Silk

“Come on,” Niki said, and Claude watched them step free of the dazzling light spilling out of Heaven and disappear into the gloomy spot where the women’s room was. After a few seconds, he went in without them.

They’d emptied the van, everything lugged clank and crash up the black stairs, black carpet and black walls and two narrow flights up to Heaven’s back door. Each branded with garish orange stickers by the security goon guarding the door, Gabriel or Michael in a muscle shirt and nothing on his face but pure and frosty e

Then the goon had grumbled that they had one too many guests on the list, only three allowed for the second band, not four. And so Mort and Keith had told him Theo was their harmonica player. The goon had shaken his head, no dice, and so Theo had begun to dig through her purse.

“It’s in here somewhere, really,” but she’d found nothing but a dented old kazoo, and he’d said what the hell and given her a sticker, anyway, had stamped their four left hands. And then they’d found out the sound man was going to be late, and Theo had broken a nail and spent fifteen minutes bitching about it. Three dressing rooms behind the stage, and only the one for the headliner had a heater.

As typical a load-in as they could have asked for.

Keith was sitting alone in a total loss of an arm chair, sandwiched between his guitar and the wobbly flight case with Mort’s drums inside, and Mort and Theo had gone to find Niki and Spyder and Claude.

He looked sick, and not just junk sick; Daria knew that look well enough. She lit a cigarette and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said and held her hand.

“You go

“Can’t sleep,” he said, and the smoke rushed back out again. “Not a wink in three goddamned nights,” and she looked at the red welt across the bridge of his nose, the angry red of infection, remembered the cuts from that morning at Spyder’s and never any explanation for how they’d gotten there.

“Bad dreams?” and she wanted to look over her shoulder, then, maybe even wanted to take back the words before he could answer her. But Keith looked at her and laughed, took another drag off the cigarette and blew two streams of smoke from his nostrils. Nothing in his gray eyes she could read.

“I think Cephus has been selling me bad shit, that’s all,” and the moment had passed them by, opportunity missed and no shared confession, no accounting of the horrors that had dogged her sleep for a week blurted out before she could stop herself. No release, no sense of relief afterwards. Only more dread, another weight to carry alone, and regret that the heroin had gotten between them again.

“I’m go

And she gripped his hand tighter, chewed at her lower lip as she read the graffiti, the writing on the dingy dressing room wall.

“Tonight’s the night,” she said, to him or just to herself, wanted it to be for him but couldn’t be sure if he was even listening. “We’re go

“Yeah,” Keith said, surprising her, and when he rubbed at the cut on his nose a single drop of pus the color of custard welled up, beaded, and he wiped it away.

“Tonight’s the night,” he said.

The restroom was freezing, nothing on the blue door but a W slashed into the paint and so much cold inside it was hard to breathe. No hot water, and Spyder was still scrubbing at the spot where he’d stamped her hand with ANGEL in invisible ink, had scrubbed it raw already, strange red under the tattoos, and Niki knew that soon it would be bleeding.

“It’s gone,” she said. “You’ve washed it off, Spyder.”

“How do you know?” she said in a vicious tone, her vicious eyes answering Niki from the mirror. “How the hell can you tell? There’s no way to know if it’s still there or not. You couldn’t fucking see it to start with, so how are you supposed to know if it’s gone?”

“It was just ink, Spyder. And ink comes off with soap and water. That’s how the hell I know.”

But Spyder pressed more of the candy-pink soap powder from the dispenser over the sink and began to lather her hands again.

“You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know shit.”

And Niki grabbed Spyder’s hands, slippery wet and living art, got her around the wrists and held on. Skin like ice from the water, and Spyder howled and tried to pull free.

“What don’t I know, huh? That your father was a fucking lunatic and cut your face up when you were a kid? That you think this has something to do with that?”

“Let go of me,” Spyder said, hissed, and Niki clearly heard the threat, the danger wrapping those four words like acid and broken glass. But she didn’t let go.

“What don’t I know, Spyder? What don’t I know?”

Spyder shoved hard, and Niki was stumbling backwards, collided with a wall and her breath whooshed out between her teeth. Her head hit the metal paper towel holder and she almost blacked out, almost let go.

No, she tried to say. No way until you tell me, but there was no air, nothing but pain in her chest and head, nothing to drive the words.

And something else, something glistening in the air like fishing line or piano wire, not there a few seconds before and now crisscrossing everywhere, everything, strung through the air like taut and silver tinsel, draping the black stalls and collecting in drifts on the floor. And then Spyder body-slammed her against the wall again.

Silk like spun razors, like steel and slicing thread.

Niki gasped, fish gasp, useless attempt to breathe, and released Spyder’s left hand, tangled her fingers in dreads and sidestepped before she smacked Spyder’s forehead into the wall. And then they were both falling, sinking to their knees, Niki’s arms wrapped tightly around Spyder, Spyder sobbing loud and jagged and blood on her face again. What Niki might have seen hanging in the air a second before was gone, had never been there, nothing now but the weak light above the sink and the sounds of the water still gurgling from the tap and Spyder sobbing like a broken child.

Niki struggled to fill her lungs again.

“You’re not fucking chasing me away,” she croaked, finally. “Not like that.”

Something settled lightly on her neck, weightless presence and nettle sting, and Niki absently brushed it away, fought for another precious mouthful of oxygen and the stink of piss and toilet deodorizers.

“You’re going to tell me, and then I’m going to understand.”

Through her tears, Spyder said only one thing, over and over again, a name, and it wasn’t Niki’s.

Heaven was a single long room, a cavernous rectangle of naked stone walls on three sides and the fourth painted with a mural of blue sky and cotton-white clouds, hardwood floor and the rafters overhead. The bar at one end and the stage way off at the other, two or three times as big as the stage at Dr. Jekyll’s; Spyder and Niki sat with Claude and Theo on rickety bar stools, watching the show over all the heads and waving arms. Spyder couldn’t drink alcohol, because of her medication, and so they both nursed flat Cokes in plastic cups while Theo and Claude drank cough-syrup colored mixtures of cranberry juice and vodka.

Niki’s head still hurt and Spyder had an ugly goose-egg bump on her forehead, a little cut that had bled like something serious; they could both have concussions, she kept thinking, or worse. Niki told Claude she’d slipped on a wet spot on the bathroom floor and when Spyder tried to catch her, they’d both fallen.

“I didn’t used to be such a klutz,” she said, and Spyder had looked the other way.