“Yeah,” he said at last. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess so? What’s with that, you guess so?”
When Anthony Jones talked, he waved the Honer in the cold air like a conductor’s wand.
“You either down with that redheaded lady or you ain’t. There ain’t no in-betweenin’ pussy.”
“Man, I had me some fine white pussy last week…” L.J. started, but Anthony cut him off with a knifeblade glance, stabbed the harmonica at his heart.
“Why don’t you shut the hell up for a little while?”
“You think I’m lyin’? You think I gotta lie ’bout gettin’ white-bitch pussy?”
“I think I’m tired of listening to you talk trash.”
And L.J. looked offended and hurt, pulled hard at his right earlobe and wandered off, mumbling to himself.
“That nigger can’t even get hisself a skeezer these days,” and Anthony laughed and stared off towards the darkened windows of the Eagle Syrup plant. This side of town was a wasteland of empty warehouses and abandoned factories, a prelude to the miles of derelict steel mills further west.
“I just can’t seem to stay out of the shit house with Daria these days.”
Anthony Jones didn’t make any sign he’d heard, still gazing across the tracks and the street at the ridiculous giant honey jar perched atop the roof of the syrup plant.
“That her name?” he asked. “Daria?”
“Yeah, man, that’s her name.”
“She the same girl that’s in that band with you?”
“Yeah. Shit, she is the band. She’s gonna dump me and find someone else to play guitar for her. She ought’a fuckin’ dump me.”
“Man, you just on yourself tonight, that’s all,” and then he looked quickly at his feet, scuffed shoes from one of the missions, rubbed at his eyes. “You got gold in them fingers.”
Keith held his hands out, stared into his palms like he could read his past or future in the lines etched there.
“She takes a load of shit, man.”
“I hear you,” Anthony said. “I do hear you. Had me a good woman long time ago. Some pretty little babies, too.”
Keith passed the almost empty bottle back to him and picked up his guitar again, ran his fingers once across the strings and started tuning, gently twisting each rusted peg in his magic fingers. And Anthony Jones drained the last of the whiskey before he hurled the useless bottle at the darkness that lay like sleeping dogs between the platform and the syrup plant.
2.
Niki Ky had finally found a place to sit in the back of the van, a plastic milk crate covered over with a warped piece of plywood. The crate was mostly full of cords and cables, rubber black coaxial serpents that stuck out through the checkerboard holes in the sides and bit at her legs every time the van hit a bump or a rut or pothole. At least they hadn’t gone directly down Morris from Daria’s place, hadn’t jounced over all those goddamned cobblestones. The rear of the van was sectioned off with a sagging barrier of chain-link fence, soldered and bolted into place, and there was more junk back there. Niki thought briefly about scooting the crate closer to the wire, close enough that she could hook her fingers through the diamond spaces and hold on.
“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 glare of the streetlights.
“So?”
“‘So’ what, Theo?” Daria said, reclaiming her seat on the tool chest.
“So is he dead or what?”
Mort sighed, pulled off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his hair.
“No one named Keith Barry has been admitted to any of the ERs tonight,” he said and put his cap back on, the bill turned around backwards so Niki could read the red, white, and blue STP patch stitched on the front. He slapped his big hands together loudly. “And there are no John Does that fit his description. We checked the city morgue, too.”
“This is bullshit,” Theo muttered and lit a cigarette.
“We should check out that house in Ensley,” Daria said, ignoring her. “The one with all the windows painted yellow.”
“Christ, Daria,” Mort hissed and slumped over the steering wheel, already defeated before he’d even begun to object. “I do not want to go wandering around that part of town after dark.”