Skin and Blond

by V. J. Chambers

  “So, I’m supposed to accept that you can’t help it?”

  “You don’t have to accept anything. You can think whatever you want.”

  “I wish it didn’t bother me,” he said.

  “It shouldn’t bother you.” I got up from the desk. “We’re not together anymore. You don’t have any reason to care about who I do and don’t sleep with.”

  “Well, when we were together, it was pretty much the same deal, wasn’t it?”

  “That was your idea,” I said.

  “Yeah, maybe I didn’t mean it seriously. Maybe I brought it up, and I thought you’d shoot me down. I thought you’d say, ‘No, Miles, I don’t need to get laid that bad. You’re enough for me. I care about you and not your penis.’ But that isn’t what you said, is it?”

  I squared my shoulders. “Is this the kind of conversation we should be having in your office?”

  “Don’t have anything to say to that, huh?”

  “It’s not like that, and you know it. What I do with those men, it isn’t about… companionship or love or… or anything. It’s just sex. I explained it to you, and you said you understood. You agreed to the arrangement. If you didn’t like it, you should have—”

  “What? Forced you to be faithful to me, when I can’t satisfy you? I know there’s something wrong with me. I know…” He took a deep breath. “You know, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this in my office.”

  I nodded, backing into his door and leaning into it. “I’m going to go now.”

  “Yeah.” He took another deep breath. “You probably should.”

  I opened his door and backed out of his office, gazing at him the whole time. I wished like hell I hadn’t fucked things up with him. This man was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’d thrown it all away like garbage. Now, here I was stuck in this other shadow life, this echo of what could have been, where everything was just… wrong.

  * * *

  I settled back into my desk at my office. I sorted through all of my files and papers. Most of them still pertained to the Webb case, so I swept it into a hanging folder and put it in my filing cabinet. I found the file that Pike had given me, and I put it in there too. I was done with that case.

  There was absolutely no point in pursuing something I wasn’t getting paid for, even if it was intriguing to wonder why someone else in Jinn Springs had disappeared along with her bedsheets. Jinn Springs was just up the interstate. If someone was traveling up the highway, it was a brief jaunt from the Renmawr exits to the Keene exit (it only had one, being a tiny town) and the Jinn Springs one. So, even though Jinn Springs wasn’t exactly real close to Renmawr, it was easy enough to get there.

  Traveling between Keene and Renmawr or Keene and Jinn Springs, I didn’t usually bother with the interstate, but if I was going to go from Renmawr to Jinn Springs, I’d probably get on the highway. I wondered if possibly Curtis had a third girlfriend, one up the road, and he’d killed her too.

  But no, Curtis had an alibi.

  And besides, I was done with this case.

  I was really, really done with it.

  Maybe this other girl—I couldn’t remember her name—and Madison were both actually alive, and they’d run off to join some cult that had its members do unspeakable acts with bedsheets, like Crane had proposed originally. I giggled a little, trying to think of what kind of unspeakable acts could be accomplished using bedsheets. As weapons went, they weren’t really the best—

  Was that why the bedsheets were gone?

  Were the bedsheets the murder weapon? Had Madison been suffocated to death?

  Not thinking about this case anymore.

  Brigit appeared in the doorway.

  “Hey, Brigit.” I was glad of the distraction. Hopefully, she had something else interesting for me to focus my attention on.

  She leaned against the doorway. “So, um, what do we do now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, now that we’re not working for Andrew Webb, and we’re not trying to solve Madison’s case. What do we do now?”

  “We wait for another case,” I said. “Someone always shows up. Sometimes several someones. It tends to actually come in bursts, to be honest. It’s a little frustrating, because I’ll be bored out of my skull and then I’m swimming in so much work, I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done.”

  “We just… wait?” she said.

  “Yup.”

  “It’s not bugging you?” she said. “The, you know, lack of closure?”

  “Not at all,” I said. Okay, maybe I was a little too forceful with that statement, as if I was trying to convince both her and myself, but I didn’t think Brigit even noticed.

  At any rate, there was no time to think about that, because a distraction magically appeared out of thin air.

  Upstairs, the dog started barking.

  I grinned. “I’ll be back.”

  Brigit’s eyes widened. “You are not going to go break into that woman’s apartment again.”

  I grabbed my lock picks. Then I pushed past her, through the waiting area, and out into the hallway. I hurried up the stairs to the second level. As I approached Kitty’s apartment, the barks grew louder and louder.

  “Don’t worry, little dog,” I called. “I’m coming.”

  But the minute that I fitted the lock pick into the doorknob and started to rattle around in there, the door opened.

  Kitty was standing inside, and she was livid.

  “You’re, um, home,” I said.

  She ripped the lock pick out of the doorknob. “I caught you red handed.”

  “Look, take the dog out of the bathroom,” I said.

  “No.” She lifted her chin. “That’s my dog and my bathroom, and I’ll put her wherever I want.”

  “The dog is unhappy.”

  “As well she should be. She chewed up my very favorite slippers.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t keep a dog locked in a tiny apartment like this. Maybe that dog needs exercise. You ever think that?”

  “If I catch you in my apartment again, I’m reporting you to the authorities.”

  I made a sour face at her, and I turned to go.

  Brigit was standing there.

  “What?” I said to her. I pushed past her again. I went back down to the office, Brigit on my heels the entire time.

  When we got back inside, the dog was still barking. I balled my hands up into fists.

  “You can’t break into people’s houses,” said Brigit.

  I glared at her.

  The dog’s barks turned into long, anguished howls.

  “Let’s go to the bar,” I said.

  “It’s three in the afternoon,” she said.

  “So?” I said.

  * * *

  Brigit did accompany me to the bar, and I treated her to one stiff mixed drink after another. I wasn’t in a particularly good mood, to tell the truth, and I didn’t want anyone to see that. I was blaming it on that conversation with Miles earlier, where he ripped me a new one for not being able to control myself.

  I didn’t much like that about myself. I was always trying to control myself. I wanted to do everything right. But… well, it just never seemed to work. There was a point in which I started to lose my mind. Where some voice in my head whispered that I should give in and live dangerously, and that voice seemed to make more sense than the voice that said to be cautious.

  Or…

  That wasn’t even exactly the way I felt.

  It was more like the idea to do something that I knew was wrong would overtake me, and I couldn’t fight it. It pestered me and pestered me and pestered me until I did it.

  There. Why couldn’t I explain that to Miles in that way? Then maybe he’d understand.

  Or maybe he’d be annoyed. It seemed that every time I tried to explain myself to him, he’d get caustic. That’s not what you said before, Ivy. You’re always changing your story.

  By seven in the evening, both
Brigit and I were pretty wasted, and she left the bar, claiming she had to get something to eat.

  That was obviously the intelligent thing to do. If I was the kind of person that Miles could spend the rest of his life with, that’s what I would have done too. I would have left the damned bar, gotten something to eat, and slept it off.

  But I was me.

  And that’s not what I did.

  Instead, I kept drinking. I thought that Crane would probably show up within a few hours, because he usually stopped by in the evenings. But for some reason, Crane didn’t even bother to show. I thought about calling him, because I could have really used an easy hookup that night, someone who wouldn’t mind how drunk I was, who’d still sleep with me.

  I kept telling myself that I’d call him after the next drink, though.

  I don’t know how many more drinks there were.

  There were a lot.

  And yet… somehow… I didn’t black out. I think it was because I wanted to. Whenever I courted the sweet, sweet oblivion of alcoholic blackout, it never deigned to arrive. So, instead, I got drunker and drunker and drunker.

  And as I stumbled and slurred my way through the bar, I got more and more sad. I was alone. I didn’t have a case. I’d been fired from my dream job. I was probably wrong about Andrew Webb. He probably wasn’t the killer.

  I’d followed the trail as best as I could, but I’d made a mistake somewhere.

  Why had I been so convinced it was him? There was no evidence that he’d killed Madison.

  I’d trusted my gut, and where had it gotten me? Nowhere.

  The worst thing about it was that if I hadn’t jumped the gun, I might still be working on that case. Now, I couldn’t work on it, because I’d sabotaged it.

  I tried to explain this to people in the bar, even though I don’t generally discuss cases with anyone besides Crane, because I was too drunk to have any ethics anymore. Fortunately, no one could really understand me.

  I was at the stage of drunkenness in which no one wanted to be around me. I was annoying. I interrupted people when they spoke. I was desperately self-centered. I was unintelligible.

  It was embarrassing.

  Not that I was embarrassed then. No, that would be a gift that I would receive the next morning when I thought about all the stupid things I’d done.

  Eventually, the bartender refused to serve me any more drinks. He didn’t outright kick me out, but he let me know that I wasn’t really welcome in the bar anymore.

  When I got out onto the street and began my lumbering, sad walk home, I started crying. It seemed to me that the sky had caved in some time ago, and here I was living in a broken world, just trying to steer clear of the rubble. I was pointless and stupid. Why did I even bother?

  I didn’t go to my own house. Instead, I stumbled to Crane’s and knocked on the door.

  He didn’t answer.

  So I got loud. I banged and banged on the door, yelling for him. “I know you’re in there, Crane! Open the door!” But I was drunk, so all my words bled together, and it barely sounded like I was speaking English. I was aware of the fact that I was slurring my words and that I was off balance, but I was unable to actually correct this.

  I banged on the door until he opened it, wrapped in a blanket, his chest bare. He was pretty pissed off. “Go away,” he said. “I have company.”

  “Oh.” I gave him an exaggerated nod. Crane had hooked up with someone else. He wasn’t there for me, because he’d probably found some cute girl in her twenties. Maybe he’d marry this one too. I hoped not. Whenever Crane got married, he disappeared for months, and I missed him. “Sorry.” It sounded more like shorry.

  “Go home, Ivy,” he said. “Sleep it off.”

  “Sorry. Really sorry.” I stumbled backwards, away from his door, tripped over my feet, and went sprawling on my ass. I started to laugh.

  “You’re fucked up,” he said. “I wouldn’t have slept with you in this condition anyway.”

  I was still laughing. “Sorry, Crane. Sorry I interrupted you with your inappropriately-aged conquest. Really sorry.”

  “Oh, you’re one to talk,” he said. “You sleep with your share of co-eds, Ivy, so leave it. And get out of here.”

  I tried to get to my feet, but my legs were tangled up. “Sorry!” I called again.

  Crane slammed the door.

  I still couldn’t figure out how to stand up again. I tried to untangle my legs.

  It seemed hopeless. Every time I tried to move, my limbs wouldn’t work the way my brain wanted them to. I could see what I wanted to do, but my body no longer knew how to cooperate.

  I laughed about it for a while. It was ridiculous, not knowing how to make yourself move. Even infants could do that.

  But then I began to feel a little panicked, because I wasn’t sure how I was going to get up. It wasn’t so funny anymore.

  I started crying again.

  I sat in a heap on the sidewalk in front of Crane’s house, and I cried.

  And cried.

  I cried until I got the hiccups.

  And then somehow, I managed to figure out how to get back up. I wasn’t steady on my feet, and I was hiccuping every three seconds. The hiccups brought up liquor-soaked bile from my stomach. It made me feel ill, but I wasn’t going to throw up.

  I hadn’t thrown up after drinking since I was a junior in college, and I wasn’t about to start it back up again now.

  I staggered down the street, hiccuping, sick to my stomach, tear stained, and miserable.

  Eventually, I made it home.

  I looked around my apartment, which wasn’t much. I had one bedroom, a small kitchen, an even smaller bathroom, and a tiny living area. The place was usually a little bit messy, because I didn’t much bother with cleaning if I wasn’t going to have visitors. I kept up with my dishes, and I kept the bathroom clean. I wasn’t really worried about germs or anything, but I did think that there was something uncomfortable about a dirty kitchen and bathroom. Other than that, I put very little effort into the place. It wasn’t something that I was proud of.

  I went to the refrigerator and got a gallon jug of water. I looked for some leftovers in there that I could eat, but there wasn’t anything, so I grabbed a loaf of bread and went into the living room.

  I threw myself down on the couch to nurse the water and eat plain bread. The bread would soak up the alcohol, and with the bile rising to my throat, I wanted something bland anyway.

  When I collapsed on the couch, the room began to spin.

  Fuck.

  I put my feet on the floor. The room righted itself, but it still felt like it was wobbling back and forth. I groaned. I was exhausted, but there was no way I’d be able to go to sleep until the spins stopped. I guzzled water.

  The water seemed to be making the spins worse. However, it tasted delicious. My body knew that it needed it, and so I kept drinking it.

  The feeling of needing to vomit hit me hard.

  I groaned.

  Not going to throw up, I told myself.

  I managed to get up and stagger into the bathroom, though. I splashed water on my face and surveyed myself in the mirror.

  The face that stared back at me was haggard and old. I used to be a fairly attractive woman, and I guessed I still was. I wasn’t fat or anything, although drinking so much alcohol had begun to catch up with me lately, and I was getting a little soft pudge around my middle. I had blond hair and my features were straight and symmetrical.

  But the woman in the mirror was tired and aged and pathetic. I looked like a wino on the street in Renmawr.

  I winced, turning away from the mirror and heading back to the living room.

  When I sat down, the room was still spinning.

  Fine. If I had to wait that out, I might as well turn on the TV. But after I flipped through the scant channels that I got (I was too cheap to pay for a decent cable package) four times, I just switched the set off. I didn’t want to watch TV.

  I wished
I could have found someone to fuck that night. That would have been a nice respite. But the fucking was a way to escape from everything, just like the drinking was, and maybe right now, it was time to face up to what had happened to my life.

  Yes, I was pathetic. Yes, I was a failure.

  No, I didn’t have anything to be proud of.

  Yes, there was no point in my being alive.

  “Fuck that,” I muttered aloud. I sat up straight on the couch. I shoved another piece of bread in my mouth.

  If that was what waited on the other side of my various escapes, no wonder I didn’t want to face it. Maybe it was true that I was a sorry excuse for a human being who had no redeeming qualities, but that didn’t mean it was fun to think that.

  Besides, there was something worthwhile that I did, something that benefited the world.

  I caught murderers.

  I stopped them from killing again, and I brought closure and justice to the families of their victims.

  It was who I was, and it was the only thing about me that was redeemable.

  When I was fifteen years old, my parents didn’t show up for one of my show choir concerts. (Yeah, I was in show choir. So what?) It was weird to me, because I expected them to come. They were always around for my activities. They were good parents, and I loved them. Sure, we had our share of normal friction, but overall, we had a strong bond.

  Anyway, this was before cell phones, so I had to try to call them at home from the school. No answer.

  I went on with my concert, and then one of the other students was kind enough to give me a ride home. I wasn’t yet old enough to drive, but some of the other students were older, and they had their licenses. The girl was a senior, and she told me that my parents had probably forgotten about me, and that everything was fine.

  And it was true that the house looked normal from the outside when she pulled up in the driveway. The lights were on inside, and the car was in the garage, and it looked welcoming and ordinary. I figured the girl must be right, and I waved to her as she backed out of the driveway and left me there.

  I didn’t know it, but when I opened the front door, I was the only person alive in that house.

  I wandered through rooms, calling for them. The lights were on in the kitchen, and there were vegetables out on the counter, as if my mother had been in the middle of making dinner. But something had stopped her, because she wasn’t there.