Part 2 (1/2)

19.

Marvin nods his head once, noncommittal nod, and then he goes to the bedroom window, stands there with his back to her and Niki, staring down at the traffic on Alamo Square. Daria crushes the b.u.t.t of her cigarette out in the ashtray and sets it on the table.

”You think I don't know how much Niki needs me here?” she asks, but he doesn't answer, and Daria sighs loudly and reaches for her pack of cigarettes, her old Zippo lighter.

”You're smoking too much again,” he says very quietly.

”Yeah? Well, it's a G.o.dd.a.m.n miracle I'm not doing a h.e.l.l of a lot worse than that,” and Daria has to flick her thumb across the striker wheel four times before the Zippo gives up an unsteady inch of blue-orange flame.

”She was playing your music,” Marvin says. ”Friday night, before she went up to bed. She plays your music all the time these days. I finally had to ask her to use the headphones because she'd put one song on repeat and it was driving me crazy.”

The Zippo's flame sputters and dies before Daria can light the cigarette hanging limply from her lips. She curses and flips the cover shut again, turns to face Marvin and the Sunday morning suns.h.i.+ne streaming in around him.

”Look, I don't need you laying some kind of f.u.c.king guilt trip on me, okay? Jesus,” and she takes the cigarette from her mouth and puts it back in the pack.

”You said you wanted to know everything.”

”Then why didn't you tell me before now? If you thought it was important that she was listening to my music Friday night, why didn't you tell me that to begin with?”

”Take her with you, Dar,” Marvin says, and he glances at Niki; she's rolled over onto her left side now, and her face is buried deep in the white cotton folds of sheets and pil-lowcases. ”That's what she needs. Just to be near you for a little while. Just a few days-”

”No,” and something in the way she says it, spitting that one word out at him, so emphatic, so final, something cold and ugly in her voice-but nothing she can take back, no 20 matter how it makes her feel. ”You weren't with us when she freaked out on me in Boston. I can't work and watch after her at the same time.”

Marvin rubs nervously at his stubbly chin, his dark cheeks specked with darker whiskers when he's never anything but clean shaven.

”Then take me with you, too,” he says. ”I'll watch her when you can't.”

”I said no, Marvin, so don't ask again. Does she even look like she's in any shape to be on the road?” and Daria pauses, knows he isn't going to answer her, but leaves s.p.a.ce for an answer anyway. ”Now, if you don't think you can do your job, I can look for someone else.”

”I'm trying to do my job,” he says, the angry smudge at the edges of his voice. ”I'm trying to keep her alive.”

”Well, you sure could've fooled me.”

And then neither of them says anything else, only one or two heated words away from something that can't be taken back, apologized for, excused. Daria sits in the chair by the bed, running strong fingers through her spiky blond hair, staring at Niki's bare shoulders as though there might be answers printed on her skin like tattoos or scars. The answers she needs to hold the world together around her, around them both, some secret talisman or incantation against all her fears and failures.

She was playing your music. She plays your music all the time these days.

”Will you leave us alone for a while?” Daria says. ”I need to get my head together, that's all. I have to figure out what the h.e.l.l I'm going to do next.”

”Yeah, Dar, sure,” he replies, the reluctance plain to hear, but at least he doesn't sound p.i.s.sed off anymore. ”If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen.”

”And take this d.a.m.ned thing with you,” and she reaches into her jacket, removes her cell phone from a pocket and hands it to Marvin. ”If anyone calls, especially that p.r.i.c.k-”

”You're busy.”

21.

”Whatever. You can tell them I'm off s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a herd of sheep for all I care.”

Marvin turns the phone over in his hand a couple of times, as if preparing to pa.s.s judgment on its molded plastic faceplate, plastic the indecent color of ripe cranberries.

”It does have an off switch, you know?” he says and points to a tiny black b.u.t.ton on one side.

”Then turn it off and take it with you.”

Marvin nods his head and walks past her to the bedroom door, has already started pulling it shut behind him when he stops and looks back at Daria.

”Hey. Who was Spider?” he asks her, and she stares at him like someone struck dumb, struck stupid, someone too far gone to ever be surprised by anything ever again but this one thing.

”What?”

”Spider. Last night, at the hospital, when Niki started coming back around, she asked for someone named Spider a couple of times. I'd almost forgotten-”

”I don't know,” Daria lies, answering the question much too quickly, and she can see from his expression, the mix of confusion and concern, that Marvin knows perfectly well that she's lying.

”I'm sorry,” he says. ”I thought it might be important,”

and he closes the door, leaving Daria Parker alone with Niki and Ophelia and the sun-bright walls.

”She wrote this song when we lived in Boulder,” Niki said, and Marvin frowned at her, at Niki Ky sitting in the center of about a hundred jewel cases, the scatter of CDs like tiny s.p.a.ce-age Frisbees. Niki in a gray-green cardigan at least two sizes too large and a black T-s.h.i.+rt underneath, faded black cotton and a big white letter Z with a question mark behind it-Z? inside a white silk-screened square- and then the song started again.

”When we still lived with Mort and Theo on Arapahoe,”

she said.

22.

”Yeah,” Marvin replied and he turned a page in the book he was trying to read. ”You told me.”

”She used to play it on Pearl Street, for spare change, you know, and I'd sit on top of the big bronze beaver and listen. Sometimes Mort would tap along on his snare drum, if he didn't have to work that day.”

”You told me that, too, dear,” and Marvin stared at her over the top of his paperback Somerset Maugham novel.

”But haven't you played it enough for one night?”

”You had to have a license, but there were lots of street performers on Pearl. No cars allowed. We knew a girl who juggled winegla.s.ses, and a guy named Silence who played the hammer dulcimer.”