Something to Drape Skin Over

Something to Drape Skin Over

Amanda Catalano

            The only things on Raven’s mind as she left the studio were a shower and the nonstop itching on her ankle where her high-top sneakers rubbed her skin raw. It wouldn’t scar. She never gave the skin a break or time to heal, always wearing high-tops.

            The shower was a bit more pressing. As soon as she got home, to her tiny apartment, she made a beeline for the bathroom. She never touched her kids after work without first blasting her skin with near-boiling hot water and practically scrubbing off the whole top layer. She always came out red and steaming, and after throwing on shorts and a t-shirt, crept silently into James and Anna’s room and pulled them into her, breathing in the pure scent of their baby skin. She kept dozens of pictures of them in her purse and showed them off to anyone who cared to see every chance she got. She needed the people at work to know that she was more than what they made her do.

            Her kids would never smell the way her skin did.  

            As she was holding them, her husband, Rob, would come in and wrap his arms around the three of them, kiss her on the forehead, and call her Julie. Her body buzzed with the sound of her real name.

            But something about tonight was off. On her way to the shower, she noticed Rob hadn’t left the bathroom light on for her the way he did every other night. Instead, a light shone from the kitchen down the hall. Curiosity overpowered her need to be clean. Her heavy sneakers were impossible to silence as she made her way down the hall, passing by her wedding pictures hanging on the wall, and the framed baby photos that were too big to fit in her purse. From the corner of her eyes, she and her family looked like nothing more than blobs of skin.

            Rob sat at the kitchen table facing her, but didn’t look up as she entered. He was usually in bed when she got home, not waking until the sound of the shower echoed through their bedroom wall. Julie’s ankle tingled, begging her to scratch, but she ignored it. She stayed standing in the doorway, refusing to touch anything when she could still feel the saliva and sweat and fluids of other people on her skin.

            “What are you doing up?” she asked, her voice soft with concern, a complete contrast from her demanding tones in front of the camera.

            Rob still didn’t look at her. Her heart beat heavy in her chest. She needed his loving gaze. His disregard of her presence ate at her.

            “Rob?” she said when he remained silent. She took a step closer, noticing the way the overhead light reflected off Rob’s thinning head the same way it did from the oiled pecs of the guys she worked with. The skin on her husband’s face sagged under his eyes and his beard cut through his skin like needles. She could see every pore in his cheeks and nose. Something was really wrong. She had never seen him like this before.

            “Who’d you work with tonight?”

            The question came out of nowhere, and his voice was so quiet, she had to take a moment to make sure she’d heard him right. He never asked her that. He never wanted to know. She didn’t know what to say other than, “What? Why?”

            Rob shrugged his shoulders, the material of his shirt stretching over them, held down by his arms held tight to his body. “Just curious, I guess.”

            It took her moment to find her voice before saying, “Tania again.”

            “Just Tania?”

            “And John.”

            He pulled his lips into his mouth and nodded. “Were you and Tania supposed to be sisters again? Did John come in as a long lost brother or something?”

            “What? Robert, what is wrong with you? How do you know anything about Tania and me? We never talk about work!”

            When they first started dating, Rob agreed to never watch her videos, and she agreed to never talk about work. Not that she would want to anyway. As soon as she left the studio, she did everything she could to forget about what she did there. She focused on the burn of the shower on her skin and the feeling of her ankle being rubbed by her shoes. Washing away Raven and grounding herself in Julie.

            “Someone said your name at work today,” Rob said, still not looking at her.

            “So what? It’s not like they don’t know you’re married.”

            “No. They said your other name. Raven. And they told me all about what you do at work. The assholes I work with have seen you do things with other people that you haven’t even done with me. Congratulations, I hope you’re happy.”

            He got up from the table and disappeared into their bedroom before she could think of anything to say. In her shower that night, it felt like her skin would melt right off her bones. She was almost disappointed when it didn’t.

            Julie took the bus to school every morning. Sitting in a classroom was supposed to be her salvation. What would soon get her out of that studio. But today, she was hyperaware of every glance sent her way. She couldn’t help but think that they saw her with her face between Tania’s legs. Something about the way her skin crawled every time she made eye contact with someone, the way she could make out every cell on the hand of the girl sitting next to her, tightened up her chest and made it hard to breathe. She needed fresh air.

            She couldn’t ignore the stares as she got up in the middle of class and walked out. The tingling on her ankle was hardly noticeable.

            Taking deep breaths of the cool Toronto air did nothing to calm her nerves. Her heart pounded and her skin prickled. She wanted to rip it all off steal someone else’s.

            “You look very familiar.”

            The voice made her jump. Standing next to her was a man with dark skin. Not dark like night. More like the coffee she drank every morning that always ended up being more milk than coffee. He carried a bag full of avocados, his forearm tattooed with a strange symbol she thought she might have seen before. Probably tattooed on some other guy. People always ended up getting the same things permanently etched into their skin without even thinking about it.

            The idea of needles in her skin made her shiver.

            “I don’t want to hear it,” Julie said. She made a move to step away from the man, but in an instant, he was on one knee, pulling aside the top of her shoe to take a look at her ankle. She screeched and kicked at his hand. “The fuck’s wrong with you? Don’t touch me!”

            “Just had to make sure,” he said calmly, standing up again. “I’ve photoshopped that thing off your ankle plenty of times. And that scar on your stomach from your c-section. And the birthmark off your left ass cheek.”

            “Who are you?” she gasped, horrified at the thought of him doing anything to her bare skin, knowing her body so intimately.

            “The name’s Artho. I work in web design. Tri-Ex Media.” He grinned at her as if it were nothing and held a hand out for her to shake.

            Julie looked from his hand to his face and couldn’t shake the dirty feeling crawling on top of her skin. Even in the cooler fall weather, she could see something oozing from the man’s pores.

            “Sorry,” she said after a moment. “It would feel weird shaking your hand, considering…”

            Artho held his hands up in surrender. “Understandable. I actually wanted to talk to you about something though.”

For a split second, Julie swore she saw a little girl with pigtails and thick glasses peak out from behind the man, but in the blink of an eye, she was gone. I’m losing it, she thought, putting a hand to her head.

“You don’t belong in those videos,” Artho continued. “You’re not like the others. You’re too real. I’m tired of making you not real.”

“What are you talking about? We’re all the same. We’re all trying to get out of it, but that’s easier said than done, ya know? What are the chances of me getting another job, even with a degree? People aren’t gonna want a known pornstar in their company.”

“What if I told you there was a way? Not just to get out of it, but to completely erase it from your history?”

“I’d call you crazy and get the hell away from you.”

“Well, there’s a way.”

“You’re crazy,” Julie said, and with that, she turned to walk away.

Artho reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing to the point where Julie heard an audible click. She yelped, thinking something in her hand had broken, but she felt no pain. Her entire body buzzed, and the man was gone. She held her hand to her chest, but something on her palm caught her eye. The symbol from the man’s tattoo was emblazoned into her skin, slowly fading, sinking into her hand.

Alarmed, Julie pulled out her phone to call Rob. A thought in the back of her mind stopped her. Her body buzzed again in response to it. Pulling up the internet on her phone, she typed in the address to the site all of her videos featured on. She searched her fake name. Where previously dozens of results had been displayed, no results were found.

With shaking hands, she dialed Tania’s phone number. The girl on the other end had no idea who she was. Her body still buzzing, she took the bus home, and her husband embraced her as if nothing had ever happened.