“Shit. Neither do I. Just one of those places he used to talk about, that’s all it means to me.”
Keith drew the heroin carefully, carefully, every drop in through the needle, tapped the syringe and pushed out the air bubbles. He set the needle against his skin, skin scarred with tracks like a pox, needle aimed away from Niki, toward his heart.
“He used to talk about the war a lot. Had a medal and everything ’cause he got a foot blown off.”
And he pricked the skin, shifted his thumb slightly, easing the pressure on the plunger; Niki clearly saw the dark flow of his blood back into the syringe, the billow darker than crimson in the shadowy apartment before he injected. When the syringe was empty, he slipped the needle out, removed the bungee cord. Closed his eyes and inhaled loudly.
“It doesn’t hurt?” Niki asked him.
Nothing for a moment, and then he exhaled, slowly.
“Babe, it only hurts when the well runs dry,” he smiled, and for just a second looked so much younger, so much more vulnerable, more than a fucked-up junky rushing after his wake-up fix. And she could almost see in him what Daria might see, glimpse of something that Niki had heard in his music the night before, someone he kept safe and out of sight.
“It only hurts when it ain’t there.”
And she thought of the things she’d read, secondhand life, William Burroughs and something about Billie Holiday. And how little any of it meant, how she understood that she’d never understand, unless she let the needle kiss her own skin one day, and another day after that, until the junk became as much a part of her as air or water or the blood in her veins.
“Most of this kit was my dad’s, too,” Keith said, and when he saw the surprise on Niki’s face, he laughed. “No shit. They sent him back short a foot, but he had that fucking medal and a hell of a morphine habit.”
And then neither of them said anything for a while, just the wind outside talking to itself, and Keith stared past her out the window.
“Should we wake them up?” she asked, finally.
“Sure,” he said. “Bunch’a lazy-ass motherfuckers.”
“And then what?” Niki asked, and Keith grinned.
“Bet you never built a snowman, New Orleans girl.”
“No,” she said. “I never did.”
After the icebox of the building, the cold outside wasn’t such a shock, except when the wind gusted, came roaring at them around the corner of a building, up a deserted street, sluiced through garbage-can alleyways. A wind that made Niki think of places she’d never been, Chicago wind, Manhattan wind, wind that flayed without bothering to peel back skin and muscle first, that cut straight through no matter how many layers of clothes.
There’d been no hope for the van, half-buried by the Dumpster, so they’d all borrowed layers from Keith’s ragpile boxes, set out on foot, and when they passed the smoked-glass window of a shoe-shine and repair shop, Niki thought they looked like the shambling survivors of some Arctic apocalypse, ice not fire, Robert Frost’s second choice. Tube socks for gloves, flannel like the hides of plaid antelope, and Niki had found a second pair of jeans, Levi’s that would have been huge on Keith or Mort, cinched around her waist with an old extension cord the color of a neon-orange warning.
They built their skinny snowman on the sidewalk outside the Compass Bank on Twentieth Street, just a little taller than Niki and Daria, three uneven tiers and he listed a little to the right. Mort found limestone gravel for the eyes, an old windshield-wiper blade for an industrial Cyrano, snapped sticks off a frozen shrub for twiggy arms.
“Ugly fucker,” Keith said, and then he’d made the snowman a bifurcated dick with another twig.
“You are so sick,” Theo said, and so he smacked her in the back of the head with a snowball, as big as a grapefruit. The one she lobbed back at him was only half as big, packed harder; it missed Keith altogether and caught Daria right between the eyes. Keith started laughing so hard that he had to sit down, holding his stomach, sinking up to his waist in the snow.
“Fuck you, asshole,” and Daria had found some wetter snow in the gutter, muddy snow, and a few seconds later she’d nailed him and Keith was spitting and coughing, but still laughing so hard he couldn’t talk.
Spyder had sat down beside the bulbous lower tier of the snowman, had pulled out his stick-dick and was busy using it to trace swirling lines in the snow crust. Niki joined her, sat as close as she dared, remembering the awkward kiss the night before, still just as confused, still just as attracted. The designs Spyder drew in the snow reminded Niki of aboriginal rock paintings or sloppy paisley.
“Are you okay?” she asked, and Spyder looked up too fast, clear she hadn’t even noticed Niki until she’d spoken. The cut over her eye was red, red against her wind-pink face.
“Um,” she said. “Yeah, but I should go home now.”
“Do you think Byron will be there, and Robin?”
“Maybe,” she said, and in the street, Theo and Daria had paired off against Mort and Keith, and they cursed and laughed and shrieked as the snow flew like shot from fairy cannons.
“Look like fun?” Niki asked Spyder, and Spyder only shrugged; she’d refused any extra clothes, except a pair of socks for her hands, a hole in one so her left pinkie stuck out the side. Her black jacket stood out, contrast like a hole in the day.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“There is something else I’ve always wanted to do,” Niki said. A missile intended for Theo sailed over their heads, then, hit the snowman instead and sprayed them both with crystalline shrapnel. And she stood, found a patch of snow they hadn’t messed up yet with footprints, and lay down.
“What are you doing?” Spyder asked, turning to see, face scrunched into a James Dean squint.
“Just watch,” Niki said. “When I was a little girl, I read about kids doing this, in those Little House books or somewhere.”
And then Niki began to move her arms up and down, legs scissoring open and closed again, displacing snow, plowing it aside. And then she stood, shaking and brushing away the white powder before it could melt and soak through.
“It’s a snow angel,” she said, proud that it had come out looking just like she remembered the pictures, and Spyder only stared, said nothing, eyes intense like she was trying to solve a puzzle, an optical illusion.
“See,” Niki prompted, “Those are the wings.”
Spyder got up and started off down the street without them.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Home,” Spyder called back. “I have to go home now.”
“Well, wait,” and by then Keith and Daria had noticed, although Mort and Theo were still busy pummeling each other.
“Where’s she goin’?” Keith asked, and Daria shook her head, asked, “Where’s Spyder going, Niki?”
“Just come on, guys,” and Niki was already running to catch up, what passed for running in the snow halfway to her knees. The street rose steeply here, last hill before the mountain, and she was out of breath after only three or four lumbering steps.
“Wait!” she called after Spyder. “I can’t walk that fast,” her voice so loud and small in the cold air and no sign that Spyder had even heard, trudging ahead as if there were no one left on earth but her.
At the top of the hill, Niki stopped, lungs aching, teeth aching from the cold, legs filled with lactic acid knives, sweatsoaked underneath her clothes and Keith’s. And Spyder still ten or twenty yards ahead, the others still twenty or thirty behind. She looked north, back toward downtown, the frozen city paralyzed, cocooned after the storm. Not a car on the roads, hardly anyone else on the sidewalks. The shouts of other people blocks away and everything too white under the low and racing clouds. The wind up here was worse, tore at her clothes, stung her face and made her ears hurt.
Hands on her knees and bent double like she was puking, Niki waited on Daria and the rest.
Two blocks west, they caught up with Spyder, finally, but only because she
’d paused to knock snow off the soles of her Docs, slamming one foot and then the other against a telephone pole.
“You’re gonna have a heart attack,” Niki wheezed, “or a stroke or something if you don’t slow down,” coming up behind Spyder, startling her again although she’d made noise on purpose so she wouldn’t. There were little snotcicles dangling from each of Spyder’s nostrils, her face like a boiled crab from the wind and exertion, and the cut on her forehead had opened again, fresh blood trickling into her eye.
“This is not a fucking forced march,” Daria said; Mort was actually holding Theo up now.
Spyder only looked at them uncomprehendingly, blank disregard, went back to kicking the telephone pole, black rubber against creosote pine.
“Man,” Keith gasped, leaned against convenient chain link, steel division between sidewalk and a smothered church parking lot. “Man, why are we chasin’ this crazy bitch, anyway?” Another pause, another gasp, and “That’s what I’d like someone to tell me.”
“I can make it fine from here,” Spyder said, examining the bottom of one boot. The hardpacked snow she’d kicked off lay all around her feet, molded like weird albino waffles.
Niki ignored her. “Because she could have a concussion for all we know. We at least need to see she gets home all right.”
“Christ,” Mort panted. “She’s in better shape than I am. Look, she’s not even outta breath! Christ.”
“How do you know if you’re freezing to death?” Theo whimpered from his side.
“We can at least get some coffee,” Daria said, “Just one fucking cup of coffee,” and Niki asked, “Where?” then noticed a diner across the street, a Steak and Egg Kitchen squeezed in between an apartment building and a Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut was dark, but inside the Steak and Egg, the lights were on.
“Yeah,” Theo wheezed. “Please? I can’t feel my tongue.”
Niki looked at Spyder, unfathomable urgency burning as cold as frostbite in her eyes, unearthly eyes, and Spyder turned away from her, gazed past and through trees and street signs and houses, at the frosted mountain, half-hidden now in the heavy clouds.
“This ain’t up for debate,” Daria said. “If you want me along, you’ll wait until after I get some coffee and catch my fucking breath.”
“Spyder?” And Niki risked one hand on the back of Spyder’s jacket, leather wet with melted snow, leathery skin as impenetrable as the girl wrapped inside.
“Yeah,” she said and looked back at Niki, and her eyes had changed, the strange silver fire only smoldering ash like dread or regret and nothing much there but exhaustion. “Some coffee would be good.”
“Thank fuck,” Theo muttered, and they followed Daria across the empty, icy street.
The diner was too warm, stifling after the cold, and the grease-haunted air smelled and tasted like all the deep fat ever fried, ghosts of a million sausages, a hundred million eggs. The place looked smaller from the inside, and there was only one other customer, an old and grizzled man at the counter, slurping his coffee noisily from a saucer. They all piled into the booth farthest from the door, scrunched in together: Keith, Daria, and Mort on one side, Niki, Spyder and Theo on the other. A sleepy-looking woman wearing too much makeup took their order, six cups of coffee, a bowl of grits and a side of toast for Mort and Theo.
“We’ll eat it fast, okay?” Mort had said when Niki had started to protest.
The coffee came immediately, black and bitter but fresh, very hot, almost not as bad as Niki had expected. She waited her turn as the sugar was passed around the table, the sweating cream decanter. She folded her hands around the cup to catch the heat, soak it all through her palms and into her bones. Burned her mouth on the first sip, was still blowing at her coffee, when a thin black boy brought the food, grease-stained apron and bones too big, but his face was smooth and pretty, eyebrows plucked and arched and his long hair oiled and tied back in an elaborate bun. A single tear tattooed at one corner of his left eye.
“Hey there, Spyder,” he said, setting down the steaming bowl of grits, a garish yellow margarine pat dissolving on top, and the toast cut into four neat and crusty wedges. Niki had known too many drag queens not to clock him, not to catch the significant flourishes of body and voice, the dozen subtle and flamboyant giveaways. Not to be reminded of Danny.
Spyder glanced up from her own coffee, the cup she hadn’t even touched, surprise and recognition, some new unease wrinkling her face.
“Oh,” Spyder said and made a nervous half attempt at a smile. “Billy. I didn’t know you were working here.”
“Just ’til Christmas,” he said. “Gotta make me some Santa Claus money, you know. ’Cause the cheap faggots that been comin’ out to see Talulah these days ain’t been tipping for shit, honey.”
“Yeah,” Spyder said.
Billy lingered, serving tray balanced one-handed, head cocked coyly and both dark eyes on Spyder.
“Ain’t you even gonna introduce me to your friends, Spyder? Oh, except you, girl,” and he jabbed a thumb at Theo. “I already know you.”
“Yeah,” Spyder said, pointing at each of them as she spoke. “That’s Daria Parker, and that’s Keith, and that’s Mort. Their band plays at Dr. Jekyll’s…”
“Spyder, you know I stay away from them punk-rock places,” Billy said, and to Stiff Kitten, “Nothin’ personal, but you got to be careful. And there ain’t too much careful these days.”
“And this is Niki,” Spyder finished. “This is Billy. He does shows at 21 and some other places.”
“Some other places too scary to mention in polite company, she means,” Billy said and smiled, warm and honest smile. “By the way, Spyder, when Miss Thing come dragging her ass in last night, well, this morning, actually, she was a mess.”
Spyder’s hand bumped her cup, and a little coffee sloshed over the brim and onto the table. “What do you mean, Billy?” she asked.
“I mean, she was absolutely freaked, child. Like she just spent the whole last week on pink hearts and nose-candy. Went and locked herself in her room, and I ain’t seen or heard a peep outta Miss Byron since.”
“I’m sorry,” Spyder said, almost shoved Theo into the floor as she climbed out of the booth. “I have to go home.”
“Spyder,” Niki started. “If you’ll wait just a second,” but Spyder spun around, cut her off with those eyes, bright new flames in there.
“No, Niki, I’m sorry but I have to go home, and I have to go home now.”
And she pushed roughly past Billy, then, and was gone, down the narrow aisle between booths and matching burgundy stools, and the door jingled shut behind her.
Halfway across the Steak and Egg’s parking lot she slipped, one boot skating on the ice hiding slick beneath the snow, and Spyder almost fell. But there was no time left to be cautious, no time for Niki Ky shouting somewhere behind her, had been no time left all morning, all night, but she’d been too dazed to understand, not listening, even in her nightmares; that they would go to her house, into her house, that Byron might be so afraid that he’d try to steal the dream catcher. Destroy it or squirrel it away someplace where she’d never find it, and so Spyder kept moving, left the pavement as soon as she could and stalked across lawns and vacant lots where the footing was a little surer, where the frozen grass and weeds crunched like glass underfoot.
And it wasn’t the fairy-tale lies she’d told them that scared her, that made her almost too afraid of what she’d find waiting at the end of Cullom Street to keep moving, not her father or the angels that had never stopped coming anyway, hunting her through sleep and the grinding days. None of them had ever suspected, not even Walter who hadn’t believed any of it for a second, that the talisman could be one thing to them, protection, and something entirely different to her. Insurance, binding them together, like a wedding band, stronger than gold or silver because it had been made of them. Robin had almost torn it all apart, and she had patched it back together with wood and blood and strands of their hair.
The rat-toothed cold gnawed at her body, inside and out, playing sidekick to the crushing weight in her head. Together, they would pull her down and leave her broken and alone, lost in impossible white, suffocating. If she was weak, if she let them. So she made a picture of Robin in her mind, beloved symbol for all she stood to lose, and stepped around the pain.
They left Mort and Theo in the diner, resolutely eating their breakfast and talking to Billy. Would have left Keith, too tired of chasing after Spyder’s crazy ass to care, he’d said, but Daria had pulled him out of the booth anyway, two dollar bills tossed on the table, and she’d pushed him grumbling out the door. By the time they reached the parking lot, Spyder was already past the Pizza Hut, a coal smudge on linen. Niki stopped and shouted for her to wait until her throat hurt.
“She doesn’t even give a shit, Dar,” Keith said. “Spyder Baxter doesn’t need any help finding her way back home,” and Daria looked at Niki, waiting for an answer, a reason why this still had anything to do with them.
“She didn’t ask for your help last night, either,” Niki said, and Keith shook his head. “Yeah, well, but right now she ain’t about to get her butt kicked.”
“He’s right,” Daria said, as if maybe it was a little painful to admit. “She acts like this sometimes, Niki. She has problems, you know?”
“She’s scared fucking shitless,” Niki said, watching Spyder getting smaller in the distance, listening to the wind, the lonely wail like mourners in the bare tree limbs. “That’s all I know, Daria. And I just want to make sure she gets home okay.”
Daria hesitated, glanced back at the warmth and shelter of the diner, up at the sky hanging purple and almost low enough to touch.
“Come on, then,” sighed resignation, was already two or three steps past Niki, hauling Keith by the arm again. “I don’t even know where the bitch lives, and if we keep standing around talking about it, we’re gonna lose her.”
Silk Page 22
