Catskinner's Book (The Book Of Lost Doors) Read online

  Catskinner's Book

  A novel

  By Misha Burnett

  Copyright © 2012

  Cover design Misha Burnett

  Copyright © 2012

  Original cover photograph Susan Clontz

  Copyright © 2011

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter One

  “there is more than one way to skin a cat, but they all end the same for the cat.”

  The sign in the window says Quality Electrical Supply. If you wander in when we're open—Ten AM to Six PM, Monday through Friday—I could actually sell you some electrical supplies—wire, wire nuts, conduit, junction boxes, breakers, things like that, as long as you didn't need anything oddball.

  I do have a number of big catalogs under the counter. I have plenty of time to look through them, but there isn't a lot of point since we don't do special orders. Victor, the owner, doesn't like it.

  Quality Electric is off the beaten path, at the corner of two residential streets, next to an empty space that used to be a corner market and then sold liquor and cell phones until the owner got himself shot.

  Now there are just some anonymous cardboard boxes covered with dust, a padlocked freezer, and a bunch of office chairs next door. I snagged one of the office chairs for behind my counter, to replace the metal folding one I used to have. If anybody asks for it I'll give it back, but I'm pretty sure no one ever will.

  We don't do any advertising at all, not even a line ad in the Yellow Pages. Despite that, we do get some customers, mostly homeowners from the neighborhood who need to replace an outlet or install a ceiling fan. They come in and look around with a sort of half hopeful, half confused expression, like they're expecting to see a shelf labeled, Hey, Joe, This Is The Part You Need!

  If I can, I help them figure out what they want, and if I have it I sell it to them. Sometimes they just have questions and I always make sure to tell them that I'm not a qualified electrician. I do know a lot about wiring though. I know a lot about things I'm not supposed to know about.

  Sometimes I daydream about making it into a real business, getting an ad in the South Side Journal, building up the inventory, maybe a nice display of light fixtures, the kind of faux brass and stained glass stuff that looks vaguely Victorian. Rehabers eat that stuff up. There's a lot of rental property in this neighborhood. I could offer commercial accounts. I'm not saying I'd put Home Depot out of business, mind you, but I bet I could make the place turn a profit.

  Of course, the owner doesn't care about selling breaker boxes and GFCI outlets, and he definitely doesn't want people coming in off the street and looking around, so it's just a daydream. It does help pass the time, though, in between the jobs I do for him that actually do make a profit.

  Behind the counter there are three doors. There's the one that leads to this weird shaped little space that you could call either a big closet or a small storeroom. It's one of those rooms that no one planned to build, just kind of a leftover from remodeling. I keep a safe in there, but it would be really awkward to try to use it as a stockroom, so it's probably for the best that I don't have any stock. What's on the shelf is what we've got.

  The second one is the bathroom thing—it would probably make a better storeroom, but the toilet and sink are in there. It's too big for just a bathroom, though, so it tends to gather all the stuff that I don't know what else to do with. A snow shovel, the folding chair that used to be behind the counter, a filing cabinet that'll come in handy if I ever have anything that needs to be filed. And my coffeemaker, since the sink's in there.

  The third door leads to the hall. There's the back door of the building, the back door to the ex-market next door, and Victor's office. He almost never leaves his office, and I don't go back there unless I have to, so I might as well be alone in the building.

  Except for Catskinner, of course.

  There are apartments upstairs, but the only one that's occupied is mine. You can't get there from the shop, you have to go outside and go back into the building from the alley. When I first moved in I thought that was inconvenient, but now I kind of like it that way. When I lock up the shop at night there's a nice feeling of going home, even though the commute is only twenty feet.

  There's an intercom under the counter with the other end in my boss’s office. I put it in myself, actually. I did most of the work setting up the shop. Victor would have been happy with an empty room and one bare light bulb. I had to explain that a cover business is supposed to, you know, provide some cover.

  So I got a counter, and some shelves, and enough stock to cover the shelves, and a computer I can use as a cash register, but I use mostly to watch music videos on YouTube, and little bell that rings on the rare occasion that someone comes in the front door.

  If someone was watching the place they'd know pretty quick that we don't do anything close to enough business to keep the lights on, much less pay my salary, but why would someone watch the place? We don't have enough foot traffic to be dealing drugs, and I keep the sidewalk clean.

  I was eating lunch—there's a little pizza place a couple of blocks away with really good sandwiches and free delivery—when Victor buzzed me.

  I set down my sandwich, locked the front door, and turned around the We're Open sign to the Back In Ten Minutes side, and went down the hall.

  My boss's office door is metal and it's very heavy. Partly it's because he wants to keep people out, but mostly it's because it's insulated. He likes it cold in his office. Really cold. Outside it was the end of May, and I kept the windows open in my apartment, but in Victor's office it was always darkest February.

  I waited until he pushed the button that made the lock go ka-chunk—I didn't wire the electric lock, he called a real electrician for that—and then I pushed it open.

  “Hello, Victor,” I said. He's fat and he smells awful. His skin is ugly, too, yellow and dry and cracked. Anyone who took one look at him would know that there has to be something seriously wrong with him. I don't mind, though, except for the cold. There's something seriously wrong with me, too—it just doesn't show on the surface.

  “Hello, James.” He smiled. He's always friendly when he talks to me, and he smiles a lot. His teeth are mostly black.

  I sat carefully in the chair in front of his desk. The wood back was fine, but the cloth seat always seemed damp. But it was either that or sit on the big floor safe—he only had two chairs, and he was sitting on the other one.

  “How are you doing, James?” Victor asked. There was really only one reason he called me back to his office, and it wasn't to make small talk, but he always asked how I was doing.

  I shrugged. “Okay. Good, I guess.”

  Victor nodded. “You look good. You look like you've put on some weight.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, probably.” I'd always been scrawny, but working for Victor gave my life some stability, including regular meals like the meatball sub waiting for me
on the counter.

  I wasn't going to ask how he was doing. Not that he'd tell me in detail, anyway. My words came out in little puffs of cloud when my breath hit the cold air. His didn't.

  “I think I'll do a little shopping on Saturday. Maybe look for a new stereo.” I hadn't been thinking any such thing, but I had to say something. “Okay if I take the van?”

  “Of course, of course, any time.” Victor grinned at me. “Just make sure you gas it up.” Victor always made sure that the company van had a full tank of gas. Why, I wasn't sure. It's not as if he ever drove anywhere.

  I nodded, then rubbed my arms. Maybe if I reminded him how uncomfortable his office was he'd get to the point.

  It worked. “Well,” he said brightly, “it looks like we've got a little job for our friend tonight.”

  Suddenly I could feel Catskinner's attention from my back. He likes Victor's little jobs.

  Catskinner isn't really on my back, because he's not really anywhere—he doesn't have a physical body, so he doesn't have a location in space the way that physical objects do—but that's where the tattoo is, so that's where I always feel him. When he talks to me it sounds like he's standing right behind me, even though I know his voice is just in my head and nobody else can hear him.

  Victor handed me a picture, an older man, bald, nondescript in a kind of generic white guy way.

  remember him, Catskinner prompted me, even though I was already studying the photograph. He can't recognize humans from pictures of faces, so he relies on me to identify our targets.

  I felt my mouth go numb and heard Catskinner using my voice to speak to Victor.

  “just him?”

  “He'll have bodyguards. Three, maybe four. Ex-cops or ex-military. Armed.”

  “where? when?”

  Victor handed me a paper menu. It was from a Italian restaurant not that far from our shop. “He'll be there at nine tonight.”

  “dinner out,” and I felt Catskinner laugh. It feels like bugs running up and down my backbone, “lots of other customers. . . .”

  Victor looked serious. “Only if you have to—and I mean really have to. We want this to be as clean as possible.”

  Silently I said, Do you want me to get locked up again? and the laughter stopped. Catskinner's bound to my body, and if I'm locked up, he's locked up. Granted, he can make my body do things that ordinary humans can't do, but he can't fly or walk through walls, and if I'm drugged into unconsciousness, he can't see through my eyes or hear through my ears. I spent most of my childhood in and out of institutions until I got big enough to live on my own without arousing suspicion.

  I've never been certain, but I think that when I die he'll go back to wherever he came from. In any event, he takes my personal safety very seriously, and it's not from compassion—he's proved many times that he doesn't have any.

  “He says he'll be good.” I told Victor. I hoped he would be.

  Then I went back to finish my sandwich. The job wasn't until late that evening, so I wouldn't have to close up early. I don't like to close up early.

  When I unlocked the front door there was someone standing outside. Female, tall, lean, in the way that vegetarian marathon runners are lean, all tendons and bones like a greyhound. Jeans, work boots, and a T-shirt that advertised the Botanical Garden. Short black hair. She looked like she was probably rewiring her house as a revolutionary deconstruction of the patriarchal paradigm.

  I unlocked the door and stifled an urge to say, Good afternoon, little missy. I know, I'm a bad person. But I'm okay with that.

  Instead I said, “I'm sorry—,” as she pushed past me into the store. Catskinner bristled at that. He doesn't like people getting close to me. She smelled like old sweat and some incense—sandalwood, maybe.

  “—I was busy in the back,” I continued as she stalked right into the middle of the store—three or four steps for most people, two long strides for her—and began scanning the shelves all around

  “Is there something I can help you with?” I was starting to feel like I was invisible and she thought the wind blew the door open or something. Also I was acutely aware of the other half of my meatball sandwich sitting on the counter and the fact that I wasn't eating it.

  She looked at me then, stared hard at me with a scowl on her face, like she needed something bad and I wasn't it.

  Okay, so I'm short and skinny and my hair is kind of muddy brownish and I keep it buzzed because it won't stay flat otherwise—I'll admit I'm nobody's idea of a dreamboat. Still, I was showered and my clothes were clean—that should have counted for something.

  I moved over next to the shelves. “Do you need something?”

  “I need to know who you are.” She was still looking at me like I was the wrong part for some job.

  “James Ozwryck.” It's pronounced AWE-sig, by the way. No one ever gets it right.

  She took a step closer to me. “And who else?”

  Catskinner said, get rid of her now or i will.

  “Nobody else.” I deliberately didn't mention Victor. Victor was very much not available for visitors, ever. Catskinner's attention was making me very nervous—he didn't make empty threats, and if he got rid of her it could cause problems. Especially if she had any next of kin.

  I was trying to come up with a polite way to say, Go away, you're creeping me out, when she just turned around and left.

  Someone even more socially maladroit than I am—I don't run across that very often.

  When she closed the door behind her I saw that I'd forgotten to turn the sign around, so I flipped it over to the We’re Open side. I didn't see the tall woman on the street anywhere.

  What's wrong with her? I wondered.

  she's still breathing, Catskinner answered, i could fix that for her.

  That didn't help. His comments usually don't.

  Outside the glass door a big panel truck rumbled by, the sides covered with that new plastic film that makes vehicles into billboards. The Land Of Tan! it advertised, garish letters over a model lying back on a tanning bed, I assumed, although it looked more like an alien life support pod. The woman was tan, of course, blond and busty and wearing an open mouthed smile, white sunglasses, and a green string bikini that covered only what the law required.

  I was pretty sure that the tall woman wasn't driving that. It didn't seem her style. Besides, the shadow in the front seat seemed a lot shorter.

  The rest of the afternoon was quiet, as usual.

  I kept thinking about that woman. The plastic one on the side of the van, not the real one who had stomped through the shop. All of my woman had been plastic, imaginary. Catskinner wouldn't allow anyone to get close to me, and even when he wasn't controlling me he left some kind of mark on me, something that kept people from wanting to get close to me. Except Victor.

  I wondered what it would be like to be with a woman like the model on the van. To touch her, to kiss her, to see her lie back and smile at me like she was smiling in that photograph. What would it be like to be able to get close to a woman like that without being scared that Catskinner would hurt her, kill her? Thoughts like that were useless. It didn't stop me from thinking them though.

  I finished my sandwich, messed around on-line, and closed up at six. I made myself a pot pie—nothing too heavy—and watched TV for a while.

  My apartment isn't much, one long room with a corner walled off as a bathroom and a sort of kitchen built into one wall. I could have more. I could knock out the walls and have the whole second floor. Heck, I could rent an apartment or even a house someplace else—I've got plenty of money these days.

  My little place is all I want, though. It suits me, and it's mine. It has a door that I can lock and unlock whenever I want. I have my fridge and all the food I want, my books, my TV and my game console, a good computer, my bed and my clothes. It's a small life, scale model of how ordinary people live.

  It's the best place I've ever had.

  I like watching old TV shows, and now that a lot
of television is available on-line I can catch up on all the shows I missed. I watched a couple of episodes of CSI. I love that show, the characters are likable and the mysteries all have answers. Catskinner seems to like it, too. He laughs a lot, usually during the autopsy scenes.

  Then I filled my pockets with candy bars and went to work. At eight-thirty that evening I was getting out of a cab a couple of blocks away from the place Victor had told me about.

  The restaurant was a little Italian place. It smelled good, and I wondered how their food was. I'd never eaten there, and after work tonight it would probably be a really bad idea to go back. I could feel Catskinner like a hot towel draped over my back. When he's fully alert it's like the tattoo on my back is made out of wire and the current gets turned up all the way.

  I went in the front door. There was a big dining area to the left and a small one to the right. The man I was looking for was on the right. I focused my eyes on him and whispered in my head.

  target acquired, he whispered back. He really enjoys our night jobs. I just get out of his way and try not to watch when he's working.

  I walked past the host at the podium by the door.

  “looking for someone,” my mouth muttered.

  Only one table in the small section was occupied. There were four men sitting there—the bald man who looked older and more out of shape than he had in Victor's picture, and three younger ones. All of them were wearing jackets and my eyes scanned them as Catskinner looked for weapons.

  I had no jacket, no obvious place to hide a weapon, and like I say, I don't look like much. That let me get within a few feet of the table before one of the young men started to get up. He was saying something when Catskinner reached down into all those strings running down my spinal cord and yanked.