Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [13]
Christ, you haven’t even eaten anything tonight, have you? Just cigarettes and coffee and great big greasy dollops of denial.
The smoke curling up from the fingertips of her right hand made a gauzy question mark in front of her face. And her hands were still shaking, dry wino jitters; the sense of dislocation had faded to the dullest gray unease.
And is that all it is, Dar? Malnutrition and caffeine, nerves and nicotine? Are you absolutely sure that’s all it is?
Daria finished the cigarette while Johnny Cash sang about Folsom Prison, while the three behind her began to talk about the time, how late it’d gotten and how early they each had to be up in the morning. Slowly, the shakiness passed, and she promised herself she’d grab one of the muffins or poppy seed bagels in the pastry case before she went back to work.
Five minutes later when the Asian girl in the ratty army jacket walked through the door, she was still sitting there.
CHAPTER TWO
Niki
1.
One forty-five a.m. by the ghost-green dashboard clock, and Niki Ky’s black Vega drifted across I-20 and rolled off the blacktop into the narrow breakdown lane. The car had been driving badly since she’d left Georgia, crossed the state line into Alabama, and a mile or so before the lights of Birmingham had come into view, the temp gauge had begun to creep steadily, ominously, into the red. She’d stayed on the interstate, trying to keep one eye on the dash and one eye on the road, on the other travelers rushing past in the night, watching for the junction that would take her north. As she’d gotten her first clear glimpse of downtown—more tall buildings than she would have guessed, more of a city—the needle had swung quickly toward the “H” side of the gauge and the oil light had flashed on. A second later the engine had died, no sputter or cough or ugly metal grind, just sudden, quiet nothing.
She turned off the ignition, cut the headlights, but left the flashers on, and for a time sat, slumped forward and forehead resting against the hard steering-wheel plastic, the Pixies cassette she’d listened to since Atlanta still playing in her head. When she finally looked up, Niki caught her dark reflection in the rearview mirror, absolutely convinced for a moment that someone else’s eyes were watching her from the glass. Her hair, which she’d kept shaved down almost to her scalp since high school, had started to grow out, spiky tufts more like pinfeathers and completely uncontrollable. The silver loops that pierced the entire rim of her right ear from lobe to helix caught the light of passing cars and glimmered like the scales of deep-sea fish.
“Pretty mess,” she said, and of course it wasn’t the prettiest by a long shot, but it was bad enough. Broken down, maybe badly broken down this time, in a city that meant nothing more to her than a few grainy news clips from the sixties, fire hoses and snarling police dogs turned loose on crowds of teenagers and children and old men, starch-white shirts and black faces.
And then the mirror filled up with headlights, too bright and she had to look away. Dim purple afterimages swam before her eyes. She blinked, wondering if it was the cops, hoping just this once that it would be cops, even a Birmingham cop. She reached for the glove compartment, for her license, fingers crossed against the chance they might ask to see the Vega’s registration.
But when she slammed it shut and turned back to the window, the face peering in at her wasn’t a cop, some lantern-jawed good old boy instead. His thick fingertips tapped eagerly at the glass like it’d been their own idea. Niki paused, thought seriously about telling him she’d been driving all night, had only pulled over to rest for a while, that was all. But how long would it be before a highway patrol car happened by, or anyone else