The City Under the Skin

7. NIGHT UNDER GLASS

Rain stippled the roof of Wrobleski’s domed conservatory, and inside it, a few scattered candles burned among the cacti, their flames reflected in the glass between the spines and paddles, reinforcing the wet darkness beyond. Shadows flicked over the relief map of Iwo Jima. Laurel was there, lolling, angled across the sofa, awake but drunk or stoned or exhausted, her head just a few inches away from the blue-black point of an agave leaf, her attention a million miles away. Wrobleski and the improbably named Genevieve sat in rattan chairs facing each other. He had poured two glasses of wine, and Genevieve was holding hers tightly in both hands, as if it might fly away.

“How are you?” Wrobleski asked, sounding, or at least trying to sound, concerned.

Genevieve blinked a couple of times, looked not quite at him, and said, unconvincingly, “I’m good.”

“Great,” he said. “I’m glad you could come.”

If she found this an odd way of putting it — and how could she not? — she gave no indication. Perhaps she was no longer capable of being surprised.

“You’re a train wreck, aren’t you?” Wrobleski said.

She shrugged: it made no difference.

“I didn’t ask for this date,” she said.

“No, you didn’t,” Wrobleski agreed. “What’s that thing you’ve got wrapped around you, anyway?”

“It’s a curtain,” she said, and that was all the explanation she thought necessary, or was prepared to give.

“And you’re naked under there?”

“We’re all naked under our clothes,” she said.

“Very profound,” Wrobleski said quietly. “Let me see.”

She hesitated only long enough to take a gulp from her drink, set it on the floor, and then she stood up slowly, regally, so that the velvet curtain — if that’s what it really was — remained behind her on the chair. She stood naked, about to place her dirty fingertips on the edge of the case containing the relief map, for support, but Wrobleski raised his hand to indicate she wasn’t allowed to do that. She took a step back and looked sideways at her own bare, milky, phantom reflection in the glass of the conservatory, and then she faced Wrobleski with an unconcerned calmness.

“I need you to turn around,” he said.

“Of course you do,” she said.

She did what he asked, as if she were being examined by a doctor, or posed by the instructor of a life drawing class. Wrobleski got up from his chair and moved very close to her. Yes, there was an odor rising from the body, onion and tired sweat, but Wrobleski didn’t care about that. He was staring very closely at the tattoos on the woman’s back.

“When did you have this done?” he asked.

“I didn’t have it done. It was done to me.”

“Who by?”

“I don’t know. I never saw his face. Could have been anybody. Could have been you.”

Wrobleski declined to respond to that.

She continued, “I was tied down, on a metal table. I don’t know where I was, a basement, I think. I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter much where it happened, does it?”

“And you’ve been on the street since then?”

“I was already on the street,” she said.

“And do you know what the tattoo means?” he asked.

“What do you mean by ‘means’?”

“You really are a philosopher,” said Wrobleski. “I mean that the tattoo is a map, right?”

“You’re smart,” she said. “It took me a while to realize that’s what it was.”

“So don’t you ever wonder what it’s a map of?”

“I used to. Then I stopped wondering. Wherever it’s a map of, I don’t want to go there.”

“Maybe it’s somewhere you’ve already been,” Wrobleski said, and he continued to stare, squinting in the flickering light, the explorer in the cave, confounded by the writing on the wall. He moved even closer and stretched out a hand as though to touch the woman, but his fingertips stopped an inch or so away from the surface of the skin, as if touching it might burn him, or worse.

“You ever think of getting it removed?” he asked.

“Never quite had the budget for that.”

“Or you could have something tattooed over it, something better, maybe something Japanese.”

“Could I?”

“Unless you think it’s too late for that.”

It sounded like a threat. Genevieve said, “What are you going to do to me?”

He looked at her with some sympathy. He accepted that was a fair question.

“I don’t know,” he said plainly. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“What are the options?”

“I haven’t decided that either.”

“My glass is empty,” Genevieve said.

He filled it for her.

“Look, Genevieve,” he said, “you’re going to have to stay here for a little while. Out of harm’s way. Till I work out what’s best.”

“Best for who?”

“Who do you think, Genevieve?”

She looked across at Laurel, who was staring at her, offering what might have been a smile of welcome.

“You’re starting a harem?” said Genevieve.

“No. I’m not doing that.”

“A freak show?”

“Well, we’re all freaks, aren’t we?”

Suddenly Akim was there in the conservatory, standing beside Genevieve. He was holding a black silk robe, long, voluminous, embroidered with purple and red poppies, and he draped it softly over her shoulders, patting it around her with rather more attention than the job required.

“For now, Akim will take care of you,” Wrobleski said. “Akim’s good at taking care of things.”