In Her Skin

by Kim Savage

  You finish the last note and cover your face with your long white hands. I pull the door shut softly and wait for you to come to me.

  * * *

  The next night, sleep comes in dark waves. I’ve felt better about us since you sang to me, though I’ve seen little of you in the day since. It’s past midnight when I jolt awake. I wait a minute, hearing nothing but my own ragged breathing, but the air is disturbed. I feel under my pillow for the knife and touch the cold handle when you whisper near my ear, “Time to go!”

  I am dragged from bed and dressed in your clothes, clothes I can’t see. I don’t struggle. It feels like a dream, to have your hands on me, fingers tugging at a zipper, buttoning the fly at my waist.

  “God, it’s like dressing an infant! A little help, please,” you whisper.

  “Where have you been?” I murmur sleepily, swaying.

  “Does it matter?” you hiss. “And be quieter if you want to come. Slade’s job is to watch me. Most nights he stares at porn in his room, but you never know when he might get bored.”

  You pull the nightshirt over my head and the shock jars me awake, a sudden arousal. You hand me my bra.

  “This one’s your job,” you say.

  I twist into the bra and the shirt you hand me and like that you are gone, one leg thrown through the window, and we are getting good at this. We launch ourselves into the night and onto the shaky fire escape. This time I follow your dark shape, led only by the pale flashes of your miniskirted legs. From the last landing we leap to the alley, noisily, and I hope Slade’s skin flick has a good story line.

  “Come, down here,” you say, dragging me to the corner of Comm Ave., away from the brownstone. Your phone glows in your hand; you’ve already called for a car.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The car arrives, and a guy with a slick smile leans over the passenger seat and buzzes down his window. “Tem-pull?” he asks.

  “Tell me where we’re going or I won’t come,” I say.

  You laugh and slide into the car. “We both know that’s not going to happen.”

  I wait outside the car, door hanging open, rubbing my shoulders. By the light of the car door I see what I’m wearing. The jeans are skinny and the shirt is cropped just under my chest. It is not my best combination. You bend close to a lighted compact, slicking on lipstick.

  My hand floats to the back of my neck.

  “You have bedhead. It’s fine. It works,” you say without looking at me. “Get. In.”

  “Works for what?” I say.

  “Where we’re going,” you say.

  I blow my cheeks out in a raspberry and slide in beside you. The phone on the driver’s clip-on stand says we are driving to Somerville, outside the Back Bay and a world away. I know this because Keloid Kurt was from Somerville. Called himself one of the last remaining members of the Winter Hill Gang. No one listened. He grumbled constantly about the “Yuppies” and “gen-a-fecation” and only shut up after someone ate his rat. The driver gets lost and you lose your patience. He tries to let us out in the middle of nowhere, but you say there’s no chance he’s dumping and running, you’ll give him a lousy rating and post a complaint. Finally he takes another turn and we land in front of a warehouse thumping with music, and you do tiny baby claps. We scramble out of the car. You make nice with the driver, ask him if he might come back in a few hours. He makes a crude noise and speeds off. I say something about taking the train, and you look at me like I’m crazy.

  “The train stopped two hours ago,” you say, opening the door to the warehouse.

  I am not a fan of EDM—it gives me a headache—and I wouldn’t have thought you were, either, with your fancy opera training. We are way young for this crowd, and I wouldn’t be concerned except you’ve got me breaking every one of my survival rules. Don’t wear clothes that show off your body, for starters. But maybe I’m wrong, because no one is sizing us up: no one is even paying attention to us, not really. This crowd is here for the DJ, who stands on a second level, and they look up to him like he is a god, jumping, dancing, shuffling, waving their hands. This is a neon rave, and these are throwbacks, kandi kids and not-so-young kids, and for sure, lots of people here are on something, but this is a happy crowd. You grab my arms and drag me to the front row. The music booms, its pulse in my ears and veins. It feels like something is trying to punch its way out of my throat. You start dancing and I am awkward. Then I close my eyes and let go.

  This is exactly what I needed. A familiar heat builds inside me, a heat I’m liking. A heat I don’t want to release just yet.

  An out-of-place-looking guy watches us. He is older, hooded. He stands behind us, too close, until we both stop dancing and back away. He swoops fast and whispers something in your ear, and the urge to grab your arm and run is strong. You dig in your pocket and pass him a wad of cash, and he places something in your hand. You turn and show me two beige tablets printed with the letter M.

  “We don’t need it,” I mouth.

  You smile as if you don’t understand me and shrug, popping both. I try to pretend you didn’t just do that, try not to worry that you have no idea what was in them, and dance, but honestly, it’s ruined for me. Rich kids think drugs make them edgy, when the opposite is true: it just makes them dull. I want to leave the front line, but I’m crushed by bodies, and twenty minutes later you abandon the shuffle moves everyone else is doing for grinding on guys, and then the beat changes, and you’re hanging on me. I know you’re playing, but soon I’m swept up in it, too: the pounding bass, the flashing lights, the neon. No one cares what I look like out here: it’s just us, and you seem fine, maybe it was filler in the pills.

  You reach for my arm but miss as you dive toward the sawdust floor. I yank you upright before you hit it. You’re pale and sweaty. I throw your arm over my shoulder and shove people aside, and people are pissed, and I don’t care, because you’re giving me nothing, no help, you’re so weak, and I need to get you out of this place but I can’t find the door we came in. When I see people with water bottles, I realize we have been dancing for hours with nothing to drink. Finally, I spot the exit sign and push through the door, leaning you against a cement wall.

  “So thirsty,” you gasp.

  I jab my finger in your face. “Stay here. Do you understand me? Stay. Here.”

  I walk among packs of people, mostly having cigarettes, and I beg but no one has water to share, and someone does have a beer, and that’ll do. I bring the beer over and you accept it gratefully. I consider taking a sip myself, but I should save it for you.

  Your pupils are fat olives. “I love you for saving me,” you say, licking your dry lips and holding the beer in both hands like a mug of something warm.

  “I didn’t save you,” I say. “We need to get home. Tell me your phone still has juice.”

  You look at me as though I have proposed the most brilliant idea, and fish in the pocket of your mini, which in addition to you looking so vulnerable is getting us unwanted attention. We need to move, soon. You pull the phone out and hit the car service app.

  “I hope it will find us,” you say weakly.

  You hope. I am thinking of the Lovecrafts’ disappointment when we vanished from the dinner table. What will happen if they realize we’re not in our beds?

  “You look so sad,” you murmur, moving a chunk of sweaty hair from my eye. “What are you thinking about?”

  “How much trouble we’re going to be in if your parents find out,” I say.

  You laugh, at first weakly, then it spreads to your belly and grows into something hyena-pitched and hysterical. Two large bald dudes are checking you out and I wish you would stop.

  “It’s not funny,” I hiss.

  You ignore me and twirl, looking up at the sky and talking about the stars, how they look like frosting, and you love doing Molly, because you feel things you can’t normally feel, and you wished I’d done it, too, because friendship is about sharing
, and we are new friends, and I don’t bother correcting you by reminding you that we are old friends.

  “If your parents find out we came to a rave, they could send me away,” I insist.

  You stop twirling and stagger for a moment, then swoop toward me, taking my face in your hands. Underneath, my cheeks flame. “Oh sweet, dumb Vivi. They’ll never let you get away.”

  We are framed in a car’s headlights, and you check the license plate to your phone. Satisfied, you climb in. To my surprise, a potbellied woman busting out of a Coachella T-shirt climbs into the front seat, and when I say, “Hey,” thinking she’s stealing our ride, you say, “Carpool,” and that explains it. The driver cranks the air conditioner aggressively, and my sweat is drying. I shiver. You collapse and draw your knees up, head in my lap, smiling up at me dreamily.

  “You have the most beautiful skin. Like melted coffee ice cream,” you say.

  The lady in the front seat sneaks a look and snickers. I look out the window, embarrassed.

  You sit up suddenly and twist toward the door, palm against the window.

  “I feel sick,” you whisper.

  “Pull over!” I scream. The driver’s eyes flash in the mirror and he swings to the curb. “Get her out!” he yells. You get out on the empty street and I slide out behind as you dry-heave into a bush. I hold your hair and stroke your back and remind you that you are dehydrated, and call to the driver, asking if he has water. He shakes his head disgustedly and gets out to check if you puked in the backseat. The car door alarm chirps, a shrill ding, ding, ding.

  “Are you okay?” I murmur, rubbing your back.

  You nod gratefully. “So much better.”

  The lady in the front seat yells to the driver, “Leave the hoes!”

  You straighten. “What did you say?”

  The lady hangs out of the passenger seat and pokes her taffy hair out the window. “I said, we should leave you, hoes!”

  You charge at her. I try to catch you, but you’re already on top of taffy hair in the front seat, pummeling her lumpy arms with your fists. The driver hops up and down and threatens to call the cops. You manage to drag the woman out of the passenger seat and hurl her to the ground.

  I grab your wallet off the seat and throw a ring of bills at the driver, crying, “You’ll drive when I say drive!” Only after I see his shocked face do I realize the bills are hundreds. I scramble back to the street and grab you, now kicking the woman in her ribs, by your waist and throw you in the car, still kicking.

  The driver screeches away from the woman.

  “You say she started it! That is why I left her!” he warns over the front seat, and I promise we will. I try to soothe you, but you’re glaring out the window, itching for more action.

  Finally, you turn to face me. Your look is too intense and I wish you’d speak.

  “I guess you crashed?” I say, trying to make light. Your dead seriousness scares me.

  “I call it my bloodlust. The sensation of hitting, pummeling, crushing. I crave it sometimes.”

  “How often is sometimes?”

  “Only when I witness something unfair.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re the same, you and me. I can tell. A natural-born killer,” you say and laugh darkly. You lie back down in my lap and become gentle again, and I love seeing you framed like this, hair all around, the heat of your head.

  “Only when there’s a right to wrong,” I kid.

  You waggle your finger at me. “See? We’re cut from the same cloth. I knew the first moment I saw you.”

  “When we were little?” I say.

  “Mmmm.” You seem to fall asleep. In the half-light, your face is damp and feverish. When I am sure you’re passed out, I blow lightly across your face. You smile with closed eyes.

  We wind down Memorial Drive and across the Mass Avenue bridge in the predawn glow. At a stoplight, I watch as a mother and her kid step out of a bus, so painfully early, the kid begging to be carried. The mother is young but life has worn her face. I imagine she is taking her daughter to a place where she’ll pay to have her babysat while she works for that same money. She carries a vacuum cleaner. The daughter’s starfish hands reach up, and the mother drops the vacuum and meets her daughter’s hands, swinging her side to side, mustering sweet, tired words.

  Inside me, the old rage puckers and releases. Biding its time.

  * * *

  You crave risk and you crave bloodlust. I crave protection and I crave you. Nine days have passed without you. The excuses range from rehearsals to weekends at friends’ vacation homes to tutoring sessions, and I am busy with Zack, too, but he leaves at two o’clock and then—that is, now—there is nothing. I am as underscheduled as you are overscheduled, and the Lovecrafts seem determined to find even more things to keep you busy. I am left alone for entire afternoons just like this, my saddest hours, though I am always happy to shed Zack. I have taken to wandering, watched by the plaster angels. Old habits are hard to break, and so far I have tallied about seventy thousand dollars of stuff worth stealing.

  Yet I will not steal, because that would be stupid, but also because Mrs. Lovecraft’s kindnesses have pried open the fist I’ve made of myself. She opens me up in other ways, too. Everywhere, I see mothers. In the growing belly of the housecleaner. In the waiting room at the dentist Mrs. Lovecraft takes me to. On the streets of Boston, pushing strollers that look like drones. Everywhere, mothers tending to daughters. I begin to remember. The sounds in the tiny house where I was born. Its shade of French’s mustard, what Momma called a happy color. Where the front door was always open to let God’s air-conditioning come in. Momma’s boyfriend then, a good man named Jackson who worked two jobs and drove a Chevy Impala and swung Momma around every time she walked in the door. Then later, the Impala and Momma’s old self gone, and the apartments in Jasper, Homestead, Blountstown, and the last one in Immokalee, as we worked our way closer to the casinos, where marks grew like kudzu.

  Mrs. Lovecraft and I talk a lot about how one little event can change the course of someone’s life, and it’s like she knows about Momma, and the person she was, and what our life was like before she met the Last One buying butts at the Timesaver. He told her he drove Everglades tours for an airboat company, but driving isn’t the same as casting the ladies’ lines and gutting their catches and keeping the beer on ice for tips. The Last One saw something in Momma, something actressy that liked to perform. More importantly, he saw a little seed of anger at the world for not treating her right, something he could grow. She saw something in him, too. He was a preacher and a teacher. He railed against the dangers of doing drugs, and as the dealer who didn’t use, she thought him a model of self-restraint, given her own weaknesses for anything that numbed her. As a teacher, he brought her game up to a whole new level. They’d pretend to be that local couple in the bar at the fancy Chart House, charming the tourists with lies about his time in the Coast Guard and wrestling gators. People would invite them to dinner, and they’d skip out on their share of the bill. That sort of thing. Pretty soon they got known in Belle Glade and we had to leave the happy house behind. Around the time we moved on, the Last One began to notice my potential. By the time I turned fourteen, I’d gone to five schools, answered to five different names, and driven a getaway car.

  Driving the getaway car was unplanned. Momma was the shill and we had no one else to drive. It was a short con gone bad: I don’t remember the details. Around the time we got to Immokalee, we’d done so many cons, flimflams, grifts and gaffs, they started to blur.

  What I do remember about Immokalee: tears. Bus tickets. A stash of money in the cookie tin. A packed suitcase under the bed. Momma getting ready to leave him.

  Your absence drives me to these sad thoughts. Wears me down, day after day.

  Mrs. Lovecraft doesn’t like to interrupt my tutoring sessions and never sticks around. Slade is unconscious. I wander into Mr. Lovecraft’s office and slide the pocket door closed behind me. A dark
drizzle blurs the windows and reduces the sidewalk people to their brightest colors. The restaurant is closed now, but I stare anyway, the way Mr. Lovecraft did that first night I came, wondering what he saw. Himself and herself, I imagine, having dinner, never suspecting someone would break in and disrespect the safety that comes with being rich, and take their daughter’s friend.

  For the first time, I wonder: Why not you? You had to be a tempting morsel for a baby twiddler, that dimpled chin and those pretty eyes. The Lovecrafts were lucky. Lucky people born to a world of near misses and fortunes. Looks. Power. Children so spectacular they scare their own parents.

  Mr. Lovecraft’s desk is very old and glossy and has lots of little cubbies. I sit in the leather chair and lean back, pretending to be a man of importance. I wonder what a man of importance earns each year.

  I slide open a drawer.

  A fat packet of glossy pages are held together with a black clip. I have stumbled upon Henry Lovecraft’s personal version of porn: a collection of stories featuring himself. There are Boston magazine articles and Yale Alumni Magazine articles and look, even a whole People magazine containing an interview he and Mrs. Lovecraft did after Vivi disappeared. They are not the cover story; a little box in the corner has a picture of me. I separate the packet into two neat piles and turn to the article. A warm flush fills my cheeks as I look at the Lovecrafts from seven years ago. They are smoother around the eyes and mouth, with larger pupils and lusher hair. His hand grips her shoulder and he stands behind her. Their eyes are guarded: they are under attack, and this is their chance to tell their side of the story.

  I slip the magazine back. I know this story already: it is mine. Underneath Henry’s porn is another fat packet, this time clippings of his only daughter’s achievements, including the profile I read in the library. I lift it out and glance through the stories, and that’s just what they are: stories. They have nothing in common with the Temple I am growing to know, the Temple who feels like a marionette on strings. The Temple who insists the perception of the golden child is not the reality. Only I know this Temple. This is the Temple you save for me. My lap grows warm, thinking of your head there, those grateful eyes, the vulnerability. I’m the best thing to come along to you in all of ever. I am your release valve, the friend who knows you from before, but not now. Who has no expectations of what you should be. You can be anything with me, Temple, and I will accept you and cherish you. Where others see an overachieving straight arrow I know a pervert with a thing for EDM, Molly, and freaky puppets. I specialize in damaged things and you don’t need to be fixed, you need your spiky parts arrayed like the deadly sun that you are. You can’t touch a sparkler, you have to hold it at arm’s length, let it blaze and appreciate its beauty.