Silk

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  This late, the store was locked tight, salespeople closing out their registers, an old woman pushing her dust mop from aisle to aisle. Outside, the sidewalk was washed in the glow of the huge neon stork perched over the doors, a neon bundle of joy hanging from its beak.

  Daria walked quickly across the employees’ parking lot, past the two or three cars still waiting patiently for their drivers, tried hard not to notice the “Equal Rights for Unborn Women” and “Pro-Family, Pro-Life” bumper stickers on the rear windshield of a banged-up Chevy Nova. She squeezed herself into the narrow space between masonry and the sagging chain-link fence that separated the building from a Texaco station, barely room enough to breathe, much less walk. Back here, the streetlights and shine from passing cars couldn’t reach, and already the night was pooled like runny tar. But the door was braced open, half a brick wedged there, and she was glad that at least she wouldn’t have to stand around in the cold and the shadows digging in the knapsack for her keys.

  Daria pulled the heavy steel door open, careful to leave the brick in place on the slim chance she wasn’t the last, the latest, and stepped inside. For a moment, it seemed even darker, despite the thin and yellowy incandescence from a bare bulb strung way up at the top of the stairs, 40-watt light at the end of the tunnel. She followed it up, her bass bumping once or twice against the edge of a step, her breath, her footsteps, close in the gloom. Finally, the door that Mort had painted in charcoal grays and chalky whites, hints of crimson, a ring of tiny winged skeletons, bone rattles clutched in bone fists, leering fetal grins, and “Baby Heaven” inscribed in the perfect mimic of tombstone chisel. Mort loved Edward Gorey and Gahan Wilson, Tim Burton and Mexican folk art, and it showed every time he put down the sticks and picked up a brush or pencil.

  Daria pushed open the gates to Baby Heaven, and there was warmer air and real light on the other side, the steamy hiss of radiators and rows of fluorescents suspended from the high ceiling, a couple of shadeless old floor lamps like tiny suns on gooseneck stalks.

  And Mort, sitting behind his drums in the middle of the mostly empty room, framed in amps and completely absorbed in the business of rolling a more than respectable joint from the Ziploc baggie of pot balanced on his knee. He looked up, saw Daria and smiled his wide, perfect smile, flashed broad teeth stained dingy with tobacco and neglect.

  “Daria,” he said, the way a chintzy magician might say “Presto-chango!” or “Abracadabra!,” and made a grand show of tipping his ratty baseball cap in her direction.

  Theo, Mort’s girlfriend, latest true love of his life, was camped out in the permanently reclined La-Z-Boy chair halfway across the room, smoking and prowling through a stack of Duplex Planet and old Rolling Stone magazines. Theo had come down from Nashville late in the spring. She dressed like Buddy Holly with a stumbling hangover and claimed that she was an artist, although Daria had yet to actually see anything she’d painted or drawn or photographed. She wore her hair piled high in an oily pompadour, dyed so painfully black it sometimes seemed almost blue.

  Daria closed the door behind her, shutting out the shadows and the clammy stairwell chill.

  “He’s not here yet, is he,” she said, no room for question marks in her voice; Mort shrugged his bony shoulders in reply and went back to rolling his smoke. She watched as he sealed the paper with a single expert lick, twisted the ends tight between thumb and forefinger, and tucked the bomber in snug behind his left ear.

  “I am so surprised,” and she set her bass on the dusty hardwood floor, sat herself down next to it and flipped up the slightly rust-scabbed latches on the big case. The inside was lined with nappy wine-colored velvet, a burgundy cradle for the black Fender Precision she’d rescued years ago from a local hockshop. From her knapsack, she pulled the shoulder strap she’d cut from an old belt, midnight leather and studs like robot teeth, and fastened it to the instrument, slipped her head through. She removed a snaky coil of cable and plugged the quarter-inch jack into the bass.

  “Mort, you are going to tell her, aren’t you?” Theo asked, looking up from the jumble of pages in her lap. Daria froze, faint prickle of dread stroking the back of her neck, the deepest part of her gut.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna tell her. Christ,” but instead, he leaned forward and began to fiddle nervously with a wing nut on the snare’s tripod stand.

  “Tell me what, Mort?”

  “I was gonna tell you that Keith’s pulled another fucking boner on us.”

  The prickling inside her swelled, ballooned into raw and gnawing alarm. Keith Barry was Stiff Kitten’s guitarist, had in fact been the one who’d approached Daria the year before, shortly after the band’s original vocalist got wasted on vodka and speed and tried to play limbo with her Camaro and a moving freight train. The wreck was local legend, the sort of thing that was destined to be savored for generations, and although it had felt a little strange at first, being the replacement part for a dead girl, she’d jumped at the chance.

  Of course she’d known that Keith Barry was a junky, that he’d been shooting smack since high school, but no idea that she would wind up falling for him ass over tits. Just that he could do things with his guitar that left her speechless, could pull sounds from the strings that left her crying like a goddamned old woman, like the child she spent so much time trying to forget she’d ever been.

  “Will you please just tell me what you’re talking about, Mort?”

  “Keith told me this morning that he’s sublet this place to some guys in another band.” Mort had stopped fussing with the wing nut, sat very still now and stared up at the ceiling, past the ceiling to some invisible point beyond.

  And the old anger swept over her, then, hot and immediate and utterly devoid of focus, as perfectly indifferent to who it hurt as Keith’s addiction. The small voice, silly, timid whimper that always made her think of some milksop’s cartoon excuse for a conscience, ivory white and angel wings flitting around her head and shoulders, the voice that raised its hand politely, that begged her to think first. But Mort was convenient, Mort was here and now, and the hurting words were already slipping across her lips.

  “Jesus Howlin’ Christ, Mort. Fuck! Do you just sit around with your thumb up your ass while he’s out pulling this shit?”

  “Hey, Daria,” Theo said, rising up slowly from her nest in the La-Z-Boy, “Don’t think you’re gonna take this one out on Mort. It’s not his fault your boyfriend’s a piss-for-brains junky.”

  “It’s all right, Theo. She’s just mad-”

  “No, Mort. It’s not all right, goddamn it. If she wants to scream at someone, she can wait until Keith decides to drag his butt up here.”

  The door swung wide, impeccable slapstick timing, slammed hard against the wall, and Keith, as tall as Mort was thin, tall and hard for his habits, stepped across the threshold. He carried his guitar case in both hands like a tough in an old gangster film, violin hiding a tommy gun. Had carried it around that way for months, since he’d used the case to take a swing at a skinhead and the handle had broken off. Keith kicked the door shut behind him, and something tacked to the wall, one of a hundred flyers or handbills, came loose and fluttered to the floor like a big paper moth.

  Daria managed to draw a deep breath, wasted attempt at scrounging some sort of calm, and leaned her bass gently against the nearest speaker. Very slowly, she turned to face the guitarist. And saw at once the stupid glaze, pupils like saucers and his face slack as hot butter behind its goatee and stubble shadow. It would be worse than useless arguing with him now, she knew that, but the angry thing had wound itself so tight inside her, and she imagined its electric hiss and crackle, power lines down on wet tarmac, blacksnakes coiled on scorched earth.

  For a moment, no one said anything, and there was only the anger and her heart and the faint sounds of the last work traffic stragglers down on the street, a car horn filtered through the foam rubber and egg cartons stapled to the walls.

  “So, what’s your plan, Keith,” and her voice
sounded detached, ugly distance, and she thought again of something deadly and black underfoot. “We gonna start rehearsing in the fucking street now?”

  “What?” and his blank eyes, lids at half-mast and cold gray stones barely visible beneath the overhang of his thick eyebrows, couldn’t have looked more innocent, more surprised. “Oh, hey, Mort…Jesus, man, didn’t you explain this thing to her?”

  “I just told her what you did, man.” Mort wasn’t looking through the ceiling now, stared down at his tennis shoes, instead.

  “Jeez, man, you were supposed to tell her how it is.” Keith’s words came out slurred, fuzzy with the junk slogging through his veins. “Look, Dar, it’s only for Mondays and Sundays, okay? It’s not a big deal-”

  “Fuck you,” Daria spat back, cutting him off. “Just shut the fuck up, okay?” and she was on her feet now, the free end of the cable dangling threateningly from her hand like a weird bullwhip.

  “Me and Mort are out busting our asses trying to hold down jobs to pay for this place and get a few decent shows together, and what are you doing, Keith? Huh? Why don’t you just tell me what exactly the fuck it is you think you’re doing?”

  Keith rubbed at his chin, shook his head slowly.

  “Mortie, man, will you please talk to her.”

  “No, Keith, this time I want to hear a goddamn answer from you!” and she took a sudden, vicious step in his direction, snapping the tangled cable tight. Her bass fell over, clatter and clong to the floor, and she winced at the noise, but kept her green eyes steady on Keith.

  “Hey, Dar. I was just tryin’ to help some guys out, okay? They need a place, and I was just tryin’ to help some guys out.”

  “Bullshit! That’s a load, and you know it’s a load, Keith,” and she turned away, picked up her bass from where it had fallen and began checking it over for damage.

  “You don’t even give a shit about us, Keith, about your own music.” Her cheeks felt hot past flushed, angry-burn, blistered inside out by her rage, and she spoke with her back to him as she carefully tested volume and tone control knobs, each brass tuning peg.

  “You expect us to believe that you’re out there posing as some kind of rock-and-roll angel of mercy, that you care whether or not-” but then she found a fresh scratch an inch or so above the output jack, hairline violation of the smooth ebony resin, and ran a callused index finger softly over it.

  “Tell me how we’re supposed to get ready for a show when you’ve rented this place out from under us. We’ve got Dr. Jekyll’s this Saturday night, and then the big show at Dante’s. Or did Dante’s just kinda slip your mind?”

  “Just forget it, okay, Daria,” Keith mumbled, still holding on to his guitar case, holding it like James Cagney. “Just forget the whole fucking thing. I’ll call Jack and Soda and tell them the deal’s off.”

  Daria hooked the bass over one shoulder, closed her eyes, and spoke slowly, choosing her words more carefully now. The rage had almost passed, and she felt shaky and a little ill, the dimmest threat of nausea squiggling around in her belly like tadpoles.

  “You do that, Keith,” she said. “And listen, I swear to god, if you ever pull anything like this again, I don’t care how bad you need money for a fix, you’re out on your ass. Do you understand?”

  “Hey, whatever you say, Dar. You’re the boss lady.”

  And then Daria marched away to the skanky little toilet at one end of the room, trailing the black cable out behind her. She shut the bathroom door hard, but the cable-half in, half out-got caught in the way, and the door swung slowly open again.

  Keith set his guitar down, ran one hand through his spiky mud-brown buzz cut.

  “So, Mortimer. I guess you think I’m one mondo asshole too.”

  “I think you went way too far this time, man, that’s all. I’ve always known you were an asshole.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, man.”

  “Hey, that’s what I’m here for,” and Mort lightly smacked the edge of a cymbal with two fingers.

  Theo pushed the magazines aside and climbed over the arm of the La-Z-Boy, wide corduroy gash and bulging tufts of white stuffing, chair hernia. Neither Mort nor Keith said anything to her as she got up and followed Daria and her black rubber excuse for bread crumbs to the john.

  Theo stepped inside the bathroom, little more than a shit closet really, and pushed the door quietly shut behind her. Daria’s bass cable was wound loosely around her left hand like a ropy bandage; she slipped it off and laid it on the edge of the sink, feeling awkward, knowing she was absolutely no good at this, wise-ass Theodora Babyock, never any good at consolation or the sympathetic shoulder to cry on bit. Just like now, worrying more about her inability to be the good mother goddess, dispensing tenderness and understanding like Easter jelly beans, than Daria’s need for comfort.

  “Hey, are you gonna be okay?” she asked, and god, that was lame enough all right, Daria sitting there on the edge of the crapper, arms tight around her bass, face buried in her hands and everything hidden beneath her blood-red hair. She wasn’t crying; Theo had never seen Daria cry, and she had a feeling no one else had, either. She was just sitting there, breathing too hard and too fast, a dry and graceless sound stranded somewhere useless, the stillborn expression of something she knew Daria would never even admit to feeling.

  “I am so goddamned sick of this,” she said, the words squeezed out like toothpaste between her clenched teeth, and her voice only made Theo feel that much more ineffectual.

  “He’s just gonna keep jerking us around like this, and pretty soon I’m gonna be too tired to even care anymore. Christ, I hardly give a rat’s ass now,” the last word hissed, and she kicked the wall, drove the toe of her Doc Marten into the bare Sheetrock.

  “Then maybe it’s time to cut him loose, babe,” and there it was, out quick before she could back down, before she lost her nerve.

  Daria looked up through the red straggle, slash-mouthed lips pulled tight and those eyes, red-rimmed but tearless, their twin fires banked for now, but the last green coals still dancing around her pupils, and Theo looked away.

  “We’re nobody without Keith. Do you honestly think people are gonna pay to hear Mort, or to listen to another froggy-voiced chick with a bass? Even when he’s so high he can’t find his dick to take a piss, he plays like…” but she trailed off, and her face disappeared back inside the shaggy veil of her hair.

  “You can’t save him,” Theo said flatly, and she heard the tone of her voice slipping, no longer straining to sound supportive, pretty sure she was at least as fed up with Keith Barry as anyone could be.

  “And if you guys think you can, he’ll wind up dragging you and Mort down in flames with him.”

  And then neither of them said anything else for a moment. Through the closed door, they could hear Keith tuning, rambling discord, stray chords segueing cruelly into a snatch of something that might have been funked-up B. B. King or Muddy Waters. And then the riff collapsed in a sudden, tooth-jarring twang and feedback whine, and Keith, cursing the broken string.

  “What an asshole,” Daria muttered, releasing a stingy, strangled sound that might have been meant for a laugh, and Theo flinched, afraid for a moment that Daria might cry after all. Instead, she leaned back against the toilet tank and sighed loudly, inverted V of dark water and ruststreaky porcelain showing between her denim thighs.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Theo,” she said, soft as a whisper. “I mean, I never thought it was gonna be the fucking Partridge Family, you know, but I also never figured it was gonna be like this.”

  There was a hesitant, soft rap at the door, just once, as if whoever it was had thought better of it at the last minute, and then Mort, sounding cautious and impatient at the same time, said, “Daria? We’re ready whenever you are.”

  “C’mon, girl,” Theo said. “Nothing else is gonna make you feel any better.” And she knew at least that much wasn’t bullshit, had been through this scene enough times, scenes enough like it, t
o know that the only way back up for Daria was work, her music or just the coffeehouse thing she’d taken to keep the bills paid. Work that absorbed her and left absolutely no room for distraction, no room for anything but itself, and always ended in merciful exhaustion.

  Daria fingered the new scratch on her bass, freshest scar, so many dings and scrapes there already that one more couldn’t possibly matter, and Theo thought about all the stickers on the instrument’s case, glossy Band-Aids hiding a hundred scuffs.

  “Yeah, Mortie,” Daria said. “I’m coming,” and Theo felt unexpected relief, the knot in her stomach beginning to loosen a little. Daria stood, flushed the toilet for no reason Theo could see, turned on the tap and splashed her face with cold water.

  “I’m right behind you,” she said, drying off with the front of her T-shirt, and Theo opened the bathroom door.

  2.

  As McJobs came and went, Daria had certainly done a whole lot worse than the Fidgety Bean. Whenever the crowd of yuppie poseurs, the wannabes and could’vebeens, began to eat away at her fragile resolve not to get canned, all she had to do was remind herself of the months she’d put in at the Zippy Mart, two armed robberies in as many weeks, and that last time, the slick and shiny barrel of the.38 or.45 or whatever so close to her face. Or the fast-food nightmares, scalding showers after every shift, scrubbing with sickeningly perfumed soaps and shampoos until her skin was raw and her hair worse than usual, still stinking like deep-fried dog turds.

  There were no drug tests or polygraphs at the Bean, no security cameras. And at least Claire and Russell, the two aging Deadheads who owned the Morris Avenue coffeehouse, allowed her to dress like a human, the less threadbare of her own clothes instead of some middle-management fuck’s idea of dress-up, somebody’s poster child for corporate identity.