Second Skin

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Second Skin - book excerpt

Chapter 1

“My name is Elisa Monroe, and I am a failure.” I squint into the mirror at the smear of uneven eyeliner and frown. A wrinkle creases my forehead.

“Come on, Lise,” Alex calls. “We’re going to be late.”

Muttering curse words so softly even I can’t hear them, I grab a makeup wipe—the overpriced kind that smells like roses—and wipe my eye clean.

“Don’t mess up. This is your last chance,” I remind myself. Anxiety bubbles up in my stomach as I stare myself in the eye. Just one eye. It’s easier when there’s just one eye to look at.

Primer. Do I really need it? I’m only going to be made up for a few hours…but what if not reapplying makes the eyes not match?

Sighing, I smear the clear gel over my lid, where it promptly sinks into the lines I pretend not to have. Yuck. Thirty-six doesn’t look so good. It’s the light, right? The glaring bulbs over the bathroom sink. The ones Alex insisted were better. They make me look like a lizard. Scaly, staring and…blank. Blank because I don’t want to see this house.

Scowling, I sweep green eyeshadow over the offending eye and then turn to the bottle of liquid liner. Why do I do this to myself? I don’t know, but here we go. I take in a deep breath—the air is hot in the bathroom—and touch the pen to my eyelid. I inhale. Hold. Sweep. For once, the brown line arranges itself neatly enough. Not perfectly, to be sure—reality still holds sway—but at least it doesn’t look freakish.

Capping the pen, I run the brush through my short brown hair and stare at myself for another moment. Good enough, I suppose.

Flipping off the light, I step into the hallway between the bedroom and living room of our small apartment. My eyes meet the eyes of my mother, or at least of her portrait, which hangs next to my deceased in-laws’ anniversary photo and my own posed wedding shot.

“What are you doing, Lise?” Alex demands. “You know I’ve got the overnight shift tonight. It starts in four hours. We have to move.” He takes in my appearance and his lips compress. “Let’s go,” he says at last.

I step into my sandals, grab my purse from its habitual spot next to the door and we step out of the apartment.

“I wish you would stop leaving your purse there,” Alex says, still frowning. Bright sunlight hits his dark eyes, and he squints, but no wrinkles mar his skin. It remains perfectly smooth. His black hair shines with the gel that locks every strand in precise, flawless place.

I shrug. We’ve had this conversation before. No need to rehash it. I head for the stairwell, but Alex grabs my arm and drags me to the elevator.

“It’s not going to crash, Lise. We live in a modern building that gets adequate maintenance.”

I don’t like elevators because of how they make my stomach feel, but no matter. Alex is right we don’t have much time. The bell dings, the door opens, and my guts are already jumping. I gag as he tugs me into the small, tan box.

The state of the buttons—fingerprinted and grubby, the numbers fading—calls into question his assertion about the state of the maintenance, but it’s too late now. The door closes and the box drops, leaving my stomach on the fifth floor.

The lobby also disappoints. Yes, there’s a lovely chandelier, but it’s dusty. Mail bristles out of the boxes on the far wall. Sneaker marks mar the floor tiles. Maybe it will be good to get out of this messy place, I tell myself, even as my comfy little change-resister howls in protest. But there’s no point in arguing. Alex will do what Alex will do. He’s a force of nature. Now, we must choose, buy and move into a house, and that’s that.

“Come on,” he urges, tugging on me again. I try to extract my arm, but he tightens his grip until his fingers pinch my skin.

I stumble after him, catching the toe of my sandal on the stoop that leads into the parking garage. “Slow down, Alex,” I beg. “My legs are not as long as yours. I’m coming. Don’t pull me.”

He slows. Ostentatious roll of the eyes notwithstanding, he allows me to walk to the car at a comfortable pace.

We reach Alex’s fancy black SUV, and he clicks the button once, climbing into the driver’s side. I wait, knowing full well that the passenger side door is still locked.

He stares at me through the window, eyes half-lidded and expressionless.

I pantomime clicking the key fob to remind him and he pushes the button to release the door. I scramble up, the high interior of the car straining the reach of my legs. I wish we could have taken my sedan, but I know better than to ask. Being seen in a small car with a dent and a few rust stains would not have delighted my admittedly snobby anesthesiologist husband. I settle into my seat and fasten my seatbelt as he backs out of our designated parking space, ignoring the honk of a late-returning nurse from two floors below ours, and zooms forward into daylight.

I blink as bright sunlight assaults my eyes, but there’s no time to adjust. We fly down the street and merge onto the westward-going freeway ramp with an ease that reminds me how Alex can perform complex procedures in high-stress settings without a blip to his blood pressure. It’s one of my favorite things about him, I remind myself. He balances my emotional nature and keeps me grounded and productive.

The freeway is packed, as always, and the traffic slows to a crawl, further irritating my husband. Despite his breath rasping into growls, his posture remains relaxed and in control. I don’t know how he does it.

A car flies at our rear bumper. Alex smoothly merges into another lane. The car zooms past us. Silver metal flashes through deep scrapes in the blue paint, showing that the driver doesn’t fear for its well-being.

“People like that should not be allowed on the road.”

I shrug. I tend to agree, but the conversation doesn’t interest me, so I watch the scenery fly by. Downtown skyscrapers give way to city neighborhoods, and then to a grassy suburb with large lots. The summer heat has rendered the grass brown and the trees yellow, but in wetter times, it might be lovely.

We merge into an exit lane not far from a strip mall. The exit is crammed with cars. I have no idea how Alex manages to make his way into the lane, but he does. We leave the freeway, turn left at the light and pass under the freeway onto city streets. We turn left, then right, then left again onto a long loop of a street with a small fountain in the center. To the back is an open grassland.

At the rear of the loop, I see a small rambler with the stumps of dead trees in the front yard.

I frown. “Alex, is this the house?” I ask hesitantly.

“Yep. Isn’t it great?” he asks.

I look again. “Isn’t it a bit small?”

“It’s bigger than it looks,” he informs me. “Wait until you see the inside. Where is that realtor?” All this he delivers without a change in his tone.

“I’m sure she’ll be here any minute,” I say. “After all, we’re somehow fifteen minutes early.”

“Early is on time,” he replies, quoting the old saying.

“On time is late,” I add. “I know that one.”

Alex gives me a cool look as a snazzy gold sedan pulls along the curb behind us.

“See?” I ask brightly. “Here’s Susan now. Let’s go.” I open the door and slither to the ground. My purse snags on the door handle and it takes me a minute to disentangle myself.

“Elisa,” Alex snarls.

I jump, startled to see him suddenly behind me, regarding me with those cold, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He grasps my purse strap and extracts it. One eyebrow rises. I’m on thin ice.

Without a word, I slam the door of the SUV, sling my purse onto my shoulder, and follow Alex’s fast steps toward the tiny rambler. It occurs to me, as I approach the house, that it looks like a face. Symmetrical windows stare from a centered, bright red door. Above, a motion-sensor light creates a small, narrow nose. The shingles of the roof resemble shaggy hair. I frown again, not liking the effect.

A rock seems to appear out of nowhere, catching my shoe and making me stumble. It tips up, revealing a feast of bugs and grubs in the soil beneath before settling back in place.

“Easy!” Susan says in a hearty voice, smoothing teased blond hair back from her face. She catches my elbow and helps me steady myself.

“Hello,” I reply in my best for-public voice. I grin at her, feeling my eyes pinch in the corners.

“Well, let’s see it,” Alex adds, striding to the door.

Susan trots up to him, confident in her four-inch heels. It strains the seams of her skirt to lift her leg high enough to step onto the porch.

Alex snorts as she fumbles with the lock box, but in the end, she withdraws the key, wrestles it into the knob and fights the door open.

“Cranky lock,” I comment, perhaps more vehemently than the situation warrants. Somehow the small annoyance seems emblematic of something bigger.

“That’s an easy fix,” Alex points out.

My cheeks burn. He’s right. I clamp my mouth shut, determined not to say anything else stupid.

We step through the door into a small living room with copious wood trim: wainscoting, windows and even molding around the ceiling. Oddly, the floor—the natural place to showcase gorgeous wood—is covered with a dark green, shaggy mess like pond scum. The busy wallpaper on the upper half of the walls closes in the room like a tomb. There are two huge windows—the one I saw from outside that has a decent view of the neighborhood and a second to the side that looks directly into the neighbor’s kitchen. It reminds me of too many old, dirty houses I’ve seen.

The owners have furnished the room with faded red velvet sofas whose wooden arms twist as though in anguish.

You’re being dramatic, Elisa, I tell myself. No one likes a drama queen. Those sofas won’t even be here after the sale, so don’t worry about them.

I scrutinize the room. Decent size, but it needs a major overhaul—the wallpaper’s gotta go. With white paint, the wood should look pretty, and who knows what’s under the carpet. Houses of this age often hide secret treasures like hardwood.

Trying to put a bright spin on things does nothing to improve my mood. Shouldn’t buying a house be exciting? I think of our snug, familiar apartment and realize that if I lived there for the rest of my life, that would be totally fine with me. Owning anything isn’t that important to me. Owning this…I shake my head.

The realtor bustles off to the kitchen. Alex follows her, and I bring up the rear.

On the other side of the narrow doorway, yellow appliances leer at me from between horrible moss green cabinets. Shredded linoleum bristles up from the floor. Grease clings to the walls.

“I think I’ve seen enough.” I start to turn.

Alex whirls around and grabs my arm.

It’s so hot in the house that I can see heat shimmers around his body. His angry scowl sets off my anxiety, but this time, I stand my ground. “This is not better than the apartment,” I tell him. “It’s a dump. I don’t even know why we’re here.