Silk

At the top of the hill, Niki stopped, lungs aching, teeth aching from the cold, legs filled with lactic acid knives, sweatsoaked underneath her clothes and Keith’s. And Spyder still ten or twenty yards ahead, the others still twenty or thirty behind. She looked north, back toward downtown, the frozen city paralyzed, cocooned after the storm. Not a car on the roads, hardly anyone else on the sidewalks. The shouts of other people blocks away and everything too white under the low and racing clouds. The wind up here was worse, tore at her clothes, stung her face and made her ears hurt.

Hands on her knees and bent double like she was puking, Niki waited on Daria and the rest.

Two blocks west, they caught up with Spyder, finally, but only because she’d paused to knock snow off the soles of her Docs, slamming one foot and then the other against a telephone pole.

“You’re go

“This is not a fucking forced march,” Daria said; Mort was actually holding Theo up now.

Spyder only looked at them uncomprehendingly, blank disregard, went back to kicking the telephone pole, black rubber against creosote pine.

“Man,” Keith gasped, leaned against convenient chain link, steel division between sidewalk and a smothered church parking lot. “Man, why are we chasin’ this crazy bitch, anyway?” Another pause, another gasp, and “That’s what I’d like someone to tell me.”

“I can make it fine from here,” Spyder said, examining the bottom of one boot. The hardpacked snow she’d kicked off lay all around her feet, molded like weird albino waffles.

Niki ignored her. “Because she could have a concussion for all we know. We at least need to see she gets home all right.”

“Christ,” Mort panted. “She’s in better shape than I am. Look, she’s not even outta breath! Christ.”

“How do you know if you’re freezing to death?” Theo whimpered from his side.

“We can at least get some coffee,” Daria said, “Just one fucking cup of coffee,” and Niki asked, “Where?” then noticed a diner across the street, a Steak and Egg Kitchen squeezed in between an apartment building and a Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut was dark, but inside the Steak and Egg, the lights were on.

“Yeah,” Theo wheezed. “Please? I can’t feel my tongue.”

Niki looked at Spyder, unfathomable urgency burning as cold as frostbite in her eyes, unearthly eyes, and Spyder turned away from her, gazed past and through trees and street signs and houses, at the frosted mountain, half-hidden now in the heavy clouds.

“This ain’t up for debate,” Daria said. “If you want me along, you’ll wait until after I get some coffee and catch my fucking breath.”

“Spyder?” And Niki risked one hand on the back of Spyder’s jacket, leather wet with melted snow, leathery skin as impenetrable as the girl wrapped inside.

“Yeah,” she said and looked back at Niki, and her eyes had changed, the strange silver fire only smoldering ash like dread or regret and nothing much there but exhaustion. “Some coffee would be good.”

“Thank fuck,” Theo muttered, and they followed Daria across the empty, icy street.

The diner was too warm, stifling after the cold, and the grease-haunted air smelled and tasted like all the deep fat ever fried, ghosts of a million sausages, a hundred million eggs. The place looked smaller from the inside, and there was only one other customer, an old and grizzled man at the counter, slurping his coffee noisily from a saucer. They all piled into the booth farthest from the door, scrunched in together: Keith, Daria, and Mort on one side, Niki, Spyder and Theo on the other. A sleepy-looking woman wearing too much makeup took their order, six cups of coffee, a bowl of grits and a side of toast for Mort and Theo.

“We’ll eat it fast, okay?” Mort had said when Niki had started to protest.

The coffee came immediately, black and bitter but fresh, very hot, almost not as bad as Niki had expected. She waited her turn as the sugar was passed around the table, the sweating cream decanter. She folded her hands around the cup to catch the heat, soak it all through her palms and into her bones. Burned her mouth on the first sip, was still blowing at her coffee, when a thin black boy brought the food, grease-stained apron and bones too big, but his face was smooth and pretty, eyebrows plucked and arched and his long hair oiled and tied back in an elaborate bun. A single tear tattooed at one corner of his left eye.

“Hey there, Spyder,” he said, setting down the steaming bowl of grits, a garish yellow margarine pat dissolving on top, and the toast cut into four neat and crusty wedges. Niki had known too many drag queens not to clock him, not to catch the significant flourishes of body and voice, the dozen subtle and flamboyant giveaways. Not to be reminded of Da

Spyder glanced up from her own coffee, the cup she hadn’t even touched, surprise and recognition, some new unease wrinkling her face.

“Oh,” Spyder said and made a nervous half attempt at a smile. “Billy. I didn’t know you were working here.”

“Just ’til Christmas,” he said. “Gotta make me some Santa Claus money, you know. ’Cause the cheap faggots that been comin’ out to see Talulah these days ain’t been tipping for shit, honey.”

“Yeah,” Spyder said.

Billy lingered, serving tray balanced one-handed, head cocked coyly and both dark eyes on Spyder.

“Ain’t you even go

“Yeah,” Spyder said, pointing at each of them as she spoke. “That’s Daria Parker, and that’s Keith, and that’s Mort. Their band plays at Dr. Jekyll’s…”

“Spyder, you know I stay away from them punk-rock places,” Billy said, and to Stiff Kitten, “Nothin’ personal, but you got to be careful. And there ain’t too much careful these days.”

“And this is Niki,” Spyder finished. “This is Billy. He does shows at 21 and some other places.”

“Some other places too scary to mention in polite company, she means,” Billy said and smiled, warm and honest smile. “By the way, Spyder, when Miss Thing come dragging her ass in last night, well, this morning, actually, she was a mess.”

Spyder’s hand bumped her cup, and a little coffee sloshed over the brim and onto the table. “What do you mean, Billy?” she asked.

“I mean, she was absolutely freaked, child. Like she just spent the whole last week on pink hearts and nose-candy. Went and locked herself in her room, and I ain’t seen or heard a peep outta Miss Byron since.”

“I’m sorry,” Spyder said, almost shoved Theo into the floor as she climbed out of the booth. “I have to go home.”

“Spyder,” Niki started. “If you’ll wait just a second,” but Spyder spun around, cut her off with those eyes, bright new flames in there.

“No, Niki, I’m sorry but I have to go home, and I have to go home now.”

And she pushed roughly past Billy, then, and was gone, down the narrow aisle between booths and matching burgundy stools, and the door jingled shut behind her.

Halfway across the Steak and Egg’s parking lot she slipped, one boot skating on the ice hiding slick beneath the snow, and Spyder almost fell. But there was no time left to be cautious, no time for Niki Ky shouting somewhere behind her, had been no time left all morning, all night, but she’d been too dazed to understand, not listening, even in her nightmares; that they would go to her house, into her house, that Byron might be so afraid that he’d try to steal the dream catcher. Destroy it or squirrel it away someplace where she’d never find it, and so Spyder kept moving, left the pavement as soon as she could and stalked across lawns and vacant lots where the footing was a little surer, where the frozen grass and weeds crunched like glass underfoot.