Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [142]
Wednesday night, after the funeral, they’d finally gone back to her apartment, after driving around all afternoon, drinking beer and listening to bootlegged tapes Keith had made on Daria and Claude’s stereo: bestiary of guitars through the shitmobile’s tinny speakers: Hendrix and Page, Clapton and all those old blues guys she could never keep straight, Chuck Berry and the Eagles’ “Hotel California.”
“I tell you what he would have wanted,” Mort had said, finishing another Bud and crumpling the can, tossing it in the direction of the kitchen sink. “What he said he wanted,” and he told them about one night the summer before, July and he and Keith walking the rails alone, smoking pot and talking music shit. And they’d found a cat dead on the tracks, swollen and stinking on the oily ties and granite ballast, and for a while they’d just walked. And then Keith had said that when he kicked he wanted music around him, music and booze and people laughing, like they did down in New Orleans, you know. “Think of the most fucked up you’ve ever been, man, and then get ten times that drunk, and that’s what I want.”
“We’re working on it,” Theo had said and belched, still wearing her funeral clothes, the gloves bunched down around her wrists.
“No, we’re not. We’re just sitting around drinking. He meant he wanted a party.”
And they’d both looked at her, like it was her decision, her call, whether or not Keith got his fête, his wake, and she was already at least twice as drunk as she’d ever been and her head still hurt from all the crying, and she just wanted to go to bed.
But “Sure,” she’d said, instead, “Whatever you think,” and she’d opened another beer, had lain down on the floor and stared at a big water stain on the ceiling while Mort started making phone calls.
And an hour later, just before they’d left for Keith’s apartment (she still had her key to the door downstairs), the phone had rung and Theo and Mort were already on their way out the door, Claude and his latest boyfriend, too, so she answered it, third ring and she’d held the receiver close to her face, so drunk she had to brace herself against a wall, and said “Hello,” had waited, listening to the nothing from the other end. Then, “Ah, yeah…I’m looking for Keith.” A guy’s voice, and she’d almost laughed, had wanted to laugh, but she wasn’t quite that drunk yet.
“Keith Barry?” he’d said, nervous boy voice, and she rubbed her face. “You probably don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Spyder Baxter’s.”
“Oh, yeah, uh, just a minute…” and Mort was watching her from the doorway, his tired face that said he was right there if she needed help, needed anything at all, and she tried to smile, easy nothing’s-wrong smile for him, failed and said “Keith doesn’t live here,” to the telephone; before the shaky voice inside could reply, she added, “Keith Barry never lived here,” and then she hung up.
3.
Hours later and Keith’s apartment was still empty, as empty as if all his stuff had already been carted away, as if most of the people Mort called hadn’t shown: skatepunks and slackers, a few people from other bands, and almost everyone with a bottle or two, a six-pack or a case of shitty beer. Daria sat on the old mattress, wedged into the corner and the sleeping bag across her lap, five times as drunk now as she’d ever been, and she’d already puked once and started drinking again, looking for a place inside that was absolutely fucking numb.
The sleeping bag smelled like Keith, the whole apartment that same smell, that feel, and the pain faded and then welled back up, time after time, ocean tide, and she’d be crying again, and Mort or Theo or someone else sitting with her, comforting words and touches that could never really comfort, couldn’t possibly touch the shattered place inside.
A friend of Mort’s from work had brought a portable stereo and stacks of CDs, four speakers spaced around the room, and the music blaring so loud that the cops were bound to come sooner or later and run them all off, arrest them for the veil of pot smoke hanging in the cold air. Daria pulled