Debt of Skin

I was packing up my toolbox on my kitchen floor when she hit me with it. Not the toolbox, the favor. I had my wrenches sorted into the roll and my pipe cutter wrapped in a rag, and I was thinking about how the truck was mostly loaded already, when she leaned on the counter with her coffee and said, "You know you still owe me, right?"

"I know," I said. "Four hundred bucks. I'm good for it."

"It's not the money, Emile. I covered your half of rent in March when that hospital job stiffed you for six weeks. I didn't ask for anything then."

"And I appreciate it. I said I'd pay you back."

"I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about the favor. The actual favor." She sipped her coffee like she had all the time in the world. She was thirty-eight and she'd been doing this look at me for three years, the one where she's already decided how the night goes and she's just waiting for me to catch up. I was forty-three, a plumber with a bad knee and a loaded pickup, and I still hadn't learned.

"So what is it?" I asked. "You want me to drive you somewhere? Fix something at the bar?"

"Nope. Tonight. The Crooked Note. You're coming in at nine, and you're going to do what I say." She grinned at me over the rim of the mug. "That's the favor."

I didn't like the sound of that. Flo hosts karaoke there three nights a week, and Wally the owner has run that place for fifteen years, and I know exactly what kind of ideas live in that building. But I also owed her, and I knew it, and she knew I knew it.

"Fine," I said. "But if you're going to make me sing, I'm picking the song."

"Who said anything about singing?" She set her mug down and walked out of the kitchen laughing, and I sat there on the floor of an apartment I was technically moving out of, holding a pipe cutter, wondering what I'd agreed to.

I'd met Flo three years back when her sink flooded. She was thirty-five, I was forty, and I was under her cabinet for two hours because the previous owner had done some of the worst plumbing work I've ever seen in my life. She sat on the counter the whole time and talked, and I fixed it, and she fed me spaghetti, and that concluded the matter. We'd been together ever since. Now I was taking a job on the coast, starting Monday, and she was staying put for her own work, so this was our last real night in the same zip code for a while.

I got to the bar at nine like she said. The Crooked Note is in a strip mall between a nail place and a tax guy, with a neon sign that flickers on the C like it's having a medical event. The floors are sticky. The microphone has been dropped more times than I've dropped a wrench, which is saying something. I've been drinking there two years myself, since Cassandra started bartending. She's twenty-nine, sharp as a tack, and she knew immediately something was up.

"You look nervous," she said, sliding me a beer I hadn't ordered.

"I'm not nervous."

"You're doing the thing with your jaw." She pointed at my face with the bottle opener. "What did Flo rope you into?"

"I don't know yet. That's the worst part."

Cassandra laughed and went off to serve the Dwyer twins, who are in there every Friday arguing about fishing. The place was about half full, regulars mostly, plus a bachelorette party of six women who were already loud at nine fifteen. Flo was up on the little stage doing her host thing, teasing the next singer, and every so often she'd look at me and smile in a way that did not settle my stomach at all.

At ten she cut the music short. That never happens. Somebody was mid-chorus and Flo just turned his mic down and said thanks, Gary, take five.

"Alright everybody, listen up!" she called out. "Special announcement. We have a farewell situation tonight."

The crowd made noises. Somebody yelled congratulations, and Flo waved it off.

"It's not a wedding, Doreen. My boyfriend Emile is moving to the coast on Monday. Plumber. Some of you know him, he's the one who fixed the ladies' room sink in June and wouldn't take a tip."

"I took the tip!" I yelled from the bar.

"He took the tip," she confirmed. "Anyway. He owes me a debt. A debt of honor. And tonight, before he skips town, he's paying it. Emile, get up here."

Every head turned. Cassandra set a fresh beer in front of me and whispered, "Good luck," and I swear she was already grinning like she knew the plan, which she probably did, because Flo tells her everything.

I walked up to the little stage. It's maybe a foot off the ground and it creaks. I stood next to Flo and she put her arm through mine like we were about to address a jury.

"Now, Emile here is not going to sing," she announced. "Believe me, you don't want that."

"Thank God!" shouted one of the bachelorette party women, and her friends cracked up.

"Instead, he's going to perform. A farewell number. Here's how it works." She turned to me with the biggest smile I've ever seen on her face. "One song. One full song. And over the course of that song, Emile is going to take off every single stitch of clothing he walked in with."

The place went up like I'd announced free drinks. People were hollering and stomping, and one of the twins fell off his stool, and Wally came out of the back office wiping his hands on a bar towel going, "What, what's happening?"

"Fundraiser, Wally," Flo called. "You'll like this part. Every item comes off, we auction it to the crowd. Proceeds go to the jukebox repair fund, which you have been ignoring since Christmas."

"You're not serious," Wally said, but he was already laughing.

"Dead serious. Cassie, get the hat."

I stood there on the creaky stage while my girlfriend, who I love very much and who has apparently been planning this for weeks, laid out the rules. Shirt first. Shoes and socks. Pants. And, she said, pausing for effect, "Everything else. It's a full show, people. He owes me big."

"How big?" Doreen shouted.

"Rent-sized, Doreen."

The bachelorette party was on its feet. Gary, the guy she'd cut off mid-chorus, yelled that he wanted first bid on the shirt. Cassandra was already circling the room with a tip jar, and people were stuffing bills in it just to bid on clothes I was currently wearing.

Flo leaned close to me and lowered her voice so only I could hear. "You can back out. I mean that. Say the word and we do karaoke like normal people and I never bring up the favor again."

I looked at her. I looked at the crowd. Cassandra caught my eye from the floor and raised both eyebrows, waiting. And the honest truth is my stomach was doing flips, but some other part of me had already said yes, because Flo has always been the one who watches, and she'd once told me, drunk on her birthday, that what she really wanted was to see me be reckless for once in my life. Apparently this counted.

"What's the song?" I asked her.

She beamed and turned to the laptop on her chair. "Oh, I picked it months ago."

"Months?"

"Months, Emile. Now take off your shirt, the meter's running."

The opening bars kicked in and the whole bar started clapping, and I reached down and grabbed the hem of my shirt while forty-some people I've been drinking with for two years started chanting my name.

So there I am, holding the hem of my shirt like it's glued down, and the track is rolling along and the crowd is clapping in rhythm and my brain has completely left the building.

I stalled. I'll admit it straight out. I pointed at the speakers and said, "Hang on, hang on, I think I'm missing a button here," which is a stupid thing to say because my work shirt has snaps, and everybody knows it, because half these people have watched me come in smelling like flux and PVC glue every Friday for two years.

"Boo!" yelled one of the Dwyer twins. I think it was the older one, the one who argues about walleye. "Boo, get on with it."

"He's stalling!" Doreen shouted, delighted. "He's a professional. I bet he does this at every job."

"I do not," I said. "I bill by the hour, though."

That got a laugh, which bought me maybe ten more seconds, and I used every one of them standing there sweating under that single spotlight Flo had aimed at the stage. It's the same sad little spot they use for the wheel of fortune night, and it runs hot, and I could feel my back getting damp in a way I will not describe further. The track kept going. Verse was coming. I knew the plan was shirt during the first verse. Flo had rehearsed me in the car