Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  “We would very much appreciate it.”

  “Thank you,” Diane told her resolutely. “Min will be down there in due course.” She reached up and hung up the call just as the Constable was saying something else.

  I stared at the phone, gaping, as Diane turned away from it. I couldn’t focus on anything other than what I’d just heard. If they wanted to speak to me in person that was bad, right? Didn't they have to deliver the news of someone's death in person? That seemed ridiculous, though. I wasn't Bree's next of kin. Why would they call me if something happened to her?

  “I believe we were about to discuss the fact you were in Sean's office when the Vladivostok pitch was cancelled,” Diane prompted me. I looked from the phone to her, distracted.

  Jason butted in with, “And the fact that when I told you to stay put, you went straight to his office.” Diane didn't look like she welcomed his input, but she didn't say anything about it.

  I didn't know how to answer. I could hardly think. Everything was just nuts and I was shaking. All these different scenarios were racing through my head: Bree had had an accident and asked for me, maybe Bree's brother had done something and they wanted to know what I knew about him? After all, Bree did say something about jail, didn't she? Wouldn't crimes generally involve the police? Or maybe she'd done something crazy and been arrested and she needed someone to post bail for her and her family couldn't afford that? And while I was grappling with a million questions about Bree, I was completely aware of Diane staring through me, wanting me to answer her question about Sean and the lost pitch.

  I didn't have the answers, not to any of it. Everything was completely over my head, and I forced it out of my dry lips. “I don't know.”

  Jason looked like he didn't believe me, but Diane was more difficult to read. She just sat there in her high-backed office chair, watching me closely. I didn't think she believed me, either, but after a good few seconds she gave up. She leant back in her chair and crossed her legs. “Go on,” she told me shortly. “Obviously you think whatever they want is serious. Jason and I need to have a word about what's happened anyway.” The way she looked at him, I think he might have been sweating as much as I was. He then turned that same severe glare on me as I left.

  I should have been more worried about that, but right now, all I could manage was a mumble of thanks as I rushed out.

  Sarah had been loitering around the corner, and as I jogged past she caught up with me. “Oh my god, Min, are you okay?” she asked as we headed for the lifts. “What happened? And why are we practically running?”

  I could barely say it. I could hardly believe it, really, but I needed to tell the team as soon as possible. “Vladivostok cancelled the pitch.”

  She looked at me like she thought she might have misheard me. “What?” she said, probably much more loudly than she'd intended. “Why? We were solid with them!”

  We got to the lifts and I pummelled the button, shaking my head. “I don't know why,” I said honestly. “Except Diane and Jason seem to think it has something to do with the fact I was in Sean's office ten minutes ago, but obviously it doesn't, and now the police have called—something to do with Bree—and I have to go meet them.”

  The lift dinged and the doors opened. Sarah just kind of stared at me. “All this happened now? Like in the last five minutes?”

  I nodded and as I stepped into the lift, I made a face. “I know this is a big ask, but could you tell the team about Vladivostok for me?” I was cringing even as I said it.

  Her brow had a deep line through it. “Yeah,” she said a bit vaguely.

  The doors slid closed on her gaping at me.

  It normally took me about 15 minutes to get home, door to door, but I swear to god right then it took me five minutes to get to the corner of Essex and Harrington. When I turned down the side roads there were three police cars all pulled up along the curb of Harrington Street with their lights flashing. I had absolutely no idea what was going on until I saw a familiar man in a suit arguing loudly with two policemen. It was that guy who'd nearly followed me into Frost, and behind him was the car I'd last seen crawling down George Street. It looked different now, though: the windscreen was smashed and the side of it was covered in dents. Its hazard lights were going, and on the road all around it there were little cubes of safety glass everywhere.

  “Excuse me, are you Min Lee?” a woman's voice asked me.

  I turned towards it. “Yeah?”

  It belonged to a short woman in a fitted police uniform. She was fully kitted out: gun, baton, high visibility vest and walkie-talkie on her shoulder. She was also holding a notepad in her hand. “I'm Constable Garrett,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt your meeting, I hope it's not too much of a hassle.”

  I shook my head. I was very out of breath. “It's okay,” I said. “Where is she? Is she here? Is she okay?” I surveyed the area around us, looking for curls.

  The officer made a gesture for me to follow her, and started walking towards the hairdresser's on the corner. “That's what I wanted to discuss with you. We actually need her to come down to the station and make a statement about what just happened.”

  We passed the Fischer Mercantile car with the dents in it. “Did she do that?” I asked. They were big dents.

  Constable Garrett cringed. “Allegedly,” she said. “And that's what we need her to make a statement about.” She stopped on the footpath. “Look, normal process is just to forcibly arrest people who refuse or resist. But she's not doing that well, and probably it would be better for her mental health if you could convince her to come of her own accord. We have a duty of care to make sure she has support if she needs it.”

  Arrest her? Not doing that well...? “I'm not her next of kin,” I told the officer, in case it was relevant.

  She shrugged. “We asked her if there was someone we could call for her, and she said you.” She was looking pointedly over my shoulder, and I turned to see what was there.

  The street had a pretty steep incline, and flights of stairs were spaced along the length of the footpath. Beside them were garden beds that hid them from the road. A police officer was standing a short distance from them, and at first I thought he wasn't doing anything. I was wrong, though, because he kept looking over his shoulder at the stairs beside the hairdresser. In the shadow of a garden bed, I could see Bree on the stairs. She was all curled up in that same foetal position I'd left her in on the train, with her arms around her knees and her head resting on them. There was gravel and dirt all over her.

  My heart practically stopped and I completely forgot about the officer. “Bree!” I shouted, and ran across the road towards her. I was lucky there was no traffic.

  When she heard my voice, she looked up, surprised. From the state of her, it looked like she’d been crying all weekend. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was bright pink, and she just looked so lost. I wanted to give her a big hug, but the last time I'd done that she'd pushed me off. So I just stood in front of her at the bottom of the stairs, unsure about what I should do.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice croaky.

  What am I... “Bree, you asked for me,” I said, confused.

  “I know,” she said and just stared at me, stunned and still breathing a bit raggedly. She'd stopped crying, though.

  I was so taken aback that I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. Didn't she want me here?

  Constable Garrett came up behind me. “Worked like a charm,” she said, giving both of us a smile. Then she looked at Bree. “You want to come down to the station now that you seem to be feeling better?”

  Bree looked from me to the officer, and then pulled herself up and walked past me, following her into the patrol car. I watched them, wondering what the fuck I was doing here if Bree was just going to ignore me, and then followed them into the car anyway.

  When I stooped to climb inside, Bree had already barricaded herself all the way across the back seat against the other door, and was
gazing out of the window. After I'd buckled myself in, I spent a while worrying about the fact she was too angry to even look at me. When I heard her sniff, though, I realised why she'd turned away: she was trying to hide the fact she'd started to cry again.

  What’s happened, Bree? I asked silently, watching her. What did you do that ended with us both being in a police car?

  It would have been insensitive for me to ask her what was going on while she was so upset, and the two police officers in the front of the car were obviously preoccupied. The hiss and static of the comms radio kept cutting in and out as we drove; I couldn't really understand what anyone was saying through it, but Constable Garrett and her colleague were in serious discussion about it for most of the way.

  The back seat was quiet. Bree didn't say anything to me, and the more silent she was, the more I wanted to ask her why she’d told them to call me. She wasn’t making any attempt to talk to me, or ask for comfort, or anything. I wondered if maybe this 'duty of care' or whatever the officer had said they were bound by forced them to contact someone, and Bree didn't want her family to know she was in trouble.

  Well, regardless of whether she wanted me to be here or not, it was still painful listening to her crying. I would have apologised about Friday if the police weren't able to hear everything we said, and I would have hugged her if she didn't look so much like she wished none of us were there.

  The police car came to a stop and the officer who was driving twisted in his seat. “Here we are,” he said to Bree. “Just follow Garrett inside, she'll sort you out.”

  We bundled out of the car and into the station; it was on the south side of the city, and it was nerve-wracking how close we were to all the Korean shops on Sussex Street. Not that I'd had anything to do with the Korean community in Sydney other than Henry's family, but Mum always seemed to know people who knew people, and if I'd had my phone with me I'd have expected to get a call from her along the lines of, 'What are you doing at the police station with a little white girl when you should be at work!'. I really don't know, Mum, I thought, looking down at Bree as we followed Constable Garrett inside.

  Constable Garrett took Bree behind the counter straight away, and as she was ushering her into an interview room and promising her everything would be over soon, Bree gave me this frown and then the door closed.

  She definitely doesn't want me here, I thought, and then felt a surge of emotion about that. I’d rushed out of a critical meeting because I thought something had happened to Bree and I was so, so worried about her, and she didn't even want me here.

  I turned towards the empty waiting room; everything was turning to shit. Work, at least, I could probably still do something about. I should call Jason and let him know what was going on, I decided, looking around to see if there was a phone anywhere. The only phone I could see was behind the desk and I didn't have the guts to ask the policeman doing reception duty if I could use it. Part of me was thankful it looked so inaccessible anyway, because I really didn't want to speak to Jason right now.

  I sat down in one of the chairs. I was in two minds about whether or not I should have left the meeting for Bree at all; on one hand, it was good to see she was alright, even if she was upset and didn't want to talk to me. At least I knew nothing had happened to her. But on the other hand, now Diane and Jason had yet another reason to think I was a screw-up.

  Secretly I think I was relieved, though. If I was honest with myself, I was getting extra time to try and make some sort of sense out of what Diane was accusing me of. Sabotage, I thought, remembering her drawing a connection between me being in Sean's office and the Vladivostok pitch being cancelled. Surely all my hard work made it obvious that that suggestion was outrageous, right? And conspiring with Sean? Why would I want to ruin my marketing career by going behind Jason and Diane's back? And why did Diane have one set of rules for Jason, and another set for me?

  None of it made sense. Nothing made sense. And now I was sitting in a police station while Bree was being hauled up for some mystery crime.

  I’d grabbed one of the old magazines from a table nearby so I could flick through it and distract myself, when an officer came through the internal door and leant across reception. “Hey, any interview rooms free?” he asked his colleague. “I need to make a phone call.”

  The guy on reception was in the middle of typing something and pushed a thick exercise book at him. “Check for yourself, mate, I'm not your secretary,” he said gruffly, but he was grinning. They were speaking so openly they probably thought I couldn't hear them from all the way over here.

  The other officer did check, flipping through the pages and reading the contents. “Whoa, we’ve got Fischer in here again?” he asked, holding the book open so he could read the entry. “What’s he done this time?”

  The policeman on duty shook his head. “Nah, not him, some kid got sick of his crap and threw a flower pot at his car, we’ve got her in room three.”

  “Fair dinkum,” the other guy said, and then borrowed a pen to scribble in the book. “Well, I guess he'd better learn that if he ignores the debt collection guidelines, he's going to have people ignoring all sorts of laws in return, yeah?” He laughed. “And room 11 is free. Thanks.”

  That suited guy was a debt collector? Well, that fit right in with my guess that Bree's family had money problems. I would probably have asked more about this Fischer person, but I had a feeling I wasn’t supposed to have heard that conversation and I didn’t actually think they’d tell me any more about it.

  Bree threw a flower pot at his car, though? It explained the dents in it, but I agreed with the assessment that officer had made: Bree didn't look big enough to have caused them.

  “Thanks, Briana,” I heard a voice say as Constable Garrett walked through the dividing door, holding it open. Bree emerged, walking out past her into the middle of the waiting room where she stood uncomfortably, refusing to look at me. Constable Garrett noticed, but I think she assumed it was over the flower pot incident. “We're all done here. Nothing to worry about, we're not going to charge her,” she told me. “I'll sort you out to get home.”

  The constable organised for one of the units on patrol to ferry us back up there since they were headed up to the Quay anyway, and we got into the back of the car, sitting in silence as we were driven.

  Bree was still silent. I watched her as she stared miserably out the window at the pedestrians on George Street, desperate to take her hand or say something comforting to her.

  The police dropped us off outside my building in the valet circle. Bree waited besides me as they drove off, hunched with her arms crossed. She was still wearing those dirt-stained clothes.

  “You want to come up and change?” I asked her quietly, and she nodded. That was a relief at least. I got a spare keycard coded by reception and led her upstairs.

  Once we were inside my apartment she just kind of stood in the hallway.

  “Your clean clothes are in the hamper in my bathroom,” I told her, because I didn't know what else to say. “You can have a shower if you want, your towel's still on the rack.”

  She exhaled, and then turned and looked at me with a really forlorn expression on her face. “I can't believe you're even talking to me after Friday.”

  That felt like a kick in the gut. I deserved it. “I know, I know I don't have any right to,” I said. “I just... well. You needed help, so...” I swallowed. “You can leave, if you want.”

  Her face cycled through a series of emotions: surprise, panic and finally horror. Then, it crumpled up again. “I fuck everything up,” was all she said, blinking back fresh tears. With that, she took off and shut herself in the bathroom. I could hear her crying over the sound of the water.

  Join the club, Bree, I thought, walking into my bedroom. I'd run out of energy to try and guess what was going on for her. I was exhausted.

  I glanced at the clock; it was nearly lunch time. The responsible thing to do would be to go back to work now the police st
uff was over, but, then again, Bree was sobbing in my bathroom. It would probably be more irresponsible to leave her while she was feeling like this—regardless of how much she didn't even want me to talk to her—than it would be to take the rest of the day as sick leave. With the Vladivostok pitch cancelled there wasn't anything urgent that needed to be done. I mean, I should have been there to debrief the team after a failed pitch, but... fuck, they probably all thought I was hopeless, anyway.

  The more I stared at my reflection, the more I decided that with all the shit going on, I didn't have enough energy to look like this. Fuck it, I thought. I'll take the rest of the day off. I changed into my guy clothes and washed my makeup off in the kitchen sink.

  Then, because Bree had turned the shower off, I went and sat on my bed and waited for her to come out. I didn't know what was going to happen when she did, she might just have wanted to go straight home, anyway. She'd stopped crying; that was good, at least.

  She didn't come out, though. Five minutes went by, ten minutes.... and she was still in there, silent. It was unnerving.

  I stood up and went and knocked lightly on the door. “Bree?” I asked through it. “Are you okay?”

  Silence.

  I knocked again; maybe she had a towel on her head or something. “Bree?” When she didn't answer, I went to open the door just a fraction so I could talk through the gap. The door wouldn't open, though; she'd latched it shut. I rattled it. “Bree?”

  Putting my ear against the wood, I listened. The bathroom usually had really loud acoustics, but I couldn't even hear her breathing. I had this awful vision for a second of discovering Bree in the bath like that scene in The Virgin Suicides, but when I rattled the door again, I heard her sigh.

  “Why did you even come today?” she asked me in this little voice; it came from just below me. She was seated against the door.

  I sighed with relief that she was still alive enough to resent me. “Because I was worried about you,” I told her. “Especially after Friday.”