BooksBarbecue
Back Thin Skin Save as PDF
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Cast of Characters
  7. Part One
  8. One
  9. Two
  10. Three
  11. Four
  12. Five
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. Thirteen
  21. Fourteen
  22. Fifteen
  23. Sixteen
  24. Seventeen
  25. Eighteen
  26. Nineteen
  27. Part Two
  28. Twenty
  29. Twenty-one
  30. Twenty-two
  31. Twenty-three
  32. Twenty-four
  33. Twenty-five
  34. Twenty-six
  35. Twenty-seven
  36. Twenty-eight
  37. Twenty-nine
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-one
  40. Thirty-two
  41. Thirty-three
  42. Thirty-four
  43. Thirty-five
  44. Thirty-six
  45. Thirty-seven
  46. Thirty-eight
  47. Thirty-nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-one
  50. Forty-two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-four
  53. Forty-five
  54. Forty-six
  55. A note on the Author

As luck would have it, no one recognized me in any of the four bars I hopped. It’s like wanting to find a boyfriend—you never get one when you’re looking. And because I wanted so desperately to be looked at that evening, everyone turned their eyes away. The last bar I hit was on Ludlow Street. As I walked over some gratings, the sound of the keyboard surged dully beneath me. I sat across the street and smoked a cigarette. I prayed to my mother and got a couple of drinks. There were streaks of hot pink tearing strips out of the sky as the sun began to set. Asian appeared. I didn’t recognize him at first, out of context. I pictured a makeup girl blotting his forehead with powder as he fumbled for his Marlboro, and it made me gasp. I settled my bill and followed him across the street and down the stairs.

He told me what I needed to know. I hurried home to get on with it.

Thirty-five

image
Bad roommate

Cyrinda was not there when I got home, although she had taken the Cinnamint toothpaste that I thought was now mine by default. There is no default with Cyrinda. She had taken other things that were mine too. A bottle of my bubble bath, a tube of scarlet lipstick she had been coveting.

I took fifty pills from a jumbo bottle of aspirin. I laid them out on my desk and popped them in my mouth one by one. Om. Yum. Good girl, Ruby. I drifted into unconsciousness, calm and content, because I was doing the right thing.

“Listen,” whispered the thought of suicide, which was lying beside me with its arm around my torso.

“Uh-huh,” I answered dreamily, letting it nuzzle my neck, grateful, at last, for contact, even if it was not human.

“Listen,” elaborated the thought of suicide, “Liev wants to talk to you.”

Thirty-six

image
The other side

The ambulance man kept prodding my arms to keep me awake. Irritated not so much that I was still alive, but by all the screaming going on around me, I closed my eyes and went back to the other side for another forty winks.

Thirty-seven

image
Sebastian works it out

I floated back up to the surface to find myself in a hospital bed with tubes in my nose and something sticking into the back of my hand. A male nurse was standing over me and asking, scar by scar, in a heavy Indian accent, “Is this recent? Is this recent?”

“That one?” answered Sebastian helpfully. “I haven’t seen that one before. Oh, that one on her upper arm is at least a year old.”

“Why you do this?” asked the nurse cheerily. “You won’t be pretty for husband.”