Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [37]
“But you weren’t born there,” Claude said, and Daria realized that she’d missed something. It didn’t matter; Claude would entertain Niki Ky, had already moved in on her like a kitten with a fine new toy. Claude would play the proper host while Daria brooded and sipped her scalding coffee.
“No,” Niki said. “I was born in New Orleans.”
“I have friends in the Quarter,” he said, and Daria opened her eyes, stared across the brim of her mug at the giant poster of Billie Holiday hanging above her stereo. Lady Day watching over them like some beautiful, tragic madonna of heroin and the blues. Bee-stung pout in grainy black-and-white, enlarged too many times to retain integrity, resolution, black-and-white flowers in her hair. Eyes that let nothing in and gave nothing away. Claude had brought the poster home with him one night, had carefully mended a tear along the bottom edge with Scotch tape, and she’d never found out where he’d gotten it.
It made her think of nothing now but Keith. Keith and his needles and his strong and certain fingers pulling music from the strings. From her.
“Since June,” Niki said, half-sighed answer to a question Daria hadn’t heard, and then, “But it seems like years, you know?”
This late, Keith had probably already made his connection, would have scored for the day and fixed. Was either laid up in his roachy little apartment or hanging out with the bums and punks and other junkies who used abandoned railroad cars, condemned and empty buildings, as shelter from the cold and cops. She held the mug to her lips, swallowed quick before the coffee had time to cool inside her mouth.
Another hour and Mort’s shift at the machine shop would be over.
Claude laughed, soft boy laugh, almost as comforting as the coffee, and she tried to let it all go for now, plenty of time later, the rest of her life, to worry about Keith Barry and Stiff Kitten and the haunted places in her sleep. Her croissant sat neglected on an apple-green plastic saucer in front of her, pastry dusted with powdered sugar and cocoa, and she didn’t even remember him setting it on the bed.
“Does it bother you if people call you a stripper?”
“Christ, Claude, does it bother you when people call you a faggot?” and it didn’t come out like a joke at all, sharp edges and acid where she thought she’d only intended to slip back into the conversation.
Claude was staring at her, his face gone stony hard and any surprise or hurt guarded safe behind a piercing what-the-hell-crawled-up-your-ass-and-died glare. Good question, good fucking question. Niki had looked away, quick glance down and picked at her own croissant, half-eaten and the gooey brown insides showing.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me. I am a stripper.”
“I’m sorry,” Daria said, meant it but there was no way to sound enough like she meant it.
“And that’s Mr. Faggot to you,” Claude said sternly, mock-severity that lifted the tension just barely enough that she could slip beneath his barbed-wire gaze, could at least look away.
“I really do need to call about my car,” Niki said. “I have no idea what time the garage closes.”
“Yeah, sure,” and Daria pointed at the clunky old rotary phone sitting on the floor next to one of the stereo speakers. “Help yourself.”
Claude finished the last of his coffee, stood up, and walked back to the sink with his mug and saucer. Niki set her own dishes out of the way before she pushed aside the afghan and the Peanuts sheets and scooted across the floor to the phone. And again, Daria found herself watching her, envying the subtle alliance of movement and unaffected elegance that made the simplest action seem graceful. She tried to imagine Niki Ky on some seedy, barroom stage, rehearsed bump and grind, bogus passion, through a haze of cigarette smoke and colored lights, but there were too many contradictions. All the strippers