Skin Privilege

SEVEN

The Home Sweet Home motel on the outskirts of Reece had been Lena 's only option the night before. The two-story cinder block building looked like a slasher movie set out of the sixties. Even as a kid, she'd thought of it as the Whore Hotel, the kind of place where people who didn't want to get to know each other too well met to fuck. At the age of sixteen, Lena had pretended to lose her virginity here. The guy, Ben Carver, was thirty-two, which was about the only thing she'd found attractive about him. He was dull and stupid to the point of being possibly retarded, and she'd been on the verge of breaking up with him until Hank had found out they were seeing each other. Hank forbade her to see Ben again, and the next night, Lena had found herself flat on her back at the Whore Hotel.

She wouldn't say it was the most boring three minutes of her life, but it came close. It was safe to say that when Ben didn't call her the next day, she was far from heartbroken. Lena had been too terrified to think about anything but her fear of being pregnant. Ben had said he would use a condom, but she had been too embarrassed to check. Lena had been completely powerless when it came to protecting herself. The only pharmacist in town refused to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. As far as she knew, the pharmacy was still owned by the same man today. She bet the bastard had no problem selling Viagra to unmarried men at ten bucks a pop.

Not that birth control pills were a hundred percent effective. There was always that less than one percent chance, that one time when the pill failed and the condom broke, and then before you knew it, you were sitting on a hard plastic chair at a clinic in Atlanta, waiting for your name to be called.

Lena could still remember everything about that day – the texture of the chairs, the posters hanging on the walls. Hank had waited outside, mumbling to himself, pacing the parking lot. He hadn't agreed with Lena 's decision, but in his fucked-up Hank way, he had supported her through the whole thing. 'I'm not in any position to cast judgment,' he'd told her. 'We all make mistakes.'

Was it a mistake, though? Most everybody was quick to say that abortion was okay in cases of rape, as if the fact that the woman didn't enjoy the sex negated any squeamishness they might have about the procedure. Lena 's relationship with Ethan was a lot of things: tumultuous, violent, brutal… but then sometimes it could be tender, loving, almost affectionate. The truth was that most of the time, she had willingly had sex with him. Most of the time, she had put her hands on his body, welcomed him into her bed. Could she trace back the conception of their mistake to a specific night, a specific time, and say whether or not it had been consensual or the other kind? Could she separate what it felt like to be beaten by him from the way it felt to be loved by him?

Could she really say that their baby had been a mistake?

Lena sat up in bed, not wanting to think about it anymore.

She made her way to the sink area and took her toothbrush out of her bag; she had not wanted to leave it by the sink last night. God only knew what people got up to on the cracked, plastic basin. The room was even more disgusting than she remembered; the carpet cupped the soles of her shoes as she walked across it and the sheets on the bed were so nasty that she had slept in her clothes. She had basically lay there all night, falling in and out of sleep, startling at any noise, afraid that the creepy night manager would use his passkey and try to catch her off guard. This was just the kind of place where that sort of thing happened.

She had slept with her gun by her hand.

The photograph from the newspaper was seared into her brain, and when she wasn't worrying about being raped and killed, she worried about her mother, the lies she and Sibyl had been told. It was clear now that Angela Adams had not died after two weeks spent lying comatose in the hospital. She had lived at least six months past Lena and Sibyl's birth. On the day the picture had been taken for the newspaper, she had held them in her arms, posing for the photographer as she told the reporter that she thought it was a travesty that her husband's murder had gone unsolved. I loved Calvin more than my own life,' she had told the reporter. 'He should be here now being a father to these precious little babies.'

Her words were much more saccharine than Lena would have liked, but the sentiment hit home. Her mother had loved them. She had been devastated by the loss of their father. She had held them in her arms.

Lena walked around the room as she brushed her teeth. When had Angela really died? And how? Hank had said that the thug leaving his house was the man who had killed Angela Adams. The drugs had let down Hank's guard, and she was certain that he had been telling the truth, or at least the truth as he saw it.

But did Hank mean the man had actually, physically killed her mother? He was certainly old enough to have been around when Calvin Adams was shot and killed. Had the thug been the one who ordered the hit on Calvin all those years ago, leaving Angela with no husband and two twin daughters to raise on her own? Had it been too much for Angela to bear? Had suicide seemed like the only way to make the pain stop? Lena could understand the draw. There had been many times in her life when she had considered the option herself.

Suicide might explain why Hank had lied about the timing, the mode, of Angela's death. He didn't want the girls to be burdened with the legacy of their mother's suicide. Lena could understand – if not forgive – that. At least there was some kind of logic to the lies.

If her mother had killed herself, it would also make sense that Hank was trying to do the same. Lena had seen it many times as a cop: suicides ran in families. Without a doubt, if Hank maintained his present lifestyle, he would be dead before the month was out. Whatever he was doing to himself, it was completely and entirely deliberate. Lena had never thought of Hank as anything but a survivor.

You didn't shoot junk into your veins for twenty years and still keep breathing if you had a death wish. You didn't suddenly stop hanging on to your life by your fingernails unless someone gave you a damn good reason to let go.

Lena spat into the sink, then used a bottle of water to rinse her mouth.

Hank had always been careful, as if he could distinguish himself between being a user and an abuser. For all his blackouts and open sores, he was careful about one thing. If speed was Hank's religion, he prayed at the altar of his veins. This was where the dope entered his system, and he was rigorous about making sure he took care of them. He never cooked with the same needle he injected with because the spoon or cotton could kink the tip and leave a bigger scar. He always used new needles, fresh alcohol swabs, and vitamin E to keep the tracks down. He didn't smoke before he shot up because that made the veins harder to find, the needle less likely to hit at the right spot.

Sure, there were times when his need overcame his logic; the track marks scarring his forearms, the way he sometimes lost feeling in his hands and feet because the veins couldn't get enough blood to his extremities, betrayed that fact. But, as drug addicts went, he had always been fairly careful.

Until now.

Lena turned on the water in the shower, then changed her mind, thinking she would feel even more filthy if she stepped her bare feet into the soiled, gray bathtub. She checked the lock on the door, then quickly took off her clothes, changing into a fresh pair of underwear and slipping back into her jeans from the day before. She found a T-shirt in her bag and kept her eyes on the door as she put it on.

Hank wouldn't talk to her. He had made that clear yesterday. Whatever his reasons, she knew that he was stubborn – as stubborn as she was. No matter what she said, how much she begged or beat him, he wouldn't talk until he was damn good and ready. The way he looked yesterday, unless a miracle happened, he would more than likely take his secrets to his grave.

Lena caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. It was tilted down toward the bed, spidery lines meant to give the appearance of lace framing the corners. She didn't see Sibyl anymore when she looked in the mirror. Sibyl would forever be trapped in a particular time that would never allow her to move on. She wouldn't have tiny lines around her eyes or the faint trace of a scar on her left temple. Her hair wouldn't get those few streaks of gray Lena had found in the bathroom mirror last week and, much to her shame, had plucked out with a pair of tweezers. Even if she'd lived, Sibyl would never have gotten that hard look to her eyes, that flat, cold stare that sent out a challenge to the world.

Sibyl would never know that their mother had lived however long – at least long enough to hold them. She would never know that just as Lena had always predicted, Hank had finally given in to his addiction. Nor would she stand at his graveside, cursing him for his weakness.

Hank was going to die. Lena knew there was no way he could pull himself out of his current condition without some kind of medical intervention. Yet, every time she thought about him, she didn't see the Hank from the last twenty-five years, the one who dutifully attended his AA meetings and ran to Lena 's side whenever she called him. She saw the addict of her childhood, the speed freak who chose the needle over his nieces. When Lena thought of his state of decline, she felt the rage only a child can feel toward a parent: you are all I have in the world and you are abandoning me for a drug that will destroy us all.

That's what addicts didn't see. They weren't just screwing up their own lives, they were screwing up the lives of everyone around them. There were some nights of Lena 's childhood when she had actually kneeled on the side of her bed and prayed that Hank would finally mess up, that the needle would go too far, the drug would be too potent, and he would finally die. She had envisioned adoption, a mother and father to take care of her and Sibyl, a clean place to live, order in their lives, food on the table that didn't come out of a can. Seeing Hank now, knowing the state he was in, Lena could not help but recall those sleepless nights.

And part of her – a very big part – said to let him die.

Lena sat on the bed as she tied her sneakers. Thinking about Hank wasn't going to get her anywhere but back in bed feeling sorry for herself. She wasn't sure what she was going to do today, but her top priority was getting out of this dingy room. The library's microfiche archives didn't go past 1971. The newspaper office was based out of the back room of an insurance company, so Lena didn't have much hope that they kept old issues. Still, she would try to get in touch with the weekly's editor, a man whose full-time job was picking up roadkill off the interstate.

Lena supposed she could find her mother's death certificate through the proper state office, but she would need Angela's Social Security number, place of birth, or at the very least her last known address in order to help her narrow the search. She knew both her mother's and father's birth dates from her own birth certificate, but beyond that, there was nothing. The hospital might have kept a billing address or other pertinent information, but she would need a warrant to get that information. She had thought about trying the county courthouse, but according to the message on their phone, they were closed while asbestos tiles in the floor were being removed.

Since the motel was right next door to Hank's bar, Lena decided she might as well start there. Technically, the Hut was not in Reece's city limits. Like a lot of small towns all over America, Elawah was a dry county. If you wanted to buy liquor, you had to cross the county lines into Seskatoga, which explained why the Elawah sheriff's department spent most of its weekends scraping teenagers off the road that led out of town.

Lena opened the door to her room and immediately closed her eyes, her retinas screaming at the sudden light. She blinked several times to regain her vision, staring at the floor of the concrete balcony. Just to the left of her foot, she saw a small, red X chalked onto the ground, maybe three inches square.

She knelt down, running her fingers along the red mark, wondering if it had been there when she checked in last night. It had been dark, but the ancient sign outside the motel cast enough light to see by. But, Lena hadn't been looking at the ground as she walked into the room. She'd been concentrating on the basics: bringing in her bag, finding her toothbrush, falling in to bed.

Lena looked at the tips of her fingers, saw that the chalk had transferred to her skin. The chalk mark didn't mean anything except that the maid didn't clean much. Judging by the state of Lena 's room, the woman wasn't exactly thorough.

Still, Lena glanced around as she stood back up. No one jumped out at her, and she went to the balcony and scanned the parking lot. Except for a motorcycle parked in the handicap space, her Celica was the only vehicle there.

She looked back at the ground. An X. Not a swastika, not a cross. Just a red X to mark the spot.

Lena wiped her hand on her pants as she strolled across the balcony toward the stairs. She kept her eyes on the ground, looking for other marks, trying to see if any of the other rooms had been singled out. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just cigarette butts, trash, and a few leaves, though the closest tree to the motel was about twenty feet away in the forest that ran behind the building.

She stopped in the front office to get a cup of coffee. There was a box of change by the pot, requesting fifty cents for each cup. Lena dropped a dollar in the box and stood looking into the parking lot as she poured herself a cup.

'Nice morning,' a man said. She turned toward the front counter and saw that it wasn't a man, but a teenager – the redheaded would-be gangsta she had seen in the Mustang outside the school yesterday.

She said, 'Shouldn't you be in school?'

'Work release,' he told her, leaning against the wall behind the counter. His T-shirt was so big the shoulders lapped around his elbows. He had a belly on him, but she could tell from his large hands and feet that he would lose that in the next few years as he grew into his body. He would still have that carrot-colored hair, though, and those freckles would never go away.

'I'm Rod,' he told her. 'You want some Halloween candy?'

'No.' Lena remembered the decorations from the library. Halloween was two nights away. She hadn't even remembered what day it was.

He asked, 'Are you a cop?'

So much for being undercover. 'What makes you say that?'

'You talk like a cop.'

She tasted the coffee and tried not to gag. 'How do you know what a cop talks like?'

'I've seen it on TV.'

Lena fished her change out of the honor box. 'You shouldn't believe everything you see on TV.'

'Junior watches it all night,' he said, probably meaning the clerk who had stared at Lena when she checked in last night as if she was the first woman he'd seen in his life. 'He's got porn tapes he keeps under the couch. Mr. Barnes doesn't know. He's the owner.' The kid gave her a big grin. 'You can watch some of them if you want.'

'Wait for that.' She started to leave, but changed her mind, thinking she might as well try. 'Hey.' The kid was still leaning against the wall, waiting. 'I saw a man the other day,' she began, resting her coffee cup on the door handle, trying to appear disinterested. 'He had a swastika on his arm.'

The kid stood away from the wall. His voice went up three octaves. 'A swastika like Hitler?'

'Yeah.'

'Cool.'

'You think that's cool?'

'Well, yeah. I mean, no, it's obviously, like, wrong.' He leaned back against the wall. 'I just meant it as in good for him for, you know, like not being ashamed.' He lowered his voice. 'There are some people in this town who have some white sheets in their closet.'

'Like who?'

'Well…' The kid realized he had an angle to work. 'Why don't we go back in the office and we can talk?'

'Why don't you call me when you get some fuzz on your peaches?' Lena moved to push the door open just as a woman was walking in.

'Christ,' the woman hissed as Lena 's coffee spilled down the front of her shirt. She was older, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled up into a blue bandanna. She was trim, too – about Lena 's height – and pissed as hell. 'Watch where you're fucking going.'

'Sorry,' Lena apologized, but the woman still scowled as if Lena had done it on purpose.

'Just fuck off,' the woman barked, pushing past Lena and going into the office. She slammed the door so hard that the pictures hanging on the wall rattled.

Lena asked the kid behind the counter, 'What's her problem?'

'She's the maid.'

That explained why the motel was a rat's best friend. 'She always that pleasant?'

The carrot shrugged, still smarting from Lena 's brush-off. 'Better you than me.'

Lena left the building, feeling bad for the woman, thinking she'd probably be pissed if she had to work at this dump, too. It was one thing to work a crap job when you were young, but the lady had to at least be pushing sixty. She should be retiring to Florida, not cleaning motel rooms for pocket change.

Lena walked across the parking lot, wishing she'd put on a jacket before heading out but not wanting to go back into the miserable room to fetch one. The sun was already busy burning off the fog, and she knew that in a couple of hours, she'd be glad she was in short sleeves.

She dumped the rest of her coffee into a storm drain as she crossed the street, glancing down to see if it ate through the concrete. There was a Stop 'n' Save catty-corner to the hotel, just opposite Hank's bar. She tossed her empty cup into the trash as she walked into the general store, which was little more than a front for selling cheap beer. She had sneaked out of Hank's house many a night to hang out behind the store with the other bad kids from high school.

Inside the store, the air-conditioning was already on full blast in anticipation of the coming heat. Lena walked past the coffee machine and grabbed herself a Coke. As she paid, she had the vague feeling that she knew the woman working behind the counter, probably from high school, but neither one of them was particularly interested in starting up a conversation. Lena dropped her extra pennies into the cup and headed back out the way she had come.

She stood on the sidewalk, waiting for the traffic to clear. The motel was directly across the street, and she saw that some creative vandals had broken the lights in the sign so that at night 'Home Sweet Home' would turn into, 'Ho eet me.' What else had the vandals done to the motel? Were they the ones who had scratched the red X in front of Lena 's door? The mark was bothering her. She wondered how long it had been there and if someone was trying to send her a message. Whatever it meant, she wasn't getting it. Still, she looked around as she waited for a truck to pass, her skin tingling, her gut telling her that she was being watched.

As casually as she could, Lena glanced over her shoulder. The woman behind the counter at the convenience store was staring out the window.

Candy, Lena suddenly remembered. That was her name. They had called her 'Corny' because someone had said that she walked like she had a corncob stuck up her butt.

There were times that Lena thought she wouldn't take all the money in the world to be back in high school.

The traffic cleared and she popped open the Coke as she started to cross the street, wondering how in the hell Hank's shitty bar had managed to help put Sibyl through college and bail out Lena more times than she wanted to admit. The Hut was a three o'clock bar, the kind where everyone started to look good around three in the morning. Desperation hovered like a black cloud over the place, and she suppressed a shiver as she got closer to the building.

The bar didn't even have a sign out front; everybody knew what it was. The roof was thatched on

the front, but what looked like a case of mange had set in around fifteen years ago and Hank hadn't bothered to fix it. Tiki torches with orange and red lightbulbs banked the front door, which was painted to look as if it had been fashioned from grass. The exterior walls were decorated in a similar theme, but the paint was so faded you couldn't tell what you were looking at unless someone gave you a clue. There were windows all along the front, but they had been painted black so long ago that they had taken on the appearance of rotten wood.

The yellow ATF tape across the door was the only thing that looked new. Hank hadn't told her the bar had been closed. There were only two reasons to explain the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms paying a visit to the Hut: either Hank had been caught selling liquor to underage patrons or he'd been caught dealing drugs.

Lena tried the door, but it was locked. She put her hand on top of the jamb and felt for the spare, but it wasn't in its usual place.

She gave up and walked around the side of the building. She didn't need to get inside the bar anyway. Hank's office, which bore a closer resemblance to an outhouse, was tucked behind the bar on the edge of a slow-running stream.

Lena tried the shed door just in case, but it was locked, too. Hank must have locked it himself; there was no sign of ATF tape on the shack. The federal boys probably hadn't bothered to get a warrant for the shed. The drug trafficking going on inside the bar would've been enough to make the headlines.

She put down her can of Coke and pushed her hands against the small window tucked high on the creek side, but it would not budge. A rock helped, and the untempered glass shattered into a million pieces, some of it falling into the open mouth of her soda can. Lena found a stick and used it to knock away the broken glass. Still, she didn't like the idea of climbing blind through the window. What's more, it was high up, probably too high to get to without a ladder. She had done stupider things, but at the moment, Lena was hard-pressed to remember what.

Out of frustration, she kicked the wall, mad at herself and this idiotic situation. The board made a hollow sound, and she kicked it harder until the wood splintered. A few more kicks created a nice hole in the shack. She cringed as she reached in and pulled out the pink insulation, sneezing from the dust, wondering if she was inhaling asbestos. There were black flakes of mold and excrement from animals that she didn't want to think about, but she pulled out enough fiberglass to expose the backside of the paneling that lined the inside office. She used her foot again, kicking out the plywood, which made a cracking sound as it pulled away from the rusted penny nails holding it to the studs.

A few minutes later, Lena was inside Hank's office.

She brushed off her jeans as she looked around, trying to find the light switch. She pushed away a spiderweb, then realized that it was actually the cord for the overhead light. Lena tugged the string and the bare bulb flickered on, then made a loud pop as it blew.

Lena cursed again. She had a flashlight in her car, but she didn't want to go back and get it.

Instead, she used the light coming in through the broken window to look for the spare bulbs Hank always kept in his desk. He had wired the office himself using a hundred-foot extension cord he'd snaked through a piece of metal pipe and plugged in at the bar. This was not the first time the light had blown. She found the pack of bulbs in the bottom drawer and changed the light, trying not to think about what her hands might find in the dark. Her feet crunched on the broken glass as she twisted the bulb, the socket making a dry, crackling sound as she tried to get the right angle. Finally, the light came on and the sudden heat from the bulb made her jerk back her hand.

She wasn't just being paranoid. Hank had almost electrocuted himself a couple of times trying to change the bulb.

Lena looked around the airless room, which was wallpapered with posters from beer and liquor companies. Half-naked women stared back at her, most of them fellating bottles they held in their hands. White cartons stuffed with paperwork that dated back to the bar's grand opening were stacked against the back wall, leaving about ten square feet for a desk and two chairs. Piles of receipts were in shoeboxes scattered around the desk.

Six years ago, Lena had sat in one of those stupid plastic chairs across from Hank, drinking so much Jack Daniel's that she made herself sick, as she tried to work up the courage to tell him that Sibyl was dead.

Was that when he had started using again? Had the news that his beloved girl, his favorite niece, was dead, been what had finally thrown him over the edge?

Or had it started six months ago when Hank had taken Lena to the abortion-clinic? He had stood outside the building, chain-smoking cigarettes, listening to angry protestors with their disgusting signs screaming about hell and damnation, condemning Lena and everybody else in the clinic to hell for their sins.

Had she done this to him? Had Lena 's actions helped put the needle back in his arm?

The guy with the red swastika had helped, too -she was certain of it. Lena had to find the man, to figure out who he was working for. Guys like that were muscle. There was a brain somewhere, and once Lena found that brain, she would burn his fucking house down with him inside.

Lena sat in Hank's chair, the springs squeaking like an old barn door. The top drawer to his desk was locked, and she took her folding knife out of her back pocket and flicked open the blade from the white pearl handle. The lock jimmied open easily enough. In the drawer, she found Hank's business checkbook, a couple of free coupons to Harrah's casino up in the mountains, and his spare set of keys to the bar. The larger drawers contained files that seemed mostly to do with the running of the business. Liquor distributors, payroll, taxes, and insurance. She flipped back through the checkbook and saw the last balance was dated three weeks ago. At the time, he had around six thousand dollars in the bank.

What date had the bar been closed down? She would have to find out from the sheriff's office. She wondered if that old fart Al Pfeiffer was still running the show and had to smile at the thought of going into his office, flashing her gold shield in the fucker's face. Pfeiffer had a neat trick where he pulled over young girls for speeding and frisked them to within an inch of their ovaries. He had pulled over Lena once and taken a few liberties before she had figured out what was going on and slammed her knee into his groin. Pfeiffer had thrown her into jail without charging her or giving her a phone call. She had sat in the cell for six hours before Hank had come down to the station to file a missing persons report.

His face. God, she could still see Hank's face. There was this split second when he saw her coming out of the jail when his eyes filled with tears and his mouth opened, letting out this yelp-like sound when he realized that she was okay. Just as quickly, his mouth had closed into an angry frown, and he had cuffed her on the back of the head, asking her what the hell she was doing getting herself into trouble, who the hell she thought she was sassing the police. He hadn't wanted to hear her story. Pfeiffer was one of his AA buddies and Hank thanked the man for not formally charging her.

Still, his face…

Lena had seen that same transformation so many times now that she'd come to think of Hank in almost schizophrenic terms. One second, the loving guardian who would do anything for her, the next second the angry disciplinarian threatening to beat her to within an inch of her life.

And now the drug addict – back to that old role again, waiting for the curtain to finally come down.

She put her elbows on the desk and dropped her head into her hands. The shack was like a kiln, and she felt sweat rolling down her back and into the waist of her jeans. Still, she sat there, heat engulfing her body, the water in the creek a constant murmur as she thought about Hank, the way he had looked in the shower, the hard words he had used when he told her to leave.

There had to be an explanation for his disintegration. Did the bar's closing send him into a spiral? Was that what had finally pushed him back into his old ways? Lena looked around the cramped office, trying to put herself in Hank's mind. He had no love for this place. He had always seen the Hut as a way to make money and nothing else. There was almost a perverse pleasure he got from being a recovering alcoholic and having the strength to be around liquor all day without imbibing. Had it been a crutch all these years?

She pushed herself back from the desk, her shoe sliding on a piece of paper. Lena reached down to pick it up, her hand freezing midair as she stared at the light blue notepaper on the concrete floor. The handwriting was a perfect cursive, the kind they used to teach in school back when it mattered. The words were easy to read from this distance, but still, she picked up the paper and sat back in the chair so she could study it. She had to read through the page two more times before the words started to make sense.

Lena rummaged through the desk, looking for the rest of the letter. She moved the shoeboxes and found three more pages underneath, then a few more that had fallen behind the desk. When she put them together, Lena found that there was not just one but three letters, all dated within the last two months. She read through them, feeling like she was reading someone's diary. The notes were banal in parts, listing details of shopping for groceries and picking up the kids after school. Some of it was intensely personal, the kinds of things you shared only with a close friend.

Finished, Lena pressed her palm flat against the stack of letters, fingers splayed out, as if she could divine their true meaning.

How had she been so blind?