Silk

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “I keep forgetting you’re not from around here, either.”

  Niki looked up at the low sky, the baby-aspirin clouds hanging closer than before the show, pearly and swollen with reflected city light.

  “Well, I think it’s gonna snow,” Theo said.

  They were waiting for Keith, who was supposed to be bringing the van around, had been waiting for almost ten minutes now, for Mort and Daria still inside the club. Shivering caryatids bracketing what Niki supposed you’d call the stage door, standing guard over the amps and cases of sound equipment stacked up beside the curb. This door was wider and the same black as the wall, no handle on the outside so it would be almost invisible when closed.

  “I’ve never really seen snow,” Niki said.

  In the big parking lot across the street, there were still people lingering around cars, stalling, wringing the last dregs from a Saturday night already gone well over to Sunday morning. Smoking and getting sick drunk on cheap wine and beer. The back edge of the lot ran all the way to the railroad tracks, and Niki noticed a few of the goths there, clustered around an old brown car, Spyder Baxter sitting on the hood, still the center of their attention. And the green-haired girl so close she could pass for a Siamese twin.

  “Come on, guys…” and the door swung immediately open, as if Theo had commanded it, open sesame, but really just Daria kicking the door wide, trying to brace it open with one shoulder. Niki caught it, held it open while Theo hugged herself and Daria and Mort wrestled the last of the equipment through.

  “So, where the hell is he?” and Daria still sounded every bit the queen bitch, but Niki could feel how much of her tension had drained away during the show, through the show. Up there, she’d slipped around the diffusion somehow, wrapped herself in soothing rhythm and feedback, electricity and discord sedation. She wore a fresh Band-Aid on her right index finger, and her hair was plastered flat with the dried sweat of two long sets and the beer that someone down front had drenched her with halfway through the last song.

  “First guess don’t count, right?” and Theo laughed, only half to herself, then began to whistle the chorus of “Let It Snow.” Niki was amazed; Theo even managed to whistle sarcastically.

  “Fuck,” resigned and weary moan from Daria, and she helped Mort roll the cumbersome flight case the last couple of feet to wait with everything else, one wheel missing and so it tipped and wobbled like a drunken monolith. Mort had painted the band’s undead mascot on one side of the scraped and dented black box in his most careful acrylic. The zombie kitten leered hungrily at Niki, broken fangs, one eye rolled back in its rotting skull, the other dangling by gooey optic nerves.

  “Shit, it’s cold out here,” Mort said, pulling Theo close to cop what little body heat she might have to spare.

  “That’s ’cause it’s gonna snow, dumbass,” she said, and Niki let the door slam shut, sealing them all outside.

  Mort grumbled something rude and unintelligible through his steaming breath. And then, one thunder-crack backfire, shotgun loud in the brittle air, and Niki jumped, felt her heart lurch and skip inside her chest. The van rumbled around the corner of Dr. Jekyll’s, pulled out of the side lot and bounced down onto the cobblestones, cough and blat of a muffler shot like a coal miner’s lungs. Keith pulled in too close and the right front wheel scrunched against the curb; the wind caught white puffs of the Ford’s exhaust, blew acrid warm and choking gusts into their faces. The van idled, and Keith stepped around the side, unlocked the rear doors and opened them like the wings of a giant albino scarab.

  “Okay, boys and girls. Time to feed the shitmobile,” Mort said, mock glee, and Niki stepped back, out of the way, feeling useless and uncertain, feeling outside. They moved like this chore, too, had been choreographed and rehearsed, performed a thousand times, as practiced as their music. They filled the caged-in back of the van while she watched, attentive, just in case someone asked for her help.

  When they were done, Keith bummed a cigarette from Mort, bummed a light, spoke around the Camel’s filter, “Did y’all settle up with Bert?”

  “Oh yeah. And he said we could have the second week in December if we wanted it. Dar has your split.”

  “You mean you got cash out of him?”

  “Twenty-five each,” Daria said. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  From across the street, the gravelly, coarse rumble of male laughter, threatening and primal as the warning growl in a bad dog’s throat; Keith turned to see, and Niki followed his gray eyes back to where the goths had gathered around Spyder and the cruddy brown car. Except now there were three big guys, almost everyone else had gone, and Spyder sat alone on the hood, head down as if she were praying or straining under an invisible weight.

  “Assholes,” Keith muttered. “Christ, I hate those fuckers,” and Niki heard the threat there, too.

  Daria had opened the panel door, crouched inside, almost out of the wind, trying to tease a spark from her lighter. She glanced up at Niki. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Some guys’re messin’ with Spyder and the shrikes,” Mort said.

  “Skins?” asked Daria, and the lighter flickered, framing her face for a yellow-orange instant before the flame guttered and died again.

  “Nah,” Mort answered. “Just some assholes.”

  “Well, you stay the hell out of it, Keith,” Daria said. “You hear me?”

  “Yeah, Dar. I hear you.”

  The laughter again, smug and hateful chuckle, and whatever the guy closest to Spyder said was spoken almost loud enough for Niki to hear. Spyder raised her head slowly, and Niki imagined she could clearly see the anger glistening in her eyes. The guy leaned closer, seemed to whisper something in her ear, and then his friends sniggered.

  “I fucking mean it, man.” Daria gave up on the lighter, exasperated, tossed it out of the van and disposable pink plastic clattered across the pavement. “We don’t need you getting your ass kicked tonight by a pack of bulletheads.”

  But Keith was already moving, quick around the driver’s side, the door jerked open, and he pulled a dented aluminum baseball bat from behind the seat, black tape strapped around the handle.

  “There he goes,” Theo said, both hands up, helpless, furious gesture, and Niki knew this was something else practiced, something else played over and over, something else she had no part in.

  “Stop him, Mort!”

  “Oh yeah, right. Fuck you, Dar. You stop him.”

  “Goddammit,” and Daria was out of the van and running to catch up with Keith. Niki hadn’t even seen her reach for the tire iron that she held clutched in both hands, close to her chest, as she ran.

  “Jesus Christ, why don’t we just call the cops?” Theo pleaded, “This one time, Mort, why don’t we please justcall the fucking cops?” and she sat down on the curb, kicked at Daria’s dead, discarded lighter.

  Yeah, Niki wanted to say. Good idea.

  Mort sighed, a loud and vaporous sound, his face helpless as Theo’s, almost as fed up.

  “You guys just wait here, okay.”

  “No, Mort. It is not okay,” Theo spat back. “Goddamn it. One night you’re gonna get killed playing Mr. Third Musketeer, and it is not fucking okay….” But he had already gone, chasing Keith and Daria through overlapping pools of streetlight.

  4.

  When the three jocks showed up, Spyder had been thinking about bed and the flower and sweat smell of Robin’s naked body, contentedly enduring the idiot argument between Tristan and a chubby girl named Darlene over whether the Sisters of Mercy were better pre-or post-Vision Thing, with or without Patricia Morrison. Most of the evening’s earlier doubts had faded, dimmed almost to irrelevant mist, and she’d been about to tell them both that they sounded like comic-book fanboys, fussing over which superhero had the lamest sidekick or the biggest dick.

  And now these three in matching green and gold UAB baseball jackets, haircuts like a lawn mown too close to the earth and eyes full of piggy stupid trouble.<
br />
  “See, Tony? Man, I told you there were dykes over here,” the tallest said, blond hair and Nazi-blue eyes.

  Tristan and Darlene shut up and stepped out of their way. In the Celica, Byron and Walter paused in their own affairs, Byron up front alone and Walter in the backseat with a boy dressed like a deb from Hell’s cotillion; Spyder could feel their uneasiness seeping sticky cold through the windshield.

  “Goddamn,” said the jock named Tony, and Spyder felt Robin shudder then, saw the frightened recognition on her face. “I guess you were right, man.”

  The third guy, shorter and chunkier than his buddies, didn’t say anything, laughed and spit tobacco juice into a McDonald’s cup.

  “All kinda freaks hang out down here,” the first guy said. “Half the time, you can’t tell the fuckin’ girls from the boys.”

  “That was original,” Spyder said, speaking through the sudden playground memories of adrenaline and shame, and she felt Robin tense, maybe start to push away. “Did your daddy teach you that one before or after he taught you how to suck his cock?”

  Shortest perfect silence, and then the guy took one step closer, “What did you say?” Surprise and disbelief and hardly any room left for the anger bubbling up between his words.

  “You heard me. Bet your daddy told you if you acted like an asshole, nobody would know how much you liked his dick.”

  And his friends laughed, stinging loud belly laughs.

  “Digger, man, you gonna let this freak talk to you like that?” said the guy with the half-full McDonald’s cup and he laughed again.

  “Let’s just go,” Robin said, her voice too shaky, like they’d never had to listen to this shit before. “I know one of these guys. They’re not worth it,” and she did pull free of Spyder’s embrace, slipped off the hood to the blacktop.

  “What’s the matter, little girl? Don’t you think your bigmouth lesbo girlfriend here can take care of you?” Digger asked, but Robin was already opening the passenger side, getting in beside Byron and locking the door behind her.

  “Why don’t you just leave us alone,” Spyder said, confused, more hurt by Robin’s retreat than anything these creeps could say.

  “Is that it, lesbo? Think maybe you can talk like a man, but afraid you can’t fight like one?” And he leaned close, whispered loud so everyone could hear. “Bet you sure as hell can’t fuck like one.”

  Chunky gales of laughter from the other two, and Spyder stared down at the scuffed toes of her boots.

  “I don’t know ’bout that, Digger,” Tony said. “Bet she’s got one of them plastic strap-on jobs.”

  “Is that true, lesbo?” and he leaned close enough that Spyder could smell him, sweat and sour alcohol, after-shave and sweet wintergreen snuff. “You got yourself a strap-on dick, lesbo? You fuck that weird little bitch with a big, hard strap-on dick?”

  “Back off,” Spyder said, final useless warning murmured just for this one asshole, knowing that he wouldn’t, that this had already gone too far for either of them to simply back out now.

  “Does it feel good, lesbo?” sneered Digger. “Does it make you feel like a man?”

  “Digger, you are just too fine,” said Tony and slapped Digger on the back.

  And then Spyder reached up, circled his neck with her strong arms, leather and the inky webs hidden underneath, and pulled him down, the cactus stubble on his cheek scraping at her smooth white skin.

  “Let me show you how it feels, motherfucker,” and she opened her mouth very, very wide.

  5.

  Daria ran all the way across the street, across the wide parking lot, never more than a few steps behind Keith and her heart banging away like it meant to kill her. She screamed out his name one time, a wasted curse or warning, but the wind was growing stronger, raw and living without flesh or bone, and it had snatched her voice away in its icy fingers. And by the time she caught up with him, it was already too late to stay out of the bad shit going down around the rusty-guts Toyota, had probably been too late all along.

  Keith had seized one of the bubbas by the collar of his jacket and was towing him backwards, away from the car. The guy backpedaled and flailed the air with his arms, mad pinwheeling arms, spilled the syrupy dark contents of the cup he was holding and lost his balance anyway, landed on his ass. His face was livid red, competing startled and pissed and embarrassed hues of scarlet, and when he started to get up, Daria kicked him in the ribs and he sat back down.

  She looked up and there was Spyder, still sitting on the hood of her car and one of the guys bending down over her. Both her arms were locked firmly about his neck, her tattooed hands shimmering oily in the mercury-vapor light. Her mouth was pressed viciously against his left cheek, grinding; it looked like she was kissing him.

  “Keith, wait a goddamn minute….”

  But he’d already shoved the second bubba out of the way, grabbed the one leaning over Spyder by one broad shoulder and yanked hard; Spyder let go, and the guy stumbled, almost fell as he spun around to face Keith, clutching his jaw. Blood oozed black and wet from between his fingers, rouged Spyder’s chin and grinning lips.

  “She bit me!” he squawked, his face going sickly pale in the yellow parking lot glare. “The dyke bit my fuckin’ face!”

  “Get out of here, man,” Keith growled, tightening his grip on the bat, testing its familiar weight like he was stepping up to the plate for a fastball.

  “Fuck you, buddy. She bit a hole in my face.”

  “And I’m gonna knock your head off if you don’t get the hell away from her. Now.”

  Daria moved in closer to Keith, nerves sizzling like bad wiring behind old walls, but she kept her eyes on the guy on the ground and the one Keith had pushed aside, the one holding a liquor bottle wrapped conspicuously in a brown paper bag.

  “Oh yeah,” she whispered. “This is some mighty nice shit you’ve gotten us in tonight, Keith. Extra special shitty.”

  Sudden footsteps, heavy and coming up fast behind them, but she didn’t have to turn around to know they belonged to Mort. A second more and he was standing next to her, wrapping her in his welcome reek of drummer-sweat.

  “Tony, the bitch chewed up my face!”

  “Don’t worry, Digger,” said the bubba with the liquor bottle, his eyes locked firmly on Keith’s bat. “We’re gonna mess her freak ass up real good.”

  “Last chance, brother,” Keith said, smiling as he spoke, and Daria knew that he’d be disappointed if the guy did back down now, the days of empty black rage that would follow. She braced herself, glad for the weight of the tire iron, gladder for Mort at her side.

  “Last chance.”

  “Screw you, fucker. The bitch probably gave me fuckin’ AIDS—”

  Spyder shrieked, a piercing and guttural cry like night birds or barbarian soldiers, rocked back and drove the heels of both her boots into Digger’s kidneys, pushing him stumbling towards Keith. The redneck howled, fresh pain and surprise, and threw a desperate, sloppy right at Keith’s head; Keith ducked the blow effortlessly, sidestepped and swung his silver bat, connecting hard with the guy’s right arm. Daria heard clearly the muffled thwump, the sick wet snap of living bone, and Bubba Digger crumbled to the pavement.

  Bubba Tony took a single, hesitant step in Keith’s direction, and Daria heard the steel-soft click of Mort’s knife, the big folding lockblade he carried for cutting electrical tape and splicing cable. Tony saw the knife and stopped, free hand disappearing into his jacket, returning a second later with a snubby little handgun.

  “Screw this,” he said and aimed the .32 at Keith with one unsteady hand. “Screw all this shit.”

  The car coughed suddenly awake then, whined and hacking roar from its reluctant engine, and Daria noticed Byron Langly for the first time, crouched behind the steering wheel, bright panic glittering in his eyes as he tried to wrestle the car into first gear. The Celica lurched forward, and Spyder groped frantically for handholds that weren’t there, then pitched sideways into the
windshield. Bubba Tony yelped, tried too late to jump clear before he was knocked sprawling to the ground. His bottle smashed loudly against the asphalt and the gun skittered out of reach, spinning butt over glistening black muzzle.

  Spyder managed to hang on a second or two longer, hands spread flat for traction against smooth metal and smoother glass. Then the car bounced violently over a speed bump and she was tossed clear, rolled like a stuntman in a TV cop show. The Celica squealed and screeched out of the parking lot, fishtailing and burning precious rubber from bald tires, missing the van by inches.

  And nothing else for a long moment, then, time like caramel and cooling wax, nothing but Digger sobbing incoherent threats and curses, and the sound of Spyder’s Toyota, the flight of the shrikes, fading into the distance.

  “Jesus,” whispered Mort, and Daria realized that she’d been holding her breath, breathed out and inhaled deeply, and the air tasted like car exhaust and spilled whiskey.

  The sound that tore itself from Spyder’s mouth dragged Robin immediately back down to the dreams, the creeping things that had followed her back from the peyote, up from the pit of Spyder’s basement. The angry screech of denied retribution, raging shadows and nightshade teeth, and she covered her ears, squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting any more of this, not understanding how everything had gone so wrong so fast.

  “Open your door, Byron,” Walter said. “We gotta help her.” And when Byron didn’t move, didn’t say a word, Walter kicked the back of his seat. “I said open the goddamn door!”

  Robin was busy trying to make safe pictures in the imperfect darkness behind her eyelids, trying not to believe that one of those Neanderthal fucks was the same Tony Falleta that she’d happily let maul and screw her once upon a time, the same asshole that had tried to rape her the night Spyder and Byron and Walter had taken her home with them. She tried to see herself back inside Dr. Jekyll’s, making fun of the wannabes and them not even bright enough to know. Still sitting safe in Spyder’s arms, two hits of ecstasy burning in her brain. Back in Spyder’s bedroom, the silent, watchful tanks and web-painted windows safe as a church, and their flesh bleeding sweat and reassurance and the smells of sex.