Silk

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  Now she followed Theo along the sidewalk, half a step behind and hurrying to keep up.

  “It’s a great place to hear shitty punk bands,” Theo explained. “And really shitty hardcore bands. And drink shitty beer. If you want rock and roll, you go to the Nick, and if you want thirtysomething pop crap, you go to Louie Louie’s. If you want to hear techno or industrial, there’s the Funhole, just across the tracks,” and she pointed.

  They huddled together in the doorway, no shelter from the November wind but their own bodies, while a boy with three silver rings in his lower lip checked the band’s guest list for their names.

  “Come on, Jethro. You fuckin’ know I’m on there,” Theo said, her teeth beginning to chatter so that there were little hitches between her syllables. They had both begun to shiver, the coffee only a fond and dimming memory.

  “I know you,” he said. “But I don’t know her.”

  “Niki Ky…N-i-k-i K-y,” replied Theo. “Come on man, I’m freezing my titties off out here.”

  “You should have to sit on this stool for a few hours….” and he tapped down the list, name after name, with the eraser of a nubby yellow pencil.

  “And you should have to suck on the drippy end of my fuckstick.”

  “Here it is. Niki Ky,” and he drew a graphite slash through her name. “Show me your wrists, ladies.”

  The rubber stamp left a fizzing green beaker on Niki’s skin, and she let Theo lead the way in, into air so suddenly warm and smoky she thought at first that she might not be able to breathe this new atmosphere. An all but impenetrable haze of cigarette smoke and the damp and sour reek of spilled beer underneath, almost masking the fainter, more exotic hints of pot and piss and puke. The sound system was blaring drums and meat-grinder guitar, something like Soundgarden, minus any trace of rhythm or melody or talent. Across a sea of heads and shoulders, Niki caught a glimpse of Daria, doppelgänger much too tall for Daria, waving, and Theo took her hand and pulled her through the crowd.

  Daria was standing up in one of the burgundy-red Naugahyde booths and Mort was sitting across from her, nursing a Miller High Life.

  “I don’t suppose you saw Keith out there anywhere?” Daria asked, shouting to be heard above the carnival din of music and voices. Theo shook her head and slid in next to Mort. He put one arm around her and kissed her cheek.

  “Sit down,” Daria said to Niki, leaning close, and she obeyed. Mort reached across the table and shook her hand.

  “Good to see you’re still with us,” he said. “After last night, I thought maybe you’d head for higher ground.”

  “What the hell is that shit?” Theo sneered, one finger pointing up at heaven or the speakers overhead.

  “Bites the big one, don’t it?” and Mort finished his beer and laid the bottle on its side, began to roll it back and forth with his free hand.

  “That,” Daria shouted, “is Bogdiscuit.”

  “The opening band?”

  “The missing opening band.”

  “Last seen in Lubbock, dropped off the screen somewhere in the wilds of Mississippi,” Mort added.

  “Which means we have to go on forty-five minutes early and play two sets.” Daria was still standing, her Docs sunk deeply into the duct tape–patched and cigarette-scarred upholstery, still scanning the crowd for some sign of Keith.

  Mort sighed and bumped the beer bottle against one corner of a glass ashtray. “But at least we’ve all been spared the live-and-in-your-face Bogdiscuit experience.”

  “This is plenty bad enough,” Theo said. She laid her lunch-box purse on the table, opened it and began to rummage through the junk inside.

  Niki tried not to notice Daria looming over her like a vulture or the way she kept sliding toward the gravity well of those boots pressed into the springshot booth. Instead, she watched the crowd, the sandshift of flesh and fabric, pretending she was also looking for the tall guitarist. But really she was just taking in these faces, same faces as New Orleans or Charleston or anywhere else she’d sat in crowded bars. A lot of the faces were clearly too young to be here, fake IDs or bribes or stamped hands licked wet again and pressed together, and for a second that passed like the lead-blue shades of sunrise, she felt homesick.

  And then, across the room and tobacco veil, the Bogdiscuit-tortured space, she saw the girl with white dreds, punk-dyke attitude scrawled on her white skin and another girl with hair as unreal as Daria’s snuggled under one arm. Six or seven kids were crowded into the big semicircular booth with them, the white-haired girl at their center.

  Niki leaned across the table, not taking her eyes off the clot of goths, whispered loud to Theo, “Who is that?” Indicated who she meant with one hitchhiker’s jab of her thumb toward the crowded back booth.

  Theo looked up from the cluttered depths of her purse, lipstick tubes and tampon applicators and a Pink Power Ranger action figure, following Niki’s thumb.

  They all looked like underagers, ubiquitous black and glamorous dowdy. Robert Smith clown white and crimson lips, bruise-dark eyes.

  “Oh,” Theo said, quick, dismissive wave of one hand and then her eyes back down to the purse, “That’s Spyder Baxter, holding court over her shrikes.”

  “Shrikes?” Niki asked, and Mort chuckled. He’d stopped rolling the Miller bottle, bread-dough kneading the tabletop, was now busy making spitballs from his cocktail napkin and flicking them over Daria’s head. She hadn’t noticed, or if she had, chose to ignore him. They sailed by, just inches above her scarlet hair, and stuck to the black plastic Christmas tree set up behind the booth, decorated with rubber bugs and Barbie doll parts.

  “That’s what Theo calls our local death rockers.”

  And Niki nodded, though she’d always hated that label, death rockers, more reminiscent of heavy metal, headbanger crap than anything goth.

  “You wouldn’t think a chicken-shit city like this would have so many of them,” Theo said, found what she was looking for, a worn and creased emery board.

  Niki had treasured the dark children who congregated in Jackson Square, who haunted the narrow backstreets of the Quarter, the same white faces and black-lace pouts as these, the same midnight hair. These could be the same children, she thought, transplanted like exotic hothouse vegetation, identities as blurred as their genders. Seeing them here only seemed to redouble her homesickness, the vertigo sense of being misplaced herself, a refugee.

  One boy stood apart from the others, better dressed than the rest. Bell-bottomed stretch pants and a wide white belt, puffy white shirt with balloon sleeves and a lace jabot that looked purple from where she sat. He stood with his back to the others, staring out into the crowd with vacant intensity, back straight, as alert and detached as a bodyguard. They made eye contact, and she looked quickly away, back to Theo.

  “Why don’t you like goths?” she asked.

  “Well, let’s see now,” Theo answered without pausing from her furious work on a hangnail. “They’re shallow and vain and whiny…” She stopped filing and held the nail closer to her face for inspection. “…pretentious drama queens with bad taste in clothes and worse taste in music. How’s that?”

  “Oh,” Niki replied, a sound soft and hard at the same time, and suddenly she was much too tired from the hours of listening quietly to Theo Babyock’s diva prattle, too tired to care if she pissed off Daria by picking a fight.

  “HEY! ASSWIPE!” Daria screamed over her head, and there was Keith Barry, pulling free of the throng, blotting out her view of Spyder Baxter. His head was shaved closer than the night before, and his dull eyes squinted through the smoke and shadows, recognition rising as slow as the sun on a cloudy morning. He towed some blond chick behind him like a little red wagon, Aqua Net teased bangs and trailer-park makeup.

  “Key-rist on a boat,” Theo hissed, having entirely missed the brief flash of anger on Niki’s face. “What the hell did he scrape her out from under?”

  Daria scowled down at them, “At least he’s learning how to come
when called.”

  “I’m not even gonna think about touching that one,” Theo said, dropped the emery board back into her purse and snapped it shut.

  Keith pushed his way to the booth, icebreaker through sweaty flesh and T-shirt shoulders.

  “Hey,” he said, barked the word like a stoned pit bull. “I want you guys to meet Tammi, here.” And he stepped to one side so she could stand next to him.

  “Tammi with an i,” the blond girl said, voice as perkystiff as her hair, lipstick smeared and obviously very drunk; Niki looked down at her hands, embarrassed flush, feeling the tension like lightning-charged air crackling dry against her skin.

  “Well, I’m simply thrilled,” Theo said, bouncing-ball parody of Tammi’s drawl, and offered the girl her hand. “Hows about you, Dar? Ain’t you simply thrilled, too?”

  Daria, almost as tall as Keith from where she stood, nodded but kept her eyes on him.

  “You guys go on back, Mort,” she said, checking the time by her big ugly wristwatch, her voice filled with deceiving calm. “We’ll be there in a few minutes,” and Mort, always happy to miss the next messy installment in this soap opera, pushed Theo out of the booth.

  “Oh damn,” Theo said, mocking eyes doe wide. “Just when I was about to ask Tammi where she finds that simply marvy shade of eye shadow—”

  “You just shut up and keep walking,” Mort said, and they were gone, one step toward the stage and swallowed immediately in the press.

  “What’s her problem?” Tammi asked, and Niki cringed, wishing Keith wasn’t blocking her escape from the booth, wishing that she could have followed Mort and Theo backstage.

  “Do you think you can make it through the fucking set?” Daria asked, completely ignoring Tammi.

  Keith rubbed his shabby goatee, looked down at Tammi and grinned, then turned slowly back to Daria.

  “You think I’m too fucked up to play, don’t you?”

  No reply from Daria, her original question not brushed aside, and Niki felt herself sagging deeper into the Naugahyde, wished she could melt and slip liquid from her seat, pool unnoticed beneath the table.

  “I’m cool, Dar,” he said. “I’m fine. So lay off, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Daria answered. “Whatever you say, Keith. Just don’t screw this show up,” and then, to Niki, “You gonna stick around?”

  “Oh yeah, sure,” Niki said and leaned way back so Daria could step over; her Docs left two deep prints in the shiny red upholstery, scars that would heal themselves as slowly as rising dough. Daria’s ass almost brushed Niki’s face, faded and threadbare denim that smelled of coffee and ancient cigarette smoke.

  “Cool,” Daria said. “Save us the booth.” Keith moved aside and she hopped down. “The sound’s good from here.”

  And she slipped away. Keith lingered a moment longer, still rubbing at his chin, before he finally released Tammi’s long-nailed hand, nails as pink as bubblegum pearls, and without another word, followed Daria.

  “Is it okay if I sit with you?” Tammi asked, and Niki shrugged, wondering what Theo would have said, what Daria wouldn’t have had to say.

  “Thanks,” Tammi slurred cheerfully and sat down. “You know, I went to high school with a Japanese girl.”

  “Really?” Niki sighed, half-smiling through gritted teeth.

  “Yes ma’am,” Tammi replied eagerly. “She said she was born in that city we dropped the nuclear bomb on.”

  “Which one?” Niki asked and glanced longingly back, past the girl’s puzzled face, at Spyder’s corner, towards the goths and the boy standing watch over them, but someone had already turned the house lights down, and there was only shadow.

  2.

  Because she was Spyder, they came to her, to sit near her and breathe in the air she breathed out. They brought her the meager precious offerings of their company, their fragile faces painted like gentle death to hide the real scars and pain. She wasn’t sure what she had to offer them, but accepted that it was something that they needed, something that soothed or at least distracted, and they never seemed to take anything away.

  Robin pressed tighter against her and Spyder knew how much she enjoyed the masked envy of the others, these who could come as close as a seat or standing room at her booth on Saturday night, but never any closer.

  Walter was sitting on her left, and Byron standing point like a pretty gargoyle, or just keeping his distance, distant now since Thursday evening in the shop. He’d stayed away on Friday, hardly a word to her since he’d called her house afterwards, and she thought that maybe he’d flinched when she kissed his cheek earlier in the evening. She’d said nothing more to him about what he had or had not seen in the alley, knew that he wouldn’t listen to her anyhow.

  The terrible grunge that seemed to have been playing most of the night ended abruptly, partway through a song, and even over the rambling voice of the crowd, the silence seemed profound. “Thank god that’s over,” said the boy sitting next to Robin, black Sandman T-shirt and tonight he was calling himself Tristan. Spyder nodded her head, and the lights were going down lower, pumping new life into the shadows; more darkness to hide within, and at her table she felt nervous bodies relax a fraction. Except for Byron.

  You’re losing him, she thought and shoved the thought quickly back the way it had come.

  The stage lights came up and Spyder buried her face in Robin’s jasmine-scented hair, kissed her throat. Tonight, she’d come for more than the usual self-conscious and jealous attentions, had come knowing that Daria Parker and Stiff Kitten were playing, a month or more since she’d seem them last. Daria had not come back to Weird Trappings on Friday as she’d hoped, had hoped for no reason she’d been able to recognize. Except that Daria had been getting into her dreams lately, sometimes looking down on her from high places while Spyder walked the Armageddon streets. More than once, Spyder had looked up and there she’d been, her face pressed against window glass, hair like the blood that filled the gutters and gurgled down storm drains. Silent judgment in her eyes.

  “I heard this band really sucks,” Tristan said, risking brave opinion; Robin leaned over and whispered something into his ear. He bit his lower lip then, and shrugged and looked sheepishly away.

  “Well, the girl who said that’s a dweeb, anyway,” and then he was quiet. Robin smiled a wicked-mean grin, and Spyder kissed her on the forehead.

  The band entered from a door poorly hidden behind the stage, taking their places on the rough platform of plywood and railroad ties: drummer first, skinny stick man whose name she always forgot, and then the towering guitarist, and Daria last of all. She wore her bass like an albatross or something deadly from an old Buck Rogers film. Spyder sipped at her watery gin and lime, the one drink she’d allow herself all night, savoring the pine sap or turpentine bite of the liquor.

  The band opened gently with a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again,” spooky lilt and punched up just a little, but still as much a lie, as much an act of misdirection, as the hushed moments before a tornado. Last verse, and Byron turned and she caught him looking at her, his face more than its usual pinched, and he looked immediately away again.

  Yeah, you’re losing him, and she took a bigger sip from her drink, pretending it wasn’t true, watching Stiff Kitten across the writhing dark of Dr. Jekyll’s. The spotlights stabbed down from the cramped balcony, borrowing definition from the smoke, blue and red, too much like something toward the end of any one of her nightmares.

  Only if you let him go.

  Daria Parker was building a mournful, droning bridge with her strings, segueing into their own “Imperfect.” Spyder knew the titles to a few of the songs because she’d bought their demo tape a few months back, five tracks and a grainy black-and-white photocopied snapshot for the cover, snapshot of a very run-over cat.

  Up there, her lips pressed to the microphone, muscle-taut fingers locked in their brutal tarantism, Daria drove her words like nails. And Spyder tried not to think about anything
else, nothing but the sneer and tremble of Daria’s lips and words.

  ‘I always meant, always meant to open up,’ my skin starts to tear, my skin starts to tear, my skin starts to tear…

  Down in the pit, bodies slammed together, meat stones pounding themselves for some sympathetic spark, some uglier echo or answer, and from where Spyder sat, the moshers looked more like the condemned souls from a Gustave Doré illustration.

  …and what’s inside pours itself out, pours itself out, ink into your arms.

  Daria wheeled suddenly away from the mike, yielding to the guitarist, set her back to the crowd, and played now to black building-block stacks of amps. Under the gels, Keith Barry’s red Fender looked bruised, damaged by his hurried, certain hands. He was left-handed and played left-handed, and Spyder always felt like she was watching him through a mirror, reversed. Then Daria was back, managing to sound bitter and innocent in the same conflicting instant. Daria, mike stand pushed forward and teetering on the edge of the stage, head bowed, leaning out over the damned, leaning into herself. Her hair, washed red-violet in the lights, ripe plum tangle and spray of sweat, whipped side to side, her face a blurred snarl.

  You see there’s nothing else left for you in there, nothing that you’d want to fuck, nothing you could steal…

  Her fingers released the steel strings, drawing sudden silence from the bass, and Keith Barry and the drummer were on their own for the last furious, rushing beats. At the end, after the end, the fading whine of the guitarist’s final, angry chord, alone for the brief and empty space before the applause. And Robin’s hand, like a hungry child’s, at Spyder’s breast.

  3.

  “It doesn’t snow down here, does it?” Theo asked, hugging herself tightly, stomping her feet loudly on the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know,” answered Niki, and Theo nodded her head.