“We could help,” and Niki felt Spyder’s impatience just fine without having to see her face; swelling, burring, silent disapproval like something solid as the old mill.
“We can handle it just fine. Just tell the guy at the box office you’re on Stiff Kitten’s guest list, and you won’t have to stand in line.”
“Well, if you’re sure…”
“Hey, girl’o, we are three buff motherfuckers,” Daria said and flexed her biceps like Mr. Charles Atlas, her hard, scrawny arms hidden underneath her coat, anyway. “We can handle this shit just fine.”
And so they went to the box office, Claude catching up with them, and a guy with three steel rings through his left eyebrow and a violet goatee checked their IDs against sheets of paper on a clipboard, checked them off one after the other: Niki, Claude, and Spyder last, and he complimented the tattoos on the backs of her hands, the webs disappearing up and inside the cuffs of her leather jacket.
“Yeah. Thanks,” Spyder said. All three got Day-Glo orange bracelets and a stamp on one hand that left behind nothing they could see. Then they bypassed the long line of shivering faces waiting for nine o’clock to come, foggy breathers, passed under the wrought-iron sign into a short passage with an uneven dirt floor; must and the same bare stone walls seemed to go up forever, the ceiling lost somewhere high overhead.
On the right, a rough arch and the sense of vast space beyond, swallowing depth and dark lit only by incandescent lightning and black-light strobes, flashes that revealed empty cages hung, lasers that stabbed crimson shafts through a roiling haze of glycerine smoke. Some of the smoke drifted out into the bright hall, hesitant tendrils out of their element. A huge gargoyle the color of shit squatted on one side of the arch, warty plaster haunches and a spiked leather dog collar around its neck, the collar fastened to a chain bolted to the wall. In there, the DJ already warming up for the night, and the smoke shimmered and the dusty floor ached with the twining, remixed passion of synthesizers and drum machines.
And above the door, of course, another heavy iron sign on its rusted chains, one word burned through the metal, meaning in the emptiness left within the raw edges of acetylene cuts. Inferno, and Claude said, “Hell,” and jabbed a thumb at a smaller archway to their left and another sign, this one a plank of dark wood, wood sculpted like muscle, straining shoulder and gritted teeth, empty eyes and Purgatorio carved there, hung on oily-looking ropes. The heavy wooden doors to Purgatory were closed and padlocked.
“They do special shit in there,” he told Niki. “Fetish night and things like that.”
At the end of the passage there was more wrought iron, a spiral staircase winding up and up and a longhaired boy, blond and Niki thought he looked like a misplaced surfer, California tan in Georgia November.
Claude presented his hand, palm down, and surfer boy ran some sort of scanner across it, neon blue light and ANGEL stamped right there on Claude’s skin. Niki next and the same secret message revealed, and then he reached for Spyder’s hand, but she had backed away, stared, eyes wide and her mouth the slightest bit open, gazing into her tattoos.
“What’s wrong, Spyder?” Niki said, soft voice, calming voice. “Is something wrong?” and surfer boy looked annoyed, sighed loudly. Claude was already halfway up the stairs, noisy clanging shoes; he stopped and waited, looked down at them and whatever was happening.
“I don’t want that on my hand,” she said. Niki looked at Spyder’s face, cheeks too pale, the cruciform scar between her eyes angry pink, and Niki understood, click, like revelation or an impossible math problem that you’ve sweated over and then it just makes sense.
“Are you going up or not, ladies?” surfer boy said and waved his glowing scanner at them like a magic wand. “In or out, one way or another.”
“Just a second,” Niki said and smiled, wanted to kick him instead.
“I’ve got to wash it off,” Spyder said, but Niki took her hand and held it tightly.
“It’s just ink,” she said quietly. “That’s all. We’ll wash it off as soon we get upstairs, I swear. We’ll find a restroom and wash it off.”
And she led Spyder past the cruel, unveiling light and they followed Claude up the winding stairway, around and up and around and up, to the landing above. And the third sign set above the third arch, chisel-scarred marble and Paradiso, like the punch line to a dirty joke.
“Where’s a restroom?” Niki asked, and Claude pointed into the shadows on one side of the landing.
“Right over there,” he said, confusion and worry thickening his voice. “You gonna be all right, Spyder?”
“She’ll be fine,” Niki said, smiling, nodding, trying to sound like she believed it. “You go on in, and we’ll catch up, okay?”
Spyder had begun to dry-scrub the back of her hand hard against her jeans.
“Come on,” Niki said, and Claude watched them step free of the dazzling light spilling out of Heaven and disappear into the gloomy spot where the women’s room was. After a few seconds, he went in without them.
They’d emptied the van, everything lugged clank and crash up the black stairs, black carpet and black walls and two narrow flights up to Heaven’s back door. Each branded with garish orange stickers by the security goon guarding the door, Gabriel or Michael in a muscle shirt and nothing on his face but pure and frosty ennui, and the stickers read DANTE’S, “Stiff Kitten” and the date scrawled underneath with a smeary black Sharpie.
Then the goon had grumbled that they had one too many guests on the list, only three allowed for the second band, not four. And so Mort and Keith had told him Theo was their harmonica player. The goon had shaken his head, no dice, and so Theo had begun to dig through her purse.
“It’s in here somewhere, really,” but she’d found nothing but a dented old kazoo, and he’d said what the hell and given her a sticker, anyway, had stamped their four left hands. And then they’d found out the sound man was going to be late, and Theo had broken a nail and spent fifteen minutes bitching about it. Three dressing rooms behind the stage, and only the one for the headliner had a heater.
As typical a load-in as they could have asked for.
Keith was sitting alone in a total loss of an arm chair, sandwiched between his guitar and the wobbly flight case with Mort’s drums inside, and Mort and Theo had gone to find Niki and Spyder and Claude.
He looked sick, and not just junk sick; Daria knew that look well enough. She lit a cigarette and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said and held her hand.
“You gonna make it?” and he didn’t answer, drew smoke deep into his lungs and rubbed at his stubbly cheeks.
“Can’t sleep,” he said, and the smoke rushed back out again. “Not a wink in three goddamned nights,” and she looked at the red welt across the bridge of his nose, the angry red of infection, remembered the cuts from that morning at Spyder’s and never any explanation for how they’d gotten there.
“Bad dreams?” and she wanted to look over her shoulder, then, maybe even wanted to take back the words before he could answer her. But Keith looked at her and laughed, took another drag off the cigarette and blew two streams of smoke from his nostrils. Nothing in his gray eyes she could read.
“I think Cephus has been selling me bad shit, that’s all,” and the moment had passed them by, opportunity missed and no shared confession, no accounting of the horrors that had dogged her sleep for a week blurted out before she could stop herself. No release, no sense of relief afterwards. Only more dread, another weight to carry alone, and regret that the heroin had gotten between them again.
“I’m gonna have to stop buying from that jerkoff before he kills me.”
And she gripped his hand tighter, chewed at her lower lip as she read the graffiti, the writing on the dingy dressing room wall.
“Tonight’s the night,” she said, to him or just to herself, wanted it to be for him but couldn’t be sure if he was even listening. “We’re gonna knock that rep on her ass, and she’ll b
e talking deal before we can get off the stage.”
“Yeah,” Keith said, surprising her, and when he rubbed at the cut on his nose a single drop of pus the color of custard welled up, beaded, and he wiped it away.
“Tonight’s the night,” he said.
The restroom was freezing, nothing on the blue door but a W slashed into the paint and so much cold inside it was hard to breathe. No hot water, and Spyder was still scrubbing at the spot where he’d stamped her hand with ANGEL in invisible ink, had scrubbed it raw already, strange red under the tattoos, and Niki knew that soon it would be bleeding.
“It’s gone,” she said. “You’ve washed it off, Spyder.”
“How do you know?” she said in a vicious tone, her vicious eyes answering Niki from the mirror. “How the hell can you tell? There’s no way to know if it’s still there or not. You couldn’t fucking see it to start with, so how are you supposed to know if it’s gone?”
“It was just ink, Spyder. And ink comes off with soap and water. That’s how the hell I know.”
But Spyder pressed more of the candy-pink soap powder from the dispenser over the sink and began to lather her hands again.
“You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know shit.”
And Niki grabbed Spyder’s hands, slippery wet and living art, got her around the wrists and held on. Skin like ice from the water, and Spyder howled and tried to pull free.
“What don’t I know, huh? That your father was a fucking lunatic and cut your face up when you were a kid? That you think this has something to do with that?”
“Let go of me,” Spyder said, hissed, and Niki clearly heard the threat, the danger wrapping those four words like acid and broken glass. But she didn’t let go.
“What don’t I know, Spyder? What don’t I know?”
Spyder shoved hard, and Niki was stumbling backwards, collided with a wall and her breath whooshed out between her teeth. Her head hit the metal paper towel holder and she almost blacked out, almost let go.
No, she tried to say. No way until you tell me, but there was no air, nothing but pain in her chest and head, nothing to drive the words.
And something else, something glistening in the air like fishing line or piano wire, not there a few seconds before and now crisscrossing everywhere, everything, strung through the air like taut and silver tinsel, draping the black stalls and collecting in drifts on the floor. And then Spyder body-slammed her against the wall again.
Silk like spun razors, like steel and slicing thread.
Niki gasped, fish gasp, useless attempt to breathe, and released Spyder’s left hand, tangled her fingers in dreads and sidestepped before she smacked Spyder’s forehead into the wall. And then they were both falling, sinking to their knees, Niki’s arms wrapped tightly around Spyder, Spyder sobbing loud and jagged and blood on her face again. What Niki might have seen hanging in the air a second before was gone, had never been there, nothing now but the weak light above the sink and the sounds of the water still gurgling from the tap and Spyder sobbing like a broken child.
Niki struggled to fill her lungs again.
“You’re not fucking chasing me away,” she croaked, finally. “Not like that.”
Something settled lightly on her neck, weightless presence and nettle sting, and Niki absently brushed it away, fought for another precious mouthful of oxygen and the stink of piss and toilet deodorizers.
“You’re going to tell me, and then I’m going to understand.”
Through her tears, Spyder said only one thing, over and over again, a name, and it wasn’t Niki’s.
Heaven was a single long room, a cavernous rectangle of naked stone walls on three sides and the fourth painted with a mural of blue sky and cotton-white clouds, hardwood floor and the rafters overhead. The bar at one end and the stage way off at the other, two or three times as big as the stage at Dr. Jekyll’s; Spyder and Niki sat with Claude and Theo on rickety bar stools, watching the show over all the heads and waving arms. Spyder couldn’t drink alcohol, because of her medication, and so they both nursed flat Cokes in plastic cups while Theo and Claude drank cough-syrup colored mixtures of cranberry juice and vodka.
Niki’s head still hurt and Spyder had an ugly goose-egg bump on her forehead, a little cut that had bled like something serious; they could both have concussions, she kept thinking, or worse. Niki told Claude she’d slipped on a wet spot on the bathroom floor and when Spyder tried to catch her, they’d both fallen.
“I didn’t used to be such a klutz,” she said, and Spyder had looked the other way.
“Maybe you could sue,” he’d said, not helpful at all, and Niki shrugged and nodded. “Maybe so,” she’d replied.
Seven Deadlies turned out to be goth, eight white-faced boys and girls in gauzy black, guitars and drums and a cello, creepysoft renditions of “House of the Rising Sun” and a couple of Leonard Cohen songs before they’d drifted on to louder, ragged rock, but everything covers.
“Wake up, dead babies,” Theo sneered in a thrumming quiet space between songs. “It can’t be 1985 for ever.”
TranSister was earsplitting grrrl grunge-metal that trebled the pain in Niki’s head, each song separated from the last only by the grace of the singer’s mike-shouted obscenities and diatribes against punker boys and pro-lifers. Halfway through their set, she unzipped her jeans and pulled out a two-foot rubber dildo and let it hang there between her legs, swinging like an elephant’s trunk while she gyrated to the guitarist’s grind and wail. And all Theo had said between two sips of her red drink was, “These chicks have issues,” and she and Claude had laughed.
3.
Daria stood in the darkness behind the stage, counting seconds and clutching her bass like something blessed, talisman or fetish, teddy bear or lover or crucifix, waiting as TranSister thrashed their way through an encore. Keith was right behind her, smoking, comforting presence despite himself, and Mort, drumming nervously along with the band, his sticks on the black wall.
And none of this seemed as important as it should, she knew, hadn’t since that morning on Cullom Street, the morning they’d taken Spyder home; the urgency, her scalding ambition that permitted precedence to nothing and no one, was slipping away, deserting her when she needed it most. The fire that she’d used to keep them all in line, working and dreaming and creeping steadily toward this point, this opportunity or one like it.
It was nothing she could explain, even if she’d tried, to herself or anyone else, no more than she could explain why she’d started jumping at shadows, why she’d bought a night-light (Donald Duck in his blue sailor’s hat) and slept with it burning. When she slept.
Her stomach made a sound like air in old plumbing.
Stiff Kitten was the second band, so they’d gotten one free plate of supper each, greasy yellow rice and stale tortillas, dry black beans and drier strips of chicken, from the kitchen behind the bar. The headliners got as much as they wanted, and the two bottom bands were left to fend for themselves. Daria, Keith, and Mort had carried their sagging plates and cans of Coca-Cola and 7Up back to the freezing dressing room and eaten with plastic forks. No conversation, and when Mort flicked a bean at the back of Keith’s head and it stuck there like a rabbit pellet, Keith had only wiped it away and gone back to his own food.
The sound guy had shown up, finally, half an hour late and everyone looking at their watches and grumbling. They’d waited backstage, bundled and shivering, while the headliner finished its check, and then they’d taken the stage, taking direction through the monitors. “Gimme one,” the sound guy said, so they’d played a few chords of “Imperfect,” and Daria couldn’t hear anything but Mort’s kick drum. Keith broke a string, hadn’t had another, and so he’d begged one off Shard’s guitarist.
The last cascade of drums and the crowd and the vocalist for TranSister sneered something through the mike, one last taunt or jibe, before the lights went down. And instruments revolved, bands revolved, and she was climbing the four steps up on
to the stage, second time tonight, but this time for real. This time the crowd surging against the stage and maybe seven or eight security guys between them and the mosh pit, and somewhere out there, Niki Ky and Spyder and Claude, and the Atlantic rep. Daria adjusted her mike stand and looked around, Mort sitting down behind his kit, Keith seeing nothing now but his guitar. And then she looked down at her feet, ratty shoes and the set list taped to matte-black plywood.
“It’s gonna be good,” Keith whispered, leaning close, surprising her again. “It’s gonna be killer.” And he kissed her on the top of the head.
The lights, then, and fresh applause, blue and red gels making violet. Lights of Heaven, she thought and stepped up to the microphone, just one word, “Thanks,” breathed through the black windscreen, before Keith stepped in with the first chords of “Gunmetal Blues,” Mort following softly on his snare and Charleston cymbal. Her fingers, third voice, the steady heartbeat behind it all.
This was one of his songs. Not that they weren’t all part him, varying degrees of him and Daria, but this one was his, picked out one afternoon when Daria had the flu and they had canceled practice. So he’d fixed and sat alone in Baby Heaven, just loving the feel of his fingers on the strings, just glad there was this one thing that was his, this one thing that was so right, so pure, it was almost stronger than the junk, almost clean enough to redeem. The sky outside had been the color of the music in his head, the low clouds moving out before thunder and lightning and he was the rain. He’d played it for Daria, wanting her to add some words, but she’d shaken her head and he’d seen the tears straining in her eyes, holding back, and when she could speak, she’d said, No, no Keith, it’s right—just like this—I’d only fuck it up. So he’d shown her the bass lines in his head, and it had stayed his song.
Following the notes where he knew they’d lead, letting Daria and Mort tag along, and the restless bodies stretching out before them, almost lost in the glare. But he was doing it for himself, no deception there, not like it was any better now than that day on an old sofa in their loft above Storkland, or a hundred times he’d sat on the street and picked it out for Anthony Jones or fucking L.J. or anyone who cared to listen. Just for himself.
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