Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [67]
Now she followed Theo along the sidewalk, half a step behind and hurrying to keep up.
“It’s a great place to hear shitty punk bands,” Theo explained. “And really shitty hardcore bands. And drink shitty beer. If you want rock and roll, you go to the Nick, and if you want thirtysomething pop crap, you go to Louie Louie’s. If you want to hear techno or industrial, there’s the Funhole, just across the tracks,” and she pointed.
They huddled together in the doorway, no shelter from the November wind but their own bodies, while a boy with three silver rings in his lower lip checked the band’s guest list for their names.
“Come on, Jethro. You fuckin’ know I’m on there,” Theo said, her teeth beginning to chatter so that there were little hitches between her syllables. They had both begun to shiver, the coffee only a fond and dimming memory.
“I know you,” he said. “But I don’t know her.”
“Niki Ky…N-i-k-i K-y,” replied Theo. “Come on man, I’m freezing my titties off out here.”
“You should have to sit on this stool for a few hours….” and he tapped down the list, name after name, with the eraser of a nubby yellow pencil.
“And you should have to suck on the drippy end of my fuckstick.”
“Here it is. Niki Ky,” and he drew a graphite slash through her name. “Show me your wrists, ladies.”
The rubber stamp left a fizzing green beaker on Niki’s skin, and she let Theo lead the way in, into air so suddenly warm and smoky she thought at first that she might not be able to breathe this new atmosphere. An all but impenetrable haze of cigarette smoke and the damp and sour reek of spilled beer underneath, almost masking the fainter, more exotic hints of pot and piss and puke. The sound system was blaring drums and meat-grinder guitar, something like Soundgarden, minus any trace of rhythm or melody or talent. Across a sea of heads and shoulders, Niki caught a glimpse of Daria, doppelgänger much too tall for Daria, waving, and Theo took her hand and pulled her through the crowd.
Daria was standing up in one of the burgundy-red Naugahyde booths and Mort was sitting across from her, nursing a Miller High Life.
“I don’t suppose you saw Keith out there anywhere?” Daria asked, shouting to be heard above the carnival din of music and voices. Theo shook her head and slid in next to Mort. He put one arm around her and kissed her cheek.
“Sit down,” Daria said to Niki, leaning close, and she obeyed. Mort reached across the table and shook her hand.
“Good to see you’re still with us,” he said. “After last night, I thought maybe you’d head for higher ground.”
“What the hell is that shit?” Theo sneered, one finger pointing up at heaven or the speakers overhead.
“Bites the big one, don’t it?” and Mort finished his beer and laid the bottle on its side, began to roll it back and forth with his free hand.
“That,” Daria shouted, “is Bogdiscuit.”
“The opening band?”
“The missing opening band.”
“Last seen in Lubbock, dropped off the screen somewhere in the wilds of Mississippi,” Mort added.
“Which means we have to go on forty-five minutes early and play two sets.” Daria was still standing, her Docs sunk deeply into the duct tape–patched and cigarette-scarred upholstery, still scanning the crowd for some sign of Keith.
Mort sighed and bumped the beer bottle against one corner of a glass ashtray. “But at least we’ve all been spared the live-and-in-your-face Bogdiscuit experience.”
“This is plenty bad enough,” Theo said. She laid her lunch-box purse on the table, opened it and began to rummage through the junk inside.
Niki tried not to notice Daria looming over her like a vulture or the way she kept sliding toward the gravity well of those boots pressed into the springshot booth. Instead, she watched the crowd, the sandshift of flesh and fabric, pretending she was also looking for the tall guitarist. But really she was just taking in these faces, same faces as New Orleans or Charleston or anywhere else she’d sat in crowded bars. A lot of the faces were clearly too young to be here,