Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

“What,” she says like a scared kid, like she’s broken curfew for what will absolutely be the last time.

He’s sputtering, he’s so mad. He starts biting in on his top lip and his arm comes up and starts pointing at the screen. She steps to the side a bit and looks to see this morning’s riot outside Herzog’s.

“What the hell happened?” he snaps, but instead of answering, Sylvia just stares at the screen. It’s an unsettling experience. She’s seeing everything she just lived through about five hours ago, but she’s seeing it from another perspective. The riot’s been filmed with a hand-held camera and the picture has that feeling of ongoing immediacy, that voyeuristic aura that’s spliced with both attraction and repulsion, as if anything is not only possible but probable. And as if you’re in the eye of a maelstrom, adjacent to disaster but chronically protected. She’s seeing all kinds of things that she missed the first time around. She’s seeing more small pockets of skirmishing, more people trading punches and losing blood. And she’s hearing noises that she never picked up. Dozens of screamed exchanges studded with a censor’s bleep, voices at differing distances from the microphone creating a cacophony that tells more than any narration could.

Perry plants his now-empty glass down on the floor and picks up the remote control. He hits a button and the images on the screen start to race by, obscured into a hyperriot, bodies now flying at speeds more laughable than tragic.

“You taped this?” is all she can think to say.

He doesn’t respond, but squints down at the screen and then at some right moment, he thumbs down on another button with such emotion and emphasis you’d think he was launching warheads from hidden silos. The picture calms back to normal speed and clarity and there’s Sylvia, wrestling with the cop over the camera.

“Oh, God,” she mumbles.

“That’s it,” he says, head still wobbling over his neck, face flushed to a murky red, “Oh, God, huh?”

She looks from his face back to her own image on the screen and in the most sarcastic voice she can summon, she says, “Sylvia, are you all right? Were you hurt? Is there anything I can do?”

His arm shoots up and a finger is pointed out at her. “Don’t do that,” he says, trying and failing to get a grip. “Don’t turn this around. Don’t try and put this on me. You didn’t even call me. It’s been hours, for Christ sake. I called the hospitals. I had Ratzinger phone the police station. You didn’t even call me, Sylvia.”

“How was I supposed to know I’d be on TV?” she says but it’s weak and they both know it.

“I’ve been pulling my hair out of my goddamn head—”

“You’re right,” she says, suddenly feeling guilty and wishing they could end the argument immediately. “I should’ve called.”

“Should’ve called,” he roars and she knows they’ve got some bad hours to go through. Maybe some bad days.

“What the hell happened, Sylvia?” he says, wiping his face with his hand and trying to calm down.

Sylvia extends her arms toward the TV.

“You saw what happened, Perry. I went down there to pay for the camera and the next thing I know I turn a corner and the street is filled with all these people—”

“You’re fighting with a cop, Sylvia. Look at yourself there. For God’s sake, you’re fighting a cop.”

She looks at the screen. He backs up the picture and they watch it again. The cop grabbing the camera. Sylvia grabbing back. The picture cuts away to another brawl before she’s pulled inside the Skin Palace.

She looks at him. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to say anything. She wants to take a bath and throw down a drink and go to bed for the next two days.

“What were you doing home?” she finally says and knows it’s a mistake as the words leave her mouth.

“That’s not an answer,” he yells, then continues, “I wasn’t home. I was in my office with the FUD people having a planning session when Ratzinger buzzes me to come upstairs. He’s sitting on the edge of his desk playing this as I walk in. He was watching the local news at noon. When he saw the fighting, he popped a tape in for our personal-injury people. Then he spotted a familiar face. He gave me the goddamn tape, Sylvia. Ratzinger taped the thing.”

“I’m sorry, Perry,” she begins, feeling like she’s going to start crying which is the last thing she wants to do right now.

“Are you hurt?” he finally asks. “Did you get hurt at all? Did you break anything?”

“Not a scratch,” she says, too low.

“You’re sure?” he demands, and before she can reanswer he says, “Were you arrested? Did they arrest you?”

“I wasn’t arrested,” she says. “They had their hands full.”

“I can see that,” he says and they both stare at the screen as he plays it all over again, her now famous dance, her ten seconds of fame. He mutes out the sound and the silence almost makes her sick.

After a minute, he sits back down on the hassock and looks up and simply says, “How, Sylvia?”

She swallows and says, “Does it look like I planned this, Perry? Do you think I woke up today and said I think I’ll cause some civil unrest down in the Zone?”

“How many times,” he says, showing his strained patience, his heroic restraint, “have we talked about you going down there? How many discussions have we had about that part of town, Sylvia?”

“I’m an adult, Perry.”

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s what this looks like. You being an adult.”

Her nerves are shot. The toll of the entire day is shorting her out and all her hurt is starting to mutate into anger. “Thanks for the concern,” she manages to say.

He bolts to his feet and screams, “I sat here for hours not knowing whether you were dead or alive. You didn’t even call me—”

She screams back, “You’re pissed off that I looked bad in front of your goddamn boss. That’s the extent of your goddamn concern, you bastard.”

He rears back and heaves the remote control at the television. It misses the set and sails into the wall, explodes into a rain of black plastic and batteries.

“Your aim is off,” she says. “I’m over here.”

He stands fuming, hands on his hips, his chest pushing out.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” he says, then he adds, “I’m going out,” and moves past her, down the hall and out the back door with a slam.

And now the tears come and she folds down on herself, slides her back down the wall and sits on her feet and just lets it happen. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her either. She doesn’t know why she didn’t call him. She doesn’t know what she was thinking of, following Mr. Quevedo, hiding out in the Skin Palace, walking into Der Garten. She honestly doesn’t know how today happened. She feels as controlled as the TV set, as if someone she can’t see is holding another kind of black box, that they’re thumbing down buttons that make her move in ways she can’t understand.

She looks up at the TV and into the eye of the Skin Palace riot, finally advanced past the point of her walk-on, her public insult to Perry’s career. She watches the jumpy, off-balance shots of chaos, the bouncing pan of frenzied upheaval. It’s as if the TV is plugged into her head instead of the VCR, as if the images ricocheting across the glass are a reading of her brain, an X ray of the inside of her skull. And she’s watching it through the blur of her water-logged eyes so everything’s obscured just that much more.

She pulls herself up from the wall and goes into the bathroom. She turns on the water and cups her hands under the faucet, lets her palms fill up with a pool, leans down and soaks her face. She repeats this several times, then she opens the medicine cabinet, takes down her mother’s old Valium prescription, ignores the expiration date and swallows a couple.