Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [115]
It was nothing she could explain, even if she’d tried, to herself or anyone else, no more than she could explain why she’d started jumping at shadows, why she’d bought a night-light (Donald Duck in his blue sailor’s hat) and slept with it burning. When she slept.
Her stomach made a sound like air in old plumbing.
Stiff Kitten was the second band, so they’d gotten one free plate of supper each, greasy yellow rice and stale tortillas, dry black beans and drier strips of chicken, from the kitchen behind the bar. The headliners got as much as they wanted, and the two bottom bands were left to fend for themselves. Daria, Keith, and Mort had carried their sagging plates and cans of Coca-Cola and 7Up back to the freezing dressing room and eaten with plastic forks. No conversation, and when Mort flicked a bean at the back of Keith’s head and it stuck there like a rabbit pellet, Keith had only wiped it away and gone back to his own food.
The sound guy had shown up, finally, half an hour late and everyone looking at their watches and grumbling. They’d waited backstage, bundled and shivering, while the headliner finished its check, and then they’d taken the stage, taking direction through the monitors. “Gimme one,” the sound guy said, so they’d played a few chords of “Imperfect,” and Daria couldn’t hear anything but Mort’s kick drum. Keith broke a string, hadn’t had another, and so he’d begged one off Shard’s guitarist.
The last cascade of drums and the crowd and the vocalist for TranSister sneered something through the mike, one last taunt or jibe, before the lights went down. And instruments revolved, bands revolved, and she was climbing the four steps up onto the stage, second time tonight, but this time for real. This time the crowd surging against the stage and maybe seven or eight security guys between them and the mosh pit, and somewhere out there, Niki Ky and Spyder and Claude, and the Atlantic rep. Daria adjusted her mike stand and looked around, Mort sitting down behind his kit, Keith seeing nothing now but his guitar. And then she looked down at her feet, ratty shoes and the set list taped to matte-black plywood.
“It’s gonna be good,” Keith whispered, leaning close, surprising her again. “It’s gonna be killer.” And he kissed her on the top of the head.
The lights, then, and fresh applause, blue and red gels making violet. Lights of Heaven, she thought and stepped up to the microphone, just one word, “Thanks,” breathed through the black windscreen, before Keith stepped in with the first chords of “Gunmetal Blues,” Mort following softly on his snare and Charleston cymbal. Her fingers, third voice, the steady heartbeat behind it all.
This was one of his songs. Not that they weren’t all part him, varying degrees of him and Daria, but this one was his, picked out one afternoon when Daria had the flu and they had canceled practice. So he’d fixed and sat alone in Baby Heaven, just loving the feel of his fingers on the strings, just glad there was this one thing that was his, this one thing that was so right, so pure, it was almost stronger than the junk, almost clean enough to redeem. The sky outside had been the color of the music in his head, the low clouds moving out before thunder and lightning and he was the rain. He’d played it for Daria, wanting her to add some words, but she’d shaken her head and he’d seen the tears straining in her eyes, holding back, and when she could speak, she’d said, No, no Keith, it’s right—just like this—I’d only fuck it up. So he’d shown her the bass lines in his head, and it had stayed his song.
Following the notes where he knew they’d lead, letting Daria and Mort tag along, and the restless bodies stretching out before them, almost lost in the glare. But he was doing it for himself, no deception there, not like it was any better now than that day on an old sofa in their loft above Storkland, or a hundred times he’d sat on the street and picked it out for Anthony Jones or fucking L.J. or anyone who cared to listen. Just for himself.
Eyes