Under My Skin. Lisa Unger

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СКАЧАТЬ arm around my waist practically the only thing holding me up. Layla holding my other hand. Mac’s whisper in my ear: It’s okay, Poppy. We’re going to get through this. All of us together. Hold on. Be strong. He’d want that. Our old apartment filled with friends, damp eyes, whispering voices; Jack’s mother, her face ashen with a tray of sandwiches wobbling in her hand; Layla taking it from her, laying it down on the table. My mother chatting with Alvaro, flirting as if this wasn’t her son-in-law’s funeral. I can hear her throaty laugh, inappropriate enough to draw eyes. Me wishing for the millionth time that my father was still alive. Daddy, please. I need you. How silly. A grown woman still calling for her father. Those are the last things I can remember. Where am I now? How did I get here?

      I pull myself unsteadily to standing, the walls spinning. Someone pounds on the stall door.

      “One minute,” I say, voice croaky and strange. I don’t even sound like myself.

      Whoever it is finds another stall, slams the door. The door outside swings open, voices and music pour in, filling the whole room. Then it goes quiet again.

      There’s a bag lying beside me, a glittery black evening purse. Even though I don’t recognize it, I grab for it and open it. My cell phone, dead. Five hundred dollars in cash. A thick compact, which I pry open with shaking hands.

      The woman in the mirror is a mess, long black hair wild, mascara running down her face in sad clown tears, pale, blue eyes wide with fright. I sit on the seat and use some toilet paper and my own spit to clean my face. I do a passable job, running my fingers through my hair, using the makeup in my bag to fix myself up. In the small shaking mirror, I’m almost normal again. Except for the fact that I have no idea where I am, or how I got here.

      Okay. Deal with that later. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I just need to get myself home. I can figure everything out once I’m safe. I’ll call Layla then. We’ll figure it out. She’ll know what to do.

      I wobble through the stall door, tilting in heels too high. Two women—one black, one white—applying makeup at the mirror glance at me, then at each other. They both start to laugh.

      “You okay, honey?” one of them asks, not really caring. She smears a garish red to her lips.

      “You need to Uber your ass home, girl,” says the other, frowning in disapproval. Her hair is dyed platinum blond, her lips dazzling berry. I feel a lash of anger, but a wash of shame keeps me from answering back.

      Their laughter follows me out the door, until it’s drowned out by the heavy techno beat. Bodies throb on the dance floor as I push my way through the crowd, wondering where the exit is. Instead, I find myself at the bar, taking a seat. I’ll rest here a minute, my legs so unsteady, head spinning.

      The bartender comes over and leans in to me. She brings me a glass of ice water. Embossed in ornate script on the glass, a word in red: Morpheus.

      “Your boyfriend’s been waiting for you all this time,” she says as I take a long swallow. “If you thought you lost him, you didn’t.”

      I glance in the direction that her eyes drift—they are violet, eerie and strange. Color contacts. On her arms, tattoos—a dragon, a tower, a woman dancing. I stare, fixated by the lines and colors. I can’t focus on anything for very long.

      “He sees you.”

      Who is he? Long sandy hair, pulled back, a thick jaw and strange eyes that seem to defy colors—amber, green or steely blue. He gets up and comes over, leans in behind me.

      “I thought you left.” His voice in my ear sends a shiver down my spine.

      He spins me around, tugs me into him. The heat between us; it’s electric. He snakes one arm around my back, the other around my neck and leans in, as if we are not in a crowded club, but alone. His draw is magnetic, irresistible. And then we are alone, the world dropping away, music fading, as he kisses me long and deep. I am on fire with desire, a deep ache inside me. It’s embarrassing how badly I want him.

      Jack. Jack.

      But it’s not Jack.

      “Who is Jack?” he wants to know. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be Jack, whoever he is. I’ll be anyone you want me to be.”

      Then, as if by magic, we are in his car—or at least he’s driving. I have no idea whose car it is. But it’s a nice one, leather, glowing blue lights, soft music playing on Bose speakers. Everything smells clean, new. The city skyline is in the rearview mirror, streamers of white and red lights around us.

      “Where are we going?” I ask, barely even recognizing my own voice.

      “Don’t you remember?” he asks gently.

      “No,” I say with a rising panic. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember at all.”

      He looks at me with a strange smile and just keeps driving.

       6

       I’m sorry. I don’t remember at all.

      The words burrow into my sleep, taking on urgency, growing louder, until the sound of my own frightened shout wakes me.

      I bolt upright, breath labored, T-shirt soaked through with sweat. I’m in my own bed, the covers tossed to the floor. A weak Tuesday morning sun bleeds in through the blinds, shining on my clothes from last night in a messy tumble on the floor.

      The details of the dream are already slippery. What kind of car? What club? It’s important to remember; I must dig into that place.

      Coffee brews in the timed pot that’s set for six, its aroma wafting through the apartment. The city is awake with horns and distant sirens and the hum of traffic. Slowly, breath easing, these mundane details of wakefulness start to wipe away my urgency. The dream, the panic to remember, recede, slinking away with each passing second like a serpent into the tall grass of my wakefulness.

      Sleep is the place where your mind organizes, where your subconscious resolves and expresses itself. In times of great stress, dreams can become like a whole other life, Dr. Nash said. A terrifying, disjointed life that I can’t understand.

      I reach for my dream journal and start writing, trying to capture what I remember:

       Morpheus, a nightclub?

       Black-and-white-tile floors, kissing a faceless man?

       He takes me somewhere in his car, a BMW maybe. Afraid. But relieved, too? Who was he? Where was he taking me? Why did I go with him?

       Red dress?

       Powerful desire. Jack. I thought he was Jack, but he wasn’t.

      The impressions are disjointed, nonsense really in daylight. As I scribble, the sunlight brightens and begins to fill the room through the tall windows. Too bright. I must be late for work.

      Finished writing, I flip back through to the earlier pages, looking to see if there’s any other dream like this one. Reading what I wrote late last night, СКАЧАТЬ