Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  “Yes. I don’t like it. Missing him.”

  Jae is looking at him, a look that makes him want to shift his gaze. But he doesn’t.

  Jae takes his scarf between her fingers and tucks it back in, back of her hand against the ironed cotton of his shirt, inside the warmth, close to him, then she pulls it out.

  “I miss him, too.”

  Nuance is hard for Skinner. Responding accurately to verbal tones has been one of the most intensive courses of conditioning he has set for himself. It never seems to end. He makes a point of not guessing at the meaning of those obscure shifts in pitch and pace, emphasis; always responding to something specific. He decides what the other person is feeling and acts on that decision. Incapable of stinting on effort, he is often right. Which pleases him. But he must pause now, after Jae says that she, too, misses Terrence, confused by how the words have been shaped by her larynx, tongue, teeth, and lips. The air rushing through and over them, carrying the vocalization of her feelings, seems to be telling him something terribly sad.

  Then he looks up the Tunnelgatan stairs and sees Twig-Beard and his friends at the top, starting down, their meal abbreviated for a hurried departure that is putting them on Skinner and Jae’s heels.

  His scarf flies loose again, he points southward.

  “This way.”

  Walking, he thinks about the pressure he felt behind his face when she touched him, the physical impulse to bend, kiss her. What might have happened.

  Foolish thoughts.

  He tucks the scarf back. Jae has not noticed the protesters behind them. He wonders if she felt the huge serrated steak knife he dropped in his wallet pocket when he stole it from the restaurant. In his hand now, blade up the sleeve of his jacket. Cutting back to Malmskillnadsgatan, Skinner can hear the protesters closing, speeding up, breaking into a run. He is starting to spin, picturing where the sweep of his arm will draw the blade across the neck or face of the first of the charging protesters who attacks them, when Jae applies a surprisingly strong and efficient arm bar and forces him across the sidewalk and against the wall of an office building that looms over them. Skinner’s intended target runs past, ignoring them both, screaming something in German and unfurling a spray painted banner from his backpack. And suddenly a flood of protesters are spontaneously erupting from the streets in all directions, filling a small park square.

  Jae lets Skinner’s arm go.

  “It’s just a flash riot. Don’t kill anyone.”

  Skinner watches the dozens of young people as they begin to self-organize into chanting unison.

  “Flash riot?”

  She looks around, takes in some details of the building they’re standing next to.

  “Shit. The Riksbank. Fucking Swedish national bank. We should have picked a different route.”

  Skinner is still holding the knife, only slightly less confused, he guesses, than the office workers who appear to be the regular inhabitants of this area. Young professionals and the service economy workers who make them possible, all with no clear idea if they should fight, flee, or go about their business as the protesters, some dressed in camouflaging business attire, begin to spray-bomb the street, the sides of the Riksbank, and any cars parked at the curb. Looking at those cars, Skinner realizes that there are none moving on the street itself, that traffic disappeared just before the protesters started their action.

  He grabs Jae’s arm, pulls her close, starts moving them toward the protesters, but before he can take the next step, sirens echo, and half of the local spectators who have been keeping to the sidelines shuck off their coats to reveal high-viz police vests, and fully uniformed riot cops stream from the front of the bank building.

  Jae nods.

  “Hard to be surprised by a protest at the national bank.”

  Skinner is scanning the buildings that surround the park.

  “They’re going to use the square as a kettle. Once it’s sealed they’ll keep everyone inside while the city settles down. Release in small groups. Lots of photographs of everyone here.”

  Skinner watches as rocks are launched from a cluster of protesters, bouncing off riot shields. He can see a few protesters who have climbed a large bare tree in the square. A heavy man is jumping up and down on a bench, the slats break under him and he falls, then gets back up and starts prying one of the broken boards loose, handing it to another protester, who swings it experimentally. More benches are broken.

  “Skinner.”

  Jae is pointing at the arcs of three flaming rocks descending toward the police line that has closed from the south end of the square.

  Skinner frowns.

  “Molotovs.”

  The three projectiles hit the street, exploding with whumps of igniting jellied gas and the tinkle of shattering glass, the police line retracting from the nearest blaze, more than a few officers swatting at small, sticky gobs of fire on their arms and legs. A large vehicle can be seen over the heads of the police now, and a second level of officers is materializing. Their horses hidden behind the front ranks, they appear giant.

  Jae is on her toes.

  “This is going to be a shitstorm, isn’t it?”

  Skinner sees a man in an Armani overcoat, shouting into his BlackBerry in English while holding up a second phone, taking pictures or shooting video.

  Another Molotov flies from the trees, clears the nearest police line, ignites something other than the street. Screams. The line breaks, in the opening a flicker, rearing horse on fire, then the line closes again.

  Skinner nods toward the man with two phones.

  “This way.”

  The man is holding his second phone over his head, pointed toward the section of police line where the flaming horse appeared a moment before.

  “It’s out of control! I’m gonna send it. No, don’t fucking put it on YouTube, sell it to someone. Fuck do I know? Talk to your guy, him, the agent. So what he’s a sports agent, he fucking knows people!”

  Skinner puts himself directly in the man’s sight line.

  “Sir.”

  The man’s eyes move to Skinner’s face.

  “I’m not part of this, man. I’m just here.”

  Skinner points at the locked entrance to the nearby Scandic hotel.

  “Sir, we’re getting hotel guests inside before the police charge the square. Are you staying nearby, sir?”

  He tips his head at Jae.

  “I’m escorting guests safely inside. Are you a guest of one of the hotels, sir?”

  The man looks at Skinner.

  “You’re hotel security?”

  Shouts, screams, full throated bellows. They all turn to watch the vanguard of protesters charging the police line, cobbles flying up from their rear, two Molotovs, aimed at the police line, forcing a retraction as they hit and smear fire over the street. Poorly considered, the pools of fire are in the path of the charge, momentum carrying the protesters forward. Someone goes down, the mob hits the police line, and the clubs start to rise and fall.

  The man has both phones up now, both shooting video, but he’s started moving toward the Scandic hotel at the edge of the square.

  “Okay, let’s go, fucking shit, let’s go, okay, move, move!”

  Skinner grabs Jae’s upper arm, pulls her a few feet, gets ahead of the man and in front of him.

  “I need your room number and I need to see your room key, please. We’re only admitting registered guests.”

  The protester that went down in the fire is up, running, flames streaming from the back of her head. Two more protesters run alongside and behind her, one trying to pull off her burning jacket, another trying to empty a liter bottle of Evian on her head, an officer has dropped his baton and shield, pulled off his coat, carrying it spread before him like a net, trying to tackle the girl and bring her to the ground so he can smother the flames. He leaves his feet, throws his body onto hers, and they go down, he blankets her with the coat, slapping it with flat palms, hugging her. A protester with a bench
slat runs from behind and smashes it over the cop’s helmet, knocking him off the girl.

  The man flinches.

  “Holy shit.”

  He puts both phones in one hand and digs in the deep outer pockets of his Armani.

  “Key card, yeah, five-nineteen, shit.”

  The attack on the police line has disintegrated under the clubs, driven back, but several retreating protesters have stopped and formed a ring around the fallen officer, kicking him. The burning girl he extinguished is lost to view.

  The man pulls a key card from his pocket.

  “Key. So can we get the fuck inside now?”

  Skinner knees him in the crotch twice, easing him down to the ground as he folds forward, curled on his side, mouth open wide but unable to draw enough air to make any noise. His hands have clenched and Skinner has to pry the key card and both phones from his grip, dropping the phones, one each in his jacket pockets, key in hand, rising and taking Jae by the wrist.

  “Let’s go.”

  She drags her feet, looking at the man on the ground.

  “Is he safe there?”

  Skinner is still moving, pulling her toward the Scandic.

  “No.”

  A new siren rises and fills the square, bouncing off the faces of the tall buildings. A warning that something large and powerful is coming. At the far end of the square the police line splits open and a towering blue and high-viz truck, unholy product of a mating between a doubledecker bus and a fully armored Humvee, rolls through, two water cannons above a high cab, windows covered by steel screens, a broad cow catcher mounted up front.

  Skinner draws Jae close, his arm over her shoulder.

  “Passport.”

  She watches Skinner take his own from inside his jacket, holding it and the key in the same hand, holding them up in clear view, as they walk briskly toward the Scandic. She unzips her jacket, unzips one of the interior pockets, pulls out her own passport, and presents it in the same manner.

  Skinner is waving his passport and key at the security guards behind the locked doors, pulling Jae closer.

  “We’re staying in the hotel.”

  Skinner slaps the key card and his passport against the glass.

  “Room five-nineteen.”

  The doors are unlocked, guards pulling them open, holding out their arms to draw Skinner and Jae inside as if pulling them from the ocean after a shipwreck. Behind them, the water cannons open fire on the square, white noise drowning the world’s voice.

  Someone drapes a blanket over Jae’s shoulders, a man pats Skinner’s back as if for a job well done. The thunder of the water cannon and continuing howl of the siren force everyone to raise their voices, Skinner can see people who have come down from the restaurant for a different perspective on events, cocktails in hand.

  A man, British accent, north-something, places himself in front of Skinner and Jae.

  “How is it out there? The police need to contract their lines, yes?”

  Gravitas in the words.

  Skinner leads Jae around him toward a bank of elevators.

  A concierge crosses the carpet, meets them at the elevators, pushing the button. Her English is impeccable.

  “My apologies for the situation. We, of course, have no control over something like this, but we will make every effort to see that it doesn’t make your stay any less enjoyable.”

  By the time they descend in the elevator to the subfloor basement, ask a laundress with poor English for directions, lose themselves, find themselves, find the loading dock, wave off the questions of a security guard, smiles, head shakes, sorry, we don’t understand a word, and emerge into brisk sunlight on the peaceful street of Drottninggatan, eight minutes have passed since the protesters started their flash riot a block away.

  Seventeen minutes of traffic later, a taxi deposits them at the south end of Helgeandsholmen and they cross a bridge, wandering into the narrow cobbled alleys of old world charm that define the tiny island of Gamla Stan.

  Postcards, cafés, historical preservationists at work. They slow down, the buildings built tall and narrow and pressed together, dense, no sound reaching them from the riot now. Sunshine on the exterior walls of the upper stories. Wooden shutters folded open. Flower boxes.

  Jae checks a map on her phone, turns it this way and that, the streets a senseless tangle, points down a twisting cobbled way that appears to have been built to follow a popular goat track from some previous century.

  “This way. I think.”

  Skinner follows a step behind, taking time to glance in the uncovered ground-floor windows, glimpses of storerooms behind businesses on parallel streets, kitchens, small domestic settings. It is an area for artists and eccentrics and families who have lived here for generations. An expensive and particular way of life, keeping house in a tourist district. But you never know what you might see. Grandpa’s birding shotgun over the sink. That HK 9mm taken from a field in Bosnia while on UN peacekeeping duty during service years. Or, more likely, a well-honed boning knife. Thinking about objects he can kill with, Skinner only gradually becomes aware of how slowly they are meandering, weaving steps, their shoulders bumping from time to time.

  It seems quite natural, an act that requires no thought at all, for him to take Jae’s hand. And when he does, she does not take it back. Walking, hand in hand, down the streets of Gamla Stan, name like a lost province of one of the world’s popular war zones, Skinner scouting for mortal weapons, Jae using him for balance as her mind drifts through the data.

  Eye of the storm, winds building around them, but careless, for the moment.

  pogrom

  TERRENCE LIKES THE future.

  What Skinner said before the riot. Before she tucked in the ends of his scarf and touched him.

  Terrence likes the future.

  That he spoke so authoritatively in the present tense means less than shit. He is, she tells herself, a killer. He’s killed many people. She’s watched him do it. An experienced killer must have had ample opportunities to try to hide the fact that he’s killed someone. Changing the tense, from Terrence liked the future to Terrence likes the future. This is not something on which to hang your fucking hat when assessing whether the person you are traveling with has killed a friend.

  I miss him.

  What he also said.

  Well, shit, she misses Terrence, too. And she can’t stop thinking about Haiti. The satellite photos she had looked at on the plane, coming in with a team of American emergency responders. There she was, the odd lady in the window seat at the back; no one knew how she’d gotten on the flight. Most of them knew one another. Indonesian tsunami, Katrina, Brazilian favela mudslide. Regular gatherings for these specialists who operated somewhere on the border between selfless altruist and risk taking adrenaline junkie. They were pumped.

  Conversation from the seats in front of hers:

  Saving a life is like the most intense high ever.

  There were vets. Men and women who’d left the battlefield with new scales of affect. Dulled to any scenario that did not involve screaming sirens, the unbalanced sway inside a speeding vehicle, pop of small arms, deafening shudder of helicopter blades just overhead, and blood, still wet, squelching underfoot. A plane full of creatures who had stopped feeling quite human. Stopped acting like their husbands and wives and parents. Could not see themselves in their children any longer. They’d walked or been pushed through a scrim, seen what so much of the world saw daily from birth. The limitless possibility of life ending brutally and for no reason in the next instant. Those on the plane were the crest of human evolution. The next stage. The ones who experienced calamity and learned to thrive in that environment. The age of disaster, and these its natives. For now, they could choose to visit those places where misfortune rooted deepest; soon enough everyone would be living in the shit. The end of the global configuration that she could never avoid finding. Disaster World. What was waiting for them all, around the corner.

  Jae was
there because Terrence stuck her on the plane. He’d found her at Texas A&M, tinkering in someone else’s lab; piecework, her soldering always flawless. Assisting when municipalities would send teams of fire fighters to be accredited on new equipment in the rambling artificial catastrophe that was Disaster City. Training ground and test bed for the personnel and equipment that would try to blunt the edge of the future.

  She’d stopped designing her own robots after Iraq. Stopped building them, anyway. She could never stop designing them in her head. Senseless crawling tools that could uncover lost and missing things. How could she stop? She’d blunted her own edge with Xanax and booze. The configurations were still there, but all they did was swirl around her, never resolving into anything coherent. Off the radar for Cross and Kestrel. She’d tried going back to teaching, but a room full of young people had come to look like a room full of animated corpses. Dead in waiting. Born too late. After the deluge had already begun.

  So she’d walked away and found the job in Texas. And discovered that the ersatz emergencies of Disaster City dulled the constant internal hysteria that had plagued her since Iraq. Visiting fire fighters might be impressed by the war zone verisimilitude of the street called Sniper Alley, devoted to learning fire suppression while in a crosshairs, but she knew better. It was all so comfortingly harmless.

  Then Haiti shook.

  The lab emptied out. Academics only on the surface, they were men and women building robots to save lives. They’d been at Ground Zero for fuck sake. Their only problem was finding a plane with room for them, and getting a landing slot at demolished Toussaint Louverture International Airport. Jae stayed behind. A day later there was Terrence with a proposition.

  Money was involved. In more than one sense. Money for her, of course, and money on the ground. Under the rubble. In a safe. Maybe. An office in a Hatian strip mall, lawyer’s office. Someone’s asset, moving cash, lots of it, toward a political party that might have a shot at the presidency in a country where very little was needed to give one a shot at the presidency. The essential value of political influence in Haiti being of debatable value to Jae’s mind but not, clearly, to someone else. Someone with an interest in coastal land leases on the southern edge of the island. An area that could serve excellently as a training ground for both open desert combat tactics and beachhead landings. Skill sets in much demand. There were also, in the safe, a hard drive and several papers that could, along with the money when you got down to it, be lost, happily, but should, most definitely, not be found by the wrong people. The wrong people defined as anyone not under specific contract to get the fucking things and destroy them. Terrence didn’t need to say Cross or Kestrel, she knew who she would be working for. It all sounded terrifically fucked to Jae. Dirty and horrifying. Something she’d gladly rather not know was happening, let alone participate in. But the money. Soldering, though specialty work, paid no bonus for a PhD. She was renting a room in a double-wide at a trailer park five miles from campus, riding the bus. Long past the point where she could produce credible excuses for not visiting home a single time in the last three years. Estranged wasn’t a nuanced enough word to describe the state her relationship with her father had reached.