Dreadful Skin Read Free Page A

still. And he had too much wine in him to steer us anyplace at all.
    The rain came slapping against the windows, where we had windows, and it came splashing down onto the deck and into the rooms where we didn’t. Thunderstorms are easy enough to wait through, though. And it was warm. At least getting wet didn’t mean freezing yourself to death, or losing toes. So I didn’t mind the rain. I’d missed it, and I was happy to see it again.
    “Can I clear these plates out for you?” I asked them, wishing they’d finish up. Mr. Cooper and the nun, as they were the only two left, they told me that was fine and they were mostly finished. But they stayed out there talking in a friendly way, and I thought it was funny that the two of them would be friends.
    Doesn’t the Lord frown on cards and dice alike?

III.
    I will tell you how it happened.
    It unraveled.
    ***
    My given name was John Gabert, but I went by many others if the mood and fancy struck me. From time to time, the mood and fancy came in the form of police atten-tion, or in the stalking threats of mercenaries. Occasionally, it was a journalist—some ratty, tattered little man with a notebook and a pencil clenched between two fingers.
    I could only give them what they didn’t want. I could give them a name (not my own) and an ounce of respectability (borrowed or stolen), and I always had—at my immediate disposal—an alibi.
    An alibi was my favorite accessory.
    I would wear one like a funeral carnation in a black lapel. I would use it to garnish myself, and to redeem myself. I would sport it in public to reassure London that I was a worthy, plain, and innocent citizen—confused, and in mourning like the rest of them.
    But after a while…yes, well. In time, all the expensive alibis in the world could not be stacked, one on top of another, high enough to build a wall between myself and the prying eyes of nervous, curious people.
    Jesus, God, or Whoever.
    It was only a little hunger. Only a little need.
    And I kept it so closely in check. I watched myself for the signs, and for the warnings. After so many years I knew what to look for, and what twisted visions I could count upon to warn of impending change. I had learned how to control it!
    All the rest I can blame on my father, because I went to him for help and he refused me, at first. Later, he would use his influence to keep our name out of the papers, and later—always when it was much too late—he would quietly arrange for restitution.
    He seemed to think it was a disease—acquired in some opium den or brothel. Every objection I uttered was nonce to him, and every plea for a reasonable treatment fell on deaf ears. So far as he was concerned, I needed a physician like Dr. Marblen, or Dr. Bentley. There was no room in my father’s head for an infection like the one I carried.
    There was no room in his mind for the monsters at the far corners of the Good Queen’s Empire.
    In time, he came to invent his own explanations. He passed them around to his friends over too much brandy when the weather was cold. Once he said that I’d been cursed by a gypsy, and another time he mumbled that I’d been trampled by elephants while abroad.
    Once—just once—he came very near the truth by virtue of his own imagination. Even as he denied any truth to the unflattering rumors, he would feed them seedling crumbs.
    One night I overheard him speaking to the marquess. He spoke of me like I was a wayward adventurer from a penny dreadful; he was constructing a myth of me with his words, in his own library and parlor. Deny the facts when they are gruesome, or untidy. Speculate for me something prettier, and simpler, and easier to spread by firelight.
    I recall, from my listening place beside the door jamb, that there were expensive cigars that night and a crystal decanter that drained by the hour. I held my position outside the room, and listened to the old men ramble about war, and children, and monsters like me.
    “It was