“Down the hall,” Daria said. “There’s a john down the hall. Jesus, it’s really coming down out there.”
“I guess a washcloth or a towel would be too much to hope for,” Niki said.
“I’ve got a handkerchief.” Theo had stuffed everything back into her purse, sat on the ugly carpet beneath a tattered Nirvana poster stuck up with tacks; someone had drawn graceful angel wings, black Magic Marker plumage from Kurt Cobain’s shoulder blades, a cheesy halo over his head. Theo found the handkerchief, actually clean except for a couple of lipstick smudges, and tossed it to Niki.
Niki tucked the sleeping bag tighter around Spyder and went alone to find the john.
The sickly light from Keith’s room petered out on her about halfway down the long hall, and at the very end, a door she couldn’t see and the richer blackness of the stairwell dropping away on her right. The sort of darkness that begins to move, that writhes, if you stare at it too long or too hard. She pushed the door open, felt along the wall until she found the switch. More shitty light.
Tiny closet of cracked tile and yellowed walls, the faint smell of disinfectant and the thicker smell of piss. Two stalls without doors and a dented and empty paper towel dispenser. Niki went to the sink, turned the knob marked H, then waited to see if the water would ever get warm. Her reflection in the cracked mirror over the sink stared back at her, disheveled, wind-chapped cheeks bright in the white-green light. She looked at least as misplaced, as ineffectual, as she felt. Her round face lost in the ruins behind her, broken into glassy pie slices that converged between her tired eyes. She noticed a spot of something dark at one corner of her mouth: a streak of grease from the van, or dirt or…
Blood. Spyder’s blood.
Niki grabbed for the handkerchief, soppy cold, and scrubbed at the stain, and then shame at her horror, that there might be something in Spyder’s blood more dangerous than her own. She dropped the white cloth, plop, back into the rust-stained sink.
The water isn’t ever going to get warm, Niki, not tonight, her pecan-shell eyes said from the broken looking glass, eyes that looked suddenly older than the smooth face they were plugged into, the eyes of someone who ought to know better than to have ever wondered if the water was going to get warm.
What happened back there, Niki?, remembering that moment in the parking lot at Dr. Jekyll’s, something there and then gone again, but something left behind, too. And suddenly the cold in the little restroom seemed to press at her, deep-sea pressure, liquid cold, and she gasped.
A whisper somewhere behind her, from the stalls or the hall outside or right into her ear, something dreamed, maybe, and forgotten on purpose. It isn’t hard to drown, not if that’s what you’re after…
Niki turned off the faucet, quick twist and the water stopped flowing, squeezed out the handkerchief; she left the light in the restroom burning and hurried back to Keith’s apartment.
Spyder didn’t flinch when Niki touched the wet handkerchief to the cut on her forehead. It was deep enough to need stitches; Niki was afraid that if she rubbed too hard at the dried blood, she’d see bone underneath. She dabbed, gentle as she could, and fresh blood welled up along the half-moon slash, ugly loose flap of meat as wide as her thumb.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that’s gotta hurt.”
“Yeah,” Spyder said, soft chuckle, “Like a motherfucker.”
Now Keith and Daria were together on the mattress, Mort on the floor next to them, the Thunderbird just about gone. Theo had picked through the boxes of clothing, had come up with a couple of raggedy flannel shirts and a ridiculous-looking toboggan cap, Play-Doh blue with a huge lavender pom-pom sewn on top. She’d jammed the cap on over her fallen pompadour, wrapped the shirts around her double-breasted polyester jacket and sat back down under the Nirvana poster.
“You’d be a lot warmer over here,” Mort had said, had patted the floor beside him, and she’d told him to go fuck himself, that she’d have been warmer in her own goddamn apartment.
Niki had barely begun, and already the handkerchief was filthy crimson and she was just smearing the same blood and grime around and around. She considered going back to the restroom, rinsing it out and starting over again, but the thought of another stroll down that hallway made her shiver, the thought of her reflection in that fractured mirror. Instead, she tried wiping it clean on the carpet, silently dared Keith to object; he didn’t, of course.
“You don’t have to do this,” Spyder said quietly.
“I just wish you’d let us take you to a doctor.”
Now there was a bloody splotch on the carpet, and the handkerchief was still a useless mess. Niki looked around the room, spotted a crumpled Taco Bell bag nearby.
“Just a second,” she said, and yes, there were paper napkins inside, only one grease-stained from the half-eaten and mummified burrito hidden at the bottom. And there were at least a dozen other fast food bags scattered around the room. She dampened a corner of the napkin with her tongue, dry paper taste and a hint of refried beans, forcing herself not to think too much about germs, infection passed either way. She wiped at the crust between Spyder’s eyebrows.
“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, and then you just sit there in your plastic cottage and watch the fallout.