Silk

“No, Mort. I need to see her. With my eyes. Just a simple yes or no, okay? I think maybe it’s important.”

“I think maybe Mort hit you a lot harder than he intended,” Theo said, and Mort glanced back at her, a

“‘Important’ how, Dar?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, it’s probably nothing, okay,” and she thought about Walter, again, had been thinking about him a lot the last couple of hours: rumpled and bleary-eyed, shivering in the alley behind Keith’s, fear like fresh scars on his pale, thin face. The things he’d said, the things she hadn’t let him say. “But I need to get some rest, and I don’t think I can sleep until I know Niki’s all right.”

“After that scene between you and Spyder last night, it just doesn’t seem like such a bright-”

“Please, Mort. I swear I’m not go

Mort rubbed at his forehead above his eyebrows, like he was getting a headache. “It’s not you I’m worried about, Dar,” and he gave the ignition another try. This time the shitmobile belched and grumbled, carburetor hack and piston hem, and the engine growled to life.

“Yeah, sure.” He sighed. “Why the hell not,” and Mort released the parking brake and wrestled the stick into reverse.

“Thanks, Mortie.” And she leaned over, hugged him, little kiss against his stubbly cheek.

“Yippee,” Theo groaned behind them, “Yippee-fucking-ki-yay.” The van lurched backwards, tried to stall, but Mort pushed the clutch down to the floor. And Daria watched the beam of the headlights and the numbers painted on the wall, the banks of phony jaundiced daytime overhead, until they were out of the parking deck and under the city night again.

2.

Spyder sat on a wobbly stool by the bedroom window, no light but a candle on the floor, and she listened to the gentle, restless sounds of Niki sleeping, asleep for hours now, and Spyder had noticed that she’d been taking pills from her Klonopin script for days. Traffic sounds from outside, another place too far off to be of consequence anymore, and the noises from the basement, and the noises from the yard. Her face hurt, swollen lips, black eye, and another pain, inside, pain that meant more than broken skin and bruises.

“I don’t think I can stay much longer,” Niki had said that afternoon, after they’d fucked. “I can’t take much more of this.”

“What do you want?” Spyder had said, knowing the answer, playing the game as if she didn’t.

“I want you to get help. I want you to tell your doctor what you told me. I want you to tell her about the body you hid in the fucking basement.”

“Or you’ll leave.”

“I love you, Spyder. It’s not what I want.”

And then she’d rolled over, and Spyder had gotten up and gone to piss. When she’d come back, Niki was already asleep, so Spyder had sat down on the stool, thinking about the hospital and its sterile, numbing tortures, idiot questions from people who got paid to listen. And then she’d thought about being left alone in the house, alone with the house, and herself, everyone dead or gone away somewhere else. Nothing left but long days and nights and memories.

Bitch, I’m not done with you, bitch, her father said, mocking, laughing behind the closet door. What you’ve told her, what she knows, and she’s still going anyway.

“I figured you out, too,” she said and then didn’t say anything else, nothing to be gained from talking with ghosts or voices that weren’t there, remembrances like broken toys she couldn’t put away, talking to herself and answering herself. Spyder dug down into her jeans pocket for the last ball bearing, the one there hadn’t been time for before the bedspread ripped open and spilled her life onto the floor. The one she’d written Niki’s name on, and she held it in her fist. Held it tightly, and Niki stirred, eyelid flutter and she pushed back the covers, rolled over so Spyder could see her breasts, perfect, small, firm, the silver ring through one nipple and the scar across the other.

If you died now, it wouldn’t matter. And her father was trying hard to sound like he had before he’d started seeing angels. If you’d died when you were supposed to, we’d have both gone up to Heaven a long time ago. But if you die now, at least no one else will get hurt.

She won’t get hurt.

Spyder opened her hand and held the ball bearing up so he could see it through the closet door. Faint steel glimmer in the candlelight and a sound like autumn crumbling or the smell of tears, and he hissed, They won’t let me come without you, Lila; when she answered, Spyder spoke low, trying not to wake Niki, just as careful to find the threat.

“Does it scare you, Daddy?” and she gri

And when she was sure he had gone, had slipped like cold air back between the cracks, sifted down through termite rot and dust and rusting nails, Spyder laid the ball bearing on the windowsill, making sure it wouldn’t roll off.

Like a totem animal, Niki had said, like something Robin would have said, something Robin had understood. And it didn’t matter if it was factual, because it was true, whether she’d chosen them or they’d chosen her. Somewhere all those fine distinctions had been lost, her and them, enemy and friend and lover, past and present, no difference anymore and no one holding on to the leash.

I love you, Spyder, she’d said, and It’s not what I want. The last straw in that contradiction, the last silver ball before the bedspread had torn, and the rage was coming, rage that had imprisoned Robin and Byron and Walter in her hell under the floor, the rage that swirled around her, storm rage, virus rage, and she knew it had touched Keith Barry, too. And now there was no distinction, the rage and the world, and soon it would touch the girl sleeping on her bed, the girl who hadn’t run yet, never mind what she might do someday. Spyder’s rage like the vengeance of her dead father’s god, as bottomless, as all-consuming, as blind, and it would take Niki apart, body and mind and soul.

Spyder got up from the stool, went to the bed, and she kissed Niki lightly on one cheek, careful not to wake her. And then she began to unbutton her jeans.

3.

Mort drove slowly to the dead end of Cullom Street, pulled the shitmobile into Spyder’s dirt driveway, and then they sat in the van, watching the dark house, motor still ru

“They’re already in bed,” Theo said, and Mort looked at Daria, tired what-next resignation on his face, too tired to argue. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “You guys wait here. There’s no need for us all three to go tromping up there.”

“Are you sure, Dar? You messed her up pretty good. I expect she’s still pissed off.”

“I’ll be right back. I’m just go

Mort switched off the headlights, left the engine idling in neutral, and Theo grunted, disbelief and indignation. “Daria, if you go apologizing to that bitch, I ought to kick your ass, on general fucking principle.” But Daria’s door was already open, the cold getting into the van and she said, “I’d like to see you try sometime, girl’o,” and the door banged closed again.

So much different than the last time she’d stood in Spyder’s yard, that day in the snow and everything so vanilla-icing white, that day with Keith; a sprawling shadow garden now, bare-tree shadows and unkempt shrub shadows, a million weedy shadows crowded around her feet. Standing at the edge of the porch, she looked back but couldn’t see Mort, nothing but more dark behind the windshield. And at the farthest corner of her vision, sudden movement, and she faced the porch again, stared into the junk shadows waiting for her and nothing else.