Under My Skin. Lisa Unger
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do, smiles victoriously as he swings it open. He has long blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, faded denim eyes and a jaw like the side of a mountain.
“I got there first, Miss Poppy,” he says.
“This time,” I concede, slipping into the buttery leather interior, and he closes the door.
It’s a thing we have; how I find it ridiculous to wait by the door while he comes around to open it. And he considers door-opening a critical feature of his job, and a terrible dereliction of duty if I open it and get in before he sees me. He’s the rare person who cares about the minute details of his profession. I shouldn’t mess with him. But he’s sweet and funny and we enjoy our little game.
“Home?” he asks.
“Home,” I say, even though I don’t have a home. I have a place where I live, but not a home.
The city rushes past—lights and people, limos, beaters, taxis, bicyclists. I am light, the wine, the pills—I let my head rest against the seat, which seems to embrace me. The hooded man is a distant memory. The car is quiet, except for low jazz coming from the radio; I let my eyes close. Sometimes Carmelo and I chat about his aging mother, his young son, Leo. But he rarely speaks unless I talk to him first, unless he has a question. It’s another standard of his job, to disappear, to be only what you need him to be. When I open my eyes, I catch his in the rearview mirror, watching.
“Long day?” he asks.
“Yes,” I admit. “You?”
“The usual,” he says with a shrug. He takes the kids to school, Mac to work, shuttles Layla through her busy day, waits for Mac in the evenings, takes clients (and friends) around; his day ends when Mac’s does, often not until after midnight or later. Carmelo was always the driver for boys’ night out, when Jack, Alvaro and Mac got together. Shuttling them from bar to bar, maybe to some private card game at Mac’s club, who knows where else.
What could Carmelo tell us about our husbands? Layla mused.
Are you kidding? I’d quip. He’d never tell us anything.
“The city, though, lately. What a mess.”
“Ever think about getting out?”
“Nah,” he says. “Born and raised, you know.”
He pulls to the curb and I just stare for a second, my heart pulsing.
“Carmelo.”
He turns to look at me questioningly, then out at the street. His eyes widen as it dawns.
“Oh, no,” he says, then covers his mouth in a girlish gesture of embarrassment. “Miss Poppy. I’m so sorry.”
He’s taken me to my old apartment building, the one on the Upper West Side where I lived with Jack, not far from Layla’s. A couple I don’t recognize climbs the stairs, laughing, carrying sacks of groceries. She’s petite and wearing jeans, a light black jacket. He’s taller, broad, with an inky mop of hair—young, stylish. It could be us. It was us.
“It’s okay,” I say, biting back a brutal rush of grief, of anger—not at him, at everything.
He pulls away from the curb quickly, cutting off another car and earning the angry bleat of a horn.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says, voice heavy with apology. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say again, trying to keep my voice steady. “Easy mistake.”
I look back at my old street, but then he turns the corner and heads downtown. It’s gone. I want to go back; I want to get as far away as possible. I wish that he would drive and drive and that we’d never reach our destination; that I’d just drift in the space between Layla’s life and what’s left of mine forever.
* * *
Back at my place, I open another bottle of wine, pour myself a glass and look around the space. The pain from the sucker punch of seeing my old block has subsided some. And I experience a brief flicker where I feel distantly inspired to decorate, to settle in, as Dr. Nash keeps encouraging. At least unpack the boxes that are still stacked everywhere.
But that moment of inspiration passes as quickly as it came and I find myself reclining instead on the couch. I turn on the television, close my eyes and listen to the local news—an armed robbery in the Bronx, the Second Avenue subway near completion, a missing child found. The measured, practiced voice of the newscaster soothes; my awareness drifts.
* * *
“Jack?”
The bed beside me is cold, the covers tossed back. The clock on the dresser reads 3:32 a.m. I push myself up, sleep clinging, lulling me back.
“Jack.”
I pad across the hardwood floor. I find him in the living room, laptop open.
“What are you doing?” I ask, sitting beside him on the couch.
He drops an arm around me, pulls me in. I love the smell of him, the mingle of soap and—what? Just him, just his skin. No cologne. He’d wear the same three shirts and pairs of jeans all week if I didn’t buy his clothes. He doesn’t always shave, wears his hear longish, a sandy-blond tangle of curls. Has a pair of black-framed glasses instead of bothering with contact lenses.
“Just catching up on email.”
His email is open, but so is the web browser, the window hidden.
“What is it?” I tease. “Porn?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m out here watching porn while my beautiful wife sleeps in the next room.”
I nudge in closer, wrap my arms around him.
“Porn’s easier, though, right?” I offer reasonably. “Isn’t that what they say? Porn’s never tired, doesn’t say no. You don’t have to satisfy porn.”
“Stop,” he says. I reach for the computer and open the web browser before he can stop me. The face of a beautiful dark-eyed woman stares back at me. But it isn’t porn; just a news article he’s been reading. A photojournalist was beaten to death in her East Village apartment, a suspected robbery gone wrong, all her equipment stolen.
“Who is she?” I ask.
He shakes his head, a beat passing before he answers. “Just someone I used to know.”
I scan the article. “She was murdered?”
He stays silent.
I feel a rush of urgency. “Jack, tell me who this is and why you’re reading about it in the middle of the night.”
He doesn’t answer, just stares straight ahead.
“Jack,” I say again. “Who is she?”
* * *
I wake up with a jolt on the stiff fabric of my couch, disoriented, reaching for him. The dream lingers, clings to my cells. Who is she? My own voice sounds back to me. I’m tangled in that strange weaving of the real, the remembered and the imagined. Jack’s scent, the feel of his arm, stays even as the shapes and shadows of the apartment he’s never seen assert themselves into my consciousness.
I reach for the dream—the woman’s face on the screen, the news article. Someone I used to know. But it’s jumbled, makes no sense. A dream? A memory? Some weird hybrid?
The couch beneath me is hard, not soft and saggy like the one in our old place. This one I bought online because I thought it looked sleek and stylish; when it arrived, it was as stiff and gray as a concrete slab. I didn’t have the energy to return it.
The television is on, the sound down so low it’s barely audible. Radar images of tomorrow’s weather swirl red and orange, a storm brewing, unseasonable heat.
Slowly,