Silk

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “You still seein’ that pretty little girl with the fire-engine hair?” Anthony asked, and for a second Keith was too busy looking through the neck of the bottle, strange and useless telescope that looked out on nowhere, to answer.

  “Yeah,” he said at last. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You guess so? What’s with that, you guess so?”

  When Anthony Jones talked, he waved the Honer in the cold air like a conductor’s wand.

  “You either down with that redheaded lady or you ain’t. There ain’t no in-betweenin’ pussy.”

  “Man, I had me some fine white pussy last week….” L.J. started, but Anthony cut him off with a knifeblade glance, stabbed the harmonica at his heart.

  “Why don’t you shut the hell up for a little while?”

  “You think I’m lyin’? You think I gotta lie ’bout gettin’ white-bitch pussy?”

  “I think I’m tired of listening to you talk trash.”

  And L.J. looked offended and hurt, pulled hard at his right earlobe and wandered off, mumbling to himself.

  “That nigger can’t even get hisself a skeezer these days,” and Anthony laughed and stared off towards the darkened windows of the Eagle Syrup plant. This side of town was a wasteland of empty warehouses and abandoned factories, a prelude to the miles of derelict steel mills further west.

  “I just can’t seem to stay out of the shit house with Daria these days.”

  Anthony Jones didn’t make any sign he’d heard, still gazing across the tracks and the street at the ridiculous giant honey jar perched atop the roof of the syrup plant.

  “That her name?” he asked. “Daria?”

  “Yeah, man, that’s her name.”

  “She the same girl that’s in that band with you?”

  “Yeah. Shit, she is the band. She’s gonna dump me and find someone else to play guitar for her. She ought’a fuckin’ dump me.”

  “Man, you just on yourself tonight, that’s all,” and then he looked quickly at his feet, scuffed shoes from one of the missions, rubbed at his eyes. “You got gold in them fingers.”

  Keith held his hands out, stared into his palms like he could read his past or future in the lines etched there.

  “She takes a load of shit, man.”

  “I hear you,” Anthony said. “I do hear you. Had me a good woman long time ago. Some pretty little babies, too.”

  Keith passed the almost empty bottle back to him and picked up his guitar again, ran his fingers once across the strings and started tuning, gently twisting each rusted peg in his magic fingers. And Anthony Jones drained the last of the whiskey before he hurled the useless bottle at the darkness that lay like sleeping dogs between the platform and the syrup plant.

  2.

  Niki Ky had finally found a place to sit in the back of the van, a plastic milk crate covered over with a warped piece of plywood. The crate was mostly full of cords and cables, rubber black coaxial serpents that stuck out through the checkerboard holes in the sides and bit at her legs every time the van hit a bump or a rut or pothole. At least they hadn’t gone directly down Morris from Daria’s place, hadn’t jounced over all those goddamned cobblestones. The rear of the van was sectioned off with a sagging barrier of chain-link fence, soldered and bolted into place, and there was more junk back there. Niki thought briefly about scooting the crate closer to the wire, close enough that she could hook her fingers through the diamond spaces and hold on.

  “There, Mort. Turn right there,” Daria ordered, pointed one insistent finger at a side street. She was sitting on a huge red Sears Craftsman tool chest behind the driver’s side, straddling it, hanging on to the back of Mort’s seat. The tools inside the chest clanked and clattered, and Niki imagined that it was the sound of her bones and teeth and kidneys.

  Mort missed the turn, and Daria slammed her fist into the back of his headrest.

  “Goddammit, Mort! Are you fucking deaf?”

  “There’s no left turn there, Dar—”

  “Did you see any fuckin’ cops?! Who would’ve given a shit? Huh?”

  “Why don’t you calm down,” Theo said, and Niki saw the fire jump like lightning in Daria’s eyes.

  “Why don’t you keep the hell out of this?” she said, almost snarled, and Niki wished again that she had stayed back at the apartment with Claude and his Ella Fitzgerald tapes, his comforting coffee and conversation.

  “Hey, will the both of you just shut the hell up and let me drive?” Mort growled, no patience infinite and Niki could tell he’d had enough.

  She had just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang, was still standing naked and dripping in the steam, drying herself with a thin, not-quite-white towel that had once belonged to a Holiday Inn. Someone who’d heard from someone else that Daria’s boyfriend had been in a fight, had gotten himself cut up and might be dead. Dying, at the very least.

  A minute or two later, the towel wrapped tightly around her, and “It might just be a false alarm,” she’d said, trying her best to sound hopeful, reassuring, starting to feel awkward and misplaced.

  “You don’t know Keith,” Daria had said, pulling her boots on and not bothering with the ratty laces.

  “Which makes you a very lucky girl,” Claude said and had turned quickly away, shielding himself from the hot recrimination in Daria’s eyes.

  “Put on some clothes if you’re coming,” Daria had said, and Niki thought maybe it would be rude to say no thank you, I’ll stay right here. Rude, or dangerous.

  “Okay, look, you can turn left at the next light, on Seventeenth, and circle back around….”

  Niki tried to shut out Daria’s frantic commands, shut her eyes and then immediately opened them again, not wanting to make car sickness any more likely than it already was; puking would do absolutely nothing to improve the van’s all but palpable funk, the reek of ancient sweat and cigarette smoke, oil and the sweet and sour hint of rotting food. She hung on to the edges of her plywood raft and rode the wave.

  After they’d checked two titty bars and a park full of bums and monuments to dead civil rights leaders, Daria had finally thought to call the hospitals. Niki and Theo sat in the van while Daria and Mort fed precious quarters into a pay phone and argued with emergency room nurses.

  “God, I hate that asshole,” Theo said.

  Niki, who’d decided she was better off just staying in the floor after having been twice bounced off the milk crate, shifted her stiff and aching butt, rubbed her freezing hands together. Obviously, the van had no heater.

  “You mean Daria?” she asked.

  “No, not Dar. Keith-fucking-Barry,” Theo answered too quickly, pulled the cheesy flamingo-pink polyester and velvet tux jacket she was wearing tighter around her shoulders. “Dar’s a doll, when she’s not chasing after that fucker’s junky prick.”

  “Oh,” Niki said, knowing nothing else to say.

  An uncomfortable and silent five minutes later, and Mort and Daria were climbing back inside, driver’s door popping open and banging closed again, the sliding side door complaining viciously on its rusted tracks. Night rushed into the van, soaking Niki in chill air and the colder glare of the streetlights.

  “So?”

  “‘So’ what, Theo?” Daria said, reclaiming her seat on the tool chest.

  “So is he dead or what?”

  Mort sighed, pulled off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “No one named Keith Barry has been admitted to any of the ERs tonight,” he said and put his cap back on, the bill turned around backwards so Niki could read the red, white, and blue STP patch stitched on the front. He slapped his big hands together loudly. “And there are no John Does that fit his description. We checked the city morgue, too.”

  “This is bullshit,” Theo muttered and lit a cigarette.

  “We should check out that house in Ensley,” Daria said, ignoring her. “The one with all the windows painted yellow.”

  “Christ, Daria,” Mort hissed and slu
mped over the steering wheel, already defeated before he’d even begun to object. “I do not want to go wandering around that part of town after dark.”

  “I wouldn’t want to go wandering around that part of town in broad fucking daylight, Mort, but what’s your fucking point? I’m not just gonna sit around on my ass and wait for the cops to call.”

  “I’ve had enough of this crap,” Theo said and blew a cloud of smoke against the cracked inside of the windshield. “You guys can let me out downtown. And Niki, I’d advise you to come with me.”

  Niki felt helpless, lost. None of this had anything to do with her, but she felt caught anyway, stretched suddenly between Daria and Theo like the rope in a particularly nasty tug-of-war match. And of course the advantage went to Daria, Daria who had taken her in and given her a place to sleep, a bath.

  “Uh, I guess I’ll just stay with you guys,” she said, speaking to Daria, who frowned and stared down at the bare metal floor between her boots.

  “Yeah, well, whatever,” Theo said. “It’s your ass.”

  “What’s the deal with this place, anyway?” Niki asked, certain that she didn’t really want to know. “What sort of house is it?”

  “A crackhouse,” Mort said and started the van. “It’s just a goddamned crackhouse.”

  After they’d left Theo, after she’d asked Niki if she was absolutely sure she didn’t want to come back to her place, Mort drove west and Daria took Theo’s seat; Niki sat on the floor and watched the streetlights become dimmer and farther apart, wider pools of night between them. Downtown surrendering to the first belt of decay, neighborhoods wilted and gone to ugly, cancerous fallow. She didn’t know this city, was becoming increasingly disoriented as the oasis of tall buildings slipped behind them. Daria had stopped talking, had stopped pointing, and now she sat smoking, staring intently out her window at things Niki couldn’t see.

  Niki glimpsed the incongruously bright facade of a Burger King over Mort’s shoulder, and then he turned, pulling the Ford Econoline up to the curb.

  “Man, I can’t believe the cops haven’t shut this fucker down,” he said, reaching beneath his seat for something Niki couldn’t quite make out, something black and heavy slipped quickly inside his coat.

  Daria slid the side door open for Niki, and she stepped out onto the sickly brown patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk. The house had once been something grand, Victorian gingerbread and dormer windows, a disintegrating cupola perched on the high gabled roof. And every window hidden behind irregular sheets of plywood, all painted the same neon shade of canary yellow.

  “It certainly isn’t inconspicuous, is it?” Niki said as Daria slammed the sliding door shut behind her.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” she said, stepping past Niki, heading up the walk to the long front porch. “The cops are all too busy hassling hookers and queers. They don’t get out this way very often.” Daria was walking fast, purposeful steps and words more purposeful; Mort had to jog to catch up with her.

  “Might be bad for their health,” she said.

  Up the crumbling stoop, five steps, and now Niki could see the swirling graffiti tangle laid thick across almost every available surface, tags and gang warnings, spray-can pasta, the universal language of urban tribes. She recognized some of the stuff from the Quarter, crude 8-ball placa and dollar signs to show all this territory was controlled by Crips and Disciples.

  Daria hammered on the front door, hard fist against flaking wood; Mort stood just behind her, struggling to look calm and cool, obviously neither, trying to keep an eye on every corner and shadow. The only response from the darkened house was the steady, muffled thump-thump-thump of rap, and Daria pounded the door again, using both fists this time.

  “Hey!” she shouted, howled, hands cupped around her mouth to make a megaphone. “Open the goddamn door, or I’m gonna call the cops!”

  “Come on, Dar,” Mort whispered, urgent, but she’d already started kicking at the door. It shuddered in its frame with every blow from her Doc Martens.

  The scrabbling, clicking sounds of locks turning, chain sliding back, and the door opened an inch or two. The face pressed into the crack was backlit and featureless in the glare of yellow incandescent light, leaking like pus or urine from the house.

  “What the hell do you want, bitch?” the face hissed, voice worn raw and gravelly, female voice, old as someone’s grandmother.

  “I’m looking for somebody,” Daria said, slipping the toe of her boot into the crack between door and jamb.

  “Well, you’re lookin’ in the wrong place,” the woman said, glancing down at Daria’s intruding foot.

  “He’s been here before.”

  “Well he ain’t here now!”

  “Then let me in, and I’ll see for myself.”

  The woman opened the door an inch wider, and Niki caught a glimpse of her burning eyes, eyes like the pit of famine’s stomach, and the long, uneven keloid scar beneath her right eye, proud flesh like melted plastic.

  “Look, white girl. If you keep shootin’ off your mouth and makin’ all this noise, Mr. Wilson’s gonna hear you, and he ain’t as tolerant as me.”

  Mort’s big hand on Daria’s shoulder then, and Niki could see that he was almost ready to drag her from the porch, kicking and screaming and squeezing his balls if that was the only way back to the van.

  “He’s not here, Dar. Let’s go,” he said.

  “She might be lying,” Daria said, as if the woman wasn’t standing there, as if she couldn’t hear.

  “Girl, you think tonight’s a good time to die or you just stupid?”

  Behind the woman, down the half-glimpsed throat of pissy light and wallpaper peeling in long skin strips, someone shouted, “Who the hell is it, Tabs?”

  The woman stared at them, at Daria, with her starvation eyes, and after a moment she yelled back, without turning around, yelled, “Goddamn Jehovah’s-fuckin’ Witnesses!”

  And the other voice, male boom and rumble, “At night? Well, tell ’em to go the fuck away!”

  “You heard the man,” she said. “He won’t say it that nice again.”

  “Now, Dar,” and Mort was hauling her backwards, Niki sidestepping quickly to get out of their way.

  The door slammed shut, and now the house was as dark and sealed away from the rest of the universe as it had been before. Daria pulled free of Mort and almost tumbled ass-first down the steps.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing, Mort?” she demanded, looking back at the closed door.

  “Trying to stop you from getting us all killed.”

  “You’re so full of shit!”

  A red and listing Plymouth crammed full of teenagers, black boys in sunglasses and black knit caps, cruised shark-slow past the van, big white van beached like a lunatic’s whale there against the curb.

  “Can we just please get the hell out of here?” Niki asked, heard the fear and exasperation wrestling between her words, fussing over the tattered rags of her resolve.

  “We’re already on our way,” Mort said and headed for the Ford. Niki, painfully uncertain, waited for Daria, who stood for one moment more, with fists clenched, staring back at the scarred and defiant house.

  3.

  And this is the first time that Keith had seen Daria, had laid eyes on her, this muggy summer weeknight in 1993 back when the junk still felt like gold and Dr. Jekyll’s was still the Cave. Barely six months since he’d had that last and grandest fight with Sarah and she’d driven off alone to find her own gilded peace pressed between rails and spinning steel wheels. Without her voice and her fraying scraps of sanity, the weak but vital gravity of her center, Stiff Kitten had come apart, had disintegrated and left him alone with his needles and veins. He’d still picked up occasional solo sets for the money and beer, and Mort had been there, Mort and his sticks and his foot keeping all the time Keith had left. But he’d refused to play the old songs, covered shit by just about anyone else, especially Tom Waits because h
e figured he couldn’t do the vocals much harm.

  And then he’d walked into the Cave one night, needing a fix and not a copper penny in his jeans, no credit, either, hoping that he could wheedle a few drafts out of the skinny albino kid who tended bar on Wednesday nights. And a band had been setting up on the stage, no one he recognized. It had taken him fifteen minutes to sweet-talk one lousy beer, watery Bud in a plastic cup, and then he’d sat, sick and alone in a corner booth, watched past empty tables and wobbly handrails at the steep edge of the pit, across the black moat (dance floor for Techno Tuesdays and mosh-pit hell the rest of the week).

  Her hair had been the dirtiest sort of blond back then, and he’d watched her unpack her bass, had tried to remember the name he’d seen on the marquee as he’d come in, red plastic letters that had meant nothing. Wednesday nights were always dead, and there was no one to watch her, no one but him and the bartender with his pink eyes and cornsilk hair. She’d finished tuning and looked toward him, but he was hidden by shadows and the glare of the lights; she’d shaded her eyes with one hand and, to the geeky boy with his too-new guitar and tie-dyed Sonic Youth T-shirt, had said, “Okay, guys. Standing room only tonight.” The geeky boy had laughed, and Keith scrunched down deeper into the shadows, had felt like a hungry cockroach, sipping his shitty beer and watching someone laying out a feast from his kitchen crack.

  And then the songs had come one right after the other, no introductions or titles or stupid banter between the singer and her guitarist or drummer. Just her words and her aching voice, like stained glass, beautiful and shattered sound fused together with solder, frozen lead seams binding the deepest reds and clearest cobalt blues.

  He’d finished his shitty beer, and for a while there had been only the empty cup, worried between his jonesing fingers. At some point, the albino kid had brought him another, even though he hadn’t asked, but he’d hardly noticed. Had hardly even thought of the pain worming about in every cell of his body, no room for anything but the nameless girl and her nameless band.

  A few people straggled in towards the end, goth queers who sat near him in the back and talked loud enough to hear themselves over the music. He’d leaned over to them in the white space between songs, before the very last, and “Why don’t you guys just listen,” he’d said. A fat girl with so much eyeliner she’d looked like a gluttonous raccoon had sneered at him, and then they’d all started talking again.