Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

She’s about to sarcastically thank him for blowing her shot when it clicks in that he’s given her a more dramatic image than the jilted wallflower in the distance. He holds out a hand, palm up, and says, “Shall we?”

She brings camera to eye and starts twisting her focus ring and says, “Shall we what?”

“Take home the prize for best costumes.”

“Sorry,” she says and shoots him, “I’m working.”

But there’s no way he’s giving up this easily. “This isn’t a night for work,” he says.

“It is for me.”

“Your dress says otherwise.”

“I like to blend in.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” he says. “Blending in?”

“What I’m doing,” she says and hits the shutter, “is trying to take some photographs.”

She lowers the camera and leans forward, smiles and says, “Look for yourself tomorrow in the arts and leisure section.”

He moves quickly, reaches in, and before Sylvia can grab it, he’s got the Canon in his hands, then up at his masked eye, focusing in on her.

“For Christ sake,” she yells.

“Relax,” he says and fires off a frame. “How does it feel? Being on the receiving end.”

She stays calm, extends her hand and says, “Look, that’s an expensive piece of equipment. Just hand it back to me.”

Another shot and he says, “It’s a very intrusive art form, wouldn’t you say?”

“Give it back,” she says and a little helplessness bleeds through the mounting anger.

“You can see,” he says, intent, rotating the camera and firing again, “why the Indians despised it so much. The way it captured the soul and all.”

“What do you want?” she says. “You don’t like your picture taken? Fine. We won’t run any prints of you. Is that—”

“You don’t work for the Spy,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone.

“What do you want?” she repeats, getting nervous.

He takes his time for another shot, pulls her in and out of focus, tries a variety of angles until finally something he sees pleases him and he clicks off a shot, lowers the camera and says, “I want to dance.”

“I don’t dance,” Sylvia says.

He stares at her through the felt mask.

“One dance,” she says.

He nods.

“Give me the camera.”

“After the dance,” he says and deposits the Canon into some interior fold of the cape, then secures the cape around his shoulders. He takes her hand and leads her to an open spot next to an oil-scarred grinding machine up near the picnic table. Then with his free hand he gives this flourish of a signal to the d.j., who immediately fills the loft up with tango music.

Sylvia looks up at the guy and rolls her eyes and says, “I don’t know how to dance to this stuff.”

He throws an arm around her waist and pulls her forward and says, “After tonight, you’ll never forget.”

She says, “Be careful of the camera and let’s get this over with.”

He starts to lead and it’s clear this is no bluff. The guy knows what he’s doing. He could be some kind of professional instructor, for God sake. And within minutes this annoyance starts to turn into something fun and wonderfully different.

She’s getting warm and just slightly out of breath. They dodge behind one machine, zigzag past another, and somehow he’s willing her into matching each of his turns. Then they’re off the dance floor entirely, their arms locked straight out and their hands intertwined and they’re moving all the way to the rear of the building. He stops once and they pivot to the side and their speed seems to increase as they come right again and move forward.

In front of them, a double fire door is half-open and the cool outside air feels tremendous as it gulfs around Sylvia’s legs and neck. And then they’re headed for the door, moving out the door and into the alley in the rear, the music now starting to fade and her partner’s face suddenly grazing at her neck, her neck getting wet, his hand suddenly releasing her waist and taking hold of her behind and she starts to push him off but he half-dances, half-carries her farther away from the factory and they collide into a chain-link fence and he turns her until her back is pinned against the fence and now his hands are all over her, trying to pull up the hem of the nightgown, and he tears it in the process. Sylvia starts to scream but her voice just dissipates into the total noise of the block party. Then suddenly his whole body vaults into and off of her and she slides down the fence onto her behind and Zorro’s on the ground and it’s his voice she hears screaming alongside her own.

And now, standing sideways in front of her is another man. But this one’s got a baseball bat in his hands, choked up high in his fists, and Sylvia looks down to see Zorro-the-rapist bleeding like a son of a bitch from his head and trying to cover up.

And all Sylvia can scream to this bat-wielding stranger is, “Don’t break my camera.”

But the stranger doesn’t seem to hear her. He moves in on Zorro and pokes at him hard with the end of the bat, letting the tango-master get clear on what’s happened and maybe what’s about to happen. And despite the possible concussion the message gets through and Zorro starts to do a panicking scamper from side to side, tries to get to his knees, but each time the guy with the bat knocks him onto his backside with a harder blow until finally Zorro gives up and cowers in one place trying to cover his head. The standing man looks down on Sylvia, then swings the bat up to waist level, hesitates for a second, then chops down one last time onto one of Zorro’s ankles and snaps it into a sickening right-angle to the rest of the leg.

There’s a blast of screaming which the stranger ignores, turns to Sylvia and says, “Are you all right?”

She edges her way up to standing, runs to the cape and pulls out the camera.

Someone yells, “Marco? Are you all right?” and Sylvia looks to see two figures framed in the fire door. Then the man with the bat is reaching for her, grabbing her arm so hard she almost drops the Canon. He jerks her forward into a run and heads for a smaller connecting alley, moving away from Goulden Ave, making turns and rounding corners as if they were threading their way through a brick maze that narrowed with each directional choice. Finally, they turn right and dead-end into a trash-filled alcove, a tiny mini-alley between two identically nondescript buildings.

The man lets go of Sylvia’s arm, hunches forward onto his knees for breath and, staring at the ground, says, “Are you all right?”

She leans back against the wall, only now being hit by the facts of what just happened to her.

“I was dancing with him …” she starts and trails off.

She looks up to see him staring and fishing in a back pocket. “You’re safe,” he heaves. “And the bastard isn’t going to be doing any dancing for some time.”

And suddenly Sylvia’s terrified. She’s alone in a deserted alleyway with only one exit, with another strange man who’s holding a baseball bat over his right shoulder.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says and takes a step backwards, pulls from his pocket a keychain weighted with dozens of keys and moves to a tiny doorway near the dead-end wall.

Sylvia starts to edge backwards toward the opening of the alley. The man looks sideways at her, expressionless as he fiddles with a door lock. He says, “You can go if you want,” and she nods and keeps stepping backwards until he says, “but I’d like to know why you’ve been asking so many questions about me.”

And she stops.

“About you?”

He finds the right key and opens the door, stands up straight, runs a hand through his hair and nods at her. They stare at each other for a few seconds. It’s the first chance she’s had to get a look at him and right away there’s something familiar. He’s small and wiry, with a broad forehead and salt-and-pepper hair that’s grown too long. But the feature she locks on is the cool, pale blue of his eyes.