The Skin Beneath

by Nairne Holtz

  Sam takes advantage of the gap in Cheryl’s conversational flow to offer sympathy since Amanda doesn’t seem to grasp there is no point in being rude to crazy people. “That must be really hard for you.”

  Cheryl sighs. “You don’t know half of it. You from Canada, too?”

  “Yeah. Toronto. Lately Montreal.”

  “We’ve thought about going there, putting ourselves into a witness protection program. Or just getting the hell out of this country. For four years now, the military, the FBI, the CIA, and just about every nasty creep you can think of have been stalking and terrorizing us.” Cheryl bends forward to place a hand on her son’s back, but he flattens his spine so his body is out of her reach. Pretending not to notice his reaction, she withdraws her hand. “You see, all the agencies down here believe my son’s an alien hybrid. He has all the characteristics of a Starchild. When it comes to technology, he’s so smart, he’s got advanced abilities.” Crouched on the floor beside a pile of torn-up strips of newspapers, the boy seems barely capable. His eyes dart at the people passing by with the fierce yet fearful expression of a poorly trained guard dog. Sam wonders if he is suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. Something is definitely wrong with this kid that goes beyond having crazy parents.

  Amanda toys impatiently with the pleats of her sundress. “But none of this has anything to do with my sister.”

  “It does,” Bernie says. “It does.” Just as he is about to explain, a guy wanders over to leer at the videos, deciding to buy two. Cheryl cranes her neck for a last look at her picture on the box covers. She is an exhibitionist who likes to be watched, who likes to believe everyone is watching her. Paranoia, Sam decides, is another way of being the center of attention.

  When the buyer leaves, Bernie continues, “Chloe and my friend Mark were looking into what the Hells Angels were doing in the Gulf War, how they made us sick.”

  Suddenly Sam is on the alert. Her information fits Bernie’s story: her sister was involved with a bona fide member of the Hells Angels, who might just have told Chloe a thing or two about their illegal activities. Real information has emerged from lunacy. To pan reality from the silt in the mind of a paranoid and untrustworthy individual, you need corroboration. Sam has watched enough conspiracy theory movies with Chloe to know corroboration is the key.

  “Can we talk to Mark?” Sam asks.

  “Yeah, you guys should talk to him. My memory’s been all screwed up since I got back from the Gulf.”

  “How do we find him?”

  “He runs a tattoo shop up in Detroit. Most nights he’s there late.” Bernie hands Sam a business card, which is nestled amongst the survival manuals. The card says: Lone Wolf Tattoo. An address is provided along with the name of the proprietor, Mark Berringer. Also displayed is a logo of a rose with a thorny stem entwining the nose of a gun.

  A gear slips in Sam’s brain; aiming for second, winding up with third. “Did you give Chloe a gun?”

  Bernie straightens up in his chair. “Yes, I did—for her protection. She didn’t know how to shoot but I showed her, using pop cans. Guess she wasn’t a good enough shot to protect herself from the wrong guy.”

  “Or from herself,” Sam replies tartly, forgetting to deepen her voice, which causes Amanda to whip her head around with a warning look. Sam isn’t sure whether her sister’s death was murder or suicide—the shimmer of one possibility immediately throws the other one into relief. Is it easier for Bernie to imagine someone killed Chloe than to consider the effect giving her a gun may have had? Dumb fuck cowboy.

  “What kind of gun?” Amanda asks.

  Bernie perks up. “A double-action Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. I always recommend revolvers for women. The guns are a smaller size so the recoil is easier to handle. They also don’t need much maintenance. You can just stick them in a drawer if you want.”

  Cheryl holds up her purse. “I got my gun in here. People who say women, kids, and guns don’t mix are going to wake up one day with their bodies on the street. Then cha-ching, the big light will go on. But it’ll be too late for them.”

  “Too late,” Amanda seizes the words. “We’re late. We’ve got to go. Nice to meet you folks.” She stands up, shakes Bernie’s hand, then grips the back of Sam’s shirt and steers her in the direction of the door. When they are a safe distance away, Amanda mutters to Sam, “If Cheryl’s a former operative, I’m an alien clone. What a waste of our time.”

  “You’re wrong.” How can Amanda always be so damn sure of herself?

  Amanda halts. “What do you mean I’m wrong?”

  With reluctance, Sam also stops. Both Francis and Bernie have established Chloe was investigating a political conspiracy, and Bernie’s information unexpectedly connects to Omar, but Sam doesn’t want to explain this to Amanda just yet. “I didn’t appreciate the way you did that Lone Ranger thing relegating me to the role of Tonto.”

  Amanda rolls her eyes. “I got results, didn’t I?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “So do you want to do all the talking at the tattoo parlour?”

  Sam thinks about it for a moment. The unpleasant truth is Amanda is much better at detecting. “No, I guess you can. You can drive us back to Detroit, too.” Sam takes out her keys, grabs Amanda’s hand and puts them in her palm.

  As Amanda drives along the back roads slitting the flat fields, Sam gives an abbreviated account of her time in Montreal: meeting Omar and going to a Hells Angels party where she met Romey, talking to Francis about Chloe, and discovering Omar and Romey slept together. How the Gulf War fits in Sam can’t say, but maybe Bernie’s friend will be able to answer that question.

  Lone Wolf Tattoo is located in a small strip mall advertising itself as a discount plaza. Amanda and Sam trudge through the mall where posses of low-income families are shopping for clothing, groceries, and dollar store specials. When they walk into the tattoo parlour, Sam can see the place isn’t a hole. A poster on the open door of the parlour outlines sanitation procedures, and the well-ordered interior affirms her sense of a level of professionalism. The floors and walls are painted a high-gloss white, and Pink Floyd plays on overhead speakers. Sitting behind the counter is a man in his thirties who Sam assumes must be Mark Berringer. She is used to being inked by bald, pierced hipsters who went to, or dropped out of, art school. She prefers their irony to the authenticity of working-class shops run by bikers or biker wannabes. But the owner of Lone Wolf Tattoo doesn’t fit either category of skin-scratcher. He is dressed in jeans and a baggy T-shirt advertising a local marathon, and his brown hair is buzzed into a military-style crewcut. He is medium height and would be thin if it weren’t for the gut poking above the belt of his jeans like the mound on the Buddha. He is reading a book, and his plastic-rimmed glasses rest on the end of his nose. His glasses have the kind of thick lenses people called “Coke bottles” before everyone got contacts or laser surgery. Mr. Lone Wolf strikes Sam as a man who doesn’t have a woman in his life, not so much because of the name of his business, but because he dresses as though he buys his own clothes. Pushing his glasses up, he places his Philip K. Dick novel on the counter and waits to hear what they want.

  “Are you Mark?” Amanda asks.

  He nods, and she gives him the same spiel she gave Bernie about the unexplained tragedy of “her” sister’s death. Mark’s eyes grow wide and are magnified even further by his glasses.

  While Amanda concludes her story with a description of meeting Mark’s friends at the gun show, Sam checks out the blown-up Polaroids of Mark’s work displayed on the wall. I’m not going to get a tattoo just because I can, she tells herself. The shop she used to go to specialized in Celtic symbols, but the closest example of tribal art Sam sees here is a picture of a dream catcher. The subjects Mark chooses are generic Americana: skulls, hearts, roses, anchors, and the heads and shoulders of pop stars. He has skill, however. His comic-book colours are crisp while the interplay of complementary shades is subtle. A panel on someone’s back rev
eals stylish mania; eyeballs with wings guarded by dragons; Japanimation crossed with Mad magazine.

  Sam walks back to the counter, where Mark is slouched over his computer, clicking files open, and inadvertently showing the pale crease of his ass. He prints several pages and staples them together, then sets them on the counter in front of Sam and Amanda. A banner across the top of what is clearly his zine says Deserted Stories. Amanda picks the zine up and thumbs through the pages while Sam reads a name that makes her heart slam: beneath the headline, “The Ecd-ysis Conspiracy,” is a byline from the grave—”by Chloe O’Connor and Mark Berringer.” Sam snatches the zine from Amanda’s hands and begins to read.

  According to the article, the Montreal chapter of the Hells Angels uses strippers to sell drugs and launder money. The strippers, who are also Raelians, went to Iraq shortly before the Gulf War, ostensibly to preach peace, when in fact they were working for the Hells Angels. The Angels in turn were running an errand for the Grey Wolves, who are one of their major heroin suppliers. Drug traffickers with a mission, the Grey Wolves believe Allah wants them to kill the “Jewish race,” and they use their drug profits to buy weapons. The authors claimed the real purpose of the Raelian/strip-per visit was the sale of chemical weapons to the Iraqi government. A more sober article photocopied from The Montreal Gazette confirms a group of female Raelians went on a mission to end strife in the Middle East.

  Whoever sent Sam the postcard was right. Her sister was investigating a political conspiracy, moreover, a somewhat plausible one. There are no presidential assassinations, no aliens, just a cult who believe in them. What Chloe describes in the article is more credible to Sam than the fact that her sister dated Bernie.

  Noticing Sam has finished reading, Amanda seizes the zine back to read the article for herself. Sam wants to read the article a second time but will have to wait. She paces around the room, examining the flash. She stops in front of a picture of the horror icon Pinhead, the man with pins sewn into his head. The image carries Mark’s stamp of sinister caricature. Sam points to the picture. “Mark? Could you put him on my calf?”

  Mark grins. “No problem.” He takes down the illustration and begins to trace it onto onion skin paper. Sam tells him she wants it to be smaller, and he leaves the shop to go to a real estate office next door to use their photocopier to reduce the tracing. Amanda mimes sticking her fingers down her throat—she isn’t impressed with the image.

  When Mark returns, he directs Sam to a chair behind the counter, then retrieves his tattoo gun from the autoclave bag. The needle of the gun is new and shiny, Sam notes. After transferring the design onto Sam’s skin, Mark sits beside her on a low stool and dips his needle into ink. As soon as Sam hears the buzz of the gun, her skin prickles with pleasure. He carves the outline into her flesh, and a line of a song about hurting so good plays in her head. The needle burns and scratches, and Sam has to keep herself from braiding her body away from the pain, yet she craves the sensation.

  Amanda opens the gate in the counter that separates the front of the parlour from the back where Mark is working. She stands for a few moments, watching him unzip Sam’s flesh with his gun, then asks him if he is willing to answer some more questions.

  He speaks to her through gritted teeth. “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you or Chloe have any evidence the Hells Angels had dealings with the Iraqis?”

  Mark holds the tattoo gun away from Sam’s skin in order to look at Amanda. “I put her in touch with this guy in New York, Wells, who used to work for the CIA. He said he’d been in the field when the Raelians went to Iraq, and he had a video that could prove Iraq bought the chemical weapons that made so many vets sick, you know, with Gulf War syndrome.”

  Amanda says, “Is that all yon know?”

  Sam, too, senses there is something more, another card to be dealt.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Just—Wells is a bit of a loose cannon.” Mark refills his needle with ink, buzzes the gun on, and retreats to the canvas of Sam’s skin where he begins to fill in his outline. Morse code messages of pain tap Sam’s spinal cord and run upwards. She tries to concentrate on what she has learned. If her sister had evidence of a chemical weapons deal, someone may have shot her. The Hells Angels? Sam remembers the last time she saw Omar, he said Chloe shot herself. But how does he know Chloe died of a gunshot wound? Sam’s father had told everyone that Chloe overdosed, a lie Sam hasn’t corrected in her conversations with Omar. When Sam was at the Tarn Tarns, she didn’t really pay attention to Omar’s choice of words; she was too upset about finding out he had cheated on Chloe with Romey. Now Sam wonders if Omar revealing his infidelity had been a ploy to keep her from asking him more dangerous questions. Everything keeps twisting back to him.

  “I’m finished.” Mark holds a small mirror up to her leg, showing Sam the tattoo from all angles. She has always avoided getting tattoos of devils and skulls, anything creepy, but she’s meeting weirder and weirder people and could use a little protection, a tattoo that will act as a talisman. Chloe’s death is starting to look more like murder.

  Mark bandages the tattoo, for which he charges forty dollars. He throws a tube of ointment in for the price. Gesturing towards the star on Sam’s leg, he says he doesn’t need to tell her about aftercare, but then he does anyway, finishing with a warning to wait until her tattoo has healed before exposing it to the sun.

  Amanda asks Mark if he can give her contact information for his friend Wells. Pushing the screen away from Amanda’s curious eyes, Mark starts up his computer again, and Sam wonders whether he doesn’t trust Amanda or has something to hide. He scribbles some words on one of his business cards. Handing it to Amanda, he says, “I’m sorry about your sister. She was really cool, a nice woman.”

  In the parking lot, Amanda passes the card over to Sam. Written beside the name Wells is a phone number with a New York area code. When they are in the car, Amanda digs the zine out of her backpack and gives it to Sam as well.

  Sam says, “There’s one thing I don’t understand. Why is it called the ‘Ecdysis’ conspiracy? Is that like a place in the Middle East or something?”

  Amanda tries not to smile. “Ecdysis means a snake shedding its skin. Speaking of skin, did I mention that your tattoo is really ugly?”

  To report on the success of their mission, Amanda calls Francis at their hosts’ home, but he isn’t back yet. To call, Amanda uses a little black cellphone. Sam thought Amanda would be one of those people who doesn’t use a mobile phone because of concerns over the radio frequency radiation they emit, but apparently she isn’t.

  When Sam and Amanda get back to Ray and Elena’s place, Francis has arrived. Elena, however, is out. She has taken her son swimming at a local public pool. Amanda and Sam volunteer to cook supper, an offer Ray happily accepts. Sam chops vegetables while Amanda cooks rice to make a stir fry. They both feel pumped, hypercharged, on a high of accomplishment. They tell Ray and Francis about their day, about everything they learned, interrupting each other to add details. As Ray thumbs through the zine, Francis leads Sam backwards and forwards through the story as though he were a police officer taking a statement. The more she talks to him, the more she begins to feel uncertain. Ever since she started trying to find out what happened to her sister, Sam has felt as if there is an inverse proportion between what she learns and what she understands.

  Sam says, “Maybe if I see the evidence this guy Wells has, the videotape, I’ll be able to decide whether the Ecdy-sis Conspiracy is real or whether Chloe got taken in.”

  Francis says, “You’ll never see a videotape.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Glancing up from the zine with a smile, Ray explains, “If the Ecdysis Conspiracy is genuine, then any hard evidence was destroyed the moment it surfaced, and any witness was discredited or killed before they could raise an alarm. If this story is a hoax, there will be no evidence to see.” He chuckles, causing his dreads to swing back and forth.

  Sam
asks, “How often are conspiracy theories proved to be correct?”

  Ray abruptly stops laughing while Amanda swoops her eyes in Francis’s direction as if he is her attorney, and she is wondering if she should answer the question or take the Fifth. Without a word, Francis draws out his wallet. Flipping it open, he places it on the table in front of Sam. Beside his identification cards is a tiny colour snapshot sealed in plastic: a black man and woman holding hands as they stand in front of the iron gates at McGill University. The picture appears to have been taken in the summer: there is lots of light, and the couple are dressed in lightweight clothing. The man is wearing long navy shorts with a tan shirt while the woman is clad in a sleeveless yellow and orange frock with a flared skirt. They both have straightened hair and could have stepped off of an early Motown album cover. Their arms are slung around each other and their smiles are confident, hopeful. Francis turns the photo over so Sam can read the inscription on the back: “Frank and Cecelia, 1960.”

  “My parents,” Francis says. “Upwardly mobile, middle-class blacks who believed in meritocracy. They thought their pursuit of higher education and their hard work would reward them. My mother was just finishing a nursing program while my father was at medical school. My mother was pregnant with me when my father began to experience some spasticity in his limbs. He thought it was due to playing sports, but, being a medical student, he wanted to rule out neurological damage. He wound up at the Allan Memorial Institute, where he was experimented on. He was given injections of LSD, intensive electroshocks, and forced to listen to tape-recorded messages. Then he was put to sleep for a week. He wasn’t told that he was being experimented on; no one obtained his consent.” Francis pauses to take a breath. “Sounds insane? Yes, except it actually happened. What was insane was the reason: McGill University was carrying out research funded by the CIA on covert brainwashing techniques.”