent by her killer. A killer who wants someone to know what he or she got away with. What other motivation could exist for sending the letter? Francis’s warning is sensible. When he wants to, he can summon gravitas. Meanwhile, she’s been running around questioning a member of the Montreal underworld. She’s being reckless, but how else can she find out what she needs to know? She isn’t used to being Mission Girl. She’s a slacker, a—what did Lemmy say? A young urban failure.

  Before striding away, Francis gives her shoulder an avuncular pat—her fear and confusion must be showing. She hopes he will be in touch. More importantly, she hopes Romey hasn’t lied to her.

  Sam is so busy thinking about her meeting with Francis she accidentally gets out of the metro one stop too soon. She walks home along Wellington Street. The street lamps are covered in plastic orange sunflowers that appear to be singing. Speakers hidden behind the flowers are tuned to a pop radio station, a sound that is momentarily dowsed by church bells. Montreal, with a history of French Catholicism, has many churches, and her neighbourhood seems to have more than its fair share. Her neighbourhood also seems to have a million pizza joints and casse-croiites, all of which have crane games. Looking in a window, she watches a three-pronged claw dig through stuffed toys held in a glass box lit by a streaking fluorescent tube. Surprise—the chubby boy standing in front of the game wins a panda. What were the chances? Unlikely. Unlikely as the idea Sam’s sister was murdered because she was investigating a conspiracy related to the Gulf War? Improbable isn’t the same as impossible.

  In front of Sam’s apartment, a group of teenagers are shooting dice. They are white but wear bandanas over their scalps. Hip hop is now so huge that what Sam thinks of as “black” is stretching like a piece of gum. She slows her pace to watch the outcome of the craps game, to see one kid collect wadded-up five dollar bills from two of the others. The parked cars on her street are rusted, and someone has fixed a smashed rear-view mirror with duct tape. These kids have more of a claim to hip hop than the sprinkling of middle-class black kids she grew up with. On the other hand, it isn’t too hard for Sam to imagine the white teenagers who live in Verdun winding up in jail, abandoning their passion for hip hop, and joining white supremacist biker gangs. Some people have the power to recreate themselves; other people do not.

  Chloe’s boyfriends—James, Omar, Bernie—are so different from one another, or, at any rate, it sounds to Sam as if they are. Maybe, for Chloe, that was the point. At the end of her first year of university, Chloe broke up with James. After she left him, she ordered a cheeseburger at a mall, thus ending two years of not eating meat and dairy. Within a week, she ate another cheeseburger and emptied the fridge of soy milk. Sam was furious at the time. How could Chloe just change her politics? How could her beliefs be so yoked to a relationship? Sam asked her, “If James was a cute guy in a Christian youth group, would you have become a Baptist? Would we have handed out religious tracts?” Her sister didn’t have an answer, except to yell at Sam to leave her alone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Some kids in her grade nine class talked about getting drunk, and Sam asked her friend Paul what it felt like. “Fucking great,” he said, which didn’t really answer the question, so Sam decided to get drunk on her own. When she got home from school, she went to her father’s liquor cabinet and took out a bottle of rum. That’s what Paul drank: rum and Coke. It tasted sweet, he said. Sam poured herself a large glass of rum and took a sip. Gross. How could adults like this? It was like drinking chemicals. Sam added some Coke, which made it a little better. She gulped the glass down and poured another one. At first she didn’t feel anything, then—whoosh!— the thoughts in her head tumbled, like a barrel over Niagara Falls. Paul was right—getting drunk was fucking great. She felt as if she could do anything, talk to anyone… After putting on her sister’s Violent Femmes record, she screamed the lyrics to “Add It Up.” She called Paul, and they took turns playing different songs for each other, holding up their respective phone receivers so the other person could hear. Battle of the bands. Punk and goth versus classic rock. The music was so loud Sam didn’t hear Chloe come in.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Chloe stamped over to the record player, lowered the volume, then turned back to Sam. “Oh my God. You’re drunk!”

  Sam told Paul she had to go.

  “Do you know what time it is? Any minute now Dad’s going to come home to this little after-school special.” Chloe put the Coke back in the fridge, stuck Sam’s glass in the dish washer. “I can still smell the booze.” Chloe ran upstairs. When she returned, she was waving around a burning stick of incense that dripped grey ash onto the floor.

  The thick herbal smell made Sam’s stomach lurch. She charged in the direction of the bathroom, but the contents of her stomach flew from her mouth onto the bathroom floor.

  Chloe came in. “I can’t believe you.” She picked up the fuzzy blue bathmat, which was now speckled with vomit, and tossed it into the tub. As Chloe ran cold water over the mat, Sam remained hunched over the toilet, throwing up again and again. Chloe sat on the edge of the bathtub, waiting for Sam to finish.

  When the spasms ended, Sam stood up and studied herself in the mirror: her face was grey, and there was a dribble of vomit on her chin. Chloe wet a washcloth and handed it to Sam.

  Voices drifted in from the kitchen. Chloe said, “Go to your room, okay?” Before dashing down the hall, she winked at Sam. Ignoring Chloe’s instructions, Sam followed her sister to the kitchen where Dad had arrived. Standing beside him was a stranger, a man who held up the bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum. Shit. Sam had left the rum on the counter.

  Chloe strode over to the man and stuck her face up to his, exhaling on him as if he had demanded a Breathalyzer test. “I drank it,” she announced.

  The man stepped back, his face puckered with distaste.

  Dad said, “This is my friend Steven, and I think you need to apologize to him.” Their father’s tone had never been icier, and Sam crept into her room. Later that evening she went to see her sister. Chloe lay in bed, reading. She seemed to be engrossed in a biography of Marilyn Monroe.

  “So what happened?” Sam asked.

  Chloe looked up. “I got grounded for two weeks.”

  Her sister did that for her? Wow. Sam’s heart suddenly felt too big for her chest, as if she’s happy and she might die. “Thanks.”

  Chloe waved the book she was reading. “The Kennedy brothers probably had her killed, but we’ll never know. They were saints, good guys, while she was a screwed-up Hollywood slut. People don’t want the truth—they reach for the explanation that fits their world view.”

  Sam didn’t respond, but she understood Chloe was also referring to their father, who tended to cast the two of them into separate roles: the fair daughter and the wicked one. Even though Sam had messed up for a change, Chloe allowed her sister to keep her privileged status.

  Chapter Thirteen

  St. Henri, where Romey lives, is a schizophrenic neighbourhood. An upscale market and expensive condominiums are blocks away from public housing and abandoned factories. On her way to Romey’s place, Sam passes a funky secondhand store, a massage parlour, a French bistro, and a Caribbean restaurant. Yet, the area seems somehow appropriate for a woman who, Sam senses, is complicated.

  Romey’s place is on the third floor of a triplex. After Romey opens the door on the second floor landing,
Sam follows her up another flight of stairs into a spacious apartment festooned with clutter. Without apologizing for the disarray, Romey goes into the kitchen to make coffee while Sam looks around the living room. A posse of dying plants is stashed in one corner of the room while opposite them on a small table is a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a statue surrounded by votive candles in coloured glass cups. The shrine doesn’t seem to be camp. Newspapers, magazines, and CDs are strewn across the hardwood floor, plastic trolls stand in a row along a windowsill, and dozens of tasteful black and white postcards of nude women are tacked onto the walls. There are also a few photographs, which Sam examines, noting the absence of women who look as if they are or were a girlfriend. Instead there are pictures of people who appear to be elderly relatives and photographs of Omar. In one picture Omar is cook ing hamburgers on a gas barbeque in a backyard. Behind him, Romey sits in a hammock with her arm draped around a small, plump older woman who has the same rounded cheeks as Omar. A strip of pictures from a photo booth reveals Omar crossing his eyes while Romey sticks out her tongue and pulls her lips apart with her fingers. Sam studies it for a moment. Who knew the two of them were capable of silliness? A second strip from the photo booth dangles upside down; a tack holding the top has fallen off. She flips the photos back up and sees her sister, which gives Sam a buzz. It’s as if she found something she thought she had lost. In each image Chloe and Omar are together, touching; his hands protectively clasp her waist, her fingers smoosh his hair. The expression on Omar’s face is serious, almost wounded, while Chloe smiles dreamily. They were, Sam realizes, smitten with each other.