Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [112]
“They do special shit in there,” he told Niki. “Fetish night and things like that.”
At the end of the passage there was more wrought iron, a spiral staircase winding up and up and a longhaired boy, blond and Niki thought he looked like a misplaced surfer, California tan in Georgia November.
Claude presented his hand, palm down, and surfer boy ran some sort of scanner across it, neon blue light and ANGEL stamped right there on Claude’s skin. Niki next and the same secret message revealed, and then he reached for Spyder’s hand, but she had backed away, stared, eyes wide and her mouth the slightest bit open, gazing into her tattoos.
“What’s wrong, Spyder?” Niki said, soft voice, calming voice. “Is something wrong?” and surfer boy looked annoyed, sighed loudly. Claude was already halfway up the stairs, noisy clanging shoes; he stopped and waited, looked down at them and whatever was happening.
“I don’t want that on my hand,” she said. Niki looked at Spyder’s face, cheeks too pale, the cruciform scar between her eyes angry pink, and Niki understood, click, like revelation or an impossible math problem that you’ve sweated over and then it just makes sense.
“Are you going up or not, ladies?” surfer boy said and waved his glowing scanner at them like a magic wand. “In or out, one way or another.”
“Just a second,” Niki said and smiled, wanted to kick him instead.
“I’ve got to wash it off,” Spyder said, but Niki took her hand and held it tightly.
“It’s just ink,” she said quietly. “That’s all. We’ll wash it off as soon we get upstairs, I swear. We’ll find a restroom and wash it off.”
And she led Spyder past the cruel, unveiling light and they followed Claude up the winding stairway, around and up and around and up, to the landing above. And the third sign set above the third arch, chisel-scarred marble and Paradiso, like the punch line to a dirty joke.
“Where’s a restroom?” Niki asked, and Claude pointed into the shadows on one side of the landing.
“Right over there,” he said, confusion and worry thickening his voice. “You gonna be all right, Spyder?”
“She’ll be fine,” Niki said, smiling, nodding, trying to sound like she believed it. “You go on in, and we’ll catch up, okay?”
Spyder had begun to dry-scrub the back of her hand hard against her jeans.
“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 ennui, and the stickers read DANTE’S, “Stiff Kitten” and the date scrawled underneath with a smeary black Sharpie.
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