Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [116]
His fingers stumbled, missed and feedback whined through the amps.
Or that was the sound it made when it opened its mouth, shifted its bulk and began to drip, leaking onto the upturned faces and outstretched hands. Leaking slicker and blacker than oil, and Daria had stopped playing and Mort had stopped playing. Both of them staring at him; he knew they didn’t see it, knew they wouldn’t, even if he pointed, and the crowd was howling, pissed and starting to throw crap at them.
“Keith?” Daria said. She wasn’t even angry yet, sounded confused, scared maybe, and he shrugged, tried to smile and make himself look back at his guitar, at the strings. “Sorry, man,” he said, but he could hear it moving around, wire brush on old wood and raw meat, and he couldn’t even begin to remember where to put his fingers.
A painful twinge across the bridge of his nose, his ankle, the syrupy smell of cold air, and Keith could feel the sweat on his face, under his clothes, like he hadn’t fixed. Daria’s lips moved without letting go of any sound, what’s wrong, and he knew this performance was everything to her and that he was fucking it up, what’s wrong, Keith, might have already fucked it up. Because there was no telling what Cephus Lee was using to cut his smack these days, no telling what he’d shot into his arm in the toilet down the hall from the dressing room, and someone in the crowd threw a beer bottle and it exploded like a glass grenade at Daria’s feet. Two of the big security guys tackled him and he was gone, and Daria turned away, one last look at those eyes full of panic and disgust fermenting in her green irises, disgust for him.
Scritch, and he tried to find his way out of the crackling silence, scritch, crackling around him like the air had that morning at Spyder’s, kept his eyes on the strings, his fingers, the playlist at his feet. Another beer bottle sailed past, hit the wall behind Mort, and Budweiser shrapnel rained down around them.
“Will you give us a fucking break?” she growled into her mike, and the crowd growled back.
The next song on the list…the list in Daria’s handwriting, the precious scrawl she’d photocopied at Kinko’s, three copies and the masking tape beginning to curl where it didn’t want to stick to the stage…the next song was “Su(in)cide” and he fumbled at the first few chords, nothing in the whole goddamn world but his hands and his guitar and Daria’s list.
Behind him, Mort began to follow, cautious three-quarter cadence, but Daria was too busy yelling at someone and it didn’t matter, because his fingers felt like he was trying to play the Gibson with yellow Playtex gloves on and the cut across his face stung so badly that his eyes had begun to water.
And one oilwet splat, then, one drop from somewhere directly overhead, and he watched the stain as it spread, bloomed, and whatever you do, man, just don’t fucking look up, just don’t fucking look up, ’cause you already know, and he stepped back from the sheet of paper taped to the stage, the acid stain, and you already know and there ain’t no point in seeing.
Then Daria was in his face, right foot planted squarely on the ruined photocopy and the stain still spreading beneath the sole of her