Murder of Angels

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “Spyder thought she could save us all,” she says.

  “Yes. I think she must have.”

  “I’ve never asked anyone to save me. The hour’s up, Dr. Dalby,” and he checks his wristwatch.

  “So it is. Remember these things. You’ll need them, I expect.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Try hard. You have to cross this bridge alone.”

  “Just like all the others,” Niki whispers, and outside the window all the pigeons take flight at once.

  “Watch your step, Nicolan,” Dr. Dalby says and takes another sip of water. “And don’t look down.”

  The Dog’s Bridge rises so high above the sea of fire that its crest almost brushes the underside of the sulfur clouds before finally beginning the long descent to the opposite shore. Niki walks down the middle, because there are no guardrails, nothing to prevent a fall, and the bridge of bones sways slightly in the hot wind, shifts as the lava flows slowly by far below. But mostly, she’s careful not to lose count, because then she’d have to go back to the beginning and start all over again, and Spyder said not to turn back, no matter what happened.

  The deck of yellow-white and ivory creaks loudly beneath her boots, long bones and vertebrae, tooth-studded jaws and parts of broken skulls all wired together, the bones of men and animals and gigantic beasts she’s glad she’s never seen alive. Sweat pours from her face and drips to splotch the dry path at her feet. The heat and fumes alone almost enough to kill, she thinks, and looks at her hand again, Marvin’s bandage gone now, sloughed off like some sweaty second skin, and the wound has turned an even deeper red than the sky.

  The sea makes a sound like dying, and the clouds moan a low and threatful rebuttal. Something falls, screeching, burning alive, a living meteor streaking past the bridge, plummeting towards the lava. She doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t stop to see what it might have been.

  “Watch your step, and don’t look down,” Niki says out loud, staring straight ahead. “And don’t fucking look up, either.”

  Bone snaps and crunches beneath her boots, and the hot wind blows like sandpaper fingers through her tangled hair, across her blistered skin, and Niki keeps counting. In the end, she finds the other side, because all bridges, even here, eventually lead somewhere.

  And when she opens her eyes, Marvin’s kneeling there beside her, brushing hair from her face, and the checkerboard tile of the restroom floor is smooth and cool as ice beneath her. She blinks up at the fluorescent bulbs, the white light that means nothing at all, only electricity and a bit of glowing, ionized gas and nothing more to it than that. Nothing to marvel at and no riddles here to solve, nothing to have to fear.

  Hold the line.

  “Don’t move,” Marvin says, and she can hear how scared he is, and how relieved, can see it in his eyes. “Someone’s coming.”

  “Did you feel it? Was it an earthquake?” she asks weakly, but he only looks confused.

  “You just be still now. Someone’s coming to help. They’ll be here in a second.”

  “I’m okay,” she says, and Niki closes her eyes again because she doesn’t want to see how worried he looks. “I was dizzy. I must have fainted. I think I fainted and fell, that’s all.”

  “I heard you call my name,” he says. “I came as quickly as I could.”

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “You did real good, Marvin,” turning her head to one side so that the cool tile presses against her right cheek, skin that still remembers the heat of a flaming sea. And Niki keeps her eyes shut until they come to check her pulse and ask her questions and take her away to one of the examination rooms.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  This Only Song I Know

  Daria Parker is lying alone on the wide hotel bed, much too wide for just one, staring out the sliding-glass balcony doors at the glittering Atlanta skyline stretching away into the night. Dylan’s playing on her laptop, Street Legal, and she rolls over and stares at Alex Singer, who’s been staring at her back for the last fifteen or twenty minutes. He’s sitting on a love seat on the other side of the room, sipping a bourbon and 7UP. His guitar case is lying at his feet. He sighs and glances towards the sliding doors.

  “So, why won’t you call her?” he asks. His Manchester accent gets heavier when he’s exhausted or drunk, and it’s heavier than she’s heard it in a long time.

  “No. It’s easier if I don’t. Marvin can take care of things. Isn’t that what I pay him for?”

  “Easier for who? You or Niki?”

  “Easier for all of us,” Daria replies and almost tells him to leave. She’s too tired for Alex and his disapproval and his questions. She just wants to sleep, wants to not think about Niki or San Francisco or work for a few hours. Her sinuses are still aching from the dry, recirculated air of the plane, and her stomach is sour as old milk.

  “I don’t know, Dar,” Alex says softly, almost whispering, and takes another sip of his drink.

  “What? What don’t you know, Alex?”

  “I’m saying you gotta deal with this shit. Get it under control. We can’t cancel another date.”

  “Niki’s my problem, not yours.”

  “Right. Well, at least we agree on something then. You’re my problem.”

  Daria grits her teeth and shuts her eyes, willing herself not to take the bait this time, too weary and sick and worried to get into an argument with Alex tonight. To get into the same old threadbare argument all over again.

  “What time’s the signing at Tower,” she asks him.

  “They want us there by three. Jarod says there are fliers up all over the city. He’s expecting a crowd.”

  “That figures,” Daria mutters to herself.

  “And you’ve got an interview at four. Nothing major, just some local music reporter.”

  “I thought we had a radio spot lined up.”

  “They changed their minds.”

  Daria opens one eye and glares at the guitarist.

  “Who changed their minds?” she asks and opens the other eye.

  “Hell, Dar, I don’t know. The fuckwits at the station. Try talking to Jarod every now and then if you want to know what’s up with your schedule. I’m not your bloody manager.”

  “You’re not my bloody marriage counselor, either, but that hasn’t stopped you yet.”

  “Touché,” he sighs and finishes his drink in one long gulp, then tosses the plastic cup at a garbage can near the bed. He misses, and melting ice scatters across the beige carpet like fake, glassy jewels.

  “Why don’t you go trash your own room,” Daria growls, and he grins and reaches for the big bottle of Seagram’s he brought in with him.

  “That’s no fun, love.”

  “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Did you know that Arkansas cocksucker is threatening to sue us?” Alex says, twisting the plastic cap off the bottle. “Jarod’s trying to talk them down, you know, but—”

  “Are you fucking deaf?”

  Alex takes a drink from the bottle, then stands and steps over the guitar case. Daria lies on her back, staring up at him, his soft gray eyes and rough, unshaven cheeks, his black hair pulled back in a short ponytail. He’s wearing a red Pixies T-shirt that’s been washed so many times it’s turning pink, and the St. Christopher’s medal she’s never seen him without. She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly.

  “They can’t sue me,” Daria says, trying hard to frown, but smiling a reluctant quarter smile instead, wishing he’d done a little more to piss her off. “I can’t afford it.”

  “Yeah, I told Jarod you’d say something like that.”

  Daria reaches up and takes the bottle from him, tips it to her lips and shuts her eyes as the bourbon burns her mouth and throat numb. A little more and maybe her head will be numb, as well. Alex leans over and licks away a stray trickle of liquor from her chin.

  “Jesus, I’m a goddamn bastard,” she says and takes another drink. “I’m a fucking cunt.”

  “We do what we have t
o do,” he replies, sitting down on the edge of the bed, running his sturdy fingers through her hair. “Whatever it takes to get us through the night.”

  “Is that what I’m doing? Whatever it takes?”

  “Way I see it, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  Alex starts to kiss her, but she pushes him away and sits up. She turns to face the balcony and the city lights again.

  “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  He shakes his head, then takes another long drink from the bottle before screwing the cap back on and setting it on the floor.

  “Don’t it get lonely, way up there on that cross all by yourself?” he asks and wipes his mouth.

  “Fuck you.”

  “What I can never can figure out is how you managed to drive that last nail in. That must have been a bitch.”

  “Will you just please shut up now?”

  And he does, for a few minutes, while she stares at the night beyond the twenty-seventh floor and the Dylan CD ends and starts over again.

  “I can’t stop loving her, Alex. I’ve tried. I fucking swear, I’ve tried, and I can’t.”

  “I never asked you to stop loving her. But you can’t live like this, either. How much longer do you think you can keep going, the way things are?”

  Daria reaches for her Marlboros and lighter, but the pack is empty; she crumples it into a tight ball and flings it at the balcony doors. It bounces silently off the glass and lies on the carpet near the spilled ice. Bob Dylan’s voice bleeds from the speakers, as haggard and sad and urgent as her own worn-out soul, and the tears come before she can stop them.

  “Fuck it,” she whispers. “Fuck it all.”

  “You just gotta let someone else carry some of the weight,” Alex says. “Just a little.”

  And then he puts his arms around her and holds her until dawn has begun to bruise the sky dull shades of rose and violet, and she finally stops crying and sleeps.

  Excerpt from “Outside the Vicious Circle: A Conversation with Daria Parker” (Women Who Rock, March 2002; pp. 27–28).

  WWR: So, how long did it take you to get sick of answering the lesbian question?

  DP: Oh, am I a lesbian? Jesus, is that official now, you know, on record somewhere? (laughs) Yeah, I guess I got sick of it pretty damn quick. I think I was kind of naive. I figured people would have gotten enough of the whole celebrity dyke confessional thing with k.d. lang and Melissa Etheridge and Ellen Degeneres, and so on. I don’t know what they expected me to add. I just write songs. I just play my fucking bass. If they want the Well of Loneliness, they should go to the library. I’m not the poster girl for lesbian equality in the music industry. I know it pisses people off when I say that, but after my records started selling, I felt this enormous pressure to be the next lesbian messiah or something. I’m sorry, but I just don’t want any part of that.

  WWR: But you’re not ashamed of your sexuality? It’s very evident in the songs on both Skin Like Glass and Exit West. These are songs written by a woman to a woman whom she loves, whom she has sexual feelings for.

  DP: I think I should have the freedom to be honest, as an artist, as a human being, without having to become a political activist. If I was writing love songs to men, or if I was a man writing love songs to women, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’m a songwriter, not a lesbian songwriter. I don’t want people to think of me that way, not because I’m ashamed of being a dyke or because I’m afraid people won’t buy my records or whatever. I just want people to think of me as a musician. I don’t have an axe to grind. And, you know, I think that’s what people are really afraid of. As long as they can hang a sign around my neck, stick that pink triangle on me, I’m not a such a big threat to anyone. I’m visible. I’m in this neat little box marked “caution—lesbian singer,” and the walls of that box limit the impact of my work, or, if what I do happens to piss you off, the amount of damage I can do.

  WWR: Is it true you declined interviews with both Curve and The Advocate?

  DP: Yes, it is. And it’s also true I got a lot of hate mail because of that. But if I’d given the damn interviews, I’d have gotten hate mail from born-again Christians and Mormons and mothers who were afraid their teenage daughters were gay. Either way, I get the reactionaries, from one side or the other. It was a lose-lose situation, and I did what I felt was right for me. I think it’s a shame people are more interested in condemning me for making my own decisions than taking the time to try to understand why I made those decisions.

  WWR: And the girl in Florida, Becky Silverlake, the suicide—

  DP: Is not something that I talk about in interviews.

  WWR: Her mother still insists that the lyrics to “Seldom Seen” were a factor in her daughter’s death and that Exit West is, in her words, “a clear and shameless invitation to troubled teenagers to turn to suicide as a solution to their suffering and alienation.”

  DP: Christ, I said I don’t talk about Becky fucking Silverlake. I thought that was understood?

  WWR: And your lover, Nicolan Ky—

  DP: Is the other thing I don’t talk about in interviews. Next question.

  Daria opens her eyes and squints at the dazzling slivers of sunlight leaking in around the edges of the thick hotel drapes. Alex must have drawn them. She can hear him snoring softly behind her, hogging most of the bed. And she can hear someone bumping about in the hall outside the room and tries to remember if she hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. She blinks at the light, unable to recall any details of the nightmare that woke her. She used to write her dreams in a notebook, because Dr. Dalby said there might be something that would help Niki, but she stopped doing that a long time ago.

  Daria looks at the clock radio and is relieved to see it’s still early, still five minutes till noon, so there’s plenty of time for her to get her shit together, maybe even eat something before the Tower Records thing. If she’s lucky, she might have another twenty or thirty minutes before Jarod starts calling to make sure she’s up and moving, to make sure she’s sober and in the same city, the same state, the same time zone, as the rest of the band.

  She pushes back the blanket and sheets, the heavy down comforter, and sits up, naked and shivering, wanting a cigarette but needing to piss worse, wondering where her clothes have gone. Alex’s faded Pixies shirt is tangled in the covers, so she slips it on and then goes to the bathroom without trying to wake him. Alex sleeps like the dead and wakes like a grizzly bear on crack, and she knows better than to try to get him moving before there’s lots of strong black coffee on hand.

  Daria flips on the bathroom light and almost manages not to see her reflection in the big mirror above the sink until she’s wiped herself dry and flushed. Then she sits on the toilet, still shivering, staring back at her face, and wonders what kind of fool would want to see themselves taking a squirt first thing in the morning.

  “You look like hell,” she whispers. “You know that, don’t you? You look like death on a bad day.”

  Through the bathroom wall, she can hear the barely muffled roar of a vacuum cleaner from the room across the hallway and thinks about offering the maid a fifty to find some other room to clean, another room at the other end of the hall or, better yet, on another floor altogether.

  It’s hardly been eighteen hours since she left the house on Alamo Square, and already it seems like another life, someone else’s life, almost as unreal now as the forgotten nightmare. That house and Niki, something she keeps trying to wake up from. She thinks about Alex, asleep on the bed, Alex holding her in the night, the solid, undeniable fact of him, and the thought brings hardly any guilt at all. Ten years of her life spent watching out for Niki, and she wasn’t lying when she told Alex that she still loved her. Ten years making sure Niki was safe, that she was taking her meds, that she didn’t hurt herself, and there’s nothing left. No more she can do. Nothing but regret that what she did was never enough, and there’s no way she can ever save Niki Ky.

  Need an
d desire are not enough. There was a time when she thought they could be, somehow, if she believed, if she gave everything she had, but that time’s passed, and she knows that it’ll never come again.

  “Hey, you stole my fuckin’ shirt,” Alex says, mumbling around a cigarette, and Daria wonders how long he’s been standing there in the doorway, watching her. He’s naked, and she smiles at the small tattoo on his left hip—a grinning, winged cupid armed with a machine gun. He got that years before they met, the price of a bet he lost to some former girlfriend or another. Every now and then, he talks about having it removed, but she doubts he ever will.

  “‘Hey’ yourself. I thought you were asleep,” she says.

  “Yeah, well, you piss louder than any woman I’ve ever known.”

  “You’re saying I woke you up taking a piss?”

  “Sounded like goddamn Niagara Falls in here.”

  “Shut up and give me a cigarette,” she says, and he takes another long drag, then gives her his.

  “What are you doing in here, anyway?” he asks and then massages his bloodshot eyes.

  “Niagara Falls, remember?”

  “I’m gonna call room service and get some fucking coffee and shit,” he says. “You want anything?”

  “I should probably eat something.”

  “Yeah, you probably should. You’re skin and bones, you know that? Want a muffin? I bet they have muffins.”

  “Yeah,” she replies. “A muffin would be good,” but her stomach roils at the thought of solid food.

  “Well, if they ain’t got muffins, you want some toast and jam?”

  “Sure. Whatever.”