Caitlin Kiernan - Silk

The woman stared at them, at Daria, with her starvation eyes, and after a moment she yelled back, without turning around, yelled, “Goddamn Jehovah’s-fuckin’ Witnesses!”

And the other voice, male boom and rumble, “At night? Well, tell ’em to go the fuck away!”

“You heard the man,” she said. “He won’t say it that nice again.”

“Now, Dar,” and Mort was hauling her backwards, Niki sidestepping quickly to get out of their way.

The door slammed shut, and now the house was as dark and sealed away from the rest of the universe as it had been before. Daria pulled free of Mort and almost tumbled ass-first down the steps.

“What the hell did you think you were doing, Mort?” she demanded, looking back at the closed door.

“Trying to stop you from getting us all killed.”

“You’re so full of shit!”

A red and listing Plymouth crammed full of teenagers, black boys in sunglasses and black knit caps, cruised shark-slow past the van, big white van beached like a lunatic’s whale there against the curb.

“Can we just please get the hell out of here?” Niki asked, heard the fear and exasperation wrestling between her words, fussing over the tattered rags of her resolve.

“We’re already on our way,” Mort said and headed for the Ford. Niki, painfully uncertain, waited for Daria, who stood for one moment more, with fists clenched, staring back at the scarred and defiant house.

And this is the first time that Keith had seen Daria, had laid eyes on her, this muggy summer weeknight in 1993 back when the junk still felt like gold and Dr. Jekyll’s was still the Cave. Barely six months since he’d had that last and grandest fight with Sarah and she’d driven off alone to find her own gilded peace pressed between rails and spinning steel wheels. Without her voice and her fraying scraps of sanity, the weak but vital gravity of her center, Stiff Kitten had come apart, had disintegrated and left him alone with his needles and veins. He’d still picked up occasional solo sets for the money and beer, and Mort had been there, Mort and his sticks and his foot keeping all the time Keith had left. But he’d refused to play the old songs, covered shit by just about anyone else, especially Tom Waits because he figured he couldn’t do the vocals much harm.

And then he’d walked into the Cave one night, needing a fix and not a copper penny in his jeans, no credit, either, hoping that he could wheedle a few drafts out of the skinny albino kid who tended bar on Wednesday nights. And a band had been setting up on the stage, no one he recognized. It had taken him fifteen minutes to sweet-talk one lousy beer, watery Bud in a plastic cup, and then he’d sat, sick and alone in a corner booth, watched past empty tables and wobbly handrails at the steep edge of the pit, across the black moat (dance floor for Techno Tuesdays and mosh-pit hell the rest of the week).

Her hair had been the dirtiest sort of blond back then, and he’d watched her unpack her bass, had tried to remember the name he’d seen on the marquee as he’d come in, red plastic letters that had meant nothing. Wednesday nights were always dead, and there was no one to watch her, no one but him and the bartender with his pink eyes and cornsilk hair. She’d finished tuning and looked toward him, but he was hidden by shadows and the glare of the lights; she’d shaded her eyes with one hand and, to the geeky boy with his too-new guitar and tie-dyed Sonic Youth T-shirt, had said, “Okay, guys. Standing room only tonight.” The geeky boy had laughed, and Keith scrunched down deeper into the shadows, had felt like a hungry cockroach, sipping his shitty beer and watching someone laying out a feast from his kitchen crack.

And then the songs had come one right after the other, no introductions or titles or stupid banter between the singer and her guitarist or drummer. Just her words and her aching voice, like stained glass, beautiful and shattered sound fused together with solder, frozen lead seams binding the deepest reds and clearest cobalt blues.

He’d finished his shitty beer, and for a while there had been only the empty cup, worried between his jonesing fingers. At some point, the albino kid had brought him another, even though he hadn’t asked, but he’d hardly noticed. Had hardly even thought of the pain worming about in every cell of his body, no room for anything but the nameless girl and her nameless band.

A few people straggled in towards the end, goth queers who sat near him in the back and talked loud enough to hear themselves over the music. He’d leaned over to them in the white space between songs, before the very last, and “Why don’t you guys just listen,” he’d said. A fat girl with so much eyeliner she’d looked like a gluttonous raccoon had sneered at him, and then they’d all started talking again.

“Stupid fuckers,” he’d grunted, but they’d ignored him, too infatuated with the patter of their own voices to be bothered by the world.

The last song had been more amazing than all the rest together.

Afterwards, he’d slipped unnoticed into the sour hall behind the stage that led back to the dressing room, the ten-by-four closet where a thousand bands had sweated and smoked and scribbled cryptic messages to each other on the swimming-pool blue walls. Had brushed at his crazy hair with his hands and tried to rub the cloudiness from his eyes. They’d all been there, packed in tight with their instruments and BO, the singer sitting on the floor, putting Band-Aids the phony color of mannequin flesh on her fingers. He’d still been trying to think of something to say, when she’d looked up and seen him, and her eyes had gone big and her mouth had dropped open a little ways.

“Hi,” he’d said, one clumsy word.

“Hi,” she’d said, that voice so much different when she spoke, but still the same voice. “You’re Keith Barry, aren’t you? You used to play with Stiff Kitten.”

“Uh, yeah…”

“Wow,” the Sonic Youth boy said, springing up from a rusty folding chair, hand out like a karate chop. “You guys were fucking killer, man.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks…” and Keith wanted to be somewhere else, out front sipping his charity beer, looking at the empty place where she’d stood on the stage.

“Whatever happened to that chick that sang for you guys, man? God, she was cool.”

“A train ran over her,” Keith said, no emotion left in the words, and the boy’s camera grin had drooped and faded away, the offered hand hanging uncertain between them. The girl on the floor frowned up at him, and he’d sat back down on the scabby chair.

“Can I, uh, can I talk to you?” Keith had asked her then, pointing at the girl with one hand and pulling nervously at the collar of his shirt with the other.

“Sure,” she’d said, getting up, the final Band-Aid wrapped around her right index finger.

And then they’d been walking back down the hall, had paused at the steps that led up to the stage, the way back, and she’d leaned against the wall, thumbs hooked into the pockets of her jeans.

“I’m sorry about Sherman,” she said and looked back the way they’d come. “He isn’t a dork on purpose, not usually.”

“No problem,” he’d said, and then, “Do you guys have a name?”

“You got a cigarette?” she asked, and he’d fumbled at his pockets, but had come back with nothing but an empty pack and a few dry crumbs of tobacco.

“Thanks anyway. Ecstatic Wreck, but that’s just until we think of something better.”

“That’s a pretty cool name,” and he was trying not to show the jitters, the way his hands shook and the cold sweat, wishing his fucking junk-starved body would let him be for five lousy minutes.