Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [73]
“Jesus Christ, why don’t we just call the cops?” Theo pleaded, “This one time, Mort, why don’t we please justcall the fucking cops?” and she sat down on the curb, kicked at Daria’s dead, discarded lighter.
Yeah, Niki wanted to say. Good idea.
Mort sighed, a loud and vaporous sound, his face helpless as Theo’s, almost as fed up.
“You guys just wait here, okay.”
“No, Mort. It is not okay,” Theo spat back. “Goddamn it. One night you’re gonna get killed playing Mr. Third Musketeer, and it is not fucking okay….” But he had already gone, chasing Keith and Daria through overlapping pools of streetlight.
4.
When the three jocks showed up, Spyder had been thinking about bed and the flower and sweat smell of Robin’s naked body, contentedly enduring the idiot argument between Tristan and a chubby girl named Darlene over whether the Sisters of Mercy were better pre-or post-Vision Thing, with or without Patricia Morrison. Most of the evening’s earlier doubts had faded, dimmed almost to irrelevant mist, and she’d been about to tell them both that they sounded like comic-book fanboys, fussing over which superhero had the lamest sidekick or the biggest dick.
And now these three in matching green and gold UAB baseball jackets, haircuts like a lawn mown too close to the earth and eyes full of piggy stupid trouble.
“See, Tony? Man, I told you there were dykes over here,” the tallest said, blond hair and Nazi-blue eyes.
Tristan and Darlene shut up and stepped out of their way. In the Celica, Byron and Walter paused in their own affairs, Byron up front alone and Walter in the backseat with a boy dressed like a deb from Hell’s cotillion; Spyder could feel their uneasiness seeping sticky cold through the windshield.
“Goddamn,” said the jock named Tony, and Spyder felt Robin shudder then, saw the frightened recognition on her face. “I guess you were right, man.”
The third guy, shorter and chunkier than his buddies, didn’t say anything, laughed and spit tobacco juice into a McDonald’s cup.
“All kinda freaks hang out down here,” the first guy said. “Half the time, you can’t tell the fuckin’ girls from the boys.”
“That was original,” Spyder said, speaking through the sudden playground memories of adrenaline and shame, and she felt Robin tense, maybe start to push away. “Did your daddy teach you that one before or after he taught you how to suck his cock?”
Shortest perfect silence, and then the guy took one step closer, “What did you say?” Surprise and disbelief and hardly any room left for the anger bubbling up between his words.
“You heard me. Bet your daddy told you if you acted like an asshole, nobody would know how much you liked his dick.”
And his friends laughed, stinging loud belly laughs.
“Digger, man, you gonna let this freak talk to you like that?” said the guy with the half-full McDonald’s cup and he laughed again.
“Let’s just go,” Robin said, her voice too shaky, like they’d never had to listen to this shit before. “I know one of these guys. They’re not worth it,” and she did pull free of Spyder’s embrace, slipped off the hood to the blacktop.
“What’s the matter, little girl? Don’t you think your bigmouth lesbo girlfriend here can take care of you?” Digger asked, but Robin was already opening the passenger side, getting in beside Byron and locking the door behind her.
“Why don’t you just leave us alone,” Spyder said, confused, more hurt by Robin’s retreat than anything these creeps could say.
“Is that it, lesbo? Think maybe you can talk like a man, but afraid you can’t fight like one?” And he leaned close, whispered loud so everyone could hear. “Bet you sure as hell can’t fuck like one.”
Chunky gales of laughter from the other two, and Spyder stared down at the scuffed toes of her boots.
“I don’t know ’bout that, Digger,” Tony said. “Bet she’s got one of them plastic strap-on jobs.”
“Is that true, lesbo?” and he leaned close enough that