The City Under the Skin

by Geoff Nicholson

  “The thing is,” said Marilyn, “I can totally understand why people kill people. That seems the easy part. But I want to know what they do next.”

  “What does your playwright say?”

  “That’s the problem. He keeps changing his mind, doing rewrites, so I’m trying to give him some input.”

  “He’ll love that,” said Sam, and ran his fingers along the keyboard, played some suspended chords, then a few cop show stabs and arpeggios.

  “Some people just shrug it off,” he said, “and they get on with their lives like it never happened. No guilt, no remorse. Nothing. I guess we call them sociopaths. Or psychopaths. I can never remember which is which. They can both be pretty hard for the cops to catch.”

  “And really hard to portray on stage, I guess,” said Marilyn.

  Sam shrugged exaggeratedly, to show this was not his territory. He said, “And some murderers go directly to the nearest cop and confess everything. That kind of takes the sport out of it.”

  “Doesn’t make for much of a play, either,” said Marilyn. “But what if they don’t go to the cops yet still feel the need to confess?”

  “Like to a priest? A family member? Only a fool trusts a priest. Or his own family.”

  Marilyn smiled at him sweetly, as if she knew he was only pretending to be so cynical.

  “What if they wrote down their confession, like in a diary?” she said. “Is that possible?”

  “I’ve seen that. Gets it off their chest, and if they’re really twisted, then they have the thrill of reliving the murder all over again.”

  “Right,” said Marilyn with what she hoped sounded like no more than professional enthusiasm.

  “It’s a dumb thing to do, though,” he said. “People have a way of finding other people’s diaries, and they always read them.”

  “What if it was in code?”

  “That would make life trickier. And a lot less plausible.”

  “Or what if maybe they burned the diary after they’d written it?” Marilyn suggested. “Like a sacrifice, burning the sins away.”

  “No, it’d just be burning a diary. The sins would still be right there.”

  Sam’s fingers moved up and down the keys again, in exaggerated ecclesiastical scampering. A weary drunk leaning against the bar turned around and blessed himself.

  “What if you drew a diagram of the murder?” Marilyn said. “Like a map. So there wouldn’t be any actual words saying ‘I did it.’ In fact, depending on how you drew the map, somebody could look at it and still not realize it was showing a murder. You wouldn’t have to draw knives, body parts, pools of blood. Is that the kind of thing murderers ever do?”

  “I’m sure somebody somewhere has done it at some time.”

  “So how about this? Our character commits the murder…”

  “This is your character?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why does she commit the murder?”

  “For money.”

  “Female hit man? You know, you’re making it harder and harder for me to suspend my disbelief, but okay, carry on.”

  “And afterward,” said Marilyn, “she’s all crazy and worked up, maybe goes into a kind of fugue state. Drives around the streets. And in order to get the murder out of her system, she grabs some random woman from the street. Do you buy that?”

  “I wouldn’t even want to rent it.”

  “Stick with me, Sam. She drags the victim into a van, takes her into a basement, straps her down, strips her naked, gets some tattoo equipment, tattoos a map on the woman’s back showing all the details of the murder.”

  “Man, I really want to see this show of yours. Why does she do that?”

  “So that it’s gone. The confession’s been made. The murderer feels free. And the tattooed woman goes back to the streets. The fugue state disappears. Then sometime later, I’m not sure how long, these women with the tattoos start showing up. Yes?”

  “This playwright of yours—who’s his biggest influence? David Mamet? The Three Stooges?”

  Marilyn raised her hands in a “search me” gesture.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We’ve still got a lot of exploration to do.”

  “I would think so.”

  Sam stared down at the keys but kept his hands folded in his lap.

  “Do you believe in this bullshit you’re giving me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to believe in it?”

  Marilyn had no answer to that.

  Sam continued, “I guess I’m supposed to say something wise and profound about now, yeah? Follow the money. Cherchez la femme. Round up the usual suspects.”

  “You’re not taking me seriously.”

  “I’m taking you as seriously as I can. And the truth is, I think you’re miscast. I think you’d make a much better victim than you would a murderer.”

  He played a few deep, rumbling, sonorous notes on the bass keys.

  “Still, if you need somebody to do the incidental music for the show—give me a call,” he said. “I’m not easy, but I’m cheap.”

  27. THE COACHING MANUAL

  “So what’s a life coach?” Billy Moore asked his daughter.

  “Search me,” said Carla.

  “Look it up for me, will you?”

  Carla was sitting at the fold-down desk inside the Lofgren Scamp, laptop open in front of her, and she tapped the words into a search engine.

  “Okay, here we go,” she said; then quoted, “‘Life coaching is a practice aimed at facilitating psychological or emotional growth, that helps individuals identify and achieve personal goals, using a variety of techniques, including psychology, sociology, counseling, mentoring, and motivational methods. It is not to be confused with psychotherapy in that it does not focus on examining or diagnosing the past.’”

  “Yeah well, I’d hate to be confused,” said Billy. “Tap in the name Dr. Carol Fermor, would you?”

  A few moments later, the website for Carol Fermor: Change and Inspiration popped up: a background with a big sky full of melting clouds, and at its center an image of a sleek, serious, confident woman, dark lips, pale eyes, and stylishly sharp gray hair.

  “Oh yeah, you’ll like this,” said Carla. “‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.’”

  “Did she really say that?”

  “No, some guy called Thoreau said that. She just put it on her website. What the doctor says is ‘Do you have two selves? Is the self you present to the world in better or worse shape than the self you keep private? Would you like to heal the separateness you experience even as you extend yourself to others?’ Then there’s some stuff about holistic empowerment. You planning to get empowered?”

  “It couldn’t do any harm, could it?” said Billy.

  “Well, it’d make the social worker happy.”

  “That’s what I live for.”

  He seemed suddenly distracted and sad. Carla decided he needed cheering up.

  “I’ve been thinking about tattooing,” she said.

  “For the love of God, why?” said Billy, and instantly realized that he was overreacting. The last thing he wanted to do was alarm his daughter. “I mean, aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about tattoos?”

  “I’m not thinking of getting one,” Carla said.

  Billy was thoroughly relieved that they weren’t having that conversation.

  “The thing is,” Carla said, “I don’t understand how anybody ever starts doing it in the first place. I mean, who’s going to get a tattoo from somebody who’s never done any tattooing before?”

  Billy gave a small, uninterested grunt that he hoped was enough to stifle the conversation.

  “Maybe most people start on themselves,” said Carla, immune to his tactics. “And I hear that some people practice on a pig, but it’s going to have to be one very docile pig, isn’t it?”

>   “Maybe a dead pig,” Billy suggested.

  “But that’s where I could come in, isn’t it?” said Carla. “Somebody could practice on me. They wouldn’t use a real needle, just a blunt stick, like a knitting needle, something that wouldn’t break the skin. And they could draw a pattern on me, all over my body if they wanted, and then when they’d finished, they’d see if it was any good. And if they didn’t like it, then they’d just wait awhile till it disappeared and then start all over again, keep on doing it until he (or she) got really good. Then move on to real ink. It could be a great after-school job.”

  “Tell me you don’t mean any of this,” said Billy gloomily.

  Her attempts to cheer him had been a conspicuous failure.

  “You really think you need some life coaching?” she asked.

  “Nah,” said Billy. “I just need a life.”

  * * *

  Akim had set up the appointment for late in the afternoon. That allowed Billy to pick up Carla from school and take her home before doing the job, though Akim had surely not taken that into account when making the arrangement. The doctor’s office was on the ground floor of a grand, red-brick, three-story house in one of the leafiest, safest, most expensive parts of town. Access to the office was via a side entrance, and Billy guessed that the doctor lived in the house upstairs, presumably not alone, given the size of the house. For now, however, there was just one car in the drive, and that promised to make things easier. He parked the Cadillac in front of it, boxing it in.

  Billy tapped on the office door and tried the handle. It was unlocked, and he stepped into a tiny reception area where Carol Fermor, looking rather less confident and sleek than on her website, was hammering at a keyboard and scowling at a computer screen.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Fermor,” Billy Moore said, though he knew he’d found her. “Dr. Carol Fermor.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Oh, okay. I thought you might be the receptionist.”

  “I don’t have a receptionist,” she said, and it sounded like a complaint. “And this computer is killing me.”

  “I’m your five-thirty,” he said.

  “Right, of course. Hello, Mr. Smith. William Smith, is it?”

  So Akim had made the appointment using half of Billy’s real name. He tried to calculate the degree of insult and the degree of risk.

  “Sounds like a fake name, doesn’t it?” he said.

  The doctor simply replied, “Go on through and take a seat in my office. I’ll be right with you.”

  Billy moved through the reception area and, via a frosted-glass door, into a large, bright room that looked out onto a trim but lush square of garden. To the limited extent that Billy had any preconceptions of what a life coach’s office would be like, he had imagined something between a hospital room and a hotel gym. This place was homely: worn rugs, unmatching furniture, a huge flabby couch. There were table lamps in the shape of ballerinas that looked like they revolved and a shelf displaying a row of Minnie Mouse figurines. And although there were framed certificates on the wall, there were also pieces of children’s art and a photograph of a younger Carol Fermor standing thigh-deep in a trench, with Egyptian ruins in the cloudy yellow distance behind her. Billy was still looking at that picture when she came into the room, but he pretended he was looking at the certificates, examining her professional credentials.

  “Are you a real doctor?” he asked.

  “I’m not a medical doctor, no. My doctorate was actually in archaeology and anthropology. Then I had a long career in human resources. I’ve been a life coach for a decade or so. And you?”

  “No, I’m not a real doctor either.”

  She offered a wintry smile.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” she said.

  Billy selected a plain, straight chair that had its back to the window. Carol Fermor sat down on a chair just like the one he’d chosen, angled at a careful 45 degrees to his. She balanced a yellow legal pad on her knee, took out a slender gold mechanical pencil. Very old-school, Billy thought, though he had no idea what new-school would have looked like.

  “Well, Mr. Smith, how are you? You sounded a little anxious on the phone.”

  “Yes,” he said. What point was there in saying it hadn’t been him who’d made the call?

  “So, Mr. Smith, William, what do you think I can do for you?”

  “Tough questions first, eh?”

  There was no smile from her this time, and nothing at all from Billy.

  “All right,” she said, “let me tell you how this usually works. At a first session like this neither of us should expect too much. We’ll talk. I’ll ask you a few questions. You’ll ask me a few questions. I’ll explain what I do. You’ll explain what you hope I can do. And if we decide to move forward, there are various personality tests and questionnaires we might find useful as a starting point.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Billy.

  “We should both come without fixed ideas, but there is one very simple thing I’d say: you must be ready for change. Are you?”

  “Fuck yes,” said Billy. “Oh sorry. Yes, yes, I’m ready for change.”

  “Good.”

  She allowed him to sit in an awkward silence for a while, until he felt obliged to say, “I feel like a bit of a fraud coming here really.”

  “It’s not unusual to feel that way. That’s often part of the problem. There’s no need for those feelings.”

  They sat in silence for an even longer spell, and this time she cracked first.

  “Well,” she said, “Freud—though you won’t find many Freudians around these days—tells us that love and work are the only therapies.”

  “Smart guy,” said Billy.

  “He had his moments, yes. So, William, how’s work?”

  “Hard,” he said. “Too hard.”

  “How so?”

  He was only briefly tempted to describe the stresses of the parking business. Instead, he said, “My boss is the real problem.”

  “Bosses so often are. What line of business are you in, exactly?”

  “Well, that’s part of the problem. I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure what business you’re in?”

  “I work for a guy,” said Billy. “I do what he tells me to do. He isn’t a guy you can ask a lot of questions, not about what business he’s in or anything else.”

  “That must make your work very difficult.”

  “You think?”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “Worse and worse.”

  “That’s why you’re ready for change.”

  “You got it.”

  Billy knew he should have made his move already, and yet he couldn’t help feeling that this woman might be pretty good at what she did. In some absurd way he’d taken an immediate liking to her. He wanted to talk to her, almost as much as he wanted this to be over. He was also finding it hard to believe that her back was covered in tattoos. He knew it was a dumb thought, but she just didn’t look the type.

  “And what’s preventing you from simply quitting your job?” she said.

  “I think I won’t be allowed to.”

  She looked away, kept her head and eyes down, inviting him to say more.

  “My boss is a crook, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, though she didn’t sound as though she thought it was okay at all.

  “A real crook. I mean, he isn’t some guy who cheats on his taxes or buys and sells things that fall off the back of a truck. The guy’s … the real deal.”

  “And you’ve been assisting him with this?”

  “Well, part of it, yeah, but only a really small part. Do you want to know exactly what I’ve been doing?”

  “Do you want to tell?”

  Billy opened and closed his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “You know,” said the doctor, “in the circumstances, it might be better if I don’t know. It might create certain professional difficulties for me.”r />
  “Maybe you could meet my boss,” Billy said, “use some of your counseling on him. I could take you there now.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not how this process works.”

  The sun had gone down appreciably, so that it now shone from directly behind Billy, turning him into a substantial, gloomy silhouette. Carol Fermor got up and lowered the blind a foot and a half. She didn’t return to her seat.

  “Mr. Smith, I’m going to be honest with you, I think I’m out of my depth here. I can see that your situation is very difficult, and your desire for change seems sincere, but I’m not qualified to deal with the situation you find yourself in. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” he said.

  Very gently she replied, “Yes, I am, and I’ll give you the name of someone else who I think will be able to help you. He’s a very good man.”

  “Somebody else won’t do.”

  “That’s simply not true, William.” She turned away from the window and took a couple of steps toward the door. “I’ll pop into the reception area and get his details.”

  “No,” said Billy. “I came here for you. You’re the one I want.”

  “We’re going to have to wind things up now, I think.”

  Billy stood up rapidly, swept past her, placed himself between her and the office door. The look she gave him was a beauty, stern but sympathetic, authoritative, earnest, cautious but unafraid, the look you’d give a dog that had wandered into your backyard: beloved pet or rabid stray?

  “Don’t you want to hear about my problems with women?” Billy said.

  “No, I don’t. You need to leave now.”

  “No, that’s not what I need. Now shut up and listen.”

  “This is getting out of hand, Mr. Smith. Step aside.”

  “You’re not like the others. They were homeless or strippers or prostitutes, and sure, one was a realtor, but you’re in a different class. Did you just get over it, shrug it off? Or did the tattoos motivate you or some shit like that?”

  That really got her attention.

  “I think you’re mistaken, William. I think you have the wrong woman.”

  “I’d like to believe that,” he said. “Not that it would make any difference. Like I said, this whole thing is a complete fucking mystery to me, and I’ve got a feeling some of it’s a mystery to my boss too, but you’ll see for yourself.”