The Skin Beneath

by Nairne Holtz

  Oh my God. Is it possible? Sam digs through her knapsack until she finds the biography of Sid and Nancy. The book is too trashy to have an index, but Sam’s suspicions are confirmed when she checks the pictures in the middle. According to a caption beneath a photograph of the hotel she is staying in, Sid stabbed Nancy to death in room one hundred.

  Sam spends the next hour skimming the biography, trying to understand the significance this punk confidential had for her sister. A few months after Nancy’s death, Sid overdosed. A suicide note was found in his pocket claiming Nancy had asked him to kill her. The pair were so young, almost teenagers, when they died: she was twenty, he was twenty-one. Through a curious mixture of circumstance and desire, they were losers who became celebrities. Sid the famous bass player who could not play bass. Famous for not being able to play, for being the embodiment of punk rock. Nancy Spungen, like Edie Sedgwick, like so many women, an icon because of who she fucked, because of what happened to her, rather than for what she achieved. Sid and Nancy’s story is a perversion of Romeo and Juliet; they killed each other not because they couldn’t be together, but because they were together. They are completely unsympathetic. Reading about them, Sam feels ill. For her, there is no romance in death and destruction. She enjoys the irreverence of punk without taking either the movement or music seriously. When she once read that the lead singer of a band called Joy Division hanged himself, she found it ironic, darkly amusing. But Chloe, who died in the Chelsea, would have empathized with singer Ian Curtis rather than distanced herself with humour or anger or disgust. Her stay here wasn’t about fandom or melodramatic posturing, or at least that’s not all it was. Staying at the Chelsea, Sam thinks, was her sister’s suicide note. That is, if someone didn’t kill her. But if she invited someone to kill her, as Sid alleged Nancy did, was it suicide or murder?

  Everyone around Sam strides with fierce intention while she just drifts, soaking up the city. She’s too tired from the drive the day before to start investigating Chloe’s last days. Plus it’s Sunday; there’s not much she can do, so she walks around. She hears a man in front of her refer to a guy who interviewed him for a job as a “bimbo.” She sees a kid use a cellphone to yell to another kid half a block away. As the afternoon slips into the evening, she passes bars full of boisterous, energetic people drinking and laughing. If they aren’t enjoying themselves, they make a successful hologram of fun.

  She takes the subway down to the Lower East Side. Just off St. Mark’s Place, she sees a raver boy twirl a glow stick in his fingers as he chats to a slightly older, bald guy who has one foot planted on a skateboard. Their opposing styles, not to mention the calculation that has gone into them, tell Sam they’re family. Behind them is a bar, and she wanders in. The space is cute if a little cramped. Exposed brick walls on the sides lead to a small riser at the back where a trio of classically trained musicians are performing disco covers on a cello, a violin, and a flute. Cute girls, who have a gritty, kitsch style Sam likes, hand her flyers for their upcoming events: a drag king show, a burlesque show, and a graphic novel launch. Everyone wants to be an underground star. An evening out holds the promise of better ones—like Russian nesting dolls. Sam orders a beer but leaves before finishing it.

  Back at the hotel, she decides to call Romey. Sam last saw Romey on Tuesday morning, only five days ago, but it feels longer, as if a hole has been torn into their time apart. The voice mail on Romey’s cell isn’t accepting messages. Sam tries her at home. No answer, but her airy greeting, which can be understood by both French and English callers, clicks on: blah, blah, blah, la, la, la. After leaving a gentle sigh, Sam hangs up. She checks the voice mail on her Montreal phone to see if Romey called. She didn’t, but there is a message from Amanda proposing a drink. Where is Romey? Gathering a pillow into her hands, Sam considers the possibilities. Romey’s back is better so she’s picking up shifts to make up for ones lost? She’s hanging out with Omar? Romey’s friend or not, Sam is going to confront him. But she needs to be prepared, to have all her facts straight, before she puts it to him: what did you do to my sister? Sam strangles the pillow into a tight tube.

  Chapter Twenty

  After their father took Chloe and Sam to see Cats in New York, he critiqued the production, tallying up failures in the direction, the costumes, and the acting. Why, he had seen a better performance in Toronto! To Sam, his incredulity was belied by the smugness glimpsed in the curl of his mouth. He was enjoying himself in his own way. He was asserting the superiority of the city he lived in, proving that a visit to New York was an unnecessary expense. Her father had excellent taste but liked a bargain.

  Chloe banged one of her pointy new wave shoes against the sidewalk. “Why do you have to ruin everything? Sam and I enjoyed the show and now you’ve destroyed it for us.”

  Sam felt like protesting but didn’t want to make Chloe any angrier than she was.

  Dad asked, “Why should how I respond to the show affect the pleasure you took in it?” He sounded genuinely baffled.

  Chloe marched ahead without answering.

  Sam explained, “You made her feel stupid for liking the show.” How come she could understand her father and her sister better than they understood each other? She was only ten years old while Chloe was a teenager and Dad was grown up. Weren’t people supposed to get smarter as they got older?

  “I see,” Dad said. He and Sam tailed Chloe discreetly for a block, waiting for her to calm down. At the corner stoplight, Dad put his hand on Chloe’s shoulder and asked her what he could do to make her feel better.

  She said, “I don’t want to go to a restaurant that you’ve read about in some guidebook. I want to walk in anywhere and let whatever happens, happen.” Her proclaimed desire for spontaneity seemed like a prepared speech. She draped her right hand over her eyes and performed a pirouette with her left hand flung into the air. Her black skirt spun out like a cartwheel. When she stopped, her arm was pointed to a restaurant with a sign advertising “Portuguese Home Cooking.” She said, “I want to go there.”

  The restaurant was empty. A house band seared their ears with melancholy songs, which Sam’s erudite father identified as Fado music long before it became popular. The smoked sausages tasted and looked as though they had been dug out of the bottom of a fire. Only Chloe finished her plate, but the set of her mouth told Sam her sister hadn’t enjoyed it. When Chloe was in the bathroom, Sam muttered, “This place sucks.”

  Dad winked at Sam. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Why can’t we make her happy?” Sam asked. Usually she bonded with Chloe against their father, viewed him as omnipotent, as always having the upper hand in his interactions with his daughters. But at this moment, Sam and her father were united in their supplication to Chloe, were mutually held hostage to her sense of being wronged.

  Dad set his chin in his hand, the corners of his mouth sloping. “I don’t know, Sam. I just don’t know.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  First thing Monday morning Sam calls the New York City police department to ask how she can get a copy of the report on her sister’s death. Before Sam left Toronto, she asked her father if he kept the police report. He said, “Are you out of your mind?” The New York police department puts Sam on hold, and then bounces her from one municipal functionary to another, all of whom inform her the request cannot be met; the report was archived, and the protocol for retrieving a copy can take months. One clerk, who seems to take pity on her, suggests Sam try a third-party information provider. Can he recommend a particular company? He can. Sam calls them. For two hundred dollars American, the police report will be faxed to her hotel within twenty-four hours. Thank God for credit cards. Hers has a streaky, worn look to it these days.

  Sam calls the Lone Wolf Tattoo guy’s friend Wells, who may or may not have been the last person to see her sister alive. Wells isn’t surprised by her call—apparently Mark emailed him about her. Wells won’t talk about the Ecdysis Conspiracy over the phone but invites her to visit
him at his apartment in Brooklyn later in the afternoon. Sam counters by suggesting they meet at a bar. He pauses, then gives her an address in Brooklyn.

  “Can you bring the videotape you showed Chloe?” Sam asks.

  “The videotape?” He talks as if he has sand in his mouth. Sam isn’t sure if it is his Brooklyn accent or a speech impediment.

  “Mark said you had a video proving Iraq bought chemical weapons from the Hells Angels.” Sam is convinced the video is the one item that will indicate to her whether what her sister was investigating was real or a hoax. People can tell stories, but faking a videotape is too elaborate a ruse for the average paranoid person.

  Wells doesn’t answer at first. Then he says, “No one’s supposed to know about that.” He hangs up.

  Sam takes the subway to Brooklyn. On her way through the tunnel, she gets deja vu, which usually gives her a thrill but doesn’t this time. She feels as if she is forgetting something important.

  The address Wells gives her leads Sam more than a dozen blocks from the subway. Located beneath the on-ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge, she finds a flophouse. It’s a three-storey brick building advertising furnished rooms and rooms by the hour. The bottom floor has a bar. Entering it, Sam is blinded by the shift from daylight to twilight created by windows boarded up with Styrofoam. When she can see again, she glances around but doesn’t notice anyone waiting for her. Older men, clad in thrift store specials, drink by themselves and in groups, although the men seem solitary even when they sit together. Sam can imagine them in their rooms upstairs, heating up canned food and watching game shows on crappy television sets. Buzzing around the men are two women—fruit flies drawn to softened bananas. One woman is white while the other is Asian, but they have the same torn-up look in their eyes. They guffaw one minute, yell the next, and are dressed in clothes they could have borrowed from teenage daughters. The Asian woman leads a stumbling man out the door, dragging him by the hand as though he were a kid.

  Sam wanders to the back of the bar, where she settles on a bar stool and watches the middle-aged bartenders pour foamy pitchers of beer and ring up tabs on an old-fashioned brass cash register. A ceiling fan stirs soupy air smelling of beer, tobacco, and sweat.

  “Sam?”

  She spins around on her stool. “Yes?”

  A pear-shaped man in late middle age stands before her rubbing his hands as if there’s a bar of soap between them. His scalp is a salmon dome topped with white bristles, and he’s dressed conservatively—grey flannel pants and a navy golf shirt. He is as out of place in the bar as she is. He points to a small table. “I got us seats. What can I get you to drink?”

  Sam shrugs. “Whatever’s on tap is fine.”

  He goes over to the bartender while she sits down at the table he indicated. After bumping her foot into something solid, she swings her head under the table and spies a black briefcase. She hopes it contains the videotape.

  Wells returns with a glass of water for himself and a half pint of beer for her. He reaches over to pick up a piece of plastic wrap discarded from a cigarette package and accidentally tips her beer. Before all the liquid spills out she manages to grab the glass. He leaps up and insists on retrieving a fresh beer. After getting a wet cloth from the bar, he furiously scrubs the table.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he says.

  Sam wipes her beer-sloshed hands on her shorts, feeling uncomfortable. He is acting nervous, as if they are on a date. It never crossed her mind when making plans with him that flirtation would be on the menu. She knows she’s young, slim, and wearing shorts and a tank top, but her butchness generally renders her either invisible or unappealing to straight men.

  Wells raises his glass. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” Sam clinks her glass against his, takes a sip.

  Without taking a drink, Wells sets down his glass of water. He peers around the bar. “I hope you don’t mind the bums and the whores.” He rolls the word “whores” in his mouth like a hard candy. He continues, “This bar does a million dollars worth of business in drugs every year. It’s owned by the Irish mob.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes, really.” Wells mocks her tone. His nervousness has dried up. He sticks his face up to hers. His eyes are glass shards, the colour rubbed and indeterminate. “Who are you?”

  Sam coerces her lips into a smile. “No one really—an unemployed dishwasher. Who’re you?”

  Wells draws his head back and places his hands on the edge of the table as if he is planning to push it over. “I’m what they call a spook defector. I was forced out of the agency. Everyone has their secrets, and the agency ferreted out mine to prevent me from spilling theirs. I had hoped your sister would reveal the story behind the Gulf War. I thought she could be the credible whistle-blower that I can’t be. Of course, I knew it was dangerous for her. The government and the military don’t want citizens to know what a bungle they made of things. When I didn’t hear from her, I assumed she had decided not to take the risk. Now I know—the agency killed her.”

  Sam thinks: everyone who believes my sister was murdered is crazy. Does that make me crazy? But then she remembers what happened to Francis’s father. Francis said it is impossible to tell the difference between someone who is paranoid and someone whom the government experimented on. When an unbelievable event occurs, something extending beyond the boundaries of the everyday world, how does a person tell if it is real?

  Sam asks, “So what is the story behind the Gulf War?”

  In a serious tone, Wells replies, “The president was manipulated by a cabal of businessmen out to protect their own economic interests.”

  Duh, Sam thinks. “And you believe the CIA killed my sister because she wrote about the Hells Angels selling chemical weapons to Iraq?”

  Tapping his index and forefinger on Sam’s side of the table, Wells says, “The Angels may have their finger in every narcotics pie in the country but chemical weapons?” He pauses for rhetorical flourish. “Getting the defence industry to sell weapons to organized crime isn’t exactly one, two, three. In the former Soviet Union, sure, but in North America? No, what happened is the CIA set everyone up. Cults are an ideal way to incubate ideas and irrational belief systems. They’re the perfect cover for foreign spies. The CIA infiltrated the Raelians. A so-called Raelian convert contacted the Angels, claiming to be a former defence industry contractor and offered them access to chemical weapons.”

  Sam places her elbows on the table like an attentive student in the vain hope she might be able to sort out what he is saying. “Why would the CIA sell weapons to Iraq?”

  “Because that’s what the shadow CIA wants, the Ter-gum Corporation. Whenever the CIA conducts an operation it doesn’t want Congress to know about, they call Tergum. They’re a private security company who protect nuclear facilities, the Alaskan Oil Pipeline, and also carry out the FBI’s and CIA’s dirty work. A third of Tergum’s billions of dollars of annual revenue comes from federal contracts. They’re an arm of the government, but they’re also war profiteers.”

  To Sam, his answer makes everything murkier. “Do you have evidence of what you’re describing?”

  “I have the videotape your sister gave me.”

  “Wait—I thought it was your videotape?”

  “No, it was hers.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Sure. We can go to my place and you can see it. I live a few blocks from here.”

  Sam takes a deep breath. “I would feel more comfortable if I could just borrow it and watch it in my hotel.”

  Wells stands up. “No problem. We’ll go pick it up.”

  Sam remains in her seat. “If this videotape caused my sister’s death, am I in danger?”

  “Isn’t it a bit late for you to be asking that question?” His lips stretch like loose rubber into a simulation of a smile. He reaches under the table to pick up the black briefcase.

  Sam follows Wells along a main street. As he walks, he swings his a
rms. His stride is fast and rough; he pummels past people while she steps aside. The part of Brooklyn they are in isn’t cool or trendy. A laundromat is just a place to do your laundry; you can’t buy espresso there or surf the web. They pass Polish delicatessens, bars, liquor stores. It is just after six, so some of the businesses are pulling steel shutters over their display windows. It is as if the store owners have to put their entire operation into a safety deposit box.

  Sam almost trips over a teenage girl and boy draped along the sidewalk. She stops to apologize, but the boy waves his hand in slow motion, “Forget about it.” His eyes are black rings: he’s a junkie with smack shimmying through his veins. He is so young, much younger than Sam. She hurries to catch up to Wells.

  Wells is unlocking the front door of a walk-up. She is surprised—she expected him to live somewhere nicer. He holds the door open for her, and she climbs up a steep flight of stairs, then steps back to let him unlock the door. She tells herself she isn’t going to go inside. She stands in the doorway while he disappears from her sight. Sam peeks in. There is hardly any furniture, and what is there is mismatched and looks as if it was dragged in from the street. There are a couple of chairs, a table, and a white laminate bookcase. The floors are covered in two distinctly different carpet remnants. Nests of cracks have formed in the plaster walls. Either Wells doesn’t actually live here or he is more low-rent than he presents himself. From the back of the apartment, Sam hears him grunt as if he is in pain. Is he being sick? She steps inside and peers down the hall—she can’t see him. She calls, “Are you all right?”