Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [40]
“No freakin’ scout wants to hear a cover band anyway, man. Punk’s dead and you guys are pissin’ up a goddamn rope.” And then he’d staggered off to take a leak, to hunt down the toilet even though the station hadn’t had water since it’d closed.
“Hey, fuck you, man,” Carlton had shouted after him. “You fucking wanker. You’re just pissed ’cause your old lady made you look like shit.”
Pablo had ignored him, had disappeared through a darkened doorway (the door torn off long ago, propped useless somewhere nearby) into the darker lobby. A second later, he’d cursed, had given up his search for the toilet, and they’d heard the metal-through-fabric zrrrip, the wet spatter of Pablo’s piss on the lobby’s tiles.
“Fuck him,” Jonsey muttered as he’d lit a cigarette and stuffed his Zippo back into his shirt pocket. “That was some amazing shit, Dar.”
Daria had wiped her face on the tail of her T-shirt, the clean ocean smell of her sweat mixing with the lingering gasoline stench, hydrocarbon phantoms, and she’d finally smiled. She had been good, damn good, and what’s more, it had felt good. Had felt wild and alive and had consumed her, every fiber of her mind and body, in a way that not even the best of her infrequent orgasms had ever come close to doing. She’d been only dimly aware of a door slamming somewhere, the rust-bucket growl of Pablo’s Impala outside the garage bay doors, the angry, hot spin of rubber on asphalt as he’d peeled out of the Chevron’s parking lot into the night.
“Don’t worry about it,” Carlton had said, “He’s bein’ a jerk.”
But she hadn’t cared about Pablo, felt only the vaguest annoyance, disappointment that he could be so insecure, could act so petty. Her head was crammed too full of the Gibson’s toothache throb, her senses clogged with the stinging numb of her fingertips, the delicious threat of cramp in her arms and shoulders and the small of her back, the heady smell of herself. And what she’d said next had spilled out like someone else’s words, no thought, no consideration of consequence or her own possible inadequacies.
“If I wrote some songs—I mean, the lyrics—can you guys write the music?”
Jonesy and Carlton had looked at each other, slug-slow comprehension, and then Jonesy had shaken his head.
“Forget it, Dar. Shit, even if I thought I could, there’s not enough time.”
“But would you try, Jonesy?” And that enthusiasm had felt strange coming from her mouth, alien vomit, shimmering silver and red in the amp-shocked garage air. “Would you at least give it a shot?”
“Why? We’re good, right? Twice as good with you on Pablo’s bass.”
“Because Pablo’s right, man,” Carlton had said, grudging agreement, as he began to break down his kit. “He might be a jerk, but he’s pro’bly right about nobody wantin’ to hear a bunch of tired old covers.”
“Just let me see what I can come up with,” she’d said, had almost been begging and no idea why, and they’d agreed, Jonesy still shaking his head, but agreeing anyway. Carlton had given her a ride home, and she’d looked for Pablo’s car on the street, had looked without letting on that she was looking. But there’d been no sign of him, no sign inside that he’d been back by the apartment.
Daria had called in sick the next day, had lied to her jowly-fat asshole of a manager, something simple and contagious like the flu or a stomach virus. She’d coughed into the receiver, had ground her voice down to the croakiest wheeze, and of course he hadn’t believed her. He handled his little legion of burger-flippers like an Egyptian foreman, building his pyramids from Styrofoam and beef patties; but he couldn’t prove she was slacking, would make it up by sticking her with all the shitty shifts for the next two weeks.
She’d found an old steno pad hiding on top of the refrigerator, half the pages filled with phone numbers and doodles, games of hangman, the cardboard cover crusted with specks of cockroach poop. She’d used one of their two butter knives to scrape the cover relatively clean and had spent the next