Silk

Spyder didn’t flinch when Niki touched the wet handkerchief to the cut on her forehead. It was deep enough to need stitches; Niki was afraid that if she rubbed too hard at the dried blood, she’d see bone underneath. She dabbed, gentle as she could, and fresh blood welled up along the half-moon slash, ugly loose flap of meat as wide as her thumb.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that’s gotta hurt.”

“Yeah,” Spyder said, soft chuckle, “Like a motherfucker.”

Now Keith and Daria were together on the mattress, Mort on the floor next to them, the Thunderbird just about gone. Theo had picked through the boxes of clothing, had come up with a couple of raggedy fla

“You’d be a lot warmer over here,” Mort had said, had patted the floor beside him, and she’d told him to go fuck himself, that she’d have been warmer in her own goddamn apartment.

Niki had barely begun, and already the handkerchief was filthy crimson and she was just smearing the same blood and grime around and around. She considered going back to the restroom, rinsing it out and starting over again, but the thought of another stroll down that hallway made her shiver, the thought of her reflection in that fractured mirror. Instead, she tried wiping it clean on the carpet, silently dared Keith to object; he didn’t, of course.

“You don’t have to do this,” Spyder said quietly.

“I just wish you’d let us take you to a doctor.”

Now there was a bloody splotch on the carpet, and the handkerchief was still a useless mess. Niki looked around the room, spotted a crumpled Taco Bell bag nearby.

“Just a second,” she said, and yes, there were paper napkins inside, only one grease-stained from the half-eaten and mummified burrito hidden at the bottom. And there were at least a dozen other fast food bags scattered around the room. She dampened a corner of the napkin with her tongue, dry paper taste and a hint of refried beans, forcing herself not to think too much about germs, infection passed either way. She wiped at the crust between Spyder’s eyebrows.

“Now we’re in business,” she said and smiled.

The scabby blood peeled away like old paint, and there was the scar, uneven cruciform, white and faded pucker but still perfectly recognizable for what it was.

Niki did not mean to pause, or stare, or allow the small gasp past her lips.

“Wow,” Spyder said, more curiosity than concern. “Is it that bad?” And she raised her fingers and touched the spot between her eyebrows. “Oh,” she said, and nothing then, for a moment, as her fingertips moved over the scar, as if she were reading an old note to herself in Braille, private significance in the raised flesh.

“That,” she said. “I guess I should have warned you. It’s real old.”

“But how,” Niki began, stopped herself, knew she’d already done something, enough, wrong.

“I was a little kid,” as if that explained anything, everything, and Spyder continued rubbing her fingers over the spot as though she hadn’t thought of it in years, fingers rediscovering the intersecting ribbons of scar tissue.

“I’m sorry,” Niki said, shivering, thinking again how terribly cold it was in the “apartment,” not wanting to think about the cross sliced into Spyder’s forehead.

“I was a little kid,” Spyder said again and smiled this time, sheepish it’s-no-big-whup smile. And outside something big and noisy, a garbage truck maybe, growled along the slickening street.

“Most of the time I just forget about it.”

Niki said nothing, wet a clean corner of the napkin and began scrubbing the blood from Spyder’s cheeks.

When the wine was gone, Daria had turned off the lights, curled up with Keith on the bare mattress. Mort was still sitting beside them, slumped against the wall, head back and mouth open, snoring. Id, ego, and superego of Stiff Kitten, drunk and unconscious and, as far as Niki Ky could tell, content with the world. Theo had drifted off into her own fitful sleep beneath Kurt Cobain’s protective glare, anything but content.

Niki had managed to get the worst of the blood off Spyder’s face, found a handful of bruises and scrapes. When Spyder had complained that the metal chair was freezing her ass, first sign of complaint and really more of an observation, they’d sat together on the floor. Huddled together in the window-framed square of light, watching the snow. They talked, quiet talk so they wouldn’t wake anyone: Niki telling the story of her trip from the Carolinas, the death of the Vega and how she’d met Daria, and then, Spyder telling Niki about her tattoos and Weird Trappings.

This is what it would be like to live inside one of those winter paperweight things, Niki thought, picturing the Christmas flurry of fake snow and water, trying to listen to what Spyder was saying. Someone picks up your whole little world and shakes the holy fuck out of it, and then you just sit there in your plastic cottage and watch the fallout.

She sneezed, then, loud and wet spray, and Spyder wrapped the sleeping bag around them both. It smelled only slightly less than Spyder herself, but the hoarded body heat, the shelter from a thousand drafts, was almost irresistible. And the snow was coming down harder, if there’d been any change at all in the storm in the last hour. Clumpy white flakes pelting the window, reducing the view of the building next door, grainy brickwork and fire-escape zigzag.

Niki yawned, growing even groggier in the sudden warmth.

“Sleepy?” Spyder asked, and Niki thought maybe she heard disappointment, disappointment or guarded alarm.

Niki shook her head, no, not at all, but then she yawned again.

“Maybe just a little,” she said, and “You too?”

“No. I can’t sleep without my meds.”

Something else Niki wouldn’t ask about, not now, better to watch the snow, wait and see if perhaps things would explain themselves further along.

“I didn’t know I wouldn’t be going home tonight,” Spyder said.

Niki nodded, looked over at Keith and Daria, twined in each other’s arms and legs, Mort alone.

“Hell’s slumber party,” she said.

“Yeah,” and Spyder shut her eyes a moment, opened them very slowly, a drawn out, predatory blink.

And through her weariness, Niki was amazed that she felt this comfortable so close to Spyder, someone she’d never even seen just a few hours earlier. More than an absence of discomfort, the pit-of-her-stomach homesickness all but faded away, the dread gone with it, mostly. She felt something like safe, something like peace. And she thought again about whatever they’d exchanged in the parking lot, whatever she might have imagined they’d exchanged; frightened at the possibility of it having been real, cautioning herself that it might have been nothing at all. Contradiction all around.

“You must be pretty pissed,” she said, praying her voice wouldn’t break the spell, the calm inside. “Your friends ru

Spyder closed her eyes again, and Niki marveled at her eyelashes, so black after her white hair, long and delicate. Spyder frowned, eyes still closed.

“That was just Byron,” she said, and Niki remembered the terrified face behind the wheel of the Toyota, the boy in his velvet frock coat that she’d watched across Dr. Jekyll’s. “He does that kinda shit. It doesn’t mean anything,” so much stress on that last part before she opened her eyes again. “You don’t count on Byron in a fight, that’s all. I guess he just freaked out.”

“You’re not mad at him?”

And the frown softened, a little of the tension in her face melting away.