Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [21]
Niki tried to speak, had tried to say that she was all right, would be all right now, but had only been able to gag and cough up more water, sea water and bile and the half-digested hamburger she’d barely remembered eating for lunch. Slowly, the arms released her and she’d sunk to her knees in the dry sand. The water burned coming up, seared her throat and nostrils.
“You were going to drown yourself,” the girl said, and Niki had slumped back against the car.
The girl had been so small, smaller even than Niki, so pale she seemed to glow softly, concentration-camp skinny and dirty blond hair ratted beyond anything a comb or brush would ever be able to undo. She’d worn a black dress, filthy plain cloth, torn and ragged, and would have stood out even among the Jackson Square goth crowd.
“You were going to drown yourself,” the girl repeated, and it had almost sounded like an apology.
“No,” Niki croaked, before she started coughing again.
“It’s all right,” the girl had said, had reached out and brushed Niki’s straggling bangs from her eyes. “The sea doesn’t mind. I think it flatters her, mostly.”
Niki closed her eyes, trying to untangle her racing pulse from what the girl was saying. Her nipple hurt like hell, and her throat felt raw; her mouth tasted like puke and brine.
I wasn’t trying to drown.
“My name is Jenny,” the girl had said, “Jenny Dare.”
“I was not—Christ—I wasn’t trying to drown,” and she hadn’t known which sounded more ridiculous, her rasping voice or what she was saying out loud.
For a moment, Jenny Dare had said nothing else, just sat there in the sand, knees pulled close and her bare feet sticking out from under the tattered hem of her skirt, watching Niki with eyes the color of Wedgwood china.
“Jesus,” Niki said. “I’m not—not a fucking suicide.” There was blood in her mouth, and she’d realized that she must have bitten her tongue or lip.
The corners of Jenny Dare’s mouth turned down, faintest frown, her full lips the same color as her eyes.
“No,” she’d said, finally. “No, I don’t guess that you are. It isn’t hard to drown, not if that’s what you’re after, so I guess you’re not.”
Then Niki had begun to shiver, sudden chills and fresh nausea, thought that maybe she was going to pass out, and those arms encircled her again, had pulled her close and held her. She tried to push away; there was something vaguely sexual about her bare breasts against this strange girl, and it frightened her. But she was too weak, too sick to do anything but give up and rest her head against Jenny Dare’s bony shoulder, bury her face in the musty folds of the old dress, in the yellow-brown hair that had smelled like autumn, like woodsmoke and frost.
Niki had wrapped her arms around Jenny Dare, returned the embrace and held on with what little strength she had left.
“Shhhh…” the girl whispered, soothing dead-leaf sound, and she had stroked Niki’s sand-flecked temples and cheeks, the stubbly back of her neck. Her fingertips slid across Niki’s skin like an ointment, gelid cold that bled heat. Warmth that soaked inside her.
In the car, the Hendrix tape had still been playing, cycled back around to where it had begun, and Niki let the living warmth and the singer’s voice take her down.
Niki had dreamed of ships, wooden ships with tall pirate sails, and fishing boats, too, and gunmetal ships of war. And Jenny Dare, watching silently, expectantly, as they had passed in the night. And when she’d awakened, when she’d been pulled slowly into purple-gray dawn by the squawk and screech of gulls, she’d been alone again.
Through the white scorch of July and into August, Niki had worked her way south, never more than a few miles at a time, sleeping in air-conditioned motels during the day, wandering the dunes and beaches and getting drunk on bourbon after sundown. When she couldn’t sleep, when the alcohol had left her restless