The Skin Beneath

by Nairne Holtz

  Sam jogs to the back of the motel. At the end of the lot she finds Omar’s vehicle parked sideways in front of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He and the escort must be visiting a biker, an Angel. Sam’s plan is unfolding like destiny. She is scared, which makes her hyper alert, although the volume on all of her senses has been punched up. Whatever common sense she has is overridden by her ragged need to put an end to her investigation into her sister’s life and death. She walks up to the door of the last motel room and bangs on it. There is a sound of scrambling feet, but no one opens the door. She pounds again.

  The door stretches the length of a gold chain lock. The escort pokes a wigged blonde head out. “C’est qui fa?”

  Sam stands on her tiptoes, trying to peer over the woman. Standing behind her is an enormous white man wearing wraparound sunglasses. Huge muscles squish out of his tattooed arms. The front and top of his head are bald, but a ginger braid hangs down his chest like a tail. He is holding a gun, not pointing it at Sam exactly, but letting her know he has it.

  Her mouth goes dry. She tries and fails to gather spit. She calls out to Omar. “It’s Sam. I need to talk to you.”

  “Shit.” Omar squeezes past the biker and the escort to undo the chain lock. “What the fuck are you doing here? We thought you were les flics or worse.”

  “You bragged to Chloe about the Hells Angels. You told her…”

  Omar grabs Sam, puts her in a headlock, and starts to drag her away from the motel room. She bites his hand like a girl, like a sissy. Omar has a high pain threshold; he doesn’t move his palm an inch. To the biker, he says, “This drama is personal.” After the man closes the door of the motel room, Omar moves his hand from Sam’s mouth.

  He says, “I did that to protect you, you know. What the hell were you doing, pulling up my file in front of that guy?”

  Sam rubs her mouth. “I want you to talk to me.”

  Omar snorts. “You’re licked. Romey says I should apologize to you, but you’re not making it easy. Do you know that?” He begins to walk away from Sam. “C’mon, get into my car.”

  She stumbles after him. The city is sprawled below them. She can see the river and churches and duplexes and triplexes. She can hear cars and trucks rumble by on the highways. Omar opens the door of his car for her and she climbs in. He glances at his watch, and she wonders if he has to be somewhere soon.

  He waves his arm in an expansive gesture. “Okay, talk to me.” Taking a pack of cigarettes out of his front pocket, he lights one.

  Sam feels her heart pop, then freeze. “I think you told my sister some stuff about the Hells Angels, and she told some other people. I don’t know whether or not the Hells Angels brokered a deal with Iraq to buy chemical weapons from the American government, and I don’t really care.”

  Smoke steals out from between Omar’s lips. “I never told her any fucked up shit about a conspiracy theory, but I told her more about the brotherhood than I should have. I’ve learned since then to keep secrets from the people I care about I don’t do anyone a favour by telling the truth, do you understand?”

  Looking into his eyes, Sam says, “Yeah, I do. But can you tell me the truth about one thing? My father told everyone Chloe died of an overdose, but you knew there was a gun involved.”

  Omar’s smile dissolves, water poured over sugar. “That’s what this is all about?”

  “Didn’t Romey tell you?”

  He shakes his head.

  Sam feels glad. It would be nice to think loyalty and consideration for her kept Romey from saying anything to Omar. Sam continues, “You see, I’ve been wondering just how far my sister was prepared to go to make her death into, well, something larger than life. Did she talk you into a suicide pact, into shooting her?”

  His eyes on hers are a whorl of fire and pain. “I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t put her in the boneyard that way. But she called me from New York. On the day she died I got two messages from her on my pager. When I called her back a few hours later, the clerk who answered the phone told me that the woman I wanted to talk to had shot herself. I don’t know if she called to say goodbye. I don’t know if I could have talked her out of it. Believe me, I’ve asked myself that question more times than I can count. But mostly I think, if her death had a message for me, it was ‘fuck you, I can kill myself better than you can.’” Omar takes a last drag on his cigarette before pinching it out with his fingers. “Is that real enough for you?”

  Sam slowly nods. Adrenaline streams from her body. “You’re right, Omar. My sister’s suicide was a fuck you. I think the conspiracy theory was more of a fantasy than anything else. Chloe was pretty good at creating fantasy worlds. She wanted people to remember her, to wonder what happened to her, so she told her friends who believed in conspiracy theories not to believe her death was an accident. She created her own myth just like her teenage heroines, Sid and Nancy. She was mad at everyone: you, Romey, my parents, my father’s boyfriend Steven, her used-to-be best friend Tory, not to mention a creep named Wells, whom she threatened with a gun. I was probably the one person she wasn’t mad at. But she didn’t leave a note because the way she staged her death was the last word.”

  Omar rubs his eyes with his fists. Sam realizes he is wiping away tears.

  He says, “She was the opposite of me, but underneath we were alike. Neither of us wanted the life we were living. I never had the guts to do what she did, so I tried to find someone else to do it for me. A guy I’m friends with now once waved a gun in my face, and I laughed. I was a reckless son of a bitch because I had no feelings for me or for anyone. It was like there was this big hole inside of me. I couldn’t fight, steal, bang enough dope to fill it. Chloe was empty the same way. Except, she made me not feel so empty—until she left me.”

  “She left me, too,” Sam says. All the anger and hate she felt towards him disappears, as they sit together sharing their grief. Suddenly everything Sam feels about Chloe’s death seems to shrink into smaller, more manageable feelings.

  Omar says, “Romey wants to get back together with you.”

  Sam says, “She does?”

  EPILOGUE

  Sam hurries along the cobblestone streets of Old Montreal. A horse-drawn carriage holding middle-aged tourists swathed in blankets rattles by. The sky is a grey, streaky colour prophesying snow: this will be her first winter in Montreal. She takes out her new cell, pushes a button.

  Romey answers on the first ring. “Hey babe. Are you coming home soon?”

  “Yeah, now. The wine tasting lecture took a little longer than I expected.” The lecture was an extracurricular event, recommended but not mandatory for the program Sam is currently enrolled in at a culinary institute. She takes classes five hours a day, five days a week. Her classes are in French, which is difficult, but a few things help. Her teachers are mostly from France, and their enunciation is easier to follow. There are also a lot of physical demonstrations, so she has a context from which to pick out words. Besides French, she is learning to master the distinctions between braising, grilling, sauteeing, and roasting. She dislikes having to cook meat, but it is a necessary compromise. Her pastry class, where she transforms dough into bread and brioches, is preferable. She has a natural flair for artful presentation.

  Romey says, “I can’t wait. I hardly get to see you anymore.” Weekends, Sam works at Le Lapin Blanc, where they were happy to hire her back.

  Romey continues, “By the way, I think we should call the dog ‘Felony’ He stole some Gorgonzola cheese from the counter today.”

  Sam laughs. She and Romey have just adopted a half-starved, wretched-looking dog from the Humane Society. He has short little legs and a huge head. Romey thinks he might be a Chihuahua mixed with a Labrador retriever. Not an obvious combination, but then neither is Sam and Romey.

  A beeping sound comes on the line, and Romey says, “I think that’s my uncle. I got to talk to him. We’re looking at a property tomorrow.” She has this plan that she and Sam are going to buy a triple
x. Romey keeps having meetings with her various male relatives to discuss mutual funds, tax breaks, and what types of buildings are good investments.

  “See you soon,” Sam says. “I love you.” She grins into the phone. She is, as they say, bien dans sa peau.

  The streets of Old Montreal are glutted with expensive restaurants, and Sam stops in front of one a teacher has praised; the food here is “exotique” by which he means novel, exciting. Sam reads the menu shielded in glass beside the door: there is smoked duck with apples, curried tempura prawns, grapefruit Pernod sorbet. Interesting selections, but there are no vegetarian options and nothing is organic. Inside the darkened window, Sam catches sight of two patrons whose faces, illuminated by a flicker of candlelight, she recognizes.

  She draws closer to the window. Omar is more dressed up than she has ever seen him as is his beautiful date— Amanda. She is clad in a slinky dress with spaghetti straps. Her blonde hair is pinned into a chignon, and her neck is bent to the side as if to indicate a vulnerability she does not, as far as Sam knows, possess. As the waiter sets down two elaborately designed plates of food, Amanda’s fingers lift from Omar’s arm. Before gliding off, the waiter tops up their glasses of wine. Sam ducks back from the window as it dawns on her how dangerous it could be if they see her.

  Fuck, Sam thinks. Sometimes there is no such thing as a coincidence, and this is one of those times. When he guessed Amanda’s life was a cover, Francis was right, even if he didn’t know what she is, even if Sam still isn’t sure who or what Amanda is. Omar’s lover, obviously. But is she also investigating Omar? Sam remembers Amanda saying, “Whoever’s the last possible person I should want, that’s who I’m doing.” As Sam struggles to piece the information together, she remembers something else. The anonymous postcard about Chloe was postmarked from Mexico, and Amanda’s passport was stamped Mexico. At the time, Sam didn’t think of the fact as a coincidence. She didn’t think anything of the fact. But now she realizes Amanda sent the postcard, sent Sam on her mission. How often do women kill themselves with a gun? It would take a woman, or a cop, or both, to notice that detail.

  As she walks away from the restaurant, the wind from the nearby river tears at her face. Did Amanda kill Chloe? Or did she, like Sam, just want to find out what happened? That’s more likely. But Sam isn’t sure she wants to know what Amanda was up to, why she, like Sam, borrowed Chloe’s life. This is a game of hide-and-seek best abandoned.

  Wondering about the name of the conspiracy, Sam read up on the process of ecdysis. Somehow she was sure Chloe came up with the name; she was always good at that sort of thing. Sam discovered that, along with skin, the snake discards its protective eye covering. When a snake loses its skin, its eyes turn milky and it becomes almost blind.

  Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my agent, Margaret Hart, my official editor, Gillian Rodgerson, and my unofficial editor, Claude Lalumiere. For comments on an earlier draft, I would like to thank Angel Beyde; for assistance with proofreading, I would like to thank Neil Smith, Elise Moser, Fred Holtz, and Susan Holtz.