Chapter Forty-Two
Justin
“Under Your Skin”- Aesthetic Perfection
Hours. It’s been hours that we’ve been cleaning. Marisa threw a bedsheet over Amy’s body, and that’s helped. Bucket after bucket, we’ve scrubbed and scoured my kitchen. Marisa pushes up from her knees and wipes the sweat from her forehead before glancing back at the sheet. “Shit, okay,” she says. “We’ve got to get her in the tub.”
“What?”
“In the tub. We need to put her in the tub. Unless you want a mess all over the kitchen again.”
“But why—”
“Well, Justin, what do you suggest we do with the body, huh? I mean, you live in the middle of fucking Manhattan. You think you can just go toting a corpse out through the front door, toss it in the dumpster by the Fish Hut?”
I glance at the sheet stained with blood, and I want to hurl again. I feel my insides shake and churn, panic ripples through me, slow at first, but then it turns into a full-on tsunami that has me grabbing for the wall to anchor myself. That isnota dead body under that sheet. I did not kill Amy. I’m not that kind of person. Sure, I write some godawful stuff. Blood and guts, kidnappings, but I’m not those people I write in my books. I’m not. I mean, there have been times I worry that I get too into character, too obsessed with understanding their psyche, their drive, but that’s all part of the art. I’m not a character in a King novel. I’m not one of those lunatic authors that’s so out of touch with reality that I just black out and slaughter someone—and then I glance at that sheet again, and an unmoving, concrete lump forms in my throat. I find myself backed against the wall, unable to pull my gaze away from that bumpy sheet, and I slide down to the floor, bending my knees and placing my head in my hands.
“Justin, I’m sorry, I just... this is a mess and it’s freaking me out and now I’m involved because I love you, I do, but we have to do something. Quickly.”
I lift my head and stare at Marisa. At beautiful, sweet Marisa. At the woman I really don’t deserve, because what if I am crazy? Do crazy people even know that their crazy? Because if you knew you were crazy, you wouldn’t be crazy, right? It’s knowing that your crazy that makes you sane, so maybe I am insane because I don’t think I am. How else can any of this be explained? And maybe, maybe I should just turn myself in. Tell the police Marisa had nothing to do with it, that I forced her to help me clean it up when she walked into my apartment.
“Justin?” She snaps her fingers in front of my face and I blink.
“Huh?”
She walks back to the kitchen and bends over, flipping the sheet back and grabbing Amy’s wrists. “Come get her legs, I can’t carry her alone.”
I slowly stand, my legs wobbling beneath me. My heart hammers in my chest, pulsing through my temples as a thin layer of sweat slicks my skin. I stare down at Amy’s discolored toes sticking out from the edge of the sheet, and I swallow hard. I bend over and grab her, but snatch my hands away when the second they touch her clammy skin. “Fuck,” I say between deep breaths.
“It’s just a dead body, Justin. Come the fuck on. You can’t think about it, just... just grab her and let’s go.”
And so, I do just that. I think about being a kid and standing at the window of the zoo, watching the monkeys swing from the little fake tree, fighting over the dried fruit the zookeeper had set out for them. I don’t know why, but that’s what I think about, and before I know it—thunk—the body lands in the tub, and I’m no longer with the monkeys. I’m back in my expensive apartment in Manhattan with a dead girl’s body in my once clean tub.
