Silk

CHAPTER TWELVE

1.

W ham, wham, wham, and Niki woke up from a soft dream of the French Quarter and a girl telling her fortune with an oversized, dog-eared pack of tarot cards, pretty girl in goth whiteface and eyeliner. And this card, she’d said, this card, well, you know this card. Woke up, groggy, and she rubbed her eyes, realized she was cold and the bedspread was gone, and Spyder was gone, nothing left but the sheets.

Wham. Wham.

The rusty old alarm clock on the floor said a quarter past three, and she closed her eyes again. Sunday afternoon; it had been sometime after dawn when she’d finally dozed off, after the long drive back from Atlanta and then sex, good sex even though she’d really been too sleepy.

Wham.

“Spyder?” she called, but no one answered her. “Is that you, Spyder? Christ, what the hell are you doing in there? Hanging pictures?”

She wanted to go back to sleep, wanted the girl in black lace and fishnets on her slender arms to finish the reading, turn over all her cards, wanted to feel the warm Gulf breeze instead of the clinging cold of the bedroom. Wanted the bedspread back and Spyder with it, Spyder warm around her, warm as any tropical evening.

“Spyder?”

Wham. Wham.

“Shit,” and Niki ran her fingers through her hair, shaggy mop she’d been thinking of cutting off short again, kept meaning to ask Spyder if she cared or not. She kicked the sheets away and slipped out of bed, bare feet on the cold floorboards and she looked around for her socks, none to be seen so she just tiptoed, instead. Out of the bedroom and it was even colder in the foyer, tiptoed across to the living room but still no Spyder. The television was on, the sound turned down all the way, silent MTV nonsense, gangsta rap pantomime; she had to pee.

And there was the missing bedspread, a huge white crocheted thing stretched trampoline tight and hanging in the air in the next room, the old dining room full of Spyder’s books; she stopped and rubbed at her eyes again. She could see where two corners had been nailed directly to the wall, big nails driven into the peeling wallpaper and a third corner stretched over to a crooked shelf and held in place with stacks of World Book encyclopedias. The fourth was out of sight, around the corner, wham, wham, and she knew if she stepped out into the middle of the living room she’d see Spyder in there, hammering it to the other wall. But she didn’t, too curious; Niki knew that whatever Spyder was doing, she’d probably stop the second Niki asked.

“Oh,” Spyder would say, “nothing,” so Niki kept her mouth shut and watched.

An instant later and Spyder stepped into view, wearing nothing but the Alien Sex Fiend T-shirt she’d put on after they’d made love, the shirt she slept in a lot but never washed so it always smelled like sweat and patchouli. Spyder was holding a bowling ball, a black bowling ball with red swirls in it, so it sort of looked like she was holding a strange little gas planet, ebony and crimson Neptune; she held it out over the center of the bedspread, set it carefully in the middle. The whole thing sagged with the weight of the bowling ball, sagged in the center until it was only about a foot off the floor, but it didn’t pull loose from the walls; Spyder ducked underneath, then came out the other side and she stacked more encyclopedias to hold up the corner that wasn’t nailed. She didn’t notice Niki, standing alone in the TV glare.

Spyder disappeared, toolbox sounds, and when Niki could see her again, she had a fat black marker in her left hand, a yardstick in her right; she leaned over the bedspread, measured distance, colored careful dots, measured, black on the white cotton here and there, begi

Spyder selected another ball bearing and placed it on the next mark, clack, and she repeated the action over and over, clack, clack, clack, but never twice from the same mark, choosing each bearing and taking care to be sure it started its brief journey toward the center from the next mark in. Sometimes she paused between ball bearings, paused and stared at the bedspread, out the window and then back. Once or twice she stopped long enough to measure the shrinking space between the floor and the bowling ball with her yardstick. Spyder chewed at her bottom lip, something urgent in her blue eyes.

Niki’s legs were getting tired, and she wanted to sit down, too afraid of interrupting to even move. Her kneecaps were starting to ache. She wanted to say, “What the hell are you doing, Spyder?” What anyone else would have said right at the start, but then she wouldn’t have seen even this much, and never mind if it didn’t make any sense, that didn’t mean it wasn’t important. And if Spyder wouldn’t tell her what was going on, all she could do was ignore her stiffening legs, be patient, watch, figure it all out for herself. Like a puzzle, like a child’s dot-to-dot. Draw the lines and there’s the picture, Mickey Mouse or a bouquet of flowers or whatever had driven Spyder crazy.

There weren’t many bearings left in the tub; and Spyder had to lean way over to set them on the marks now, hardly any time after she let go before the clack of metal against hard plastic. The bedspread was almost touching the floor, and Niki could see where the weave was begi

The last ball bearing glinted in Spyder’s hand, dull reflection of the sun through the window, and there was a slow ripping sound. Spyder grabbed something off the floor, a moment before Niki saw it was a roll of duct tape, used her teeth to tear off a strip and she was reaching for the rift opening beneath the bowling ball when the bedspread tore all the way open, dropping everything out the bottomside. The bowling ball fell three or four inches, thud and barely missed crushing Spyder’s fingers. Niki felt the vibration where she stood watching as the ball bearings spilled out and rolled away in every direction.

“Fuck,” Spyder whispered, and then she sat silently beneath the ruined bedspread and stared at the hole, the last ball bearing forgotten in her fingers.

One of the silver balls rolled into the living room and bumped to a stop against Niki’s foot. She bent down and picked it up, not caring now if Spyder saw her or not, knowing whatever was happening had happened. One word, printed around the circumference of the bearing, one word that didn’t mean anything to Niki, but she thought maybe she was starting to understand the whole thing, the dot-to-dot secret, the marks Spyder had drawn for her, and she wondered what was written on that last one, the one Spyder still held. And then she realized that Spyder was crying, very softly, and went to her.