Under My Skin (24 page)

‘Let’s cool it for a little while,’ Jonathan says. He is sitting at his desk and I am sitting opposite on the low red couch. The door is closed and he is frowning, with his tie off and hanging over the back of his chair.

‘I’m sorry she did that,’ he says, ‘but don’t worry, it will all be fine… Hope… it will be fine… we just need to cool it for a little while,’ and as I sit there I can feel icicles beginning to form under my nose.

‘It’s fine,’ he says and he is shaking his head and smiling. ‘We just need to be more discreet.’

When I go back to my desk he has sent me an email.

Email from Jonathan Kirk 9.36 a.m.
To Hope Swann
Subject: Don’t worry!
By the way… you look lovely today… x

Juna is smiling, I am sure of it. Sometimes you need to push the boundaries a little. That’s what Jonathan always says. ‘Hope… sometimes you need to take a little risk.’ I don’t mean to send the email but then my hand slips and I do.

Forward email 9.40 a.m.
To everyone
From Jonathan Kirk
To Hope Swann
By the way… you look lovely today… x

Because it was Friday, Chief Gallagher left Manhattan early and as he headed towards Brooklyn and his third wife, he listened to the
Laurie Roth
show. It was too hot even for July and the radio irritated him. ‘What a turkey,’ he murmured. He always said that to Laurie Roth and even now he could not get used to the sudden heat of the city and he seemed to have been fighting against it all his life. He had married a woman from the force two years ago but he had already known her for several years. The Brooklyn boys usually knew the Brooklyn girls and this time he was forty-nine and this wife was thirty-three.

He had listened to her complain at dinner on Sunday. How she came home from work as tired as he was and then fell into the sea of laundry at her feet. He had four boys. Their football vests and shorts clogged her housekeeping system up and every second Sunday they had to take his mother out. They fought over it and lots of other things – but more than anything they argued over sex. He wanted more than she did and when he took a beer from the refrigerator and sat on the porch, he thought about this briefly – men wanted it more than women – and he shrugged as the first bubbles hit his throat and he guessed there was nothing unusual or revolutionary about this.

When the doorbell rang he was wearing a NYPD t-shirt and shorts and as he walked down the hall, his hot feet sticking a little, he noticed that the houseplants were leaning and that the goldfish bowl looked too warm. When he opened the
door there was another wave of heat and then he saw his friend Arthur Glassman standing looking up at him from the bottom step.

They embraced with a smile and from The Chief, ‘Hey, man.’ The heat from Gallagher was obvious because in his arms Glassman felt chilled and almost cold. He smiled up at him and Gallagher, in spite of his bad mood, could only smile back. He wanted to slap him hard on the back but he was afraid he would knock him down the steps. He had been like a boy in Vietnam. Smaller than the other troops but somehow he had more life and spirit than the rest of the men.

The Chief had not wanted to see anyone that evening. Not even his sons or his wife – and yet here he was, unexpected and uninvited, and with him a gentle bright calm came into his life. Suddenly his warm house was better now and he was proud and when they walked through the hall, he pointed out trophies and photographs of his sons and his wife. He smiled when he opened the kitchen door and he went to the yard for more beer and some ice.

‘I’d prefer some hot chocolate,’ Glassman said.

‘Man, in this heat,’ and he laughed and shook his head.

He found another photo of his wife and handed it to his friend and watched his face.

‘She’s a looker,’ Glassman said

‘And… Matilda?’ The Chief asked and he smiled as an image of her formed in his mind.

‘Matilda,’ came the reply and the voice was low and level with just a hint of humour behind it. ‘As it happens. She’s quite a piece of work.’

Here there was silence and only the kettle began to hum and whistle and neither man spoke as Gallagher whisked the hot chocolate up.

‘Are you in some kind of trouble?’ he asked.

‘You could say that,’ and here The Chief put one hot bear paw on his old friend’s shoulder and walking him out on to the high back porch he told him to ‘spit it out’.

So Glassman spat. He told him about the letters and the phone calls, every day and every night.

‘And what does she say?’

‘That she loves me.’

‘She’s only human, Arthur.’

But Glassman couldn’t manage a smile.

‘That I still love her.’

Here The Chief barely nodded. So far this was no good.

‘Anything else?’

‘I come home from work and she’s sitting on my steps.’

‘Every evening?’

‘Most evenings.’

The Chief lit a cigarette and they both fell silent and outside the small dogs of Brooklyn began to bark.

‘Those fuckin’ dogs,’ he murmured.

‘She’s actually beginning to scare me,’ and Glassman’s voice was slow and careful and there was no hint of embarrassment in it.

The Chief nodded.

‘She says she’s pregnant.’

‘Is she?’

‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘It’s a fantasy. Before me she had three miscarriages. We were careful and she told me herself… she’s
reproductively challenged
– go figure.’

Here The Chief lifted his eyebrows and took a long swallow of beer.

Glassman told him that she had been into his apartment even though he had changed the locks.

‘Maybe I’m being paranoid,’ he said quietly and he looked out over the trees to the church.

The Chief’s face was without any expression.

‘She’s blowing the Super,’ he said.

‘It’s breaking and entering,’ Glassman said.

‘Not if you have a key. And besides we need to catch her doing it.’

And Glassman told him about the perfume which he believed she was spraying around every room. And there was no response at all now and he felt mildly humiliated by that.

They fell silent then and this was only because The Chief did not want to tell him what he already knew. They waited and they were both deaf to the sirens and the barking dogs now.

Then Glassman took a deep breath and laid out the contents of his pockets. There were all gold-trimmed letters. Each one carried a quote and was written in black ink with a red lipstick kiss at the end.

‘I don’t understand why people aren’t a little nicer to each other.’ Marilyn

and

‘All little girls should be told they are beautiful, even if they aren’t.’ Marilyn

and

‘I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to be one.’ Marilyn

The Chief read each one with a look of concentration on his face. Then Glassman handed him another. ‘This one came this morning,’ he said.

‘A career is wonderful, but it won’t keep you warm on a cold night.’ Marilyn

Arthur could still remember the night he told her about it. How he had noticed her that first day in the swimming pool and how she had reminded him of Marilyn Monroe and how he then foolishly, romantically told her and how she had held on to it. How it had become their thing and in her head their ‘raison d’être’. How they had drunk and got a little high and made love to the thought of it. Those first weeks were like going back in time. When women wore felt hats and heels and skirts that fell below the knee but also had real breasts and an ass. And her lips were beautiful, always beautiful, and Glassman, even now on The Chief’s back porch, could give her that.

‘You see,’ he said to The Chief, and here he turned his cup in his hands, ‘I was Arthur and she was Marilyn.’

His friend took this piece of information, not handed over easily, and with some degree of shame. And because he thought until then that he had seen everything, he saw the funny side first and had no mercy for his friend’s pain.

‘Some people dress up as doctors and nurses… and you play Miller and Monroe?’

And here both men managed a laugh and then The Chief got up and walked out to the yard. When he came back he was carrying two more beers. ‘You’re having a beer,’ he said to Glassman and then he told him what he knew all along.

‘She’s not breaking the law,’ he said, ‘but we could have a friendly chat with her. It might aggravate her…’

‘It might help,’ his friend replied.

And then The Chief gave him some friendly advice.

‘She thinks she’s Marilyn Monroe – do you really think this
woman is going to see sense? This is my advice. Give her time to cool off and in the meantime go home and pack a bag.’

‘So,’ Glassman said quietly, ‘I have to run away.’

‘You still got the house on the Cape?’ The Chief asked.

‘Sure – and she doesn’t know about that,’ Glassman replied.

‘You’re not running away from her,’ The Chief said. ‘You’re taking a vacation – go down to the Cape – a few weeks out of the picture and she’ll calm down.’

At home Glassman cleaned the apartment again. He wanted to smell floor wax as soon as he opened his front door. He replaced the security chain and shot the small brass bolts and then stood facing his own world again. The locksmith had left a small splinter of wood on the rug and he picked it up and twirled it between his fingers before putting it into the trash. Otherwise the parquet floor was gleaming and the sunlight landed on it in long golden shadows and then bounced off it again. On days like this he used to feel elated. The summer sun lighting up the street and every corner of Central Park. He ran his fingers along the long narrow mahogany table, the telephone, the olive-green bowl where he kept his keys, and there was no dust. It was as if everything had been replaced with identical items so his home was suddenly clean and new. And everything else was exactly as he had left it. The soft French cheese in the refrigerator. The toilet seat standing up. The small pea of toothpaste in the sink. The kitchen mat kicked with his feet. He could still taste The Chief’s hot chocolate and how kind his voice had been when he told him in a roundabout way that he could not help.

But really he had given Glassman something he did not have before, he had given him permission to leave.

He could be replaced at the hospital. Since he became ill he could only work the shorter shifts. He wanted to get out of this city soon before it kicked him until he turned green.

He pulled his t-shirt off over his head and dropped it on the hall floor. He caught sight of his slight frame in the mirror and as usual he did not know for sure now if he was sick or well.

He stopped for a moment then and told himself to breathe slowly. He was suddenly afraid again. He could get it, the smell, he was sure of it. Last week he had called Trudy early on a Saturday morning and asked her to come over.

‘Glassman, can’t it wait?’ she asked and then, guessing that he was in real trouble, she pulled a coat on over her night-clothes and jumped in a cab in the rain. When she came in, she was fresh-faced and smiling and he just loved her then. Her hair soaked and how she shook it out, not really caring, and said in a voice full of humour, ‘Arthur – what gives?’

He said he needed her help. He needed her to explain the smell. He needed her to tell him in clear simple language that he was not imagining it. He needed Trudy to tell him that he was not losing his mind. And she pulled a dramatic face and then walked through his apartment and said, ‘Sure I get it’ and then in a completely casual way, ‘I think it’s… Chanel No 5.’

The traffic from Prince Street seemed to be inside the room today and he hated the noise and how it seemed to fill and buzz inside his head. He turned on the shower and then he stopped for a moment and listened again.

‘No,’ he told himself and then he said it out loud to remind himself one more time. He needed to deal with this. He needed to get a grip on himself. He had to stop coming home at night and checking every room. But tomorrow he knew he would change the locks again and hire someone else to clean.
The sound of the cold water calmed him. He stood under the water and leaned his head back so that the water bounced a little off his face. And when he looked down he saw with some satisfaction his feet still slightly tanned and standing firm on the green tiles. She was still sending notes to him. One said she was walking out on her contract with 20th Century Fox. He had no idea what she meant. But she was getting into his apartment and moving things around. He was sure of it and yet it was something he could not fully prove. ‘We need to catch her in the act,’ that was what The Chief said. These days after work at the hospital Glassman liked to take long walks through the city at night. He kept himself busy without explaining it. The real reason was that he felt he was living with a ghost.

He adjusted the showerhead and the water pounded over his back and it was only when he was finished that he heard the sound.

It sounded like a door, the bathroom door, he thought, being gently closed. And in sequence he swallowed and his mouth went suddenly dry and then he knew that the noise from the traffic was coming through the open bedroom window and that he never left the windows open, and that that was something only she liked to do.