Under My Skin Read online

  She had booked a concierge suite in the Waldorf Towers and it would cost $640 for one night. It was a lot of money and the same amount would have bought her a week at The Beacon on the Upper West Side. But tonight, she wanted to stay here, and wish herself a Merry Christmas in a very special way. Did the money matter now? She actually smiled when she thought about the numbers notched up on next month’s Visa bill. On the day before Christmas Eve she didn’t care about anything and with it came the first real feeling of freedom – and not for the first time she looked at herself in the mirror and asked, ‘Why did I not do this a long time ago?’

  That morning she went to a hair salon on West Broadway and had her hair styled and coloured while someone else massaged her feet and buffed and painted her nails. When they offered her the tipping envelopes she smiled very sweetly and said ‘Merry Christmas’ and put a $100 bill into each.

  She took a cab to Barneys and went first to La Perla and then to Chloë and finally to Chanel on the fourth floor. The suit she bought was pale cream cashmere, with a short fitted jacket and large buttons in a double row. The skirt was pencil and fitted her perfectly and fell modestly just below her knee. And her shoes, bought at Chloë, were black stilettos, and she felt a warm rush of love for the designer when she saw the red under-sole. On the way out the staff smiled at her and inwardly thanked her for their commissions and she stopped for a moment near the doorway and allowed a young man in a grey suit to spray her once on each wrist with Chanel No. 5.

  In the bathroom of Starbucks she took off her jeans and sneakers and left her black raincoat in a roll on the floor. She stepped into the underwear and her suit and in that moment, surrounded by balls of tissue paper, for the first time in her life, Matilda felt beautiful and new.

  The suite was as she expected – three tall windows with long silk drapes in colours like a fresh meadow in spring. The furniture was red brocade and the coffee table was inlaid with walnut and cherry wood. She breezed lightly through the doorway and walked from room to room. And the porter stood awkwardly, not knowing if he had earned a tip because there was no overnight bag. Then she walked to the bathroom and back into the bedroom again and she smiled at the king-size bed covered in the same green silk, and the orange ottoman at the end.

  ‘I am bound to sleep well here,’ she told him and she tipped him with a $50 bill. Somehow in that moment she did not want him to leave her and every stranger was suddenly important to her now. She opened the buttons on her jacket and sat for a moment on the end of her bed. Then she lay back and looked up at the pale cream ceiling. She moved further up on to the bed and lay back with both arms outstretched, and now she really knew and understood that there was no longer any reason to be afraid. So she lay like that, surrounded by the smell of her own perfume and the feeling of new clothes and silk – and far away the cabs honked on Park Avenue as everyone else went on and on and kept trying to live out life. And she turned over and for the first time ever she slept deeply, without any pills.

  In the end The Chief would blame Christmas. And later, when he told Maggie, his wife surprised him by hugging him suddenly and telling him that he was ‘getting soft’. But when she turned away and continued with her turkey stuffing he could still see the trace of a smile on her face. She did not grumble when he said they needed to go to his mother on Christmas Day, the same as last year – and later as they sat watching the first of the holiday movies together, he saw the same little smile flicker across her lips. And she was quieter too, as if what had happened and what he had managed to do had provoked some unusual and happy thought.

  On 23 December the Midtown North Precinct was busy and he spent the morning at his desk and in meetings about the Mayor – and he quietly cursed how every movement was becoming like a military operation for him now. In between talks about security checks and crowd barriers, he saw through the glass the drunks, the down-and-outs and the usual pre-holiday suicides that came in. They would watch him as they sat and answered questions, and now and then, when they glanced up at him from under a dirty hood and with bloodshot eyes, they seemed to ask, ‘What am I to do?’ And his answer was to drain his fifth cup of coffee and look down again at his work.

  For once Gallagher wanted to make a difference and not just chip away as he always did without any real feelings or thoughts. Since Glassman had come to visit him, he had felt different and as if, at long last, after twenty years in the force, he felt he could do something and change. Until that day on his back porch when he watched his friend blow on his hot chocolate, there was nothing he had not seen and nothing that could create even the slightest ruffle inside. Maybe that was why Maggie was so amused by it – and maybe now, close to retirement, he was in fact ‘getting soft’.

  On his first December in the job he had walked down to the subway and had helped to pick up body parts from under the train. Then there was 9/11 and by now he had accepted that this was just a job too and soon he would be old enough to retire and use his holiday home on Long Beach.

  It was close to 6 p.m. when Lieutenant Joe Wexler walked across the noisy precinct floor towards his office. Around him there were policemen talking and going off duty with gun belts slung over chairs and bulletproof vests hanging over desks. He nodded to The Chief through his glass door and without knocking opened the door and stepped in. They shook hands even though they were old friends and drank a cup of coffee and talked about their holiday plans. It was only as he was leaving that Wexler mentioned ‘some freaky woman’ who had been found in a room at the Waldorf and who looked a lot like Marilyn Monroe. He said he was on his way down there now and as he turned and walked away The Chief created a picture of Arthur Glassman in his head and this was followed by a second picture of Marilyn Monroe. He called Wexler back and without explaining anything, he took his own gun from the drawer and told him he wanted to come along. He surprised them by telling them to ‘step on it’ and even though they moved easily through the traffic it still took nearly twenty minutes to get there.

  As they passed the fairy lights in every shop window, he felt as if he was on a different planet to the rest of the world – and he had no idea what Christmas had to do with any of it any more. He did not want to go, and yet for the man who had saved his life, he felt he needed to be there and then at least he could bring some good news to his friend.

  Matilda called Room Service and then turned on the TV and curled up on the bed. She ordered one bottle of vodka and some ice in a tall glass.

  The knock on her door came and then the voice – young and boyish – called ‘Room Service’ and she called back, ‘Come in.’

  She curled a little more on the bed, knowing that he would see the shape of her buttocks in the cream cashmere suit and how her breasts leaned and fell one over the other. He came in and opened the table and set down the small circular tray. He spoke to her politely and to Matilda he just seemed sweet and handsome and young.

  ‘Is there anything else, ma’am?’ and she smiled without speaking for a moment and asked him if he could please close the curtains and turn down her bed.

  Then she asked him if he could mix her a drink and if he would like to have one for himself. And to this he smiled, an easy, mischievous smile, and told her that he would like to but he couldn’t as he was still at work.

  She stood for a moment and watched as he turned back the bed. She opened her cigarette case – and as he worked, the bed became a perfect square of white cotton and linen with a small mountain of white down pillows for her head. He reached for the matches on the bedside table and when she leaned towards him, she wondered if he would notice that her eyes were full of tears and that she was suddenly feeling afraid.

  She did not want to be alone and so she said, ‘Could you just sit with me, for a little while?’ and the boy, lifting dark eyebrows and smiling, poured vodka for himself and sat down. And they drank half of the bottle and neither of them said a word.

  The light began to fade, and outside the whole of New York pretended to
be happy, and Matilda wondered how many people were like herself and the waiter at the Waldorf, and really had nowhere else to go. He had done his duty and she reached for her bag and handed him a roll of dollar bills and he looked at them for a moment and said, ‘Thank you, ma’am – Merry Christmas.’

  She knew what he thought of her. That she was some sad woman heading towards forty, drunk and with lots of money and never any kind of man – and then, in case he became suspicious, and also because she did not want to frighten him, she asked if he could bring her the New York Times the following day.

  She had only taken her purse with her, a black leather pouch bought at Barneys, and inside she had one lipstick, two packs of cigarettes and four bottles of sleeping pills.

  When she lay on the white sheets she was still wearing her make-up and a white towelling robe. She thought about that day in New York with Hope and wished she had also taken her for lunch in Barneys – because Hope would have liked that. And then she took the first eight pills and swallowed them down with a drink and this time she remembered to get up and put out the ‘Shh – Do Not Disturb’ sign on her door.

  She had written the note that morning. She had used her favourite black ink pen and wrote it on her kitchen table with Godot at the bay window, still staring out at the snow. Whatever happened she did not worry about her cat. Somehow he always knew he couldn’t fully rely on her.

  She left the note on her pillow and, swallowing ten more pills, she lay back and waited – and waited – until she was no longer conscious of the wait.

  At 4 p.m. as it grew dark in New York City, Matilda slipped quietly and without causing any further trouble to anyone, out of this world. In the morning she had great hopes that she would wake up somewhere else and in that somewhere else place she would no longer be so alone. The next day the note was read by one of the younger officers and then passed with a frown to The Chief.

  ‘I never cared about fame… I just wanted to be wonderful.’ Marilyn

  Later that day an old lady who lived in the subway visited the bathroom in Starbucks and found a nice black raincoat and a pair of Chuck trainers and smiled to herself as she wore them home. The city was almost ready for Christmas and in the middle of the noise and the carol singers and the lights, no one knew or cared that one more star was gone.

  After they found her body they took a small room off the foyer and The Chief sat leaning against a table as the officers interviewed the hotel staff. They asked the receptionist how she checked in and took her credit card details. They questioned the concierge about any special requests. They interviewed the Room Service waiter and he owned up to drinking the vodka with her in her room. There were two porters standing side by side and one of them had just come in.

  ‘Did you see anything at all?’ he was asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ he replied. ‘My shift started after she checked in.’

  ‘How long have you worked here?’

  ‘One week,’ he replied and here he gave a smile.

  ‘So you’re working over the holidays?’

  ‘What holidays?’ the boy asked and The Chief grinned.

  There was nothing else anyone could do, except tell again what had happened and what was said at the front desk or in her bedroom before she died.

  Gallagher suddenly felt tired sitting there and he told the Lieutenant he was going home.

  He called Glassman from his car on his way to Brooklyn.

  He waited for him to answer and when Hope picked up the phone he spoke to her briefly and then said, ‘Put him on.’ Glassman listened and then said, ‘Thank you, John,’ and The Chief could not remember the last time he had heard Glassman use his name.

  He knew that he had helped him at last and yet deep down something worried him and he began to wonder if he could also bear – if he had to – to take all that happiness back and away.

  He had already seen them together.

  He was old and she was so young.

  There was nothing that surprised him in Manhattan and yet Glassman seemed to glow too much whenever she walked into a room. The Chief could not understand women but he could feel some sort of worry held back, as if his friend felt she was somehow too special for him or just on loan.

  He drove his jeep through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and all the way out he thought about Matilda and listened to Christmas songs. As he drove his jeep up the small hill to his house he stopped at his garage and waited with the engine on. There was something about one of the porters that bothered him but he did not know what it was. He had only started at the Waldorf that week and still for some reason The Chief felt he already knew his face. It was Christmas Eve and his family was waiting. He could see his wife inside the kitchen window and as the garage door began to lift slowly and without turning his engine off, he turned the jeep around and headed into Manhattan again. On the way back he called the Precinct and told them to bring the boy in.

  On the night before Christmas Eve Glassman wanted to stay at home. After three days they had begun to settle a little now and it became a gentle game between himself and Hope. He would cook dinner in the evenings and she would sit at the table in the kitchen, eating Saltines and reading things out to him from Time Out magazine. ‘The Rant Show’ at Mo Pikins or TJ Monkeys at the Red Room, or what about ‘Suddenly Stand-up’ on Christopher Street?

  Whenever they did venture outside, she said they would both need something to make them laugh. But they thought about these options and then she would come and stand at his elbow and check that his pasta was not overdone. Then she would agree over mixing the tomatoes and anchovies that maybe they would just stay home. They thought about that while they had dinner. The snow building up on the windowsills and the fire crackling in his living-room grate. So far neither one could offer a good enough reason to be away from the open fire and outside in the cold. Later he worked in his studio and she made a jug of hot chocolate and then called him down to bed.

  And it was that moment that he lived for – and when they were both safe under the duvet he knew for certain that he had never known such happiness as when Hope was near and curling herself towards him to keep warm.

  He was surprised to hear from The Chief again and he had no idea what he was going to say. But he would not come upstairs to the apartment and so Glassman had no choice but to wrap his muffler around his neck three times and turn the pasta down. He noticed as he kissed her cheek when he passed her that the broccoli was making the kitchen window steam up. She had even convinced him that it was good for him and he ate a little now as part of his daily homage to her.

  ‘Honey, open the air vent,’ he said and he told her that he wouldn’t be long.

  They met at the deli at the end of Prince Street, where there were long open counters of salads and sausage and ham. When he saw The Chief eating a doughnut with his coffee at a small white table, his heart lifted a little and he wondered if maybe he was wrong.

  The Chief talked about Matilda again and then he stopped for a moment and looked out on to the street. As the silence grew, one of them sighed and at this point The Chief felt he could begin.

  He talked about illegals. Hotel staff and bus boys. People who were not documented anywhere – so after 9/11 it was difficult to know for sure where they were gone.

  ‘The truth is, if someone is not registered then it is as if they’re not here. So when a bunch of people go missing – it’s hard to know for sure – if that person is actually dead – or just hiding – or gone.’

  The Chief said nothing for a little while and when Glassman lifted his coffee cup, he could not stop the shake in his left hand. The Chief’s words had begun to frighten him. They felt like stones and bricks that could break him right down. But The Chief looked into his eyes and he was suddenly steady and strong about it.

  ‘Arthur,’ he said, ‘they’re so young.’

  Glassman swirled his coffee in his cup and turned his face to the dark window and only his ears paid attention to his friend’s voice
now. She had already decided, and he believed that and this was not about choosing now. He knew that sometimes when she looked at him, it was with the slightest hint of pity, and that she did not want to leave him because it would cause more pain. He remembered how she sat in the hair salon the day before and read a magazine while he saw his own hair, all grey now, fall like dry feathers on to the floor. She had watched as it landed on his shoulders and he had seen her eyes in the mirror – and how she looked away again.

  ‘He was mugged in early September,’ The Chief went on. ‘Some junkie took his watch, his wallet and his wedding ring.’

  But Arthur would not listen or see him. Instead he looked out at people buying late stocking fillers from a stall on the street. The Chief ordered two more coffees and as he turned back from the man behind the counter, Arthur asked, ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘He knows everything about her… and when I told him that she had been looking for him… you would want to have seen his face… Arthur…’ and here The Chief was almost begging.

  ‘They’re just a couple of kids,’ The Chief said.

  ‘And his family?’

  ‘Apparently there’s no love lost there.’

  ‘And he didn’t try to call her?’

  The Chief put his bear-paw hands on his forehead for a second and he stroked the lines on his face gently as if this would somehow make them go away.

  ‘Of course he tried to call her,’ he said quietly and he watched his friend’s eyes now for some sign of recognition. And Glassman lifted his hands and finished the point.