Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [59]
“There, Mort. Turn right there,” Daria ordered, pointed one insistent finger at a side street. She was sitting on a huge red Sears Craftsman tool chest behind the driver’s side, straddling it, hanging on to the back of Mort’s seat. The tools inside the chest clanked and clattered, and Niki imagined that it was the sound of her bones and teeth and kidneys.
Mort missed the turn, and Daria slammed her fist into the back of his headrest.
“Goddammit, Mort! Are you fucking deaf?”
“There’s no left turn there, Dar—”
“Did you see any fuckin’ cops?! Who would’ve given a shit? Huh?”
“Why don’t you calm down,” Theo said, and Niki saw the fire jump like lightning in Daria’s eyes.
“Why don’t you keep the hell out of this?” she said, almost snarled, and Niki wished again that she had stayed back at the apartment with Claude and his Ella Fitzgerald tapes, his comforting coffee and conversation.
“Hey, will the both of you just shut the hell up and let me drive?” Mort growled, no patience infinite and Niki could tell he’d had enough.
She had just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang, was still standing naked and dripping in the steam, drying herself with a thin, not-quite-white towel that had once belonged to a Holiday Inn. Someone who’d heard from someone else that Daria’s boyfriend had been in a fight, had gotten himself cut up and might be dead. Dying, at the very least.
A minute or two later, the towel wrapped tightly around her, and “It might just be a false alarm,” she’d said, trying her best to sound hopeful, reassuring, starting to feel awkward and misplaced.
“You don’t know Keith,” Daria had said, pulling her boots on and not bothering with the ratty laces.
“Which makes you a very lucky girl,” Claude said and had turned quickly away, shielding himself from the hot recrimination in Daria’s eyes.
“Put on some clothes if you’re coming,” Daria had said, and Niki thought maybe it would be rude to say no thank you, I’ll stay right here. Rude, or dangerous.
“Okay, look, you can turn left at the next light, on Seventeenth, and circle back around….”
Niki tried to shut out Daria’s frantic commands, shut her eyes and then immediately opened them again, not wanting to make car sickness any more likely than it already was; puking would do absolutely nothing to improve the van’s all but palpable funk, the reek of ancient sweat and cigarette smoke, oil and the sweet and sour hint of rotting food. She hung on to the edges of her plywood raft and rode the wave.
After they’d checked two titty bars and a park full of bums and monuments to dead civil rights leaders, Daria had finally thought to call the hospitals. Niki and Theo sat in the van while Daria and Mort fed precious quarters into a pay phone and argued with emergency room nurses.
“God, I hate that asshole,” Theo said.
Niki, who’d decided she was better off just staying in the floor after having been twice bounced off the milk crate, shifted her stiff and aching butt, rubbed her freezing hands together. Obviously, the van had no heater.
“You mean Daria?” she asked.
“No, not Dar. Keith-fucking-Barry,” Theo answered too quickly, pulled the cheesy flamingo-pink polyester and velvet tux jacket she was wearing tighter around her shoulders. “Dar’s a doll, when she’s not chasing after that fucker’s junky prick.”
“Oh,” Niki said, knowing nothing else to say.
An uncomfortable and silent five minutes later, and Mort and Daria were climbing back inside, driver’s door popping open and banging closed again, the sliding side door complaining viciously on its rusted tracks. Night rushed into the van, soaking Niki in chill air and the colder