Silk

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “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.
r />   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.

  “Hey, man, we’ll talk about this after the show,” and Jonesy had laid one hand firmly on Pablo’s shoulder. “Okay? ’Cause you’re just gonna make an asshole outta yourself this way,” but those empty, dark eyes had stayed locked on Daria.

  “Give it back to me,” and everything that hadn’t been in his gaze was coiled tight and hot inside those words. He’d held both hands out for the bass, his right still encased in dirty plaster, looking more like a zombie than ever, Frankenstein’s vengeful monster come to collect his due.

  “You don’t even know these songs, man,” and Jonesy had stepped away from his mike, had moved quickly to put himself between her and Pablo.

  “It’s mine and I said give it back to me, you goddamn stinking bitch,” and Pablo had shrugged free of Jonesy’s grip, had shoved him aside and lunged for the Gibson so fast that Daria hadn’t had time to get out of his way. He’d grabbed the bass and yanked hard; the strap had held, but Daria stumbled, had lost her balance and gone down on her knees at his feet. The canvas strap had twisted up and under her chin, digging deep into her windpipe, cutting her breath off as it pulled her head around until she’d stared helplessly into Pablo’s crotch. Her hands struggled to unhook the strap, desperate fingers still stinging from the last notes of the interrupted song.

  Then Pablo had yanked again, harder than before, and Daria had heard her neck pop, had felt the nasty sensation of bone grinding cartilage. But the strap had come loose, had whipped free, and she’d crumpled, hands at her own violated throat, gasping the smoky air in reckless mouthfuls.

  And Pablo had stood above her like some ax-wielding crazy in a slasher flick, the bass clutched by the graceful handle of its neck, the dull silver instrument washed metallic red in the strobes. He’d raised it slowly over his head, over hers, and then Jonesy had hit him hard from behind, sharp rabbit punch to the base of his skull, and he should have gone down and stayed down. Instead, he only stumbled and drove one hard shoe tip into Daria’s left ear.

  “FUCK OFF!” he’d screamed, screamed high and shrill in a voice that had hardly sounded human, much less like Pablo. He’d swung the bass around fast and hard and nailed Jonesy square in the chest. Still wheezing, struggling to get enough air, Daria had clearly heard the wet snap of breaking bone, and Jonesy McCabe had sailed backwards, colliding in a noisy tangle with Carlton’s drums. And then Carlton had tackled Pablo, and they’d both disappeared over the side of the stage, swallowed immediately by the mad crush of bodies.

  Daria had staggered to her knees again, and people had begun to back away from the stage, clearing out a small, irregular circle of the warehouse’s concrete floor where Carlton was busy slamming his fists repeatedly into Pablo’s face. The Gibson had lain a few feet away from them, trampled, broken, irrelevant.

  She stood up, hands out cautious like a tightrope walker, purple-white blotches dancing in her eyes. Jonesy in a limp heap, unconscious amid the jumble of brass cymbals and aluminum tripod stalks. Abruptly, the lights had stopped strobing, and she’d seen the dark trickle of blood at each corner of his mouth. For all she’d known, Pablo had killed him, and Carlton was in the process of killing Pablo. Because of her, because she’d tried to steal something that wasn’t hers to take. Because for once in her grubby life something had felt right. Daria used the rig the bass had been plugged into to brace herself, had taken one step toward Jonesy.

  And then the pain had gone off like a grenade lodged somewhere deep inside her skull, perfect agony filling in the place where her brain should have been, drowning body and mind in its searing electric gush. And the last thing she’d seen on the way down to merciful blackout was Carlton, climbing back onto the stage, nose squashed and bloodied grimace, and the shattered Gibson clasped triumphantly in one hand.

  4.

  Niki set the receiver back into its black cradle and sighed, a loud exasperated sound, and Daria could see that she was really having to work at the half smile, only a weak droop at the corners of her perfect lips.

  “That bad?” she asked, and Niki shrugged, stared down at her feet. Her toenails were painted a dark and pearly blue.

  “Yeah,” Niki said. “Or worse.”

  “Can they fix it?” Daria was sitting at the edge of the bed now, her own feet dangling over the side, not bare, but hidden inside tube socks with mismatched colored bands around the tops. Left, orange. Right, maroon.

  “Yeah, if I want to hand over every penny I have.”

  “You should get a second opinion,” Claude said from the kitchen sink; washing the breakfast dishes, three cups and three saucers and Ivory liquid suds up to his elbows. “Most of those guys are crooked as the letter M.”

  “Yeah,” Niki said, and then, “I don’t know.”

  “Dar knows mechanics, don’t you, Dar? The big guy that plays guitar for Vanilla Domination, and that other guy, the one who looks like Nick Cave, except not so ugly.”

  Daria was still looking down at her own feet, homely twins and a big hole in one heel so she could see the scar where she stepped on a broken 7Up bottle last summer.

  “Yeah, I’m sure I can find someone to take at look at it, if you want.”

  Niki stood and stretched, and Robert Smith, white face, blackened eyes, fright-wig do, stared back at Daria from Niki’s belly.

  “Thanks, guys, but I’m afraid I’d only be delaying the inevitable. It’s either my bank account or the junkyard. I just have to decide which.”

  “It certainly couldn’t hurt,” Claude said, setting a coffee cup down to dry. “Just to be sure.”

  Niki shrugged again and then sniffed cautiously at one underarm, wrinkled her nose, and to Daria, even that seemed somehow graceful.

  “God, I stink. Would it be okay if I used the shower?”

  “Go right ahead,” Daria said and reached for another Marlboro, looking away before Niki Ky did anything else to make her feel awkward, dumpy, like a gorilla at charm school.

  “You guys are wonderful,” Niki said. “I just hope you don’t get sick of me before I can get my ass back on the road,” and she picked up the pink gym bag and stepped into the tiny bathroom, pulling the door shut behind her; Daria could hear her wrestling with the useless old lock.

  “It hasn’t worked since I’ve been here,” Daria shouted and immediately Niki stopped fumbling with the doorknob. A moment later, the loud, rusty squeak of brass hot and cold water handles and the sudden, wet shissh of the showerhead.

  “Well,” Claude said, fastidiously drying his hands with a checkered dishtowel. “I still say she’s better than Keith.”

  Daria exhaled smoke through her nostrils, stared through the window at the fiery place in the sky where the sun had gone down.

  “Just shut up, Claude.”

  She sat there until the sky was almost black, the deep indigo before true night, her cigarette smoked down to the filter and Niki still in the shower; trying not to think about Keith Barry or her father or the delicate itch of spider legs on naked skin. Unable to think of anything else.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Robin

  1.

  The girl with absinthe hair, algae hair, slipped into her fishnets and fastened her garters to the elastic band around the top of the hose. Her doppelgänger in the big gilt-framed mirror followed her every move, looking-glass girl who mocked her style and the nurtured pallor of her white skin. Sometimes Robin tried to outsmart her, misdirection, sleight of hand or foot or the slimmest parting of her lips. Nothing personal, but if the poor girl can’t be more original, she has to expect a little flack, and Robin slid into the velvet skirt, mini-short, and her twin did the same, never missed a beat.

  There was no hurry. She didn’t have to meet Spyder and Byron at Dr. Jekyll
’s for two hours yet, and she was still horny, even after an hour in bed, masturbating and watching the pictures on her ceiling, the ones she painted there last summer, making this place safe: two ladders and plywood stretched between them, just like Michelangelo.

  The hurricane swirl of clouds, black-and-blue as the swollen belly of a thunderhead near the walls and the poppy-red of Nagasaki at the eye, every shade of conflagration in between. Heaven spilling its fire and guts, and the broken angels plunging, wings back and trailing starlight and feathers. And something terrible that she’d only suggested, watching from the still heart of the storm. The angels had skin like statues, eyes like sapphire and dusk, and between their legs, the perfect alloy of man and woman. Not sexless, but genitals that had not yet been forced to take a side.

  Ritual in pretended fresco, something against the shadows.

  The girl inside the mirror ran one pinkie through the silver ring in Robin’s navel—fresh piercing and the wound still red at the edges—tugging gently, playfully. Robin removed the blouse from its wire hanger, black lace and no sleeves, crimson buttons like drops of stage blood. The gloves were black, too, and lace, and they hid the nubs of her fingernails, the cuticles chewed raw and ragged.

  Two knocks at her bedroom door, soft and hesitant, and her mother speaking through the wood.

  “Robin? Are you going out tonight, dear?”

  “Yes, Mother,” and the girl in the mirror stuck out her tongue, bright and wet against lips the color of ash. Robin’s teeth caught it, held it, supplicant flesh squeezed helpless between her incisors.