Under My Skin

by Lisa Unger

  “No, I mean it,” she goes on, her voice deep and smoky. “And then when that other family moved out—what were their names? Who can remember? Still. It’s just all the old crazy people now, the ones they can’t get rid of. Like me!”

  Her raspy laugh makes me smile until it devolves into coughing. I wait, listen with mild alarm, as she walks away from the phone, then returns.

  “Merlinda? You okay?”

  “Fine,” she says finally. “Never mind about me. How are you, sweetie?”

  There’s that tone. From anyone else, it makes me cringe. It’s the posttragedy prying. The deep, meaningful looks, the heavy sad voices. The stare that tries to get underneath the facade you’re working very hard to present. But from Merlinda, I can handle it—because she’s so well-meaning, so purely good.

  “You know. Good days and bad.” I usually put a better face on, but with Merlinda I don’t bother. She sees all, the great Merlinda. We were more than neighbors; we were—are—friends.

  She draws a deep breath and releases it.

  “Yes,” she says. “I understand. Poppy, my dear, I dreamed about you last night.”

  More dreams. Just what I need. This one from the resident psychic-slash-fortune-teller-slash-hypnotist-slash-tarot-card-reader.

  “You were in a maze,” she says. “Walking and walking, trying to find a way out.”

  Sounds about right.

  Merlinda came to our New Year’s Eve party, the last one we had before Jack died. By popular request, she’d given tarot card readings. We turned the dining room lights down low, lit some candles. Holding court in a wild green-and-orange muumuu, her dyed red hair wrapped in a sequined scarf, Merlinda played her role to perfection—predicting love and success, peace and joyful surprises for everyone who sat with her at our dining room table. Even Alvaro, silent cynic, spent some time with her, deep in conversation.

  “What did she tell you?” Jack asked Alvaro when he finally broke away from her.

  “You know—” Alvaro said, after taking a deep swallow of the beer Jack handed him. “Fame, fortune, women falling at my feet. The woman’s got a gift.”

  He was talking to Jack but he had his eyes on me. Always. That guy was always looking at me in a way I didn’t quite understand, like I was a problem he just couldn’t solve.

  “What about you, Poppy?” Alvaro asked. “What’s your future?”

  His gaze, his question made me uncomfortable, but I smiled anyway.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “I’m up next.”

  Merlinda was waving for me to join her, and I did, slipping into the chair beside her at the table.

  “What do you want from the year ahead, pretty Poppy?” she asked. She put both her warm hands over mine. I looked at the ropy veins, her thin fingers heavy with gaudy rings, nails painted red. I longed for a camera to take that shot.

  “I have everything I want,” I told her. But it sounded false, insincere.

  “No one has everything they want,” she answered. Her energy, the sudden intensity of her jewel-green gaze, it wrapped around us until there was no one else in the room.

  “I want a baby.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and I was surprised and embarrassed to find myself tearing up. I gazed over at Jack, who was making drinks at the bar we’d set up. That had been the year of my two miscarriages. I’d tried to take them in stride the way everyone seemed to think I should. But those losses, they pulled at me, kept me up at night.

  Merlinda smiled kindly and squeezed my hands. She handed me a tissue and I wiped quickly at my eyes.

  “And I want Jack to be happy.”

  Again, I had no intention of saying that. I looked over at my husband again, who had his head tipped back laughing at something Alvaro was saying. Probably something dirty, or mean—which seemed to be most of what came out of Alvaro’s mouth. Jack never said so, but I wondered if, on some level, he envied his friend—his ever-growing success, his globe-trotting lifestyle, an endless string of beautiful women. Jack had settled down, by his own choice. Did he regret it? He’s a dick, Jack had said when I asked. Clueless. If I envied anyone, which I don’t, he’d be the last person.

  Merlinda kept her head bent for a few moments. Then she held the deck out for me, and I made three choices. She spread them out between us, then flipped the first well-worn card.

  The Lovers. An angel held blessing hands over two nude figures as glorious rays of sun shone down from above.

  “You and your husband are in love,” said Merlinda. “Well suited, complementing each other and with a deep respect for each other’s passions, dreams and desires. Don’t lose faith, there are children in your future.”

  I smiled at her, grateful. I knew Merlinda was a fraud, that she had no special psychic powers. But it was still nice to hear those words. Maybe just saying them, putting them out in the universe had a kind of power. Behind me, Layla’s voice broke, bright and exuberant, through the party noise, as Jack greeted her and Mac. They were late as usual, juggling myriad social obligations that night. It was almost midnight.

  Merlinda flipped the next card, but then Jack was tugging me away. And then Layla was pulling me into a hug. Happy New Year, girl. The countdown began—ten, nine, eight—

  “I love you, Poppy,” Jack whispered, as everyone shouted around us.

  He took me into the melting embrace that always made my knees weak, and when the clock struck midnight, I lost myself in his kiss. How could he have thought I’d be unfaithful to him? I loved him. So much. When I looked back at Merlinda, her gaze had gone grim and she had shuffled away the cards into the deck. Whatever my future was, I figured it was better off as a mystery.

  “I have some questions, Merlinda,” I say now. “About the days after Jack died.”

  “Of course you do,” she says. “And I have answers.”

  Her apartment buzzer rings, tinny and distant. “But I can’t talk now. Come tomorrow, as early as you can.”

  “Wait,” I say. What does she mean by that? That she has answers? It’s not at all what I expected her to say.

  “I’ll wait for you tomorrow.”

  And then she’s gone, the line dead. I stare at the phone in my hand, feeling the cold finger of dread press into my belly. I try her back, but my call goes straight to voice mail.

  It’s a moment before I realize that my own buzzer is ringing.

  “Noah Avidon here for you,” says the doorman when I finally answer.

  16

  I try to shake off the conversation with Merlinda, peer at myself in the bathroom mirror. Though I’ve made every effort to cover the circles under my eyes, I’m still looking pretty bad—gaunt, pale. Haunted, even. I’ve tied back my long black hair, am wearing the simple black sheath dress that is my go-to, a pair of black heels. It’s the best I can do. The phone is buzzing, vibrating on the sink below the mirror. Layla. She’s relentless.

  This is a bad idea. Please don’t do this.

  I made the mistake of telling her about my plans for the evening. I can never keep things from her. And she’s been texting me every quarter hour since. I ignore her.

  I’ve thought about my night with Noah—more than once. A wash of guilt; it’s disloyal, isn’t it? Even though Jack is gone, I’m still his wife, still in love with him. Jack’s mother never remarried. And even though my parents weren’t exactly happy, my mother never remarried after my dad died. There’s only one real love in your life, Mom said mysteriously. I had a feeling she wasn’t talking about my dad. Was that true? Was there only one? Had I already loved enough?

  The phone vibrates again with another text from Layla:

  Which one was Noah? Is he hot? I think you said he was hot. Do NOT sleep with him. You’re not in a good place right now.

  I finally text her back: Stop.

  I can practically feel her fumin
g.

  Fine. Do me a favor and don’t stagger into my lobby not remembering your own name.

  Seriously? That’s what she’s going to write?

  Wow. That’s a low blow.

  Sorry. I’m just worried about you.

  I stow the phone in my evening bag and give myself a final once-over.

  A knock on the door. I take a deep breath before opening it. Layla’s right; this is a bad idea. But there he is, hands dug into his pockets. He’s bigger than I remember, broad and tall. There’s a scent—fire and linseed oil. Moments from our date come back, how he held the door, how he listened intently when I talked.

  “Hey,” he says, leans in for a quick peck on the cheek. “You look—amazing.”

  I know he’s just being kind, as I’ve recently just come from the mirror, where a washed out, frazzled woman stared back at me.

  Still, my cheeks warm. “Thanks,” I say. “You, too.”

  Triple black—shirt, jeans, boots. He runs a hand through those silky curls and his hazel eyes rest on me. There’s something, a magnetic draw, between us. But instead of moving closer, we stand awkwardly in the doorway a moment until I step aside to let him in.

  “Nice place,” he says.

  He follows me to the kitchen island, his gaze lingering on the boxes. It’s one of those details I guess, that wall of boxes with my husband’s name written over and over. If he’s intuitive, it probably screams: Hasn’t let go. Can’t let go. Head for the hills, dude.

  “I didn’t have you pegged for a girl who wanted to go to clubs.” He takes a seat across the quartz countertop from me.

  “I’m not—usually.”

  “I feel like maybe there’s something else going on,” he says. “Want to talk about it?”

  I open the fridge and offer him a beer, which he accepts. He twists off the cap with his hand and I see how it’s burned and scarred from all the metalwork he does. Those sculptures, black and twisted, dragons, and ghouls, a phoenix, a man with a knife. He’s successful, his work displayed in galleries around the world. I know not because he told me but because I Googled him after our date.

  I am sticking with Perrier. No more mystery pills, no more booze. Time to get clean, get right.

  Noah gets the abridged version, a kind of hybrid truth that makes me sound slightly less crazy than I might be. He already knows about Jack and my breakdown from our first night together. I share with him some of my dreams, the suspicion that maybe they’re memories of my lost days. When I’m done, he’s quiet.

  Part of me expects him to get up and leave, because—really—who wants this kind of baggage? When he called, he was probably just looking for a repeat of our last evening—good sex, easy, no strings. But he stays, takes a swig of that beer.

  “This club,” he says, looking down at the bottle in his hand. “You’ve been there? Or you think you’ve been there? Or maybe you just dreamed about it.”

  I prepare myself to say goodbye. He rubs at the stubble on the hard ridge of his jaw.

  “And what do you hope to accomplish by going there?”

  “I thought maybe it would jog my memory,” I say. It sounds weak, every bit as unsound and illogical as it is.

  “Can I ask you something?” he says. He’s squinting, tentative.

  “Sure.”

  “Have you considered just letting him go?”

  It doesn’t sound condescending or judgmental the way it could. It’s more like the musing of someone who’s been there. Dr. Nash, Layla, my mother, they’ve all expressed a similar sentiment. The idea of it, that I can just release the life Jack and I shared and move into some new, unexpected phase, that I might just accept this new path, and once grief has passed, move on—it’s always just within reach. And yet.

  “I can’t,” I say. “Not until I understand what happened to him.”

  So, there it is. Maybe I do want closure, after all. Maybe it does matter who killed Jack, even if it doesn’t bring him back.

  He puts the bottle down on the bar and slowly nods, considering.

  “Fair enough.”

  Again, I expect him to get up, make excuses. But he stays rooted.

  “That night we were together,” he says. “I told you about my college girlfriend?”

  I nod. “She was killed by a drunk driver. I’m sorry.”

  “I became obsessed with the man who killed her. Who was he? What had he been doing that night? What kind of monster gets behind the wheel of a car drunk and kills a girl? Takes her from her family, from the kid who loved her and wanted to marry her? He didn’t just kill her—he killed my future, the future her parents imagined. The injustice of it shredded me.”

  He’s loose, though, not tense and angry with his words. I can see that he’s on the other side of it, a place so far away from where I am.

  “But you know what? He was just a man. A middle-aged guy who had a few too many at happy hour with some coworkers. His company was going under. He had two kids and was going through an ugly divorce. He was a struggling, unhappy guy who made a mistake one evening and ruined lives—his own included.”

  “I’m—sorry.” Because what else can you say?

  He lifts a hand, but looks away. The shadow of it darkens his face.

  “Because I was young, arrogant, couldn’t believe someone I loved, something I wanted had been snatched from me, that made it worse. The randomness of it was impossible to accept.”

  He leans toward me a little.

  “I held on for years, going to the trial, writing letters to the guy. I put Bella on this pedestal in my mind. She was the one, the only one. There would never be another love like the one we shared. But the truth was that we were just kids. We loved each other, sure. But would we have shared a life? I don’t know. I wasn’t the best boyfriend. I’d cheated on her, blew her off sometimes.”

  He looks down at his hands.

  “She wanted to be a doctor, had a long road ahead of her education-and career-wise. I was less directed, an art major prone to slacking off, not sure how or if I’d make a living with my art. We weren’t that well matched.”

  The words hung between us. Outside and far below a siren wails up the street low and distant. I try to envision her, a studious young girl in love with an artist, dreams of being a doctor, life ended tragically, suddenly, as she drove home to see her parents. It hurts, though I never knew her, the waste of it.

  “What you’re going through,” Noah says. He reaches across for my hand. His fingers are cold from the bottle, soothing on the heat of mine. “It’s not the same. I’m not trying to diminish it. Your husband was murdered. You were happily married, in love, probably getting ready to start a family. I’m just saying that even when you have all the answers, you still have to make the choice to let go.”

  “When did you let go?”

  He shakes his head. “I kind of hit rock bottom with it. Failed out of school, moved home with my parents. My dad came down on me, told me to get my act together. I wound up taking an apprenticeship with a local artist, got into the metalwork. It was that work, that discovery that saved me. I worked through my grief in the studio, forged a new path.”

  “But you never met anyone else. Never married.”

  “No, nothing serious. Nothing that lasted.”

  Then, “Metal. It’s solid. Nearly indestructible. Hot, you can bend it, mold it, hammer it. But cold, it takes its shape and you can’t change it. You can melt it down, but it will just take another shape. Everything else leaves, changes, disappears.”

  Jack’s already fading. That’s the hard part. The sound of Jack’s voice, the feel of his hands. What it was like to lie in his arms, to fight with him, to laugh with him. How annoying it was that he took forever in the shower, and could never decide what to order at restaurants. He was prone to mansplaining. It used to drive me nuts that he assumed a tota
l air of authority about everything. He hogged the blankets. He made the best omelets, brought me coffee in bed, could always find a solution to any problem large or small. The whole world disappeared when he kissed me. It’s all fading, rising like steam from the lake of my memories. If I am trying to hold on to him, to us, if that’s what I’m doing, I can’t.

  Noah comes around the bar and reaches for my face, wipes away a tear I didn’t even know was there. I try to turn away from him. I don’t like for people to see me cry, though everyone has now. But he holds on to me gently, a hand on my arm.

  “I am going to give you the thing I needed and didn’t have then,” he says.

  He touches my cheek to turn my gaze back to his. I rest my hand on his waist. When our eyes meet, there’s a jolt of electricity through me. He’s so close, I can feel his heat.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “A friend.”

  I smile at the word that can be so loaded between men and women, especially when they’re standing as close as we are, when the attraction is so strong. It would be easy to lose myself in him tonight, to take some pills and forget. The phone in my pocket buzzes and vibrates, manic.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “It means I’m going to help you find out what you can about your husband, about those lost days. If you want to go to this club, if you think it will help, I’m in.”

  He steps back, offers his hand, and I take it in mine. His gaze is warm, giving, and heat spreads through me.

  Then, when I look away, there he is. Jack. Sitting on the couch he would have hated. That hard, gray uncomfortable slab, so sleek and modern. A jolt of alarm sets my heart to pounding.

  I try not to stare; he’s bloodied and beaten. Face swollen and purple like the girl in the conference room. I didn’t identify Jack’s body. Mac took on the horror for me. I’ll never forget Mac’s face when he returned to me from the morgue, ashen and drawn, eyes glittering with pain.