And above the door, of course, another heavy iron sign on its rusted chains, one word burned through the metal, meaning in the emptiness left within the raw edges of acetylene cuts. Inferno, and Claude said, “Hell,” and jabbed a thumb at a smaller archway to their left and another sign, this one a plank of dark wood, wood sculpted like muscle, straining shoulder and gritted teeth, empty eyes and Purgatorio carved there, hung on oily-looking ropes. The heavy wooden doors to Purgatory were closed and padlocked.
“They do special shit in there,” he told Niki. “Fetish night and things like that.”
At the end of the passage there was more wrought iron, a spiral staircase winding up and up and a longhaired boy, blond and Niki thought he looked like a misplaced surfer, California tan in Georgia November.
Claude presented his hand, palm down, and surfer boy ran some sort of scanner across it, neon blue light and ANGEL stamped right there on Claude’s skin. Niki next and the same secret message revealed, and then he reached for Spyder’s hand, but she had backed away, stared, eyes wide and her mouth the slightest bit open, gazing into her tattoos.
“What’s wrong, Spyder?” Niki said, soft voice, calming voice. “Is something wrong?” and surfer boy looked annoyed, sighed loudly. Claude was already halfway up the stairs, noisy clanging shoes; he stopped and waited, looked down at them and whatever was happening.
“I don’t want that on my hand,” she said. Niki looked at Spyder’s face, cheeks too pale, the cruciform scar between her eyes angry pink, and Niki understood, click, like revelation or an impossible math problem that you’ve sweated over and then it just makes sense.
“Are you going up or not, ladies?” surfer boy said and waved his glowing scanner at them like a magic wand. “In or out, one way or another.”
“Just a second,” Niki said and smiled, wanted to kick him instead.
“I’ve got to wash it off,” Spyder said, but Niki took her hand and held it tightly.
“It’s just ink,” she said quietly. “That’s all. We’ll wash it off as soon we get upstairs, I swear. We’ll find a restroom and wash it off.”
And she led Spyder past the cruel, unveiling light and they followed Claude up the winding stairway, around and up and around and up, to the landing above. And the third sign set above the third arch, chisel-scarred marble and Paradiso, like the punch line to a dirty joke.
“Where’s a restroom?” Niki asked, and Claude pointed into the shadows on one side of the landing.
“Right over there,” he said, confusion and worry thickening his voice. “You gonna be all right, Spyder?”
“She’ll be fine,” Niki said, smiling, nodding, trying to sound like she believed it. “You go on in, and we’ll catch up, okay?”
Spyder had begun to dry-scrub the back of her hand hard against her jeans.
“Come on,” Niki said, and Claude watched them step free of the dazzling light spilling out of Heaven and disappear into the gloomy spot where the women’s room was. After a few seconds, he went in without them.
They’d emptied the van, everything lugged clank and crash up the black stairs, black carpet and black walls and two narrow flights up to Heaven’s back door. Each branded with garish orange stickers by the security goon guarding the door, Gabriel or Michael in a muscle shirt and nothing on his face but pure and frosty ennui, and the stickers read DANTE’S, “Stiff Kitten” and the date scrawled underneath with a smeary black Sharpie.
Then the goon had grumbled that they had one too many guests on the list, only three allowed for the second band, not four. And so Mort and Keith had told him Theo was their harmonica player. The goon had shaken his head, no dice, and so Theo had begun to dig through her purse.
“It’s in here somewhere, really,” but she’d found nothing but a dented old kazoo, and he’d said what the hell and given her a sticker, anyway, had stamped their four left hands. And then they’d found out the sound man was going to be late, and Theo had broken a nail and spent fifteen minutes bitching about it. Three dressing rooms behind the stage, and only the one for the headliner had a heater.
As typical a load-in as they could have asked for.
Keith was sitting alone in a total loss of an arm chair, sandwiched between his guitar and the wobbly flight case with Mort’s drums inside, and Mort and Theo had gone to find Niki and Spyder and Claude.
He looked sick, and not just junk sick; Daria knew that look well enough. She lit a cigarette and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said and held her hand.
“You gonna make it?” and he didn’t answer, drew smoke deep into his lungs and rubbed at his stubbly cheeks.
“Can’t sleep,” he said, and the smoke rushed back out again. “Not a wink in three goddamned nights,” and she looked at the red welt across the bridge of his nose, the angry red of infection, remembered the cuts from that morning at Spyder’s and never any explanation for how they’d gotten there.
“Bad dreams?” and she wanted to look over her shoulder, then, maybe even wanted to take back the words before he could answer her. But Keith looked at her and laughed, took another drag off the cigarette and blew two streams of smoke from his nostrils. Nothing in his gray eyes she could read.
“I think Cephus has been selling me bad shit, that’s all,” and the moment had passed them by, opportunity missed and no shared confession, no accounting of the horrors that had dogged her sleep for a week blurted out before she could stop herself. No release, no sense of relief afterwards. Only more dread, another weight to carry alone, and regret that the heroin had gotten between them again.
“I’m gonna have to stop buying from that jerkoff before he kills me.”
And she gripped his hand tighter, chewed at her lower lip as she read the graffiti, the writing on the dingy dressing room wall.
“Tonight’s the night,” she said, to him or just to herself, wanted it to be for him but couldn’t be sure if he was even listening. “We’re gonna knock that rep on her ass, and she’ll be talking deal before we can get off the stage.”
“Yeah,” Keith said, surprising her, and when he rubbed at the cut on his nose a single drop of pus the color of custard welled up, beaded, and he wiped it away.
“Tonight’s the night,” he said.
The restroom was freezing, nothing on the blue door but a W slashed into the paint and so much cold inside it was hard to breathe. No hot water, and Spyder was still scrubbing at the spot where he’d stamped her hand with ANGEL in invisible ink, had scrubbed it raw already, strange red under the tattoos, and Niki knew that soon it would be bleeding.
“It’s gone,” she said. “You’ve washed it off, Spyder.”
“How do you know?” she said in a vicious tone, her vicious eyes answering Niki from the mirror. “How the hell can you tell? There’s no way to know if it’s still there or not. You couldn’t fucking see it to start with, so how are you supposed to know if it’s gone?”
“It was just ink, Spyder. And ink comes off with soap and water. That’s how the hell I know.”
But Spyder pressed more of the candy-pink soap powder from the dispenser over the sink and began to lather her hands again.
“You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know shit.”
And Niki grabbed Spyder’s hands, slippery wet and living art, got her around the wrists and held on. Skin like ice from the water, and Spyder howled and tried to pull free.
“What don’t I know, huh? That your father was a fucking lunatic and cut your face up when you were a kid? That you think this has something to do with that?”