The City Under the Skin by Geoff Nicholson Read Free Book Online Page A

they? It’s not like they go and fight the biggest, toughest antelope they can find, just to show how brave they are.”
    â€œAre there any big, tough antelopes?” said Billy.
    â€œSome of them have got to be bigger and tougher than others.”
    â€œI suppose so. Is that all you’ve been doing? Thinking about lions?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œHow’s your skin?”
    â€œThe same.”
    â€œLet’s have a look.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCome on, roll your sleeve up.”
    â€œI don’t want to.”
    â€œWhat are you trying to hide?”
    She wouldn’t admit that she was trying to hide anything, so she pushed up her sleeve to reveal her right arm. At first all Billy could see was a red, inflamed rash.
    â€œYou’ve been playing with it.”
    â€œIt helps pass the time.”
    â€œYou weren’t happy with the skull and crossbones?”
    She shrugged. “Change is good,” she said.
    When Billy looked more closely, he saw there was a pattern in among the disorder. By constantly pressing and drawing on her skin she’d made a word appear, a livid, blotched, temporary tattoo that read DAD.
    â€œThat’s a very weird thing to do,” Billy Moore said. “Kind of sweet and touching, but also very weird.”
    Without being asked, Carla pushed up the other sleeve and revealed on her left arm the word MOM.
    â€œEven more touching,” he said, though he was touched in a very different way by this.
    â€œDon’t worry,” Carla said. “They’ll fade eventually.”

 
    7. NIGHT UNDER GLASS
    Rain stippled the roof of Wrobleski’s domed conservatory, and inside it, a few scattered candles burned among the cacti, their flames reflected in the glass between the spines and paddles, reinforcing the wet darkness beyond. Shadows flicked over the relief map of Iwo Jima. Laurel was there, lolling, angled across the sofa, awake but drunk or stoned or exhausted, her head just a few inches away from the blue-black point of an agave leaf, her attention a million miles away. Wrobleski and the improbably named Genevieve sat in rattan chairs facing each other. He had poured two glasses of wine, and Genevieve was holding hers tightly in both hands, as if it might fly away.
    â€œHow are you?” Wrobleski asked, sounding, or at least trying to sound, concerned.
    Genevieve blinked a couple of times, looked not quite at him, and said, unconvincingly, “I’m good.”
    â€œGreat,” he said. “I’m glad you could come.”
    If she found this an odd way of putting it—and how could she not?—she gave no indication. Perhaps she was no longer capable of being surprised.
    â€œYou’re a train wreck, aren’t you?” Wrobleski said.
    She shrugged: it made no difference.
    â€œI didn’t ask for this date,” she said.
    â€œNo, you didn’t,” Wrobleski agreed. “What’s that thing you’ve got wrapped around you, anyway?”
    â€œIt’s a curtain,” she said, and that was all the explanation she thought necessary, or was prepared to give.
    â€œAnd you’re naked under there?”
    â€œWe’re all naked under our clothes,” she said.
    â€œVery profound,” Wrobleski said quietly. “Let me see.”
    She hesitated only long enough to take a gulp from her drink, set it on the floor, and then she stood up slowly, regally, so that the velvet curtain—if that’s what it really was—remained behind her on the chair. She stood naked, about to place her dirty fingertips on the edge of the case containing the relief map, for support, but Wrobleski raised his hand to indicate she wasn’t allowed to do that. She took a step back and looked sideways at her own bare, milky, phantom reflection in the glass of the conservatory, and then she faced Wrobleski with an unconcerned calmness.
    â€œI need you to turn around,” he