American Skin

When I’d arrived back at Siobhan’s, she had let out a tiny scream, seeing blood on my collar, down my left cheek, and I said quickly,

“It’s not mine, it’s Tommy’s.”

She’d gotten a towel, washcloth, cleaned me off, then poured a large Jameson, said,

“Drink that.”

She had to hold the glass to my lips as the aftershock hit. Tremors lashed my body, I heard small whimpers of anguish and realised they were mine. I told her how it had gone down. She had her arm round my shoulder, asked,

“Is Stapleton dead?”

I didn’t know, said,

“I don’t know.”

She was all business, asserted we couldn’t worry about it then. For one of the very few times, she made a mistake, we should have worried and worried a lot. If I’d been less shook, I’d have got in the car, driven back to the spot, gone down the incline, and put at least three bullets in his head.

That evening, she looked at the sacks of cash, asked,

“How much do you think is there?”

I had no idea, said,

“A lot.”

We began the count and it took five hours. We began by putting wedges of ten grand in piles and as time went by, got tired, just threw whole batches against the wall. I was drinking beer, a lot of beer, and Siobhan, never a drinker, was putting away vodka like water.

Exhausted, she finally slumped against the wall, her eyes out of focus, said,

“Stephen, there’s at least three point five here.”

I stared at it, hating it, said,

“More, I’d say.”

In noir movies, the couple make love on the mountain of money. We were as close to putting a match to it as it gets. What a fire that would have been.

I said,

“The fucking stuff’s bound to be cursed.”

“Don’t swear, Stephen.”

Even then, she was herself. And realising what she said, she began to laugh.

Then she got real serious, said,

“They say if you laugh at the dead, you’ll soon join them.”

I felt one of those cold shivers walk up my spine, tried to shrug it away, said,

“That’s a pishrog, you don’t believe in all that old superstitious crap, come on.”

She hand her arms round her shoulders, hugging herself as if she was freezing, said,

“I don’t know what I believe, I just don’t see me ever spending that money.”

I went to her, put my arms round her, tried,

“Sweetheart, you’re the one who told me money has no conscience, you’re a banker, remember, cash is simply a means of escape.”

She bit her lower lip, said,

“I don’t think there’s any escape from this.”

Thinking of the life Siobhan had, I roared,

“You bastards.”

I felt now as I felt then, a shuddering rage, a cold fury that those bastards can, with such ease, destroy the life of a child. Alcoholism had blighted mine, — Tommy, well, he never had a chance, the euphemism a broken home had broken him. His feigned indifference was the sad remnant of a spirit shattered in all the ways that matter.

Was I angry?

You fucking betcha.

As I drove, the radio played Emmylou Harris with her lost song to her lost love, Gram Parsons, “From Boulder to Birmingham.” I simmered with ferocity.

The Browning was in the glove compartment, I reached, took it out, understood how guys “go postal,” why they climbed a tower and began open season. My skin was burning, my American skin? I squeezed the butt of the gun till my hand ached and the fingers grew numb. A spirit of

vengeance was in the atmosphere and I was woven into it.

Hitting top speed, blew along, encapsulated in a case of sheer agitation. Christ, if the highway patrol pulled me over, it wasn’t going to look good. As the miles ate away, I intoned the mantra I’d adopted, the promise I’d made to Siobhan, I’ll mind you, and oh god, I could see, as if she were in front of me, the elfin face she had when I said that, her total delight in the pledge.

I wanted to grab Stapleton, gouge his eyes out, there wasn’t torment imaginable that would satisfy me.

The scene of me butting him with the gun and the question... why, oh why hadn’t I followed through, shouting over the radio,

“In the name of all that’s holy, why didn’t I kill him?”

Sweat was cascading down my shirt and I eased off the pedal, let the pistol slip to the floor, began to climb back. If I arrived in Tucson like that, he’d eat me alive.

A colder place, I needed to get to that acre in my mind where the flame burned but with cooler heat. I pulled over, counted down from one hundred, got my heartbeat slowed. Took a time, but went from hyperventilation to a zone, if not of peace then less agitation, muttered,

“Okay.”

Pete Hamill wrote of Frank Sinatra: “What Sinatra evokes is not strictly urban. It is a very particular American loneliness — that of the self adrift in its pursuit of the destiny of ‘me,’ and thrown back onto the solitude of it’s own restless heart.”

I hummed a few bars of “Under My Skin” and was, if not consoled, at least distracted.