Silk

CHAPTER NINE

1.

T hey went to Keith’s, because Daria was afraid the cops would spot the van if they stayed anywhere on Morris. A single room a few blocks away, three flights up the carcass of an old office building. His uncle owned the place and was letting Keith live there rent-free, dodging zoning ordinances by pretending he only worked there nights as security. When Keith switched the lights on, they buzzed like drunken wasps, halfhearted fluorescence that made them all look like hung-over zombies.

“Oh Keith,” Theo crooned, sarcasm thick as old honey. “I do love what you’ve done with the place!”

They all followed him inside, Niki and Spyder last, stepped into the room, stark and ugly and soulless, almost as cold as the night outside. Nappy gray-green carpet, water-stained ceiling and walls, big holes punched through the Sheetrock in a dozen places, exposing pink insulation and two-by-fours. Unfurnished, except for a scary-looking mattress in one corner and two metal folding chairs, three bulgy cardboard boxes stuffed with dirty clothes.

“What do you call this, anyway?” Theo asked. “Late Bosnian refugee?”

“Theo, why don’t you just shut the hell up?” and Daria turned around and punched her once, hard, in the shoulder.

Theo flinched and dropped her purse, the flamingo-pink plastic Barbie lunch box, bump to the floor; it popped open and everything inside spilled out onto the sallow carpet.

“Christ, Dar! Fuck you!” and she looked to Mort for defense.

“Just lay off for a little while,” he said, frown deepening, exhaustion and weary a

“Christ,” Theo hissed, “You’re all a bunch of crazy fucking assholes,” rubbing her arm, as she kneeled and began scooping everything back into her purse.

Daria and Niki helped Spyder to one of the chairs. She was limping, still bleeding some from a deep gash above her left eye; dried and congealed blood caked her dreads, crusted and sticky red-brown masking the left side of her face.

“It looks a lot worse than it is, probably,” Keith said again, seventh or eighth time since the parking lot. And for the seventh or eighth time, Spyder nodded, sluggish agreement.

“Can we at least turn the heat up a little?” Niki asked. Spyder had started to shiver, and Niki wondered if she could be going into shock, wondered if she could have lost that much blood, if maybe she was also bleeding somewhere inside.

“Would gladly,” Keith said, dull and jovial grin, “if there was any.” But he pulled a lemon-yellow sleeping bag off the scary mattress and handed it to Niki; there was a dark smear down one side that she hoped was only motor oil.

“Thanks, man,” Spyder mumbled around her swelling lips.

“Don’t mention it,” and he shrugged once, walked back to the mattress and sat down.

Niki unzipped the sleeping bag, wrapped it around Spyder’s black leather shoulders.

“Thanks,” Spyder mumbled.

“We should have taken her to a hospital,” Niki said, and Keith shrugged again.

“Hey, man, it was her call,” and he pulled a pint of Thunderbird from beneath one corner of the mattress, unscrewed the cap and drank deeply from the green bottle.

And there was nothing else left for Niki to say. In the van, Mort had asked Spyder if she wanted a doctor, if they should just drive straight to the UAB emergency room, and Spyder had flatly refused, had insisted she was fine. So Theo had driven them here, instead, had parked the van in the narrow alley around back, had hidden it poorly behind a big blue Dumpster.

Keith offered the bottle to Mort, and he accepted.

“Man, you’re as happy about that whole stupid mess as a pig in piss-warm mud,” Mort said, tilted the bottle of wine at the ceiling and traded a little air for its sweet buzz.

“Did you see the look on that dumb fucker’s face?” and Keith stopped unlacing his boots, twisted his own face into a grotesque and exaggerated mask of anger and surprise, chuckled. “You really laid some heavy juju on that asshole, Spydie. Put the bite on him,” and he took the bottle back from Mort, half-empty now, half-full. Spyder smiled weakly, wan and guarded pride beneath the clotting scars of battle.

“And you got your ass-kicking fix for a few days, didn’t you?” Daria said, vacant reproach, from the room’s only window where she stood alone, watching the snow falling outside.

“Just doin’ my part to keep the blindfolded lady with the scales honest, babe.”

Niki sighed loudly, loud to derail the conversation, loud enough to get everyone’s attention.

“Is there at least someplace I can get some water to clean the blood off her face?” And she could hear the tightness wound around her words, hoped that she sounded as fed up as she felt.

“Down the hall,” Daria said. “There’s a john down the hall. Jesus, it’s really coming down out there.”

“I guess a washcloth or a towel would be too much to hope for,” Niki said.

“I’ve got a handkerchief.” Theo had stuffed everything back into her purse, sat on the ugly carpet beneath a tattered Nirvana poster stuck up with tacks; someone had drawn graceful angel wings, black Magic Marker plumage from Kurt Cobain’s shoulder blades, a cheesy halo over his head. Theo found the handkerchief, actually clean except for a couple of lipstick smudges, and tossed it to Niki.

Niki tucked the sleeping bag tighter around Spyder and went alone to find the john.

The sickly light from Keith’s room petered out on her about halfway down the long hall, and at the very end, a door she couldn’t see and the richer blackness of the stairwell dropping away on her right. The sort of darkness that begins to move, that writhes, if you stare at it too long or too hard. She pushed the door open, felt along the wall until she found the switch. More shitty light.

Tiny closet of cracked tile and yellowed walls, the faint smell of disinfectant and the thicker smell of piss. Two stalls without doors and a dented and empty paper towel dispenser. Niki went to the sink, turned the knob marked H, then waited to see if the water would ever get warm. Her reflection in the cracked mirror over the sink stared back at her, disheveled, wind-chapped cheeks bright in the white-green light. She looked at least as misplaced, as ineffectual, as she felt. Her round face lost in the ruins behind her, broken into glassy pie slices that converged between her tired eyes. She noticed a spot of something dark at one corner of her mouth: a streak of grease from the van, or dirt or…

Blood. Spyder’s blood.

Niki grabbed for the handkerchief, soppy cold, and scrubbed at the stain, and then shame at her horror, that there might be something in Spyder’s blood more dangerous than her own. She dropped the white cloth, plop, back into the rust-stained sink.

The water isn’t ever going to get warm, Niki, not tonight, her pecan-shell eyes said from the broken looking glass, eyes that looked suddenly older than the smooth face they were plugged into, the eyes of someone who ought to know better than to have ever wondered if the water was going to get warm.

What happened back there, Niki?, remembering that moment in the parking lot at Dr. Jekyll’s, something there and then gone again, but something left behind, too. And suddenly the cold in the little restroom seemed to press at her, deep-sea pressure, liquid cold, and she gasped.

A whisper somewhere behind her, from the stalls or the hall outside or right into her ear, something dreamed, maybe, and forgotten on purpose. It isn’t hard to drown, not if that’s what you’re after…

Niki turned off the faucet, quick twist and the water stopped flowing, squeezed out the handkerchief; she left the light in the restroom burning and hurried back to Keith’s apartment.