Silk

When Spyder had finished with the windows, Niki watched as she mixed epoxy and smeared the honey-colored goo along the top and sides and bottom edges of the door, made sure the glue filled the old lock and the newer latch bolt before she shut the door for the last time. And then fifty-seven three-pe

“I’ll paint the boards later,” Spyder said. “To match the walls.”

And then she turned and stared at the neat stacks Niki had made of her belongings. While Spyder had been working, she’d seemed more alert, more alive, than Niki had seen her since the night of the storm. But now that life, driving urgency and purpose, was draining away, quick withdrawal and slack-faced again, the face that Niki had come to think of as a mask woven of shock and the antipsychotics. A mask growing out of Spyder’s flesh and so hard to fight through; now Spyder was exhausted, and the mask was back, shadowing the girl inside. What she’d had to do was finished, and now she could stop fighting the pain and the drugs.

And then Spyder stooped down, something held up so Niki could see. And yeah, Niki remembered picking that free of the glass, a dream catcher; had thought it might be something Spyder cared about. A couple of the strands that made its wood-framed web had broken, and Spyder began to laugh, just a soft chuckle at first, but then louder, and Niki saw the tears at the corners of her eyes. For a while, Spyder just laughed and cried and then, when she was done, she used her hammer to pin the dream catcher to the plywood she’d nailed over the bedroom door.

Robin’s funeral was something else that had come and gone, of course, had slipped past una

And then, their first night back and Niki too tired to notice how hard the floor was through the quilts and blankets she’d spread out for them on the living room floor, the phone had begun to ring.

“I’ll get it,” she volunteered, reluctant to break their embrace, to leave the sweaty, safe smell of Spyder, but Spyder was already up, already on her way to the kitchen. Niki lay still, listening, but nothing else from Spyder after “Hello” and “Yeah.” Just her medusa silhouette in the kitchen doorway, construction-paper cutout framed and backlit with dim moonlight through the windows. Spyder saying nothing, standing perfectly still, as Niki’s heart beat like a slow second hand, five minutes, ten minutes, and finally Niki got up.

“Who is it, Spyder?” she asked, feeling like it was none of her business, hoping Spyder would tell her so. But Spyder said nothing, held the receiver pressed to her ear and stared into the dark kitchen.

“Spyder,” and the house was so quiet that Niki could hear the angry voice on the other end of the line, speaking hard and fast, and she reached out and took the phone from Spyder, no resistance.

“Hello?” Niki said, and the voice paused a moment and then, “Who are you?” it asked.

“A friend of Spyder’s,” Niki said. Freed of the weight of the phone and the voice flowing through it like acid, Spyder sank into one of the kitchen chairs and laid her head against the tabletop.

“Yeah, I bet you are,” the voice said, a man, maybe drunk, from the way he talked, and Niki trying to sound brave and strong, “Tell me who you are or I’m going to hang up,” firm, watching Spyder at the table.

“Robin’s father,” he said. “And what the fuck difference does it make to you? I guess you’re her replacement, though, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry about your daughter,” Niki said, straining for calm. “I’m going to hang up now.”

“Don’t you dare fucking hang up on me, goddammit. I’m not-” and Niki set the receiver back in its cradle on the wall. Within seconds, the phone was ringing again, shrill and angry as the man’s voice had been, and she followed the wire to the jack above the baseboard, an old style she couldn’t simply disco

“Make it stop now,” Spyder whispered, so low Niki almost didn’t hear her over the ringing. “Please, Niki.”

Niki grasped the cord, wrapped it tightly around her hand and tugged once, hard but not hard enough, jerked again and the wire snapped free of the wall, the phone silenced in mid-ring.

“Thank you,” Spyder said, and Niki looked down at the severed phone cord dangling from her hand.

“I didn’t kill her, Niki. I wasn’t even here,” Spyder said, “I was with you,” and Niki dropped the cord to the floor. “I know,” she said, nothing else she could imagine saying that wouldn’t sound trite or stupid, and then she led Spyder back to their pallet.

After breakfast, fried slices of Spam and scrambled eggs, Spyder’s so ru

“Do you want to live here?” Spyder asked, and Niki stopped drying the dish, one of Spyder’s multitude of mismatched china plates. Plate back into the sudsy water sink, and she laid the dish towel aside, stood with her back still turned to Spyder.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” she lied. “I didn’t think you should be alone right now, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Spyder asked, and Niki stared out the dirty kitchen window, steamed over and the tangled backyard soft-filtered, tall grass winter brown and untended shrubs blurred together between the trees.

“No,” she said, “that’s not all.”

“Oh. Yeah. I didn’t think so,” and Niki had no idea what came next, what her line was, how to say what she thought she wanted to say. Terrified of the words themselves, of saying something she might want to take back or have no choice but to deny further along, time-release lie. She’d been going somewhere, a long time ago now it seemed, that wild flight west, and maybe she could have lost herself and the sorrow somewhere uncluttered, deserts or prairies, all sky and clean wind; someplace with a Spanish name, Los Angeles or San Francisco, maybe, and now she was here, instead, with Spyder Baxter. Birmingham, Alafuckingbama, and she hadn’t even made it as far west as New Orleans.

What’cha go

“I’m not an easy person to live with, bein’ crazy and all,” Spyder said. “That’s why Robin never moved in with me, you know?” and that was the first time she’d said the dead girl’s name since they’d kneeled together in the pelting snow and Spyder had screamed it over and over again at the falling sky while Niki held onto her.

Go

“But if you want to, you know, if you want to, I’d like that, Niki. I just want you to know I’d like that a lot. And it ain’t ’cause I need nobody to take care of me, or just because I don’t want to be alone.”

Grab this brass ring, Niki, because there might not be another. Or. Let this distract you and you may never know… More than that, though. Irony like an evil joke she was playing on herself, that she’d run from Da

“I’m not afraid of being alone,” Spyder said almost whispering.

“I am,” Niki said, not turning around, had to say this fast before she chickened out. “I would very much like to stay with you for a while, Spyder,” and the sex they’d had the night before, furious and gentle, and the doubt like hungry maggots. But it was out. She’d said it, had decided, and behind her Spyder breathed in loudly.