“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, fake IDs or bribes or stamped hands licked wet again and pressed together, and for a second that passed like the lead-blue shades of sunrise, she felt homesick.
And then, across the room and tobacco veil, the Bogdiscuit-tortured space, she saw the girl with white dreds, punk-dyke attitude scrawled on her white skin and another girl with hair as unreal as Daria’s snuggled under one arm. Six or seven kids were crowded into the big semicircular booth with them, the white-haired girl at their center.
Niki leaned across the table, not taking her eyes off the clot of goths, whispered loud to Theo, “Who is that?” Indicated who she meant with one hitchhiker’s jab of her thumb toward the crowded back booth.
Theo looked up from the cluttered depths of her purse, lipstick tubes and tampon applicators and a Pink Power Ranger action figure, following Niki’s thumb.
They all looked like underagers, ubiquitous black and glamorous dowdy. Robert Smith clown white and crimson lips, bruise-dark eyes.
“Oh,” Theo said, quick, dismissive wave of one hand and then her eyes back down to the purse, “That’s Spyder Baxter, holding court over her shrikes.”
“Shrikes?” Niki asked, and Mort chuckled. He’d stopped rolling the Miller bottle, bread-dough kneading the tabletop, was now busy making spitballs from his cocktail napkin and flicking them over Daria’s head. She hadn’t noticed, or if she had, chose to ignore him. They sailed by, just inches above her scarlet hair, and stuck to the black plastic Christmas tree set up behind the booth, decorated with rubber bugs and Barbie doll parts.
“That’s what Theo calls our local death rockers.”
And Niki nodded, though she’d always hated that label, death rockers, more reminiscent of heavy metal, headbanger crap than anything goth.
“You wouldn’t think a chicken-shit city like this would have so many of them,” Theo said, found what she was looking for, a worn and creased emery board.
Niki had treasured the dark children who congregated in Jackson Square, who haunted the narrow backstreets of the Quarter, the same white faces and black-lace pouts as these, the same midnight hair. These could be the same children, she thought, transplanted like exotic hothouse vegetation, identities as blurred as their genders. Seeing them here only seemed to redouble her homesickness, the vertigo sense of being misplaced herself, a refugee.
One boy stood apart from the others, better dressed than the rest. Bell-bottomed stretch pants and a wide white belt, puffy white shirt with balloon sleeves and a lace jabot that looked purple from where she sat. He stood with his back to the others, staring out into the crowd with vacant intensity, back straight, as alert and detached as a bodyguard. They made eye contact, and she looked quickly away, back to Theo.
“Why don’t you like goths?” she asked.
“Well, let’s see now,” Theo answered without pausing from her furious work on a hangnail. “They’re shallow and vain and whiny…” She stopped filing and held the nail closer to her face for inspection. “…pretentious drama queens with bad taste in clothes and worse taste in music. How’s that?”
“Oh,” Niki replied, a sound soft and hard at the same time, and suddenly she was much too tired from the hours of listening quietly to Theo Babyock’s diva prattle, too tired to care if she pissed off Daria by picking a fight.
“HEY! ASSWIPE!” Daria screamed over her head, and there was Keith Barry, pulling free of the throng, blotting out her view of Spyder Baxter. His head was shaved closer than the night before, and his dull eyes squinted through the smoke and shadows, recognition rising as slow as the sun on a cloudy morning. He towed some blond chick behind him like a little red wagon, Aqua Net teased bangs and trailer-park makeup.
“Key-rist on a boat,” Theo hissed, having entirely missed the brief flash of anger on Niki’s face. “What the hell did he scrape her out from under?”
Daria scowled down at them, “At least he’s learning how to come when called.”
“I’m not even gonna think about touching that one,” Theo said, dropped the emery board back into her purse and snapped it shut.
Keith pushed his way to the booth, icebreaker through sweaty flesh and T-shirt shoulders.
“Hey,” he said, barked the word like a stoned pit bull. “I want you guys to meet Tammi, here.” And he stepped to one side so she could stand next to him.
“Tammi with an i,” the blond girl said, voice as perkystiff as her hair, lipstick smeared and obviously very drunk; Niki looked down at her hands, embarrassed flush, feeling the tension like lightning-charged air crackling dry against her skin.
“Well, I’m simply thrilled,” Theo said, bouncing-ball parody of Tammi’s drawl, and offered the girl her hand. “Hows about you, Dar? Ain’t you simply thrilled, too?”
Daria, almost as tall as Keith from where she stood, nodded but kept her eyes on him.
“You guys go on back, Mort,” she said, checking the time by her big ugly wristwatch, her voice filled with deceiving calm. “We’ll be there in a few minutes,” and Mort, always happy to miss the next messy installment in this soap opera, pushed Theo out of the booth.
“Oh damn,” Theo said, mocking eyes doe wide. “Just when I was about to ask Tammi where she finds that simply marvy shade of eye shadow-”
“You just shut up and keep walking,” Mort said, and they were gone, one step toward the stage and swallowed immediately in the press.
“What’s her problem?” Tammi asked, and Niki cringed, wishing Keith wasn’t blocking her escape from the booth, wishing that she could have followed Mort and Theo backstage.
“Do you think you can make it through the fucking set?” Daria asked, completely ignoring Tammi.
Keith rubbed his shabby goatee, looked down at Tammi and grinned, then turned slowly back to Daria.
“You think I’m too fucked up to play, don’t you?”
No reply from Daria, her original question not brushed aside, and Niki felt herself sagging deeper into the Naugahyde, wished she could melt and slip liquid from her seat, pool unnoticed beneath the table.
“I’m cool, Dar,” he said. “I’m fine. So lay off, okay?”
“Yeah,” Daria answered. “Whatever you say, Keith. Just don’t screw this show up,” and then, to Niki, “You gonna stick around?”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Niki said and leaned way back so Daria could step over; her Docs left two deep prints in the shiny red upholstery, scars that would heal themselves as slowly as rising dough. Daria’s ass almost brushed Niki’s face, faded and threadbare denim that smelled of coffee and ancient cigarette smoke.
“Cool,” Daria said. “Save us the booth.” Keith moved aside and she hopped down. “The sound’s good from here.”
And she slipped away. Keith lingered a moment longer, still rubbing at his chin, before he finally released Tammi’s long-nailed hand, nails as pink as bubblegum pearls, and without another word, followed Daria.