Under My Skin

by Lisa Unger

  “You loved him once,” I say again. I saw it. It was real.

  “Did I?” she asks, musing, not really wanting an answer.

  She stays awhile longer, then has to get back for the kids. I walk her out to the car, where Carmelo leaps out to open the door. Poor guy. I’d forgotten all about him. I didn’t even make him a cup of tea.

  “Carmelo will come for you, day or night,” says Layla.

  “I will, Miss Poppy. Call me and I’ll be here.”

  I nod toward the Jeep, which sits powder blue and waiting for adventures it might not get.

  “Thanks but I have my own wheels,” I say.

  She seems about to make some quip, but finally she just nods and climbs into the car. As Carmelo pulls away, she opens the window and sticks her hand out in a wave. I watch the car disappear, wrapping my arms around the hole that’s opened my middle. I feel as if there’s something I should do for her that I haven’t done, something she needs that I haven’t been able to give. I think about calling her, telling her to come back. But in the end, I let her go.

  28

  The next day I head back into the city to purge my apartment. It’s time to finally, fully unpack those boxes, to sort through Jack’s belongings, and to release the things I want to let go. And maybe, maybe in my new, sober state, find parts of us I couldn’t see before. Or not.

  Maybe it’s time to accept that Jack was the victim of a random street crime, one that will, like so many crimes, remain unsolved. He was in the wrong place, the wrong time. Even though our story ends in an ugly, brutal way, it’s an ending I’ll have no choice but to accept.

  “I’ll come with you,” Noah offers.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Layla suggests over the phone. “You know I’m the purge and organize queen. The life-changing magic of getting rid of your shit and all of that.”

  But I don’t want to be the problem that one or the other of them needs to fix. I have a grip on my life for the first time in a while. I am detoxed, free from the chemical fog I’ve been in. That raw scrape of grief has eased; and I am reclaiming authority over my reality. This is a trip I want to make alone.

  It’s winter now, gray and cold. There’s snow on the ground, bowing the branches of the trees. In the driveway, Noah thumps his hand lovingly on the hood of Jack’s old Jeep. “This thing is a classic.”

  I love that he loves it, saw what Jack saw in it.

  Last week I told him that if I was to stay here, I wanted my own car. He took the train into the city and brought it back for me. I want to be behind the wheel from now on; I want to say where I go and how I get there.

  Noah stands, looking down at the ground, his hands buried deep in his pockets. I know he’s wrestling with his own demons, trying not to hold on to me too tightly.

  The energy between us is electric, but we keep our distance, dancing around each other. Layla’s right that I’m fragile and vulnerable now, in recovery from the things that have happened to me, the things I have done to myself. I haven’t completely let go of Jack, and big parts of me still belong to him. There are so many unanswered questions. It’s not fair to either of us to go too far.

  His touch sends energy up my arm. The sun is just over the tree line, the morning golden. He tugs me close, loops a strong arm around the small of my back. It would be easy to just stay, to sink into him.

  “Having you here—” His voice is a rasp as he lets the sentence trail.

  The air is frigid but all I feel is the heat between us. I never forgot that, the night we shared in his loft. How his skin felt on mine, his hunger, his restraint, his tenderness.

  Whatever he was, whatever mistakes he’s made in his life, he’s been a true friend to me. More.

  He whispers, his lips touching the skin on my neck. “Don’t forget me again, Poppy.”

  “I won’t,” I promise.

  I am at the wheel of my life now. I won’t lose my grip again.

  * * *

  Traffic into the city is heavy. The old Jeep rumbles, the heat cranking loud and rattling. People in their suits and shiny luxury cars look and smile. There’s something about a Jeep that makes people think of adventure, surf and sand, off-roading—a life like Jack’s before we met. Free from the restraints that our choices put on him—a business, a wife who wanted children, his camera packed away. I didn’t see it then. I believed we made choices together, but perhaps he made choices to please me and then regretted them. And I made choices to please him. Maybe that happens to all of us. We think we want one thing, and then we get it. We find ourselves on one path and wish we’d chosen the other.

  If Jack was having an affair, maybe that was why. Maybe it was an escape hatch for him, like my assignations have been for me after his death. It hurts to think he might have loved, or been with someone else. And it doesn’t track with what I thought I knew about my husband. Mac’s words ring back, though, over and over again. Maybe we only ever know pieces of each other. During my episode, I told Layla that he was having an affair, that it was the reason why he was killed. What led me to think that? What did that Poppy know, that I’ve forgotten? Who is Elena?

  * * *

  Parking the Jeep in a lot and walking the few blocks to my building, I realize it’s my first time on these streets sober. I’ve been taking pills since the day Jack was killed. In this new, clearheaded space, not dogged by the hooded man, the streets seem different, less manic, less full of shadow and menace. How much of what we know and see is colored by our mental state? All of it maybe.

  Inside, the apartment is quiet, that long hallway stretching out before me. I stand inside the door, but not for long. I’m here to do one thing, not leaving until it’s finished.

  I make a pot of coffee, put our music on shuffle and mercilessly dig in to those boxes. I don’t stop until everything is out on the floor, a giant mass of paper and clothes, books, leather portfolios, files, photos. Time to sort. His clothes to Goodwill; he’d have wanted that, to know that his things were helping someone else. His old files, bills, contracts in the shredder; our lawyer has all the important documents. Jack hated paperwork, considered it the worst thing about life—other than flossing.

  Ruthlessly, I bag everything else—old notebooks, prints of photos I know we have stored digitally. When I’m done there’s a small pile of things I want—his ring, our wedding album, the portfolio of some of his early prints, letters he wrote to me, a poem. It’s tiny, that stack of items. But it’s precious. The sight of his words on a page, his boyish script, fills me with love.

  I’ve put this off for so long, imagining that it would be unbearably painful. But even through the heaviness and sadness of the task, there’s a freeing sense of relief, the knowledge that I can keep what I loved about us, and let everything else go.

  After a couple of hours, everything repacked and sorted, I open my laptop for the first time in days. My email box is filled with hundreds of messages. Though I know Ben’s been staying on top of it in my absence, the mail still pops down from the server in a river of notes from clients, queries from photographers, potential assignments from editors, junk mail. My mailbox fills with a manic series of chimes, in a sluice of wants and needs, demands, requests. I skim through, reading and deleting, until I see one from Ben, sent just a couple of hours ago. The subject line reads RE: Who is this?

  Hey, Poppy,

  It took me a while but I used those ‘mad skills’ of mine to find this woman. I dropped Bill Simpson a line, forwarded him the image from his wedding that you sent me. They’ve been out of the country on assignment, and he finally got back to me. He says she’s a longtime friend and colleague of Claire’s: Elena Montoya. The unsettling news is that Elena Montoya has died since the wedding. Bill was vague, but I got the sense that her death was unexpected, that there was something mysterious about it.

  I haven’t had a chance to dig in to this yet. Do you want
me to look further into the circumstances of her death? Alvaro and Jack must have known her. Bill says they all went to Parsons at the same time.

  Ben

  Xoxo

  My hands are shaking as I scroll down to see what image he means. For a moment, I have absolutely no idea what this email is about. I see it then—the picture that Alvaro shared with me in his gallery, the one where Jack and I danced, happy and laughing, the strange woman staring on the edge of the frame.

  I don’t remember sending an email to Ben. However, I follow the chain and see the message that is obviously from me. The image attached to the email is a picture I must have taken with my phone. I can see my thumb holding the photograph, the back of the cabdriver’s head obscured by the thick plastic divider. I’ve marked it up, drawn a red circle around the girl. I wrote: Ben, can you find out who this is?

  I quickly type the name into my browser, scroll through listings—her website, some articles crediting her photographs, until I find a news article. I’ve seen it before, in my dream—or was it a memory?

  It comes back like a slap, that night, Jack on the couch, reading in the wee hours of the morning.

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “Someone I used to know.”

  “Someone you used to know? What does that mean?”

  “A friend from college. I’ve mentioned her, haven’t I? We had classes together. I see her from time to time on assignment. I’ve thrown work her way and vice versa.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. We both have a long list of friends and contacts, aren’t in the habit of keeping tabs on each other. Maybe her name sounded familiar.

  “What happened to her?”

  I read the article now:

  Elena Montoya, a photojournalist living in Manhattan, was murdered in her East Village apartment. In an apparent home invasion robbery, Montoya was beaten to death by her assailant, tens of thousands of dollars of photo equipment was stolen and never recovered. Her killer is still at large.

  Elena Montoya, the girl on Jack’s computer screen, late at night. The girl, beaten and bloodied, in the conference room. The name on the matchbook. A girl standing on the edge of the dance floor, watching us.

  Another memory comes then, whisking me into the past.

  The matchbook, the one that wove its way into my dream hallucinations. Jack had tossed it carelessly with his wallet and keys on the kitchen counter one night.

  “What a cliché!” I said, picking up the red Morpheus matchbook the next morning, reading the scrawl inside. “Picking up women in bars, now?”

  “Huh?”

  He’d had a late night out with Alvaro and Mac, was groggy at the kitchen table over coffee, cranky about an upcoming meeting with a client who he couldn’t stand but who brought a lot of money into the firm. He had a contract open in front of him, glasses on.

  He looked up at me, glanced at the matchbook in my hand.

  “Honey,” he said, raising his eyebrows, faux smarmy. “I can’t help it if all the ladies want me. You know. I just got that special kind of magic.”

  “True,” I concede, tossing the matchbook down on the table. He picks it up, peers at it through his glasses. A slight frown wrinkles his brow, eyes to me, then back to the computer.

  “That’s not mine.”

  “Really.”

  “That’s—uh—Alvaro’s pickup,” he says. “Seriously.”

  “Then what are you doing with the matches?” The funny thing was, that name on the matchbook—whatever it was—wasn’t what worried me at all. Despite what I said to Layla, I don’t recall ever once questioning Jack’s fidelity in all our years together.

  He offered me a sheepish grin. I smelled the smoke on him when he came to bed. Cigarettes.

  “Seriously?” I said, disappointed. “You haven’t smoked in a year.”

  The late nights, the drinking, the smoking—all of it only happened when Alvaro was in town. Even Layla complained about their nights out, what a bear Mac was the next day. Our husbands were straight arrows—until Alvaro was around. Then they were teenagers again, out too late, drinking too much for men their age. It was pathetic really. Meanwhile, Jack and I had just started trying for a baby. We needed to be healthy. But I didn’t say anything else. He was a grown man after all. And I wasn’t his mother.

  It was only after he left that I noticed that the matchbook had disappeared with his wallet, keys and phone.

  I briefly wondered, just for a second: An affair? All the usual signs were there. Late-night phone calls. Excuses to run out for a while in the evenings. A diminished interest in lovemaking, though we still had a pretty robust sex life. I thought it was just the scheduled nature of our “dates.” He was never an on-demand kind of guy. We didn’t keep tabs on each other, always allowed each other freedom of movement. No. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t doubt his love for me. He was a wild man, but I always believed he was faithful and good.

  Who is she really, Jack? I wonder now. A young woman, a photojournalist, beaten to death. She knew us. She stood on the periphery of our life and watched us dance. Was she something more to him than he said that night?

  I pick up the phone and call Detective Grayson.

  “Funny you called,” he answers. “I was just about to ring you.”

  “I need to talk,” I say. “Can we get together?”

  “Where are you? Some strange nightclub? An alley? At the isolated home of your stalker?”

  I find myself smiling a little. I still wish I never had occasion to have met Detective Grayson. But I like him just the same. We have a history now. Not a pretty one. But a history nonetheless.

  “Home,” I say. It doesn’t sound right. “In my apartment in Chelsea.”

  There’s silence on the other end and I think he’s hung up, heading my way. Then, “You sound different.”

  “Do I?”

  “Stronger,” he says. “I don’t know—clearer.”

  “Working on that.”

  “Good for you,” he says. “Stay put. I’m on my way.”

  When we end the call, I survey the apartment and find that it is free from ghosts—Jack and Elena, both dead, both murdered, are nowhere to be seen. There’s no disconnect from reality, no fog or wobble. Without the pills, there’s no confusion between my dreams and my reality. I just have to wonder—how bad is my reality about to get?

  29

  While I wait for Detective Grayson, my phone pings as a text comes in from Noah.

  How’s it going?

  I might be getting somewhere.

  There’s no reason to tell him about the article yet, the memories that have returned. I am just staying quiet with it, letting the information move through me. Her name, those memories, the story of her murder, what else will it trigger? What else will I remember?

  Did you find the bag?

  Even though we didn’t discuss it before I left on this errand, we both know I was at least partially looking for that pink backpack. It’s been something we’ve wondered about. I can’t let go of the idea that there’s something in there that I need. That it’s real, not a figment of my previously addled imagination. My hope was that maybe it was buried in those boxes, or hidden somewhere in the apartment. But I’ve been through everything now and it’s not here. Does it even exist?

  No. I didn’t. It’s not here.

  There’s a pause. I almost put the phone down. Then:

  Come home.

  My body floods with warmth. That house, that land, Noah. It already feels like home.

  Soon.

  * * *

  When he arrives, Detective Grayson and I regard each other for a moment. Even he seems different somehow—solid, soothing. We’re on the same side. I suppose we always have been.

  “The last time we got together here you told me to be low risk.”<
br />
  “I also told you to stay away from Noah Avidon,” he says. He glances at the row of boxes and bags. “But I guess we’re on a program where I ask you to do one thing, and you do the opposite.”

  I offer him coffee but he waves me off. “I’m overcaffeinated as it is. Thanks.”

  We move into the kitchen, and he takes his usual seat on the barstool.

  “You’re lucky your other boyfriend isn’t pressing charges,” he says.

  Noah punched Rick from finance in the face the night he brought me back to his house. I remember the blood, the way Rick wailed in pain. Serves him right; no wonder he’s not pressing charges. What was he planning to do to me?

  “Neither of them is my boyfriend.” What a stupid word, anyway, so infantilizing. “Meanwhile, Noah saved me that night. What was that you said about predators? That they look for the vulnerable and give them what they want.”

  “I was talking about Avidon.”

  “Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been there?”

  “Like I said.” He does that exhausted temple rubbing thing he does so often in my company. “High-risk behavior. Avoid it.”

  I pour us each a glass of water. I’ve had a little too much coffee myself.

  He glances around the room. “Moving out?”

  I shrug. “Just getting rid of things I don’t need anymore. Letting Jack go a little.”

  I tell him everything I’ve learned about Elena Montoya, what I remember from my dream memory, the morning I found the matchbook. I turn my laptop over to him so that he can see my email, the articles I bookmarked. Part of me expects him to be dismissive, to say he already knows all of this and it doesn’t mean anything. But he’s quiet, scrolling through the items on my computer.

  “When was this?”

  “The day I found the matchbook must have been nearly a year before he died. We had just started trying to have a baby. It was before the miscarriages.”