Skin Deep

'Sheer wish fulfillment.' She stroked my arm again. 'You were in trouble, remember?'

'So he's alive.'

'Alive and kicking. Kicking everybody in sight.'

'You made all that up, that whole story. Cutting him down and everything. The magic.'

'Oh, no. He really did use to do magic, when he was drunk.'

I didn't say anything.

'Come on, Simeon, I told that story because you were chewing on your shoe.'

'I already said thanks. Is there anything else I'm not supposed to believe?'

'I don't care what you believe. No, that's wrong, I do care. If you have to decide right now what to believe, if you can't wait a day or two, then believe that my father makes Toby's dad look like Santa Claus. My fifth-grade teacher told me once that a bad lie always comes true. You can't imagine how many people I've told that my father is dead.'

'What did he do to you?'

'That doesn't matter. Anyway, he's not dead, remember? He's still trying to do it.'

'Do what?'

She looked out the window. 'How about we let that wait?'

'We're letting a lot of things wait.'

She attempted a laugh again. It was less real, but more pleasant, than her last try. 'Please,' she said. 'Let a girl keep a little mystery.'

Sunset curved sinuously to the left, and I willed Alice to follow the dotted line. She obeyed, with the usual groan of protest from the rear axle. Two or three miles piled up behind us in a tidy, linear fashion before either of us spoke. I turned on the radio, and some deluded disk jockey threw Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' at us. It seemed like the only song I'd heard in months.

Nana beat me to the volume control, and silence reigned again. 'Don't judge me,' she said. 'Don't pass any cheap judgments. Not yet, at least.'

'I'm in the judgment business. I don't always like it, but that's what I do. I can't buy the feminine mystique. As far as I'm concerned, mystery is just sloppy business. It only means that someone hasn't asked the right questions.'

She made an impatient gesture. 'Questions. Can't you leave it alone for a while?'

'If you're satisfied to put Amber into the ground without talking about it, I can leave it alone.'

'We weren't talking about Amber. We were talking about me.'

'You're part of it. You and Amber had the same job. If I understand you a little better, maybe I'll understand Amber, too.' I wasn't being entirely truthful. 'She's not around to tell me about herself. I thought you wanted me to do something about Amber.'

'I want somebody to burn at the stake,' she said flatly.

'Then stop being Mata Hari. If you're not going to talk to me, tell me so. I don't want to hear about the feminine mystique. Like you said, it's hard either way, whether you're a man or a woman. So as one screwed-up human being to another, tell me the truth.'

'I am telling you the truth.'

'As far as it goes.'

'If I tell you the truth,' she said, 'who knows how far it's going to go? Damn, Simeon. Maybe there are some things I don't want to tell you. If I want to hide something here and there, then let me. Maybe it hasn't got anything to do with Amber. What if there are things I'm ashamed to tell you?'

'Why?'

'Boy, you're simple sometimes. Maybe I care about something that doesn't have anything to do with Amber.'

'Like what?'

'Like me. Like you, maybe.'

'Nana, this is a job.'

She straightened abruptly. 'I am not a job.'

'Okay,' I said, 'so you're not a job. So sit on your secrets. Keep them warm. Maybe they'll hatch into nightmares.' Another mile passed, and she didn't say anything. I yawned. 'Long night,' I said conversationally.

'Don't make small talk.'

'I'm not allowed to make any other kind.'

She passed her fingernails lightly over the back of my hand.

'Think it'll rain tomorrow?' I said.

She settled herself resignedly into the seat. 'I'm sure it will.'

'Who do you think will win the Republican primary?'

'Somebody who dresses in feathers and gobbles.'

'What's your favorite color?'

'Only men have favorite colors. Women choose colors that reflect their aura, and every fool knows that a woman's aura is always changing.'

'What do you use to polish your aura?'

'Spit,' she said. 'Spit and saddle wax. What do you use on yours?'

'I have a no-polish aura. It's new from Du Pont.'

She stretched like a cat and rolled her head back and forth. She had an extraordinarily long throat. 'Do you really have to ask me questions?' she said.

'Only if I want answers.'

'Okay,' she said in a businesslike tone. 'I started dancing because I had this girlfriend who was doing it and she kept asking me to. I was sixteen and a half, and my father had chased me out of the house a year before. He chased me all the way from Killeen to Hollywood. Killeen is a service town, lots of guys who used to be in Korea and lots of Korean women who were married to them. I got to Hollywood, got a fake ID, and started working at a bookstore, but I wasn't making any money. And then my girlfriend, who had become my roommate, started in on me. I knew the girls weren't whores or anything because I knew my roommate, and she was a nice girl. She still is a nice girl. I made a hundred and forty dollars a week at the bookstore, and they knocked off an hour if I went to lunch, so I didn't go to lunch. I was hungry all the time. The first night I danced, place down near the airport, I made three hundred and ninety, in cash. One guy tipped me a hundred bucks. I was the only Oriental girl in the club, and I guess I was a novelty.'

'I didn't ask you how you started dancing.'

'You were going to. Weren't you?'

'Sooner or later. Why did Amber start dancing?'

'She had a boyfriend who was supposed to be a writer. He was working on the great American haiku or something. Well, naturally, he couldn't do that, juggle all seventeen of those syllables and hold down a job, too. So he moved in with Amber and let her take care of him by dancing while he slaved every day over a hot typewriter.'

'How was the haiku?'

'Who knows? He never finished it. Probably never started it. From what people tell me, he spent most of his time looking for something to stuff up his nose.'

'Is he still around? You didn't mention him to the cops.'

'Long gone. He picked the cutest way to move out. Amber went down to San Diego one afternoon to dance a party, and she stayed the night because they finished so late. When she got home the next day, she found some of her furniture in the front yard, and the door to the house was wide open. There was nothing inside, and I mean not a dish towel. He'd had a yard sale while she was gone. Sold all her stuff and split.'

I negotiated a curve. 'Sensitive guy.'

'You know artists.'

'When was this?'

'A couple years ago. Right about the time I came to the Spice Rack.'

'I thought Amber was Tiny's.'

'What a Southern way of putting it.'