Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [90]
“Now we’re in business,” she said and smiled.
The scabby blood peeled away like old paint, and there was the scar, uneven cruciform, white and faded pucker but still perfectly recognizable for what it was.
Niki did not mean to pause, or stare, or allow the small gasp past her lips.
“Wow,” Spyder said, more curiosity than concern. “Is it that bad?” And she raised her fingers and touched the spot between her eyebrows. “Oh,” she said, and nothing then, for a moment, as her fingertips moved over the scar, as if she were reading an old note to herself in Braille, private significance in the raised flesh.
“That,” she said. “I guess I should have warned you. It’s real old.”
“But how,” Niki began, stopped herself, knew she’d already done something, enough, wrong.
“I was a little kid,” as if that explained anything, everything, and Spyder continued rubbing her fingers over the spot as though she hadn’t thought of it in years, fingers rediscovering the intersecting ribbons of scar tissue.
“I’m sorry,” Niki said, shivering, thinking again how terribly cold it was in the “apartment,” not wanting to think about the cross sliced into Spyder’s forehead.
“I was a little kid,” Spyder said again and smiled this time, sheepish it’s-no-big-whup smile. And outside something big and noisy, a garbage truck maybe, growled along the slickening street.
“Most of the time I just forget about it.”
Niki said nothing, wet a clean corner of the napkin and began scrubbing the blood from Spyder’s cheeks.
When the wine was gone, Daria had turned off the lights, curled up with Keith on the bare mattress. Mort was still sitting beside them, slumped against the wall, head back and mouth open, snoring. Id, ego, and superego of Stiff Kitten, drunk and unconscious and, as far as Niki Ky could tell, content with the world. Theo had drifted off into her own fitful sleep beneath Kurt Cobain’s protective glare, anything but content.
Niki had managed to get the worst of the blood off Spyder’s face, found a handful of bruises and scrapes. When Spyder had complained that the metal chair was freezing her ass, first sign of complaint and really more of an observation, they’d sat together on the floor. Huddled together in the window-framed square of light, watching the snow. They talked, quiet talk so they wouldn’t wake anyone: Niki telling the story of her trip from the Carolinas, the death of the Vega and how she’d met Daria, and then, Spyder telling Niki about her tattoos and Weird Trappings.
This is what it would be like to live inside one of those winter paperweight things, Niki thought, picturing the Christmas flurry of fake snow and water, trying to listen to what Spyder was saying. Someone picks up your whole little world and shakes the holy fuck out of it, andthen you just sit there in your plastic cottage and watch the fallout.
She sneezed, then, loud and wet spray, and Spyder wrapped the sleeping bag around them both. It smelled only slightly less than Spyder herself, but the hoarded body heat, the shelter from a thousand drafts, was almost irresistible. And the snow was coming down harder, if there’d been any change at all in the storm in the last hour. Clumpy white flakes pelting the window, reducing the view of the building next door, grainy brickwork and fire-escape zigzag.
Niki yawned, growing even groggier in the sudden warmth.
“Sleepy?” Spyder asked, and Niki thought maybe she heard disappointment, disappointment or guarded alarm.
Niki shook her head, no, not at all, but then she yawned again.
“Maybe just a little,” she said, and “You too?”
“No. I can’t sleep without my meds.”
Something else Niki wouldn’t