The Collection

by Bentley Little

  I looked away. The pose wasn't that intimate or that graphic. All I could see were her overdeveloped breasts and the thick triangle of dark brown pubic hair between her legs. But I did not like looking at my friend's girlfriend naked. It seemed obscene somehow, my viewing of the photo an in­vasion of their privacy.

  Matt was still trying to pull the lug wrench out of the stone.

  I debated with myself whether I should tell him. On the one hand, he was my friend, my best friend, and I didn't want to see him hurt. On the other hand, this was something he should know about, something he would want to know about, no matter how unpleasant it was, and if I were really his friend I would tell him. I cleared my throat. "Matt?" "What?" He did not even bother to look up. "There's something here you gotta see." "What is it?"

  I took a deep breath. "Julie."

  He stopped yanking on the tire iron and jumped off the stone. All the color had drained out of his face. "What are you ... ? You're not serious." I pointed at the photo.

  He stared at the picture, then looked at the surrounding snapshots. He took a deep breath, then reached out and grabbed the photo of Julie, ripping it off the wall. Beneath her photo was another, older picture of a nude girl with a 1960s beehive hairdo.

  "Fuck," he said quietly. He began tearing Julie's photo into tiny pieces, letting the pieces fall onto the dirt. There were tears in his eyes. "Fuck," he repeated.

  I knew what he was feeling, but I tried to smooth it over. "Maybe she-"

  He turned on me. "Maybe she what? How can you ex­plain this, huh? What possible rational explanation could there be?"

  I shook my head. There was nothing I could say.

  A tear rolled down his cheek. "Fuck," he said, and the word caught in his throat.

  I felt even worse now. I'd never seen Matt cry before, and somehow the sight of that was more disturbing, more intru­sive, than having seen Julie naked. I felt as though I should reassure him, touch his shoulder, clap a hand on his back ... something. But I had never done that before and did not know how to go about it, so I stepped out of the shed, leav­ing him alone with his pain. If I couldn't give him comfort, I could at least give him privacy.

  I thought about Stephanie, and for the first time since we'd started going together, I was glad that she was a hard­core Christian. Her straitlaced morality had frustrated and ir­ritated me in the past, and more than once we had almost broken up because of her unbudging commitment to virgin­ity, but for once I was glad that she did not believe in pre­marital sex. I might not be getting any, I might be forced to relieve my sexual tension through masturbation, but at least I knew that Steph's picture was not on that wall.

  Why was Julie's?

  I had no idea. Maybe an ex-boyfriend had posted it there. Maybe-

  "It's right through here!"

  I jerked my head toward the bushes.

  "God, I've been waiting for this since I was ten!"

  Two voices, female, coming this way.

  There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hurried back into the little building. "Matt!" I hissed. "Someone's coming!"

  "What?"

  "Two women are coming this way."

  He grabbed the shovels from the center of the room and smiled. There was something in that smile that put me on edge. "You mean we're going to catch them in the act?"

  I waved him into silence. "We've got to hide!" I whis­pered.

  "Why?"

  I didn't know, but I felt it, sensed it, was certain of it. I glanced quickly around the room. In the far corner was a small stack of boxes and packing crates.

  "Come on!" I whispered. I led the way over to the boxes, climbed into one, and was grateful to see Matt follow suit.

  The voices were close now, just outside the door.

  "Do you have your picture?"

  "Of course."

  We ducked.

  I heard them enter the shed. Their voices were silent now, I but their shuffling feet were loud. It sounded like there were a lot more than two of them.

  I peeked over the rim of the box, my curiosity getting the better of me. There were more than two of them. The num­ber was closer to fifteen or twenty. There were the two girls I'd heard talking, both of whom were around sixteen or seventeen, and a bunch of other girls in their late teens. They were accompanied by four or five women in their mid-thirties.

  I quickly ducked back down before anyone spotted me.

  There were whisperings and shuffling noises, and a few nervous coughs and throat-clearings. One of the middle-aged women spoke up. "You know what to do?"

  "My mother explained everything to me," one of the teenagers replied.

  "You are a virgin?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. When you are through, you may place your photo next to that of your mother."

  Her mother?

  Jesus.

  The room grew quiet. Too quiet. I could hear Mart's deep breathing in the box next to mine, and my own breathing sounded impossibly amplified. I was terrified that we would be found out, though I could not say why the prospect of dis­covery frightened me so badly.

  There was the sound of a belt being unfastened, the sound of a zipper. Something dropped onto the dirt, some­thing soft, and it was followed by a low rustling noise. Someone walked into the middle of the shed.

  Then there was silence again.

  All of a sudden I heard a sharp gasp. A small moan of pain and an exhalation of air. Another gasp.

  I had to know what was going on. Once again, I hazarded a peek over the rim of my box.

  And immediately crouched back down.

  One of the young girls, the prettiest one, was lowering herself onto the tire iron. She was squatting over the stone, completely naked, the rounded end of the lug wrench al­ready inside her. Her face was contorted, physical pain co­existing with what looked like an underlying spiritual rapture.

  The other girls and women were crouched on the ground before her, in a similar squatting position, intently watching her every move.

  What the hell was going on here? I stared at the faded brown cardboard of my box, breathing deeply. Were these women part of a fanatic James Dean fan club or was this some sort of bizarre cult?

  And what about Julie?

  The girl gasped loudly, then moaned.

  It was not a moan of pain.

  The moans intensified, coming loudly and freely, the girl's breath audible in short heavy pants.

  I thought of the photos on the walls, the thousands of photos. Had all of those women done this? They must have.

  The girl had said that her mother told her what to do. How had the rest of them found out about it? From their mothers?

  How many women knew about this shack?

  All of the women in Southern California?

  Goose bumps rose on my arms and neck. This was wrong, this was unnatural, and though I should have been aroused, I was frightened. I did not understand what was happening, and I did not want to understand.

  Julie.

  I found myself thinking of those secret societies of old, of horror movies and novels about the eternal mysteries of women and the secrets they could never share with men. I recalled-

  Stephanie

  -how, invariably, the men who did attempt to penetrate those mysteries were killed.

  If Julie knows, Stephanie knows. They're best friends.

  The thought burst into my consciousness. I had been as­suming that Stephanie was not involved in all this, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was. Maybe her picture was here, too, somewhere. Or maybe her mother's was. Both she and her mother had been born in Los Angeles.

  But she was religious. She was a Christian. And a virgin.

  The girl on the stone had been a virgin, too. Apparently, it was a requirement.

  Julie had probably been a virgin when she'd come here.

  I crouched lower in the box.

  On the stone, the girl gasped her last. I heard her jump onto the ground, and then the shed
was filled with the sounds of talking and laughing as the girl was congratulated.

  "How do you feel?"

  "I'll never forget when it happened to me. Greatest mo­ment of my life."

  "Wasn't it wonderful?" "Could you feel His presence?"

  The girl signed her photo with great fanfare and hung it somewhere on one of the walls.

  Finally, after another twenty minutes or so, everyone left.

  I stayed crouched in the box for another five minutes, just to be on the safe side, then slowly, painfully, stood. I reached over and hit Matt's box. "Come on," I said. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

  I glanced over at the tire iron. Even in the diffused light of the shed, it glistened wetly.

  I wondered where the girl had put her picture. Matt stepped silently out of his box. Carrying his shov­els, he walked out the door. I stood for a moment alone, glancing around the room at the overlapping layers of pho­tos. Was Stephanie's here somewhere?

  Had she fucked James Dean's lug wrench? The chill returned, and I was suddenly acutely conscious of being alone in the small building. I hurried outside.

  We walked back to the car in silence. I opened the trunk when we reached the parking lot, and Matt threw the shov­els inside. We did not speak on the drive home.

  I saw Steph the next day, and debated whether or not to ask her about the shed. The question of whether or not she knew of the place was torturing me; my mind had conjured up all sorts of perverse and gruesome scenes. But in the end, I said nothing. I decided I didn't really want to know. A week later, I found the nude Polaroid in her dresser drawer.

  She was in the bathroom, getting ready for our date, and I, as usual, was snooping. The photo was lying on top of a pile of panties, and I gingerly picked it up. I had never seen her completely naked, although only a few days before I had finally managed to get her top off in the backseat of my car, and I examined the picture carefully. She was seated, her legs in front of her, knees up, and the pink lips of her vagina were clearly visible.

  She was shaved.

  I heard the door to the bathroom open, and for a brief sec­ond, I considered confronting her with the photo. Who had taken it? Had she taken it herself with a self-timing camera? Had some guy taken it? Had some girl taken it? But, almost instinctively, I threw it back on top of her panties and hur­ried over to her bed, where I quickly grabbed a magazine and leaned back, pretending to read.

  The door opened, and I looked up.

  The dresser drawer was still open.

  I'd forgotten to close it.

  Steph noticed immediately. She looked at the drawer and looked at me, but I smiled, feigned innocence, pretended not to see, and she smiled back and surreptitiously closed the drawer.

  She walked across the room and sat next to me on the bed. "I forgot to tell you," she said. "I'm going to have to cancel out on next Saturday."

  "Why?"

  "Something came up."

  I threw aside the magazine. "But we've been planning to go to Disneyland for months."

  She put an arm around me. "I know, but my mom and a few of her friends are having, like, a picnic, and I have to

  go."

  My mouth was suddenly dry. I tried to lick my lips. "Where?"

  "Griffith Park."

  "Can I go?"

  She shook her head. "I'm afraid not. It's only for us girls

  this time."

  "I won't-"

  "No." She smiled, reached over, tweaked my nose. "Jeal­ous?"

  I looked at her, looked at the closed drawer, thought for a moment, and shook my head. "No," I said slowly. "No, I

  guess I'm not."

  "The next weekend we'll do something special. Just us.

  "Like what?" I asked.

  "You'll see."

  "You have something planned?"

  She nodded.

  "Okay," I said.

  We kissed.

  Skin

  I've always loved the roadside attractions that seemed to" proliferate in the desert Southwest during the 1960s. When I was a child, my parents would stop at those that had some sort of historical significance, but the gross ones, the tacky ones, the ones that promised the things I really wanted to see were off limits. I'd obtain brochures and pamphlets for these tourist spots at the hotels where we stayed, but that was as close as I'd come to them.

  I'll go there myself when I grow up, I thought.

  But by the time I grew up, most of them were gone.

  "Skin" is an homage to those sorts of ancillary va­cation destinations. I couldn't shake my parents' in­fluence completely, though. The house in "Skin" is historically significant. And the family in the story should not have stopped there.

  The brown-and-white sign at the side of the road was small, and even though he was wearing his contacts, Ed could not read what it said. He slowed the car as they approached. "What's it say?" he asked Bobette.

  "It says 'Historical Landmark. Chapman House. One Mile.'"

  Ed turned toward the kids in the back. "Want to stop?"

  "Okay," Pam said.

  Eda shrugged noncommittally.

  "We're stopping." Ed drove slowly, allowing the other cars and trucks on the road to pass him, until he saw another brown-and-white sign, identical to the first. He turned off the highway onto the narrow, barely paved road which ran in a straight line across a grassy meadow to the forest on the other side.

  "Here we come!" Pam said. She unbuckled her safety belt and began bouncing up and down in her seat.

  Bobette, hearing the click of the belt, looked sternly at her daughter over the headrest. "Young lady, you put that back on right now."

  "I was just-"

  "Right now."

  Pam rebuckled her seat belt.

  The road continued in an unwavering line, going through the front line of trees and into the forest before finally widening into a closed cul-de-sac in front of a small brown one-room cabin. The cabin was not log but appeared to be made of wood, with a sod roof. One open window and door faced outward.

  "All right," Ed announced. "Hop out. We're here."

  It had been several hours since they'd eaten lunch at a Burger King in Cheyenne, and all of their legs were cramped and tired. Pam and Eda jumped about, crunching gravel beneath their tennis shoes, while Ed stretched loudly, groaning. Bobette stood in place, exercising isometrically. They had gotten so used to the artificially cooled air in the car that they had not realized how warm it was outside. The

  temperature was well into the nineties, and there was no wind. Above them, the sky was blue and cloudless, and from the bushes they heard the constant buzz of cicadas. "I hope they have a bathroom here," Bobette said. Ed grinned. "There're plenty of bushes." "Very funny."

  "And we have empty Coke cups in the car." She shook her head. "You're sick." They moved across the small dirt lot toward the cabin, Ed leading the way. He stopped before another sign, this one mounted on a platform of cemented stones. " 'The Chapman House,'" he read aloud. '"Built in 1896, the Chapman House is believed to be the oldest extant skin dwelling in Wyoming.'" He frowned. "Skin dwelling?" He walked to­ward the cabin, the others following. This close, he could see that the cabin was not made from wood as he'd origi­nally assumed but was made from tanned animal hides stretched taut across a wooden frame. In places, the skin had been stretched thin, lending it a translucent quality, and he could see in the direct sunlight a network of spiderweb veins stretching across the wall.

  Bobette shivered. "Gruesome."

  Ed shrugged. "I suppose building supplies were scarce in those days. Who knows? Maybe they didn't have the right tools to use traditional materials."

  "There's a wooden frame," she pointed out. "And there doesn't seem to be any shortage of wood or stone around

  here."

  "Come on, let's go inside."

  "I'd rather not."

  "Come on."

  "I'll wait here."

  "Suit yourself." He turned to the girls. "You two coming?"


  "Yeah!" Pam said excitedly. She and Eda followed him through the low doorway into the cabin. It was dark inside. The one door and window faced east, and while they proba­bly let in plenty of light during the morning, they let in very little now. Across one wall ran a low bench, also made from animal hide, and in the center of the room was a low pit for fires. The floor was dirt.

  They should have been excited, they should have been having fun, they should have at least been interested, but somehow all those emotions left them when they passed through the doorway. Pam and Eda's bubbly conversation died almost immediately, and his own curiosity gave way to a feeling remarkably close to dread. There was something heavy and claustrophobic about the air in the cabin, some­thing undefinable which made all of them feel uncomfortable and ill at ease. He found himself staring at a small round patch of light-colored skin sewn into the wall near the window.

  "Ed!" Bobbette called from outside. Her voice was loud, a little too loud, and there was a hint of panic in it.

  Grateful for a reason to leave the cabin, he stepped back into the sunlight. The girls followed silently. They hurried over to where Bobette stood reading the rest of the sign. "What is it?"

  "The cabin was made with human skin," she said. "Not animal skin. Read this."

  He scanned the rest of the text. According to the sign, the Chapman House was one of a series of homes and buildings constructed from human skin in this part of Wyoming dur­ing the late 1800s. The builders of the dwellings were not known. He looked at Bobette.

  She shivered. "Let's get out of here," she said.

  He nodded, motioning for the girls to get into the car. Be­fore closing his own door, he snapped a photograph of the cabin. He didn't really want the picture, but he'd been tak­ing photos of every place they had stopped at and he took this one out of habit, for completeness.

  They drove silently back to the highway. Ed tried to con­centrate on his driving, but he found himself thinking of the small round patch of skin he had seen near the window of the cabin. He couldn't get it out of his mind, and he couldn't help thinking that the skin had come from the head of a child. The thought disturbed him, and he drove without speaking, speeding along the highway, passing other cars, as if trying to get as far away from the cabin as possible.