Under My Skin

by Alison Jameson

  Jonathan walks to his desk and takes a chequebook out.

  ‘Name your price,’ he says and his voice is low and smooth.

  ‘Name your price?’ I think. ‘What price a life and sudden death?’

  When the cheque is in my hand, my other hand still holds the corner of the painting.

  Three fingers, then two and then one.

  ‘What happened?’ Jonathan asks softly. And taking a deep breath, I let the past go and it becomes any other painting on a floor.

  ‘He cut himself…’ The words come out and Maria Callas sings to them. She raises them up before they land and create some kind of horrible thud. But Jonathan says nothing. He just puts one hand on my shoulder as if to steady himself as he gets up. He walks to the kitchen and I listen as his footsteps echo down the long white hall. When he comes back he is carrying a bottle of red wine and two glasses. We sit on the couch and he pours me a glass of wine and then another and then another after that.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says finally and he takes a deep breath, ‘and I can’t take the painting of course.’ He watches my face and then he says, ‘But… I would very much like to borrow it, so why don’t you take the money anyway… as a sort of retainer… and I’ll give the picture back when I’m tired of it… which will be… in about five years?’

  ‘Thank you, Jonathan,’ and he brushes these words away lightly with his hand. When I stand up he stands too and then he leans down to kiss my forehead and as he leans I decide to look up and that is when it happens and the kiss falls like a soft whisper on my lips.

  We stop.

  Frozen.

  No part of us moving.

  Just our breath, in and out, to keep our hearts from stopping, and I keep my eyes down and then I look into his – ‘Just once,’ I am thinking, ‘I want to look, just once,’ and we kiss again. And one more time, for luck.

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Wait… Hope…’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Hope…’

  ‘Larry is waiting… I have to go.’

  Larry turns the sign on the door. He shoots the bolts and pulls down the blinds. He takes a bottle of beer from the fridge and gives it to me with a smile. Then he slides into the red booth and puts his arm around me.

  ‘How was your day?’ he asks kindly.

  ‘Larry – I need to tell you something,’ and the words come out slowly. He lifts his eyebrows and the colour of his eyes seems to change a little. Dark brown and then just dark.

  ‘It’s about Jonathan.’

  ‘Jonathan?’ he says and his voice is confused and full of surprise.

  ‘I’ve borrowed some money from him.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he replies and he is shaking his head and looking at the floor.

  ‘And… there’s something else.’

  Outside the rain pounds down on the street. It makes little rivers and puddles and the cars splash through. There is no easy way to say it, so the words just have to be pushed out.

  ‘We kissed…’

  ‘What…?’

  ‘It was nothing,’ I tell him.

  ‘Nothing?… nothing?… oh, Hope…’ and I can’t look at him so I just keep staring straight ahead.

  ‘What happened… after you kissed?’ he asks and his voice is shaking.

  ‘We kissed again,’ and I whisper these words and I still can’t look at him.

  ‘How did it feel… to kiss him?’ and his voice is low and sad and he also looks away now when he speaks.

  And I can hardly answer him because I am beginning to cry now.

  ‘It felt… Idon’t know… sort of nice… I suppose.’

  He doesn’t say a word to me. He doesn’t even breathe. He just stands up and not seeing the downpour and without thinking about a coat or his keys or even looking back at me, Larry turns quickly and walks out into the street and the rain.

  Email to Jonathan Kirk 8.05 a.m.

  From Hope Swann

  Re: Social Committee

  Jonathan,

  Just to let you know – we’ve had three committee meetings and I’m ready to present some of our thoughts to you.

  Please let me know when you’re free.

  Thanks,

  Hope.

  Email to Hope Swann 8.06 a.m.

  From Jonathan Kirk

  Re: Social Committee

  Hope – When I asked you to head up the social committee I

  expected you to take responsibility. Not hand it back to me.

  By the way… where is the strategy document for the Heinz

  pitch?

  Jonathan.

  Bastard n. – 1. A person born of unmarried parents. 2. (informal) An obnoxious or despicable person. 3. (humorous or affectionate) A person esp. a man, ‘you lucky bastard’. 4. (informal) Extremely difficult or unpleasant, ‘that job is a real bastard’.

  Email to everyone 9.01 a.m.

  From Hope Swann

  Subject: Glad Tidings Comrades

  Hi everyone,

  Following a number of social committee meetings we have decided to make the following changes to our work place.

  1. From now on everyone will get an extra day off as part of their annual holidays.

  2. There will be no production meetings on Monday mornings.

  3. The agency will now close an hour earlier on Fridays to give people a chance to beat the traffic. Hope.

  Email from Jonathan Kirk 9.04 a.m.

  To Hope Swann

  Re: Glad Tidings Comrades

  Drop into my office.

  Larry puts two t-shirts into a bag. He finds his toothbrush and taps it on the side of the sink. The bed is not made, the sheets are twisted and the pillows are flat. Last night we could not sleep. When we tried to make love, it felt desolate and cold. His eyes are bloodshot. He is quiet and I cannot seem to help him. He seems so sad and he still wears his wedding ring on his thumb. He pulls the zip up on his bag. He sits on the bed and takes my hand.

  ‘I gave the keys of the diner to the debt collector… we don’t owe him anything any more.’

  ‘Larry…’

  ‘I need to be on my own, Hope,’ and I turn towards him again.

  ‘And this is the part when you beg me to stay,’ he says and he gives a dry little laugh. Then the silence fills up the room. He smiles at me. He puts one hand on my forehead. Taking my temperature. He should. I am not well.

  ‘What a strange girl,’ he says and he has said this before. ‘Of all the strange girls, in this strange world, I had to meet and fall in love with you.’

  I pull my knees into my chest and hug them to me now. I want to be smaller than I am. I want to sink and become invisible to him and to myself.

  ‘So,’ he says and he sniffs suddenly and then sighs. Two different ways he has to cover up tears. He stands and picks up his bag.

  ‘Hope,’ he says sadly and when he leans down he kisses the top of my head.

  ‘We both need to be free,’ he says simply, ‘and if we are meant to be together, we’ll find our way back.’

  And I answer, ‘Regular people who are married don’t do that.’

  The bag on his shoulder seems to move a little. It seems to beat, and breathe slowly, in and out. Inside he has packed up his bones, his favourite facial expressions, all his different little smiles, his scar and his beating heart. He smiles then, and one tear suddenly falls down his cheek. I put my hands over my eyes and then I put them over my ears.

  Anything – but not the sound of his footsteps walking away, and not the sound of the closing door. And not the idea that our love has failed. And not the usual mundane sounds that signify the end of the world.

  Under the pillows there might be feathers, white, light and floating, and Juna always said that feathers were a sign that there was an angel in the room. And Larry’s answer sums up our lives, as broken and as mixed up as they are.

  ‘We are not regular people,’ he says.

  And his feet begin to move. He is weari
ng his favourite black Converse runners and they walk one behind the other and leave me in our empty bedroom.

  Email to everyone 10.10 p.m.

  From Hope Swann

  Subject: Hello?…

  Is there anyone else left in the building?… is there anyone there… hello?… hello?

  Thanks very much,

  Hope Swann.

  9 At the New York Public Library

  Glassman would have to explain that he had broken up with Matilda. At his age he wondered when he would be done with love and especially the embarrassment of it. He said ‘Yes’ to the invitation to Trudy’s first book reading – and he knew that Matilda would be there too because Trudy was a mutual friend – and she would see this as an opportunity to make another little mark. The letters went into the trash and his finger continued to press the delete button, but she would not understand. She saw their love as something real and alive and she was Brutus with it one day, and Woody Woodpecker the next.

  That morning in March the NYU students rushed past him on the street. They were young and used furry boots and bright parkas to cut through the wind chill and the late flakes of snow. He stood for a moment and remembered he was one of them once and now they walked past him, without a glance or a second thought. He would have preferred to be extremely old and he held on to this thought as he walked towards Washington Square with his head down into the wind. Old age was noticed. Someone with snow-white hair and a hunch – but he was middle-aged and he had never wanted to be in the middle place. He could not bear to be ‘not one thing or another’ and he hated the idea of waiting with a thousand others in this beige waiting room.

  Recently Glassman had begun looking for his third place in the city and he especially liked to look for it at night. Some nights he would walk to the deli on the corner and buy a cup of chicken noodle soup and he would sit then, with his hands wrapped around it, watching the world from a cold park bench. So far his third place was a different place every evening. A park bench with soup. The theatre on West Houston where he watched a documentary about Russian ballet dancers, and last night, he found it standing outside Mark Twain’s house.

  Then he would walk down W9th to Fifth Avenue, and sometimes he would go sit in the church, but usually by then the cold would send him into Barnes and Noble or to SoHo and home.

  The first time it happened he was in Canada, standing in the middle of Reindeer Lake and listening to his best friend describe his own death. The light was fading and Glassman could feel the air cold in his nose and chest and it was beginning to eat into the soles of his feet – but still they stood and he would remember the red sunset and the cold and the beauty of Manitoba on the other side.

  Tom spoke without looking at him and told him evenly and with a strange sense of calm that he was going to die. Not that he was sick or planning to take his own life – but that he was going to take a knife wound, he was certain of it, and because of that he would die. He didn’t know when but he believed it would happen, and Glassman of course could not agree. He listened and nodded and acknowledged his friend’s premonition by touching his elbow and leading him slowly off the frozen lake. And two years later when they had both forgotten, Glassman went to visit Tom late one night as he closed his restaurant up and the next morning Tom was dead. He had died in the alleyway carrying that night’s takings under his apron. Someone had been watching and Tom did not know it. The last face he saw before he died was Glassman’s, and the knife went into his kidneys from behind.

  On the F train he saw Matilda. She looked beautiful and as if she had just got out of bed. She was wearing a black raincoat and Chuck Taylors and her hair was pulled into a long ponytail at one side. She saw him and pretended to read at first and then he said ‘Hi’ to her with a little wave. He made his way up the train to see her and to be polite and to be kind.

  ‘Hi,’ she said in that bright breezy way of hers and then she shrugged up at him and smiled.

  ‘Matilda…’ and he stopped for a second, not sure how to continue, and then he smiled and said, ‘You look… good.’

  ‘I’m sorry for calling you,’ she said simply. ‘I just really missed you… but I understand now… I’m OK.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ he said. ‘I want you to be OK,’ and she looked up at him and smiled.

  He felt the need to get off the subway earlier at 34th Street, and when he looked back she was still turning the pages of Time Out and pretending to read. He wanted to feel a pang of something for her and he almost did. He had no love for her but he did feel the loss of another person he knew. At times like this he missed Tom too. He missed that day on the lake and the sound of a friend’s laugh and his voice.

  He waited on the steps for Trudy and she came, natural blonde, in itself a wonder – and with fresh Scandinavian skin. They had dated a long time ago and they had broken up when he discovered she enjoyed pain. Now, after Matilda’s cloying, she was like a fresh wind sent up from Norway, and he noted with some mild amusement that her teeth had been whitened and she had had her breasts ‘uplifted’… again.

  ‘Hey, Glassman’ she said and she punched him on the shoulder and he stood still for this and laughed down into his shoes. Some women became children around him. They loafed around like puppies, and others, like Matilda, became more motherly and old. Even now Trudy would flirt with him and he would politely flirt back. Sometimes a normal conversation about Hillary Clinton or what the multinationals were doing or the weather, for Godsakes, would be just fine.

  She was worried about her reading. Held the book forward as they walked up the steps and they were both shouting now. On the steps he turned, and the wind full of new snow made his eyes water and pinched his red ears and cheeks.

  And he shouted back at her, ‘Trudy – honey, calm down,’ and he steadied her with one hand on her shoulder. That was how New Yorkers comforted one another. Shouting over the noise of the city and giving a minimalist touch. She blushed and turned and he followed her Labrador lopes up the steps.

  In the line and while the security man checked her purse, Glassman told her that he and Matilda had broken up, and she turned in silence, with raised eyebrows and the corners of her mouth pulled dramatically down. He could almost feel the glee from her and the details talked out later with her girlfriends at Balthazar. It made him smile, just the thought of it, and how he would be spread out and pinned down like poor old Gulliver – with inaccurate statements like ‘Of course, Glassman can’t commit’ and ‘Poor Matilda, she really loved him, you know’, and he hoped Trudy would at least add in that he had been great in bed. They would say he couldn’t commit but there were other reasons why relationships came to an end. There were married men all over the city. Men who had gone down on bended knee and bought the special roses in the Flower District, and met her parents, and purchased the Tiffany ring. Men could commit when they wanted to. And they gave reasons for walking away, and women talked it over, and covered it up with female theories, all designed to block out the fact that he just didn’t want to be with her.

  Glassman liked honesty. When he broke up with women he was clear and honest now. When he said, ‘I can’t.’ It was hurtful but it was true.

  Matilda was standing at the lunch buffet. She was talking to James Marshall, the academic who would introduce Trudy’s book. She would have seen him coming up the stairs with Trudy, that was why she was standing there, and now she was laughing a lot and flicking her hair. She had dressed for him and she tried to hide it. Trudy whispered now that she was sorry but that she always thought Matilda was weird – and he took this information in one mouthful and swallowed it with a little smile. ‘Women’ – and how he loved their low-down double-crossing ways. And then as the coffee scalded his lips she asked, ‘Why???’ and he shrugged and said, so that his whisper seemed to echo around the high marble domes and his own voice sounded baffled by it, ‘I have no ardour.’

  And she frowned and nodded and a minute later asked, ‘Did you say… no hard-on?’
and he smiled and it seemed easier and would require less explanation to answer ‘Yes.’

  He walked dutifully to Matilda and they spoke again. She looked good. Fresh-faced and like she had been getting a lot of good sleep. They talked about Trudy and her book and the snow and how cold it was again, and duty done, he smiled and was about to turn and run.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘did you find my diaphragm?… I can’t seem to find it anywhere…’

  In his mind Glassman could see it in a blue dish beside the cream cheese and the leftover anchovies.

  ‘In the refrigerator,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, man. Look, I’ll come back with you and get it.’

  Glassman wanted to say he would post it to her but he did not have the heart. He became silent and they both knew the game. How she would walk back with him and talk the way they always did. How she would shrug and laugh and put it into her purse. She wanted him to see and feel that she had used this birth-control device for him. That she had protected them from a baby and to remind him that they had had sex. He knew that she was hoping to excavate some old feelings with that. And he wanted to tell her that it was over. He wanted to look into her eyes and say, ‘Really, sweetheart, completely and utterly… you are mining’… and he meant… mining… ‘the bottom of the feelings barrel,’ and really he wished she would direct her energy towards someone else.

  The bell rang and everyone sat and he sat as far away from Matilda as he could. As Trudy read he remembered dating her and how she had taken him to her place at Columbia where there were wide sweeping maple floors and a horseshoe kitchen and a view over the Hudson and even the elevator seemed to gleam. They drank wine and ate a platter of cheese on the long cream couches and she pointed out her framed photographs of children in Vietnam. And how they had walked into her bedroom then, more maple and cream. How beautiful it all seemed to him now. That was before he became ill and everything she did, every little smile, every glance, even the apartment tour could turn him on. He wanted the kind of frenzied love-making that would leave them gasping, damp and embarrassed by it, and Trudy, his then Norwegian Princess, would give him all of that.