Under the Skin (16 page)

Isserley reached the hitcher and drove past him, at her usual leisurely speed. He registered her passing, her apparent
snub of him, with a squint of indifference; he knew perfectly well that his rotting banana colours would be rejected as an unsuitable match for the taupe upholstery of most cars. But there were plenty more motorists where Isserley came from, he seemed to be thinking, so stuff her.

She assessed him while she drove on. Undoubtedly he had more than enough meat on him; too much, perhaps. Fat was a bad thing: not only was it worthless padding that had to be discarded, but it infiltrated deep inside – or so Unser, the chief processor, had once told her. Fat blighted good meat like a burrowing worm.

This hitcher might well be all muscle, though. She pulled off the road, waited for the right time, and carefully executed a U-turn.

The other thing was: he was totally bald, not a hair on his head – which didn’t matter, she supposed, since if she took him he would end up hairless anyway. But what made vodsels go hairless before their time? She hoped it wasn’t some defect that would affect the quality of the meat, a disease of some kind. A disembodied voice on television had told her once that victims of cancer went bald. This hitcher in the yellow overalls – there he was again now! – didn’t strike her as a victim of cancer; he looked as if he could demolish a hospital with his bare hands. And what about that vodsel she’d had in the car a while back, the one who had cancer of the lung? He’d had plenty of hair, as far as she could recall.

She drove past the baldhead again, confirming that he had enough muscle on him to satisfy anyone. As soon as possible, she made another U-turn.

It was funny, really, that she’d never had a totally bald hitcher before. Statistically, she ought to have. His shining hairless head, coupled with his steely physique and queer clothing, might account for these irrational misgivings she felt, as she slowed to stop for him.

‘Want a lift?’ she called unnecessarily, as he lumbered up to the door she was opening.

‘Ta,’ he said, trying to ease himself in. His overalls squeaked comically as he doubled over; she released the seat lock, to give him more room.

He seemed embarrassed by her kindness, and, once seated, looked straight ahead through the windscreen while he fumbled with the seatbelt; he had to pull out the strap for what seemed like yards before it would encompass his girth.

‘Right,’ he said as soon as the buckle had clicked.

She drove off, with him blushing beside her, his face a pink melon set atop a bulging stack of grimy yellow.

After a full minute, the hitcher at last turned slowly towards her. He looked her up and down. He turned back to the window.

He was thinking, My lucky day.

‘My lucky day,’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ said Isserley, in a tone of warm good humour, while an inexplicable chill travelled down her spine. ‘Where are you heading?’

The question hung in the air, cooled like uneaten food, and finally congealed. He continued staring ahead.

Isserley considered repeating the question, but felt oddly self-conscious about doing so. In fact, she felt self-conscious altogether. Without being aware of it, she was hunching over slightly, leaning her elbows forward, obscuring her breasts.

‘Nice pair of tits you’ve got there,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said. The atmosphere in the cabin instantly began to throb with agitated molecules.

‘They didn’t grow overnight,’ he sniggered.

‘No, they didn’t,’ she agreed.

Her real teats, budding naturally from her abdomen, had been surgically removed in a separate operation from the one that had grafted these puffy artificial ones onto her chest. The surgeons had used pictures from a magazine sent by Esswis as a guide.

‘Biggest I’ve seen for a long time,’ the hitcher added, evidently reluctant to leave off mining such a rich conversational seam.

‘Mm,’ said Isserley, taking note of a road sign and making some quick calculations. One day she would have to tell Esswis that never, in all her far-ranging travels outside his little domain of fields and fences, had she seen a female vodsel with breasts like the ones in his magazine.

‘Were you standing long?’ she asked, to change the subject.

‘Long enough,’ he grunted.

‘Where are you hoping to get to?’ She hoped that perhaps by now, the question might have penetrated his brain.

‘I’ll decide that when I get there,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m afraid I’m only going as far as Evanton,’ she said. ‘It’s a change of scene for you, anyway.’

‘Yeah,’ he sniffed. ‘No problem.’

Again the molecules writhed between them invisibly, in silence.

‘So what takes you out on the road today?’ she said brightly.

‘Things to do, that’s all.’

‘I didn’t mean to be nosy,’ she went on. ‘I’m just curious about people, that’s all.’

‘S’ alright. Man of few words, that’s me.’ He said this as if this were a special distinction conferred on him by birth, like wealth or good looks. Helplessly, Isserley thought of Amlis.

‘You’re a bit of a goer, aren’t you?’ challenged the hitcher.

‘I—I beg your pardon?’ she said, unfamiliar with the term.

‘Sex,’ he explained flatly, his big melon head blushing again. ‘On the brain. I can spot it a mile off. You love it, don’t you?’

Isserley shifted uneasily in her seat and checked the rearview mirror.

‘Actually, I’m always working too hard to think about it,’ she said, trying for a casual tone.

‘Bullshit,’ he retorted passionlessly. ‘You’re thinking about it right now.’

‘I’m thinking about … about problems at work, actually,’ she volunteered. She hoped he would ask her what her work was. She would be a plainclothes police officer, she’d decided.

‘A girl like you don’t need to think,’ he snorted.

It was about eight minutes’ drive to Evanton. She should have said Ballachraggan, which was half the distance, but he might have been annoyed to be taken for such a short ride.

‘I bet a good few guys have touched those, yeah?’ he suggested abruptly, as if kick-starting a conversation she’d been cack-handed enough to let stall.

‘Not very many,’ she declared. The precise tally was none, in truth.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, leaning back on the headrest, half closing his eyes.

‘Well … it’s true,’ sighed Isserley, disconsolately. According to the digital clock, only fifty seconds had passed.

However, the universe seemed at last to have heard her prayer. The hitcher’s eyes narrowed, then shut in what might have been slumber. His head sank a little into the grimy upturned collar of his overalls. Minutes went by, and little by little the purring of the engine and the rolling grey tide of the road reclaimed a reality they had lost. Evanton was only a couple of miles away by the time the baldhead spoke again.

‘You know what gets me?’ he said, slightly more animated now.

‘No, what gets you?’ Isserley was sagging in relief, gratefully feeling the air grow less dense, the molecules moving more calmly.

‘Them supermodels,’ he said.

Isserley thought first of sophisticated automobiles, then thought he must mean the animated drawings which flickered on television early in the mornings: stylized females flying through space wearing elbow-length gloves and thigh-high boots. Just in time, as she opened her mouth to speak, she remembered the true meaning of the term: she’d glimpsed one of these extraordinary creatures on the news once.

‘You like them?’ she guessed.

‘Hate ’em.’

‘They earn a lot more than you or me, don’t they?’ she remarked, flailing, even now, to find some point of entry into his life.

‘For doing fuck all,’ he said.

‘Life can be unfair,’ she offered.

He frowned and pursed his lips, preparing perhaps for some arduous unburdening.

‘Some of them supermodels,’ he observed, ‘like Kate Moss and that black one, well … it mystifies me. Mystifies me.’

He spoke the word as if it were something very expensive he’d found lying in the street somewhere, which would ordinarily be far outside his purchasing power, but which he now intended to flaunt to everyone.

‘What mystifies you?’ said Isserley, quite lost.

‘Where’s the tits on ’em, that’s what I want to know!’ he exclaimed, cupping one huge hand in front of his own chest. ‘Supermodels, and they got no tits! How’s that work?’

‘I don’t know who decides these things,’ conceded Isserley miserably, as the atmosphere in the cabin swarmed once more.

‘Queers, I bet,’ he grunted. ‘What would
they
care about tits? That’s the answer, I reckon.’

‘Could be,’ said Isserley in a small voice, barely audible. She was wrung out. Evanton was very near now, and she would need all her remaining energy to ease him out of the car.

‘You’d make a fucking good model,’ he informed her, looking her up and down again. ‘Page three material.’

She sighed, trying to flash a wry grin.

‘Maybe I’d need smaller breasts, eh?’ she suggested. ‘Like them supermodels.’ Her awkward imitation of his uncouth phrasing sounded false and pitifully ingratiating; she’d lost her grip. God, what must he think!

‘Fuck them supermodels!’ he urged her, in a tone almost of gruff reassurance. ‘
Your
body’s way better. They’re not natural, them women. They must take stereoids. Like them Russian runners. Shrinks their tits and gives ‘em a deep voice and a must-ash. The things that go on in this fuckin’ world. There’s no limit. And nobody puts their foot down. Mystifies me.’

‘The world is a strange place,’ she agreed. Then: ‘We’re almost there.’

‘Where?’ he demanded suspiciously.

‘Evanton,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s as far as I’m going.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he responded, in a dull, almost inward tone. ‘You can go a bit further than that, I’m sure.’

Isserley’s heart began to beat harder.

‘No,’ she insisted, ‘Evanton is as far as I go.’

The hitcher reached inside his overalls and pulled out a large grey Stanley knife with its bright triangular blade already unsheathed.

‘Just keep going,’ he said softly.

Isserley clasped the steering wheel tight, struggling to keep her breathing under control.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ she said.

That got a laugh out of him at last.

‘Turn left just before the next road,’ he said.

‘It would be better … for both of us …’ she panted, ‘if we just stopped … and I let you out.’ Her left index finger was trembling above the icpathua toggle.

He appeared not to have heard her. An old church with windows cemented shut was looming on the left-hand side, with a long gravel path beside it, disappearing into scrubland.

‘This is it coming up now,’ he advised her quietly.

Isserley looked in the rear-view mirror. The nearest car was perhaps a hundred yards behind her. If she could just bring herself to step on the accelerator, and then slow down at much shorter notice than usual, she could, by the time it caught up, be safely parked in a layby, windows opaque.

She flipped the icpathua toggle.

‘Turn
left
here, I said!’ the hitcher yelled. ‘Left!’

Panic rising up in her like a gas through a liquid, she misjudged the gears of her car and yanked at them with a stomach-churning braying. In the same moment, she glanced down at the passenger seat. The trousers of the baldhead’s overalls, she realized now, were as thick as cowhide and covered in an extra yellow layer of something resembling tarpaulin. The icpathua needles had simply failed to make an impression.

She felt a sudden stab of pain in her side. It was the point of the Stanley knife, digging into her flesh through the thin fabric of her top.

‘Yes! Yes!’ she hissed anxiously, flipping the indicator toggle up and turning into the path he wanted. Gravel clattered under the wheels and thumped loudly against the belly of the chassis. Her hands wrenched at the steering wheel, overcompensating for the sudden turn, and with every heaving breath she felt the sting of the blade in her side.

‘O?, OK!’ she cried.

He removed the blade and, with his free hand, reached over to steady the steering wheel. His grip was firm but gentle, as if he were teaching her something about driving. His hand was twice the size of hers.

‘Please think … about this,’ panted Isserley.

He didn’t reply, but removed his hand from the steering wheel, evidently satisfied that she was doing an adequate job now. The car was puttering through a neglected landscape of low scrub and the rotted remains of hay-bales. Up ahead, a cluster of cheap purpose-built farm huts loomed, skeletons of fragmented concrete and twisted steel. The A9 had all but disappeared from the rear-view mirror, peeping through indistinctly like a distant river.

‘Turn right where you see that pile of tyres,’ the hitcher instructed her. ‘Then stop the car.’

Isserley did as she was told. They had come to rest behind a solid wall three metres high and ten metres long. The rest of the building was gone, but the wall remained.

‘Right,’ said the hitcher.

Isserley had her breathing under control now. She was trying to concentrate all of herself into her head. Only her wits could save her, for she could not run. She, who had once been able to sprint as fast as a lamb. She could not run.

‘I have friends in high places,’ she pleaded.

He laughed again, a short dry sound like a cough.

‘Get out of the car,’ he said.

They each opened a door and stepped out onto the rocky earth. He walked round to her side and closed the driver’s door. He pushed her against the flank of the car. Still holding the Stanley knife in one hand, he took hold of her black cotton top in the other, grabbing a handful of the material and yanking it upwards over her breasts. He was so strong that his wrenching of the bunched-up cloth, trapped under her armpits, almost lifted her off the ground. Hastily she raised her arms and allowed the top to be pulled away.

‘We can have a … a wonderfully pleasurable experience together,’ she offered, cupping her breasts in her gently quaking hands, ‘if you let me.’

Impassive, red-faced, he positioned himself at arm’s length from her. Then, reaching forward, he began to knead her breasts with the hand that wasn’t holding the knife, each breast in turn, repeatedly trapping the nipples between thumb and forefinger, rolling them like pellets of dough.