Silk

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “The phone book’s right over there,” she said and pointed to a sloppy stack of magazines and comics by the bathroom door, “if you need to look the number up.”

  “They gave me a card.” Niki was already digging through the pockets of her army jacket. “If I haven’t lost it.”

  Daria sighed, looked at her wristwatch, and swung her legs over the side of the bed, bare feet flat against the chilly hardwood. Off toward the tracks, toward the other end of Morris and work, she heard the whistle of a freight train, a desolate, empty sound, and she sat and listened to Niki arguing with the mechanic, Claude running water to wash dishes. And the steel wheels, razor wheels on steel rails, as the sun went down again.

  3.

  Daria had been nineteen when she’d fallen over backwards into her first band.

  She was living in a Southside firetrap with a guy named Pablo, had worked day jobs flipping burgers and sold blotter acid on the side to keep a roof over their heads, Ramen noodles and Wild Irish Rose in their bellies. Their apartment had been on the topmost floor of a building that might still have been habitable when her grandmothers were her age. Rats as big as puppies, and they’d slept with all the lights on to keep the roaches off the bed. When it rained, the roof was little better than a colander, rainwater seeping through a sagging foot of plaster and rotten lathe, pigeon shit and mold, before it dripped from the ceiling and streamed in murky rivulets down the walls.

  Pablo had played bass for a band called Yer Funeral, three punker holdouts with identical Ramones haircuts who covered the Sex Pistols and the Clash and made everything sound like crap. The singer and guitarist, a painfully skinny cokehead named Jonesy McCabe, had lived in Manhattan in the early eighties and claimed to have given the ghost of Sid Vicious a blow job one Halloween. Carlton Hicks on drums, and they’d opened for marginally better bands on the local hardcore circuit, two or three shows a month and the rest of their time spent picking fights with rednecks and skinheads, fucking their girlfriends; counterfeit anarchists scrounging bedlam in the sunset days of Reagan’s America.

  Daria had never asked Pablo to teach her to play, had never had any particular interests in music or anything else creative. Sometimes she’d talked about college; she hadn’t dropped out, and her SAT scores had been decent enough, but there was never any money, never would be, and although there were loans, the thought of owing Uncle Sam twenty or thirty thousand for an undergrad degree had finally soured her on the idea. So she worked at McDonald’s and Arby’s and sold her cheap blotter, stamped with dancing rows of rainbow-colored Jerr-bears and so weak that even high school kids who still thought cigarettes were cool had trouble getting a trip off the stuff.

  But the more bookings Yer Funeral managed to worm itself into, the more serious Pablo became about his music, and he’d actually begun to practice, hours spent sitting around their apartment rehearsing his bare-bone rhythms. And she’d learned that unless she paid attention, he ignored her altogether.

  It had started as a joke, yeah, Dar, let’s see what you can do, let’s hear what you got in there, and Daria holding his silver Gibson while everyone laughed and made their punker boy pussy jokes. But there had never been a single moment of awkwardness. The instrument had seemed to belong in her hands, had almost seemed built for the span and stretch of her fingers, like something that should have been there all along.

  And whenever Pablo was asleep or off screwing around with Jonesy and Carlton, she’d sat on their one chair and played, fuck the chords and notes, had listened hard to the bass lines on Pablo’s pirated tapes, and it was always so goddamned obvious, fingers here and here, then here, until she’d simply merged with the recordings. She had quickly discovered that the bass was capable of other sounds besides the all-the-way-up, tooth-grinding throb Pablo hammered out of the thing, sloppy attempts at discord that always dissolved into a noteless spew of ear-splitting low-end noise as he got drunker and cranked the blue gain knob higher and higher.

  Two weeks, and she had figured out all of the songs in Yer Funeral’s set list; so little variation in punk bass lines, anyway, almost everything on the bottom two strings. She’d deciphered most of the knobs on the cabinet and the bass itself, had grown puking sick of the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and the Clash, everything fuzzy and flat through Pablo’s junker stereo, and she’d begun to just string notes together like popcorn or plastic beads. Pictured them as fat brown blocks of different shapes and sizes to be stacked any way she pleased. And Daria had realized that she was writing her own songs, things that might become songs, and she would shut her eyes and stand before the thumping rig, imagining the drums and guitars, the singer’s wordless voice, all tied together with the warm chocolate rhythms she coaxed from the Gibson.

  And then Pablo had smashed up his hand, had been drunk and fallen, tripped on a crack in the fucking sidewalk and tried to break his fall with his right hand. One week before Yer Funeral was supposed to open a big show, Battle of the Bands thing, and there were rumors that a scout from IRS would be coming down. When they’d gotten back from the emergency room, Jonesy had been waiting for them on the front steps of their apartment building, and when he’d seen Pablo’s hand, ridiculous swollen fingers like splinted sausages and the shell of fresh white plaster, he’d socked Pablo in the jaw and broken two front teeth.

  Next day, after he’d heard that Jonesy was seriously looking for someone to replace him on a not-so-temporary basis, he’d volunteered Daria. She’d told him to fuck off, but he’d begged, and Jonesy had finally agreed to let her sit in on one practice. Yer Funeral had rehearsed in the garage of an abandoned Chevron station, concrete floors gritty oil-dark and darker pits where the hydraulic lifts had been. Pablo had sat alone in a shadowy corner, sucking beer and looking sullen and anxious; Jonesy and Carlton had exchanged doubtful smirks as she’d tuned and adjusted the strap to fit her shoulder.

  Then Carlton had started off, no warning, three loud beats slammed from his foot drum before Jonesy leaped into the New York Dolls’ “Chatterbox,” spitting the words at the mike and his graceless fingers ripping madly at his guitar. Daria had only missed a beat or two, and by the time they reached Jonesy’s solo, both drummer and singer were grinning. Daria had never looked up from the bass, never once taken her eyes off the strings, had chewed her lower lip until it bled, until the song had ended and Jonesy was laughing like a hyena and Carlton had kept repeating “Gawddammit, girl,” over and over. Pablo hadn’t said a word, had popped the cap off another bottle of Sterling and watched from his patch of gloom.

  Daria had followed straight through Yer Funeral’s entire borrowed repertoire, had ended with “ Rockaway Beach,” and her fingers had been numb, fingerprint whorls scraped raw and smooth. No breath left in her, gasping and her arms gone to slinkys, her sweat standing out on the garage floor around her feet, bright droplets and splatters unable to soak into the oil-and antifreeze-saturated cement. And Jonesy had slapped her on the back, big, stupid boy gesture of affection or camaraderie, fraternity, and then he’d hugged her tight, and Pablo, drunk off his cheap beer and confusion, knowing that this whole thing was getting way out of hand, blowing up in his face, but not sure why or how to stop the explosion, had mumbled something not entirely to himself.

  Jonesy had asked him to speak up, come again, and Pablo had stood, slight reel and sway as he stepped toward them.

  “What the hell difference does it make,” he’d slurred. Jonesy and Carlton had looked back at him with blank faces, not following; Daria had kept her eyes on the grungy floor, on her rejected sweat and abused fingers.

  “No freakin’ scout wants to hear a cover band anyway, man. Punk’s dead and you guys are pissin’ up a goddamn rope.” And then he’d staggered off to take a leak, to hunt down the toilet even though the station hadn’t had water since it’d closed.

  “Hey, fuck you, man,” Carlton had shouted after him. “You fucking wanker. You’re just pissed ’cause your old lady made you look like shit.”

 
; Pablo had ignored him, had disappeared through a darkened doorway (the door torn off long ago, propped useless somewhere nearby) into the darker lobby. A second later, he’d cursed, had given up his search for the toilet, and they’d heard the metal-through-fabric zrrrip, the wet spatter of Pablo’s piss on the lobby’s tiles.

  “Fuck him,” Jonsey muttered as he’d lit a cigarette and stuffed his Zippo back into his shirt pocket. “That was some amazing shit, Dar.”

  Daria had wiped her face on the tail of her T-shirt, the clean ocean smell of her sweat mixing with the lingering gasoline stench, hydrocarbon phantoms, and she’d finally smiled. She had been good, damn good, and what’s more, it had felt good. Had felt wild and alive and had consumed her, every fiber of her mind and body, in a way that not even the best of her infrequent orgasms had ever come close to doing. She’d been only dimly aware of a door slamming somewhere, the rust-bucket growl of Pablo’s Impala outside the garage bay doors, the angry, hot spin of rubber on asphalt as he’d peeled out of the Chevron’s parking lot into the night.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Carlton had said, “He’s bein’ a jerk.”

  But she hadn’t cared about Pablo, felt only the vaguest annoyance, disappointment that he could be so insecure, could act so petty. Her head was crammed too full of the Gibson’s toothache throb, her senses clogged with the stinging numb of her fingertips, the delicious threat of cramp in her arms and shoulders and the small of her back, the heady smell of herself. And what she’d said next had spilled out like someone else’s words, no thought, no consideration of consequence or her own possible inadequacies.

  “If I wrote some songs-I mean, the lyrics-can you guys write the music?”

  Jonesy and Carlton had looked at each other, slug-slow comprehension, and then Jonesy had shaken his head.

  “Forget it, Dar. Shit, even if I thought I could, there’s not enough time.”

  “But would you try, Jonesy?” And that enthusiasm had felt strange coming from her mouth, alien vomit, shimmering silver and red in the amp-shocked garage air. “Would you at least give it a shot?”

  “Why? We’re good, right? Twice as good with you on Pablo’s bass.”

  “Because Pablo’s right, man,” Carlton had said, grudging agreement, as he began to break down his kit. “He might be a jerk, but he’s pro’bly right about nobody wantin’ to hear a bunch of tired old covers.”

  “Just let me see what I can come up with,” she’d said, had almost been begging and no idea why, and they’d agreed, Jonesy still shaking his head, but agreeing anyway. Carlton had given her a ride home, and she’d looked for Pablo’s car on the street, had looked without letting on that she was looking. But there’d been no sign of him, no sign inside that he’d been back by the apartment.

  Daria had called in sick the next day, had lied to her jowly-fat asshole of a manager, something simple and contagious like the flu or a stomach virus. She’d coughed into the receiver, had ground her voice down to the croakiest wheeze, and of course he hadn’t believed her. He handled his little legion of burger-flippers like an Egyptian foreman, building his pyramids from Styrofoam and beef patties; but he couldn’t prove she was slacking, would make it up by sticking her with all the shitty shifts for the next two weeks.

  She’d found an old steno pad hiding on top of the refrigerator, half the pages filled with phone numbers and doodles, games of hangman, the cardboard cover crusted with specks of cockroach poop. She’d used one of their two butter knives to scrape the cover relatively clean and had spent the next fifteen minutes looking for a pencil, or a pen that hadn’t dried up.

  Before nightfall, she’d finished her first song, “Iron Lung” scribbled like a prescription across the top of the page. Rambling and craggy, and it hadn’t felt anywhere near as good as the music had, had left only a dim sense of accomplishment and fingers smudged inky blue from the free-bleeding ballpoint pen. And the fear, almost certainty, that she’d been full of shit, that she should have kept her mouth shut, that Jonesy was gonna take one look at the words she’d scrawled and laugh in her face.

  Before she’d gone to the bathroom sink to scrub the ink stains from her hands, to the boxy shower to scrub the previous night’s sweatgrunge away, she’d stood a minute or two at the window, watching Twenty-first Street, pockmarked asphalt stripe up and down the side of Red Mountain. Pablo could be anywhere, drunk or just moping; he’d drag his ass home sooner or later. She should be used to his punker boy bullshit and posing, but the guilt was starting to get in around the bright, new edges of her excitement.

  And she’d realized that what she was really beginning to fear wasn’t that she might have driven something irreparable between her and Pablo, but the fact that the ecstasy and burn she’d felt with Jonesy and Carlton was temporary. That there would be only just so many fixes before Pablo’s hand came out of that cast and she went back to being peripheral, hanger-on, the girlfriend who paid bills and sat, smoking and drinking beer in bar after identical murky bar, while the others took the stage.

  But Pablo had stayed gone, three more days and her words had fitted seamlessly with the crude, growling melodies Jonsey had fashioned for them. It was darker stuff than the fuck-off-and-die anthems Yer Funeral had always pushed. Darker and more urgent, and the thrill that Daria had felt that first night had been nothing compared to the rush that came from playing the new songs, her songs. Her fingers had become more sure by the minute, both of themselves and the strings, more like remembering than learning. And she’d loved the rawness of the lyrics, the way they rode high on the music, even if she’d still thought that Jonesy McCabe sounded like a raccoon caught in a washing machine.

  Saturday night had come around and still no Pablo, no sign or word if he’d left town or gone to ground somewhere. The excitement had begun to sour in her stomach, intoxication curdled like old milk. They’d been slated as the first of two opening acts, had sat back in the shadows, staring out at the two or three hundred people milling around inside the derelict Northside warehouse.

  “He ain’t gonna show,” Carlton had said, disgust and nerves competing for his voice.

  “Fuck him,” Jonesy had replied. “Ain’t that right, Dar? We’re the show now, and tonight we’re gonna kick some ass.”

  Daria hadn’t said anything, had scanned the scattered, shifting sea of faces, and she’d known he was out there somewhere. And that they weren’t lovers anymore, that she’d stolen something from him, and that, as far as Pablo was concerned, she may as well have sliced off his dick. She held his bass in her hands, sweatslicking the instrument’s long neck, and she’d wanted to call it off, go back, but it’d already been too late. Because she wanted this more, wanted this more than his cock between her legs or his body next to her in bed.

  Someone had turned up the lights, gel bloodied red, sunlight at the bottom of a shallow red lake, and the crowd had all but disappeared behind the glare. Jonesy had put his arm around her shoulder, then, one-of-the-boys-now embrace, and she’d stepped through the stageside snarl of cables and Peavy amps.

  The crowd had made a sound like some huge, mumbling beast, delight or dissent and a smattering of indifferent applause. Someone had hurled a beer can, and it had passed just inches from her face, drenching everything in foamy, malt-smelly stickiness.

  “FUCK YOU, SHITHEADS!” Jonesy had howled into his mike, beer in his hair, dripping down his face, every muscle in his neck strained cord-taut. And then the crowd had come alive, big beast waking up, and Blam, Blam, Blam, three beats from Carlton, and she’d taken her eyes off the hazy writhe and press of bodies at the edge of the stage, no room for anything but the business of her fingers.

  A showy little riff from Jonesy, a little too showy, and then he’d hurtled her words into the steel-gray phallus of the microphone, and the sound had poured out thick and sizzling around her, glorious wail and crash and backwash feedback.

  Halfway through the first song, she’d tossed her head to one side, flipping hair from her eyes,
had only looked away from the strings for a second, but she’d seen him. Pablo, eyes like anthracite lumps of coal, face like weathered cemetery marble. One violently still point in the fury of the mosh pit.

  “All you make me feel is depressed,” Jonesy sang. “I’m tired of toeing your line.”

  Pablo had stepped forward, not the slightest change in his expression, his utter absence of expression; the slamming flesh had parted freely as he came, Charlton Heston dividing meat with zombie eyes.

  “Let me out of this iron lung! I can fuckin’ breathe on my own!”

  He’d made it to the edge of the stage before Jonesy had noticed him, and there’d been no security down front, no security in the whole place except for one off-duty cop checking IDs at the door. And the door may as well have been a million miles away. Someone had turned on the strobes just then, and the red light had begun to pulse madly, arrhythmia flicker, as Pablo pulled himself up, pushed aside and between the monitors. He’d moved slow, and the lights had added the illusion of silent-film jerkiness.

  Daria had taken one step back, her hands stumbling as the music came apart like a house of cards.

  The crowd had shouted stupid encouragement, this new show as good as anything else, and Pablo hadn’t even blinked when another beer can had bounced off the back of his head.