In Her Skin

by Kim Savage

  “He means once the public is sympathetic to your story,” Mrs. Lovecraft says.

  There are a lot of things wrong with this idea. Instead, I blurt, “Two and done.”

  “Excuse me?” Mr. Lovecraft asks.

  “It’s not one and done anymore. It’s two and done. This is the second thing,” I explain.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Lovecraft replies. “I suppose it is.”

  “Done is done,” he says.

  Here’s the larger problem: the Today Show is on TV everywhere. Being on a national TV show is the equivalent of handing the Last One a piece of paper with my address on it. I’m not truly afraid the Last One will find and kill me. A con always looks for the angle that will benefit him most.

  I’m afraid he will find and blackmail me.

  “I am not going on the Today Show,” you announce. “It would be supremely embarrassing.”

  “No need for you to come, darling,” Mr. Lovecraft says, raising his palm. “This is about controlling Vivi’s message.”

  “What Daddy means is that it would be a distraction from your activities. We can be down and back in the same day. It’s only Manhattan,” Mrs. Lovecraft says.

  “No thank you,” I say quietly.

  They peer at me as though I just shrank.

  “No thank you, as in you’re not interested in doing the interview?” Mr. Lovecraft asks, with the faintest edge. I pull the bracelet into my lap, a knot in my throat. I have failed them, and they look disappointed. The weirdest part is, I actually care.

  “Did they tell you this place is haunted?” you say suddenly.

  This change of subject is its own kind of gift. “Haunted? By who?”

  “A traveling liquor salesman who committed suicide in room 303. Guests say they can smell whiskey and hear laughter into the night,” you say.

  Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft roll their eyes at each other, and the topic of morning news shows is dropped. They talk over us in code, and it’s hard to listen in, because being the object of your laser focus is like being grass under a magnifying glass on a sunny day.

  “And the elevator goes up to the third floor by itself, without anyone hitting the button,” you say.

  “Wow, really? Cool!” I sound naive, but it works because Vivi is the kind of girl who walks away with a kidnapper.

  You stand. “I need to pee. Come with?”

  “Same, yes.” And thank you.

  Mrs. Lovecraft studies us for a second. “Well, okay. Hurry back, though.”

  “Quick, before she changes her mind,” you whisper. “We don’t have much time!”

  “To pee?”

  “To see the haunted room. You said you wanted to.”

  I did?

  “Follow me.” You drag me into the chichi hotel lobby, stealing past the clerk behind the desk and taking the stairs. We run, laughing, up three floors.

  You stop on the third-floor landing. “Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Are you ready?”

  Oh, Temple. There are scarier things in hotels than ghosts in rooms. Old men with bellies who have paid to meet you, for example.

  “I’m ready.”

  We push the door open and prowl the hall, stealthy, and you are funny, making exaggerated hush signs and tiptoeing. You’re corny, and it is cute, and you treat me like a dumb younger sister, and I sense that you’re leading me into trouble but I am so okay with it, because trouble with you is fun, old-fashioned, clean fun, stealing poems and spotting ghosts, and I am charmed. We are Betsy and Tacy, Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, Nancy Drew and Bess Marvin. Come to think of it, we are the characters in all the books I ever stole and loved.

  We pass room 302, then 304, and you turn to face me, frowning. “This is wrong. Where’s 303?”

  I study an unmarked door next to 305. “This has to be it.”

  “This can’t be it. It’s not a room,” you say, sliding your palms together, like this is an emergency.

  “It has to be. That’s 302 and 304; this is 305, and that down there’s 301,” I say, pointing down the hall. “They must have boarded it up and taken the number down.”

  “They say you can smell whiskey and cigars. Can you smell anything?” you ask.

  I lean into the door crack and sniff. “I smell ammonia. I think it’s a utility closet.”

  “It’s not a utility closet.”

  “Oh it’s a utility closet. Maybe we’ll come across a haunted janitor. That’d be scary. I can see an evil janitor—say with no face—haunting these halls at night. Can’t you?”

  “This is boring,” you say, and if it weren’t you, I’d snap back that it’s boring because it’s the kind of kicks ten-year-olds go for.

  Instead, I say, “Your parents will worry. We should go.”

  The elevator dings and we turn as the gold doors open slowly. The down button is unlit, we are alone, and the compartment is empty.

  I shake my finger at the empty car. “Okay, that was scary!”

  “Wait, I know,” you say, reaching in your back pocket for your phone and dragging me inside. “I have a better idea.” You hit M. M is for mezzanine, and this is where the lobby bar is, brass and leather and a piano even. You stride out as if we are actually legal and choose a high table for two at the edge, immediately dipping your head over the phone.

  “We’re going to get kicked out,” I hiss.

  You barely look up. “Meh. If you’re rich enough to be here, no one cares.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “I’m not calling anyone. Okay, I’m sort of calling someone. Technically, I’m Tindering.”

  “You’re what?”

  You giggle, and I am getting angry but your giggle is sweet. You swipe right and bite your bottom lip. “Tindering. Calling any guy in a ten-mile radius who wants to hook up for sex.”

  “Why would you ever…” I’m shaking my head, dumbfounded. “Why would you ever do that?”

  “Um, because it will be hilarious when they show up and it’s you and me? And we can be like, um, we’re here with our parents having dinner, and you must have got your wires crossed, sicko.”

  I shift in my seat. A waitress eyes us, wondering if we’ll try to order a drink, when in fact you just ordered a man.

  “Relax,” you say, picking at a bowl of sugared nuts. “I’m kidding. It doesn’t work like that. Not exactly. You text the guy a few times first, make arrangements. I actually know him.”

  “You know him?”

  “His name is Andrew.”

  “His name is Andrew?”

  “You sound like a parrot. Mine’s Tracy. It’s fine. I told you, it’s going to be hilarious when he sees how old I am.”

  “How old did you say you are?”

  “Twenty-two. You only have to be eighteen.”

  “I just—God!” My chest is tightening and I’m starting to realize there is no convincing you of anything and you don’t understand how dangerous men are and how can I protect you? “I mean, how long do you think we can even wait here? Your parents—”

  Your eyes bulge at your phone. “He’s here.”

  “What? Oh my God. Temple. Do not tell me he has a picture of you.”

  “Why do you think he came?”

  I scan the room fast for Horny Andrew, and although a lot of people in this showy bar look like they want some, I don’t see a single guy scanning the room for a lanky honey-haired girl. Yet.

  You shove your phone under my nose. “He’s coming! Look, he’s coming!”

  A commotion across the mezzanine, and there are the Lovecrafts, followed by the manager on duty. They walk-run across the lobby to us. At the same time, a pudgy guy in a work suit appears behind you with an oily grin.

  “Tracy?” he asks.

  You grab your earlobe and gaze at him over your shoulder innocently. “I think you have the wrong girl.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re the girl in the picture,” he says, leaning too close to you. “You know: Tinder?”

  “Temple!” Mr. Lovecraft booms. Andr
ew’s cheeks hit the floor, and if he peed his pants I would not be surprised, but there’s no telling now, because he is beelining for the exit and you are already trying the innocent lobe-tugging thing on our father.

  “Daddy, don’t yell. We were just tired of that stuffy restaurant and came up here to people-watch.”

  “It looked more like you were getting picked up. I ought to go after that moron,” Mr. Lovecraft says, and Mrs. Lovecraft tugs on his arm.

  “Come, Henry.” She turns to thank the hotel manager in hushed tones and this dinner celebration is over.

  The ride home is silent. The Lovecrafts’ anger feels like a hair shirt, at least it is what I imagine it would feel like to wear one, maybe even to touch one. I am scared of what might come, but you are sulky and defiant, and it is glorious but also puzzling, because we really were wrong to freak your parents out like that. Dinner was over the top and my belly is nicely full, and we probably squeaked out of a sketchy if not dangerous scenario. Yet you sit the whole way home, stiff with anger, legs and arms crossed, staring out at the streaming lights reflecting off the Charles.

  “I only did it to entertain Vivi,” you say suddenly.

  The Lovecrafts look sideways at each other across the front seat.

  “She’s safe with me. You both know that,” you say, louder this time.

  * * *

  I wake the next morning expecting to meet disapproval, or at least the cold shoulder. Instead, I meet Zack, my new tutor.

  Zack Turpin is a Suffolk Law student in his early twenties who seems to think I am mentally delayed, not just a little behind in school, and I have to show him, gently, that yes, I can do division and read beyond chapter books. The Lovecrafts want me to stick to the amnesia story with Zack, which is easier than explaining how I got books in the evil man’s shed, so I say I don’t remember how I learned things. It becomes clear quickly that though the Lovecrafts can afford what they want, they have not spent much money on Zack the law student, because he is working off lesson plans he downloaded from the Internet. I try not to care that they don’t seem to think my schooling is equal in importance to yours, because it’s a ridiculous thought, a jealous thought, a sibling-rivalry-ish thought, and why should I care? The day is long, but what I really mean is the day is long without you, and I didn’t see you in the morning and now it is eight p.m. and I still have not seen you, and the Lovecrafts don’t seem to mind much that you’re hardly around.

  I don’t see you Tuesday either. Or Wednesday.

  I hear you coming and going, but by the time I run downstairs or into the hall you are behind a closed door, or being driven somewhere. It’s mostly just sleeping Slade and me, and I wonder why Slade never complains about how weird his job is. Then I realize that like me, Slade has no one but the girlfriend I hear him fighting with on his phone and the Lovecrafts. So he wants to serve the Lovecrafts and doesn’t care how strange their ideas are, because they are free with their love when someone fits in with their family.

  I even begin to wish that Wolf will come, but of course he does not. I am deeply alone, and it is choking me.

  When I finally catch up with you Thursday night, you seem angry. I play last Sunday’s dinner at the restaurant over in my head, but sneaking off and making a fake Tinder call wasn’t my idea, so I can’t figure out what I did wrong. I do know what I can do right, and it will be spectacular.

  I wait until Friday night when the Lovecrafts are both out. Slade is already on duty, which I wasn’t counting on. Luckily, he’s absorbed, hunched over sexting his girlfriend at the Lovecrafts’ kitchen counter. I approach your bedroom door and knock twice, softly. You don’t answer, but I know you’re in there, so I press the door open. You lie on your bed, head over the edge of the far end, legs on the wall, hair streaming over the headphones on your ears. I lift one earphone, and you jump.

  “Jesus, Vivi!” you sputter, squirming and righting yourself, and you are a pretty spider, scrambling. “What the hell?”

  I lay my finger to my lips. My turn. “Shh.”

  I toss your coat on the bed, along with a hat because I care.

  You smile. No fear. Only interest. “Where are we going?”

  “I have something to show you.” I turn my back and check over my shoulder to see if you’re following me to my room, and you are jamming your foot into an old Ugg boot, coat half hanging off. Game for anything. I smile to myself as I lift my window to a gust and climb onto my very handy fire escape. Your weight behind me makes the scaffolding shake, but I’m not scared, and I have yet to see you scared of anything.

  On the ground, I face you, your features disappearing in my breath-bloom. “Are you okay with walking? It’s not far.”

  “What direction?”

  I point up Commonwealth Avenue, where we’ll cut through Newbury to Boylston, and you push past me, and I’m forced to jog to keep ahead of you. As we walk, I try my tricks for not feeling the nighttime cold, from jamming my arms close to my body to pressing my lips together to hitting my feet hard on the ground to get the blood back in. You, on the other hand, walk so loose and easy. Anyone watching could tell who’s the street kid from Florida and who’s the private-school girl from this cold, cold town. It takes us half the time I figured it would to walk to our destination underneath the red, block-letter STEINWAY sign and the musical curlicue S beside it.

  “Isn’t it a little late at night to be shopping for pianos?” you yell over the wind.

  I grab your wrist and pull you to the door, which is open on Friday nights because of the writers’ group that has classes in the building. We push through and make our way to the elevator. As we walk by the darkened piano showroom on the first floor, you say under your breath, “So we aren’t buying a piano.” The elevator has a metal gate inside that I have to drag hard to shut.

  Your hand hovers near the buttons. “Going up?”

  “Down,” I say.

  You raise your eyebrows and hit the basement button, and the elevator lurches so hard we fall into each other, laughing. After a long time—forty feet underground, but I let you wonder—we hit the basement floor with a bang. I lead the way into the dark, nailed by the ammonia smell of rat droppings, feeling for the lightbulb socket hanging from a cord on the ceiling. I twist the bulb.

  “What’s your plan now, mysterious?” you say, smiling as the light reveals the padlocked door in front of us.

  I push the wooden crate Wolf and I use to reach the top rail over the door. The key takes a while to find in the dust. When I feel it, I jump down and get busy on the lock, pretending not to notice that you’re nodding, impressed. The key is stiff in the padlock, and I work it hard until it gives a satisfying pop. I ease the door open and flick on the row of light switches, one at a time, slow for effect, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. The lights come up and we are standing in front of a faded mural of ancient Romans or maybe Greeks—I never know—in togas. I take your elbow and turn you around.

  “What is this?” you gasp.

  “This is Steinert Hall,” I say, twirling around a pillar, white paint flaking under my hand. “It hasn’t been used since 1942.”

  Your chin tips up the way mine was at the Pops. “That’s the same year as the Cocoanut Grove fire,” you murmur at the round ceiling.

  “What fire?” I say.

  “A nightclub fire. It happened that same year across town. People blamed a busboy who threw a match that lit a fake palm tree. It spread to the fabric on the ceiling.” You walk to the center of the hall and shade your eyes, gazing up at the balconies that encircle us. “Showered the people below in sparks. Most died from the fumes, actually. Or they were trampled at the revolving door. Four hundred and ninety-two in all.”

  I whistle and it echoes through the space.

  You point to painted letters and arrows on the walls on either side of me. “To Carver Street, that way,” you read. “To Boylston Street, that way.”

  I look above my head to where the marble staircase exits are boa
rded over. “Not anymore,” I say.

  “Right. We’re, what, thirty feet underground?”

  “Something like that,” I say.

  You walk up the aisle and up some stairs to a fine old chair on the stage. “It’s beautiful,” you say, stroking your fingers along its back. “How did you know about this place?”

  I pretend to study the swirly wrought-iron pattern that frames the stairs. “We all have our secrets,” I say, but I’m thinking that sometimes, homeless people get caught jumping the turnstiles at the Park Street station and they have miles to go before they sleep, and that chair you’re so fond of is better than the pavement under the awning of the burrito place next door.

  “Mmm,” you say, taking in the view. “This is some stage.”

  “It was built by the guys who started the piano store above. Used to seat six hundred fifty people. The coosticks are supposed to be perfect.”

  “A-coustics,” you murmur, gazing up at the empty balcony.

  I wince. I may have gotten the word wrong, but I know what it means. “So, test it out.”

  Your head snaps. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you should sing.”

  You fiddle with your sleeves. “I can’t. You know that.”

  “It doesn’t have to be perfect. I won’t even listen. Look, I’m blocking my ears.” I cover my ears.

  You bite your lip.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I ask.

  You turn from me, one hand on the back of the chair. I step out of the room and pretend to close the door, balling up a tissue from my pocket and sticking it into the lock hole quick—an old trick so that I can open it silently, and after a minute, I do. Through the crack, I see you close your eyes and plant your feet. Your hand rises to rest on your chest. You open your eyes and focus on the pile of broken pianos at the back of the hall. Finally, the sound comes, low and sweet, a song about a world of pure imagination.

  It’s a song I’ve heard before, from a movie made long ago: old-fashioned, Technicolor, with a chocolate waterfall and a girl who turns into a blueberry and explodes. And it has nothing to do with chocolate or blueberries. You’re singing to me. Telling me life with you is freedom and I have chosen well.