Silk

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “Hey, that’s fair. I’m not asking you to make a decision right this minute.”

  “I just gotta think about it, that’s all.”

  “You got my number at the shop,” Mort had said and offered her his hand as she slipped out of the booth. “Thanks, Daria,” he said when she shook it.

  “You won’t be sorry,” Keith said, as if the deal was as good as done, adding the smoldering butt of his cigarette to the overflowing ashtray.

  “We’ll see,” she’d said, quick half smile, and walked away into the night outside the Cave.

  Mort caught up with him three days later, found him in front of Liggotti’s Pawn and Fine Jewelry, staring in at his guitar like a child looking in at candy he’ll never taste or toys he’ll never have the chance to break.

  “She said yes,” and Keith had put one hand against the storefront glass, leaning closer. “She called me this afternoon and said yes. Just give her a few days to break the news to her band. They have a gig next Wednesday, and she doesn’t want to leave them hanging.”

  “I knew she’d say yes,” Keith whispered, smiling, feeling something warm spreading through his soul that wasn’t junk, and he’d said, “So, you gonna lend me the money to get her out of there?”

  He’d waited almost a minute for Mort’s reply, sixty seconds full of traffic and dry wind between buildings.

  “No, man. I’m just gonna let you get up there and play with dick.”

  Keith had grinned and stepped back, away from the window filled with musical instruments and typewriters and portable televisions, all indentured for a few bucks and a yellow hock slip. He’d been standing watch over the Gibson for days, had been threatened with the cops twice by old man Liggotti and the Korean woman who worked for him, threats of jail if he didn’t stop standing around staring through their window all day.

  “I’ll have to go by the ATM machine first,” Mort said, and Keith had lingered only a moment longer before following him across the street to the white van.

  4.

  Sometime after ten, the van bumped across a railroad (another railroad, this city seemed shot through with them like varicose veins) and left the road, rocking over uneven ground, gravel and bigger rocks, then rolled to a stop a few feet away from what looked to Niki like it might once have been a loading ramp for the empty factories and warehouses. Her ass ached, and the small of her back, too, the place she imagined her kidneys to be, and she had to piss.

  The platform was dark, too far from the streetlights, nothing but a dull red glow from a barrel and that surrounded by shivering men in ragged clothes, freezing scarecrows or tramps.

  “That goddamn son of a bitch,” Daria said, relief and furious anger, and she slammed her fist hard against the sun-cracked vinyl dashboard, then jumped out of the van, and Niki could hear her Docs crunching toward the platform.

  No one bothered letting Niki out this time; Mort swore and killed the engine, got out and followed Daria. So Niki was left alone to wrestle with the stubborn handle of the sliding door. By the time she caught up with them, Daria had climbed up onto the platform, hands on her sturdy hips, leaning down to yell at someone sitting on the concrete edge. It had to be Keith, guitar across his lap like a disobedient child, not dressed for the weather, and she could tell he’d be a tall man when he stood. It was too dark to see his face, and he was looking down besides, past his dangling legs at the ground where broken-bottle glass glittered faintly.

  Mort stood a few feet away from her, helpless watcher.

  “Do you have any fucking idea where all we’ve been out looking for your ass tonight?” Daria hissed, and then she kicked an empty beer can; the can flew high, end over tumbling end like a football or grenade, and clattered to the ground somewhere out in the darkness.

  The figure did not move, did not shift its wide shoulders or tilt its head toward its accuser.

  “Why the hell d’you do that?” he asked. “I’ve been right here all evening. Mort knows to look for me here.”

  “Christ!” the swear spit like cracker-dry crumbs, and Daria turned, paced to the other side of the platform and stood staring out across the tracks. The bums watched from the safety of their barrel fire.

  “I got a phone call that you’d been in a fight,” she said. “That somebody had cut your guts out over a bad deal.”

  He shrugged and shook his head.

  “Who said a damn fool thing like that?” he murmured, so low his bear’s voice was almost lost in the wind.

  “What the hell difference does that make?”

  “Because some people will say anything, Dar. You gotta know who to believe and who’s just full of shit.”

  Muffled laughter from the glowing ring of bums and junkies, and one of them said, “That’s some fine white-bitch ass, all right, Mr. Barry. Yessiree…”

  “L.J., why don’t you just shut the hell up,” Keith said, but Daria had already turned on them, had taken a step toward the huddled circle of orange-brown faces and warming palms; Niki felt Mort tense in the dark beside her.

  “Man,” Keith sighed. “You’re only gonna piss her off more than she already is.”

  “I ain’t tryin’ to disrespect your lady,” said the man with arms like twigs and a face like a hungry weasel, all guilty innocence. “I’m just payin’ her some due, that’s all.”

  “Shut up, L.J.,” another of the men growled.

  “You just gotta be properly respectful of fine white pussy like that, that all I’m sayin’. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  Niki took a step closer to Mort, felt her hand on his arm before she knew she’d put it there.

  A howl like metal past fatigue, the point where stress becomes shear, and Daria rushed the men, moved howling her steel gash howl across the platform, and most of them had time to jump out of the way before she reached the barrel. Except for the one they had called L.J., who stood like a shabby rabbit in blinding headlights.

  Daria kicked high and her right boot connected with the rim of the barrel; it lifted a little ways off the concrete, short flight before gravity took it back and it tipped over, spraying embers and ash, showering the paralyzed L.J. in the sizzling rain, dumping its little inferno at his feet.

  “FUCK OFF!” she screamed, vague word shapes pounded from the howl, and L.J. dove off the side of the platform, yelping and cursing, stomping his feet and slapping madly at his clothes. Some of the other men moved in cautiously to help put him out.

  And from the smoking barrel litter Daria seized a charred stub of wood, broken fruit-crate slat, held it high like a burning tomahawk and turned back to Keith Barry. He stood up slowly, moving as if invisible lead hung from his limbs, one hand out like a traffic cop or safety guard, the guitar hanging limp from the other. Upright, he was at least a foot taller than Daria.

  “Man, you have got to get a grip on yourself,” he said, and Niki kept waiting for him to flinch, take a step backward, for Mort to intercede. But no one moved.

  “You listen to me, Keith Barry,” she said. “I am sick and goddamn tired of this shit.”

  “Mort. You better tell her to back off, man.”

  “We have a show tomorrow night at Jekyll’s, Keith, and you will be there, and you will be as straight as you are still capable of being. Are you listening to me?”

  She held the brand a little higher, bright cinders dripping to the concrete at her feet.

  “What the hell is your problem?”

  “I said, you will be there. All you have to do is say, ‘Yes, Dar, I’ll be there and, no, I won’t be too fucked-up to even take a piss.’”

  “Mort?” he asked, the name uttered almost like a prayer.

  But Mort was insensible granite beside Niki, immovable.

  “Last chance,” Daria said. “You gonna be there or not? ’Cause if you’re not, I have absolutely no reason not to go ahead and shove this board up your ass right now.”

  “Tell the woman you’re gonna be there, asshole,” said the man who’d told L. J. to shut
up.

  “Yeah,” Keith said, and Niki felt a little of the white-blue tension, the crackling threat, drain out of the air. “You know I’m gonna fucking be there.”

  “And you’re gonna be straight,” she said.

  “Yeah, straight,” and he sat back down, the guitar held out like a shield of wood and strings. “I ain’t gonna fuck up this show.”

  Daria sighed, seemed to let out a breath she might have held a hundred years, dropped the glowing slat and ground it out with the toe of her boot. Niki felt herself breathing again, pulled her hand back from Mort’s shoulder.

  “Sound check’s at eight o’clock,” she said. “Don’t be late.” And she stepped past him, then, down from the platform without looking back.

  “Come on,” she said as she passed Niki and Mort. “This place smells like rat piss.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Stiff Kitten, and How Shrikes Fly

  1.

  T his end of Morris, down past the parking decks and the Peanut Depot and the loft apartments that rent for small fortunes and have neon sculptures in their windows. Where the cobblestones are more uneven and the warehouses are still warehouses, caverns of bulk and shadow that feed the ass ends of trucks all day long and whisper rat-feet patters at night. Where the tracks are closer and the trains rattle windows. Past Daria’s building, where no one bothers with the broken glass or weeds that grow through asphalt and concrete, the kudzu that seems to grow from nowhere and creeps like hungry mutant ivy. Dr. Jekyll’s, brick front washed matte black and one door the color of something royal or orchids that could grow underground. The old marquee that sags dangerously, although this never was a theater; another warehouse once, before the seventies, before the sixties, and maybe before that. Crooked red letters, plastic messages that no one can read after dark, that fall off if a strong wind blows.

  Daria and the guys were already inside, and Niki had spent the last hour down the street in the Fidgety Bean with Theo, waiting out sound check, watching the cold night through steamy windows, bright clouds, orange with city light, rushing by overhead, drinking a Cubano and then another. Too much caffeine, even for her, and Theo talking like she’d just discovered her tongue.

  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.