Silk

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “I think Cephus has been selling me bad shit, that’s all,” and the moment had passed them by, opportunity missed and no shared confession, no accounting of the horrors that had dogged her sleep for a week blurted out before she could stop herself. No release, no sense of relief afterwards. Only more dread, another weight to carry alone, and regret that the heroin had gotten between them again.

  “I’m gonna have to stop buying from that jerkoff before he kills me.”

  And she gripped his hand tighter, chewed at her lower lip as she read the graffiti, the writing on the dingy dressing room wall.

  “Tonight’s the night,” she said, to him or just to herself, wanted it to be for him but couldn’t be sure if he was even listening. “We’re gonna knock that rep on her ass, and she’ll be talking deal before we can get off the stage.”

  “Yeah,” Keith said, surprising her, and when he rubbed at the cut on his nose a single drop of pus the color of custard welled up, beaded, and he wiped it away.

  “Tonight’s the night,” he said.

  The restroom was freezing, nothing on the blue door but a W slashed into the paint and so much cold inside it was hard to breathe. No hot water, and Spyder was still scrubbing at the spot where he’d stamped her hand with ANGEL in invisible ink, had scrubbed it raw already, strange red under the tattoos, and Niki knew that soon it would be bleeding.

  “It’s gone,” she said. “You’ve washed it off, Spyder.”

  “How do you know?” she said in a vicious tone, her vicious eyes answering Niki from the mirror. “How the hell can you tell? There’s no way to know if it’s still there or not. You couldn’t fucking see it to start with, so how are you supposed to know if it’s gone?”

  “It was just ink, Spyder. And ink comes off with soap and water. That’s how the hell I know.”

  But Spyder pressed more of the candy-pink soap powder from the dispenser over the sink and began to lather her hands again.

  “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know shit.”

  And Niki grabbed Spyder’s hands, slippery wet and living art, got her around the wrists and held on. Skin like ice from the water, and Spyder howled and tried to pull free.

  “What don’t I know, huh? That your father was a fucking lunatic and cut your face up when you were a kid? That you think this has something to do with that?”

  “Let go of me,” Spyder said, hissed, and Niki clearly heard the threat, the danger wrapping those four words like acid and broken glass. But she didn’t let go.

  “What don’t I know, Spyder? What don’t I know?”

  Spyder shoved hard, and Niki was stumbling backwards, collided with a wall and her breath whooshed out between her teeth. Her head hit the metal paper towel holder and she almost blacked out, almost let go.

  No, she tried to say. No way until you tell me, but there was no air, nothing but pain in her chest and head, nothing to drive the words.

  And something else, something glistening in the air like fishing line or piano wire, not there a few seconds before and now crisscrossing everywhere, everything, strung through the air like taut and silver tinsel, draping the black stalls and collecting in drifts on the floor. And then Spyder body-slammed her against the wall again.

  Silk like spun razors, like steel and slicing thread.

  Niki gasped, fish gasp, useless attempt to breathe, and released Spyder’s left hand, tangled her fingers in dreads and sidestepped before she smacked Spyder’s forehead into the wall. And then they were both falling, sinking to their knees, Niki’s arms wrapped tightly around Spyder, Spyder sobbing loud and jagged and blood on her face again. What Niki might have seen hanging in the air a second before was gone, had never been there, nothing now but the weak light above the sink and the sounds of the water still gurgling from the tap and Spyder sobbing like a broken child.

  Niki struggled to fill her lungs again.

  “You’re not fucking chasing me away,” she croaked, finally. “Not like that.”

  Something settled lightly on her neck, weightless presence and nettle sting, and Niki absently brushed it away, fought for another precious mouthful of oxygen and the stink of piss and toilet deodorizers.

  “You’re going to tell me, and then I’m going to understand.”

  Through her tears, Spyder said only one thing, over and over again, a name, and it wasn’t Niki’s.

  Heaven was a single long room, a cavernous rectangle of naked stone walls on three sides and the fourth painted with a mural of blue sky and cotton-white clouds, hardwood floor and the rafters overhead. The bar at one end and the stage way off at the other, two or three times as big as the stage at Dr. Jekyll’s; Spyder and Niki sat with Claude and Theo on rickety bar stools, watching the show over all the heads and waving arms. Spyder couldn’t drink alcohol, because of her medication, and so they both nursed flat Cokes in plastic cups while Theo and Claude drank cough-syrup colored mixtures of cranberry juice and vodka.

  Niki’s head still hurt and Spyder had an ugly goose-egg bump on her forehead, a little cut that had bled like something serious; they could both have concussions, she kept thinking, or worse. Niki told Claude she’d slipped on a wet spot on the bathroom floor and when Spyder tried to catch her, they’d both fallen.

  “I didn’t used to be such a klutz,” she said, and Spyder had looked the other way.

  “Maybe you could sue,” he’d said, not helpful at all, and Niki shrugged and nodded. “Maybe so,” she’d replied.

  Seven Deadlies turned out to be goth, eight white-faced boys and girls in gauzy black, guitars and drums and a cello, creepysoft renditions of “House of the Rising Sun” and a couple of Leonard Cohen songs before they’d drifted on to louder, ragged rock, but everything covers.

  “Wake up, dead babies,” Theo sneered in a thrumming quiet space between songs. “It can’t be 1985 for ever.”

  TranSister was earsplitting grrrl grunge-metal that trebled the pain in Niki’s head, each song separated from the last only by the grace of the singer’s mike-shouted obscenities and diatribes against punker boys and pro-lifers. Halfway through their set, she unzipped her jeans and pulled out a two-foot rubber dildo and let it hang there between her legs, swinging like an elephant’s trunk while she gyrated to the guitarist’s grind and wail. And all Theo had said between two sips of her red drink was, “These chicks have issues,” and she and Claude had laughed.

  3.

  Daria stood in the darkness behind the stage, counting seconds and clutching her bass like something blessed, talisman or fetish, teddy bear or lover or crucifix, waiting as TranSister thrashed their way through an encore. Keith was right behind her, smoking, comforting presence despite himself, and Mort, drumming nervously along with the band, his sticks on the black wall.

  And none of this seemed as important as it should, she knew, hadn’t since that morning on Cullom Street, the morning they’d taken Spyder home; the urgency, her scalding ambition that permitted precedence to nothing and no one, was slipping away, deserting her when she needed it most. The fire that she’d used to keep them all in line, working and dreaming and creeping steadily toward this point, this opportunity or one like it.

  It was nothing she could explain, even if she’d tried, to herself or anyone else, no more than she could explain why she’d started jumping at shadows, why she’d bought a night-light (Donald Duck in his blue sailor’s hat) and slept with it burning. When she slept.

  Her stomach made a sound like air in old plumbing.

  Stiff Kitten was the second band, so they’d gotten one free plate of supper each, greasy yellow rice and stale tortillas, dry black beans and drier strips of chicken, from the kitchen behind the bar. The headliners got as much as they wanted, and the two bottom bands were left to fend for themselves. Daria, Keith, and Mort had carried their sagging plates and cans of Coca-Cola and 7Up back to the freezing dressing room and eaten with plastic forks. No conversation, and when Mort flicked a bean at the back of Keith’s head and it stuck th
ere like a rabbit pellet, Keith had only wiped it away and gone back to his own food.

  The sound guy had shown up, finally, half an hour late and everyone looking at their watches and grumbling. They’d waited backstage, bundled and shivering, while the headliner finished its check, and then they’d taken the stage, taking direction through the monitors. “Gimme one,” the sound guy said, so they’d played a few chords of “Imperfect,” and Daria couldn’t hear anything but Mort’s kick drum. Keith broke a string, hadn’t had another, and so he’d begged one off Shard’s guitarist.

  The last cascade of drums and the crowd and the vocalist for TranSister sneered something through the mike, one last taunt or jibe, before the lights went down. And instruments revolved, bands revolved, and she was climbing the four steps up onto the stage, second time tonight, but this time for real. This time the crowd surging against the stage and maybe seven or eight security guys between them and the mosh pit, and somewhere out there, Niki Ky and Spyder and Claude, and the Atlantic rep. Daria adjusted her mike stand and looked around, Mort sitting down behind his kit, Keith seeing nothing now but his guitar. And then she looked down at her feet, ratty shoes and the set list taped to matte-black plywood.

  “It’s gonna be good,” Keith whispered, leaning close, surprising her again. “It’s gonna be killer.” And he kissed her on the top of the head.

  The lights, then, and fresh applause, blue and red gels making violet. Lights of Heaven, she thought and stepped up to the microphone, just one word, “Thanks,” breathed through the black windscreen, before Keith stepped in with the first chords of “Gunmetal Blues,” Mort following softly on his snare and Charleston cymbal. Her fingers, third voice, the steady heartbeat behind it all.

  This was one of his songs. Not that they weren’t all part him, varying degrees of him and Daria, but this one was his, picked out one afternoon when Daria had the flu and they had canceled practice. So he’d fixed and sat alone in Baby Heaven, just loving the feel of his fingers on the strings, just glad there was this one thing that was his, this one thing that was so right, so pure, it was almost stronger than the junk, almost clean enough to redeem. The sky outside had been the color of the music in his head, the low clouds moving out before thunder and lightning and he was the rain. He’d played it for Daria, wanting her to add some words, but she’d shaken her head and he’d seen the tears straining in her eyes, holding back, and when she could speak, she’d said, No, no Keith, it’s right-just like this-I’d only fuck it up. So he’d shown her the bass lines in his head, and it had stayed his song.

  Following the notes where he knew they’d lead, letting Daria and Mort tag along, and the restless bodies stretching out before them, almost lost in the glare. But he was doing it for himself, no deception there, not like it was any better now than that day on an old sofa in their loft above Storkland, or a hundred times he’d sat on the street and picked it out for Anthony Jones or fucking L.J. or anyone who cared to listen. Just for himself.

  Eyes shut almost to the end, not wanting distraction, not needing encouragement. But there were a few bars right at the close that were tricky, a little teasing trap he’d made for himself, so he had to stay alert or trip over his own big fingers on the way out, and he opened his eyes, watching the bruised light, the darkness on the other side of the spots, and up there something moved. Something hanging upside down, and at first, well, it had to be one of the stupid fuckers from the pit who had somehow made it up into the rafters, maybe a boost on the shoulders of his buddies and he might have managed to pull himself up. It moved again, hauling itself closer, easier to see now, dangling head down, bony-long neck twisting around for a better view of the stage, of him, and those eyes, one after another, black and wet and lidless, running round and round its bristling head.

  His fingers stumbled, missed and feedback whined through the amps.

  Or that was the sound it made when it opened its mouth, shifted its bulk and began to drip, leaking onto the upturned faces and outstretched hands. Leaking slicker and blacker than oil, and Daria had stopped playing and Mort had stopped playing. Both of them staring at him; he knew they didn’t see it, knew they wouldn’t, even if he pointed, and the crowd was howling, pissed and starting to throw crap at them.

  “Keith?” Daria said. She wasn’t even angry yet, sounded confused, scared maybe, and he shrugged, tried to smile and make himself look back at his guitar, at the strings. “Sorry, man,” he said, but he could hear it moving around, wire brush on old wood and raw meat, and he couldn’t even begin to remember where to put his fingers.

  A painful twinge across the bridge of his nose, his ankle, the syrupy smell of cold air, and Keith could feel the sweat on his face, under his clothes, like he hadn’t fixed. Daria’s lips moved without letting go of any sound, what’s wrong, and he knew this performance was everything to her and that he was fucking it up, what’s wrong, Keith, might have already fucked it up. Because there was no telling what Cephus Lee was using to cut his smack these days, no telling what he’d shot into his arm in the toilet down the hall from the dressing room, and someone in the crowd threw a beer bottle and it exploded like a glass grenade at Daria’s feet. Two of the big security guys tackled him and he was gone, and Daria turned away, one last look at those eyes full of panic and disgust fermenting in her green irises, disgust for him.

  Scritch, and he tried to find his way out of the crackling silence, scritch, crackling around him like the air had that morning at Spyder’s, kept his eyes on the strings, his fingers, the playlist at his feet. Another beer bottle sailed past, hit the wall behind Mort, and Budweiser shrapnel rained down around them.

  “Will you give us a fucking break?” she growled into her mike, and the crowd growled back.

  The next song on the list…the list in Daria’s handwriting, the precious scrawl she’d photocopied at Kinko’s, three copies and the masking tape beginning to curl where it didn’t want to stick to the stage…the next song was “Su(in)cide” and he fumbled at the first few chords, nothing in the whole goddamn world but his hands and his guitar and Daria’s list.

  Behind him, Mort began to follow, cautious three-quarter cadence, but Daria was too busy yelling at someone and it didn’t matter, because his fingers felt like he was trying to play the Gibson with yellow Playtex gloves on and the cut across his face stung so badly that his eyes had begun to water.

  And one oilwet splat, then, one drop from somewhere directly overhead, and he watched the stain as it spread, bloomed, and whatever you do, man, just don’t fucking look up, just don’t fucking look up, ’cause you already know, and he stepped back from the sheet of paper taped to the stage, the acid stain, and you already know and there ain’t no point in seeing.

  Then Daria was in his face, right foot planted squarely on the ruined photocopy and the stain still spreading beneath the sole of her Doc, right in his face and her eyes were as green as summer and he loved her almost as much as his music.

  “Get the hell off the stage,” she said. “Just get the hell off the stage.”

  Behind the crowd, Niki saw Keith falter and the song ended, nothing now but fading echo whine, static strips and tatters of sound. And she saw the way Spyder flinched, familiar confusion in her blue eyes that said something else was going wrong and she was there so it had to be her fault, somehow had to be her fault. It made Niki mad, mad that anyone, sane or crazy, could blame themselves for every goddamn thing that happened.

  Wouldn’t be projecting just a little tonight, would we, Niki? and No, she answered herself firmly, no, we wouldn’t.

  “Oh,” Theo said, “this is just fucking wonderful,” and she gave Keith the finger, obviously not caring that he couldn’t see her from the stage. Like she had seen, Daria, through the mike, “…you give us a fucking break?” and even way back at the bar, the crash of the beer bottle right over Mort’s head.

  “Christ,” and then Theo was gone, slipped away and into the crowd, heatseeker, and Niki rubbed unconsciously at the fa
int and lingering sting on her neck, the hairline welt that had risen on her throat.

  Then Daria was saying something to Keith, shoved him, and Stiff Kitten was leaving the stage, sulking away from the hail of boos and catcalls and flying beer bottles. Daria looked back once, everything but her face swallowed in the shadows behind the amps, but she was too far away for Niki to read expression or intent or anything else.

  “Come on,” Claude said, then. “Maybe we can at least stop them from killing him.”

  “We’ll wait here,” Spyder said, stirring at her Coke with one finger, not looking at anything, and Niki didn’t argue.

  Out of the spotlight heat and down the black hall to the dressing room, pulled deeper and deeper into the cold by the gravity of Daria, the furious wake of her. His skin felt sunburned, flashburned, and his nose hurt, and the place beneath his eyes, like the time when he was ten and he’d snorted green Kool-Aid on a dare. He followed her, because anyone would have, and he knew she hadn’t seen anything hanging above the crowd, hanging there above his head.

  The light in the dressing room made him squint, and Keith sat down, him and his guitar and Mort must have stopped to talk to the manager because it was just him and Daria. She had stopped in the doorway, lit a cigarette and didn’t look at him.

  “I’m not gonna ask what happened out there, Keith. I know what happened.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and she just shook her head then, drew gray smoke and exhaled.

  “You’re a fucking mess. Just look at your face in the goddamn mirror. We can’t count on you.”

  He didn’t look in the mirror behind him, but when he touched the place where his face ached, his hand came away wet, a ginger alloy of pus and blood; he wiped his fingers on the couch, and Daria flicked her half-smoked cigarette away into the dark, cold hall, little comet of sparks arcing away into space.