Silk

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 ru

“Jesus Christ, why don’t we just call the cops?” Theo pleaded, “This one time, Mort, why don’t we please just call 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 go

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.

“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 go

“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.