Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [126]
“Oh,” Spyder would say, “nothing,” so Niki kept her mouth shut and watched.
An instant later and Spyder stepped into view, wearing nothing but the Alien Sex Fiend T-shirt she’d put on after they’d made love, the shirt she slept in a lot but never washed so it always smelled like sweat and patchouli. Spyder was holding a bowling ball, a black bowling ball with red swirls in it, so it sort of looked like she was holding a strange little gas planet, ebony and crimson Neptune; she held it out over the center of the bedspread, set it carefully in the middle. The whole thing sagged with the weight of the bowling ball, sagged in the center until it was only about a foot off the floor, but it didn’t pull loose from the walls; Spyder ducked underneath, then came out the other side and she stacked more encyclopedias to hold up the corner that wasn’t nailed. She didn’t notice Niki, standing alone in the TV glare.
Spyder disappeared, toolbox sounds, and when Niki could see her again, she had a fat black marker in her left hand, a yardstick in her right; she leaned over the bedspread, measured distance, colored careful dots, measured, black on the white cotton here and there, beginning near the edge and working her way in, toward the sucking weight of the bowling ball. Thirty, forty, forty-three dots, and she set the yardstick and the marker on the floor, then, gone again and this time she came back with a blue plastic butter tub of ball bearings, different sizes, like steel marbles. She dug around, selected one, as if only that one would do, and placed it on the first black mark she’d drawn. The ball bearing made its own small depression in the bedspread before it started to roll downhill; Niki heard the distinct clack of steel against epoxy as it hit the bowling ball, loud sound in the still, quiet house.
Spyder selected another ball bearing and placed it on the next mark, clack, and she repeated the action over and over, clack, clack, clack, but never twice from the same mark, choosing each bearing and taking care to be sure it started its brief journey toward the center from the next mark in. Sometimes she paused between ball bearings, paused and stared at the bedspread, out the window and then back. Once or twice she stopped long enough to measure the shrinking space between the floor and the bowling ball with her yardstick. Spyder chewed at her bottom lip, something urgent in her blue eyes.
Niki’s legs were getting tired, and she wanted to sit down, too afraid of interrupting to even move. Her kneecaps were starting to ache. She wanted to say, “What the hell are you doing, Spyder?” What anyone else would have said right at the start, but then she wouldn’t have seen even this much, and never mind if it didn’t make any sense, that didn’t mean it wasn’t important. And if Spyder wouldn’t tell her what was going on, all she could do was ignore her stiffening legs, be patient, watch, figure it all out for herself. Like a puzzle, like a child’s dot-to-dot. Draw the lines and there’s the picture, Mickey Mouse or a bouquet of flowers or whatever had driven Spyder crazy.
There weren’t many bearings left in the tub; and Spyder had to lean way over to set them on the marks now, hardly any time after she let go before the clack of metal against hard plastic. The bedspread was almost touching the floor, and Niki could see where the weave was beginning to ravel from all that weight. Spyder worked like she was running out of time, just one or two bearings left to go; Niki had to piss so bad she was afraid she was gonna have to show herself soon or wet the floor.
The last ball bearing glinted in Spyder’s hand, dull reflection of the sun through the window, and there was a slow ripping sound. Spyder grabbed something off the floor, a moment before Niki saw it was a roll of duct tape, used her teeth to tear off a strip and she was reaching for the rift opening beneath the