Part 2 (2/2)
Marvin made a face like a cat trapped in a small child's lap, sighed and glanced back down at his book.
”I'm sorry,” Niki said, not entirely certain what she was apologizing for and feeling more annoyed at Marvin than sorry for playing ”Dark in Day” twelve times in a row.
”No,” he said, but no change at all in his expression, the strained patience, his good-nurse face that she hated so much. ”It's not your fault. I think I'm getting a headache.”
Niki picked up one of the CDs, turned it over and stared at her reflection in the iridescent plastic. Her face too round, too fat because the Elavil made her gain weight and hold water. Dark circles beneath her eyes and the disc's center hole where her nose ought to be. She held the CD at an angle so it caught the lamplight, sliced it up into spectrum wedges, violet to blue to green, yellow to red, and she hummed quietly with the song. Daria's ba.s.s thumping out the rhythm like an erratic heartbeat, breathless fingertip dance across steel strings to draw music from nothing, and Niki murmured the last part of the chorus just loud enough that Marvin would hear.
” 'Dark in day, I'd always say, that's not the way to know,' ” her voice and Daria's, pretending they were together because Daria was still on tour, out singing for other people in Nashville or Louisville or Memphis, some distant Southern city that Niki had never seen and never wanted
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to see. And her reflection in the CD wavered then, as if the plastic were water now and someone had just dipped their hand into it, concentric ripples racing themselves towards the edge of the disc, and Niki dropped it.
”Is something wrong?” Marvin asked, and no, Niki said, didn't say the word aloud but shook her head, not taking her eyes off the CD lying on the floor. It had stopped rippling and she stared back up at herself from the mercury-smooth underbelly of the disc.
”You're sure, Niki?” and she looked up at Marvin, hoping he wouldn't see that she was frightened, because then he'd try to get her to tell him why, to explain another one of the things that no one ever believed she really saw or heard. The things they gave her pills for, so that she wouldn't really see or hear them, either.
”I dropped it,” she said. ”Sorry,” and then she smiled for him, and Marvin smiled back and stopped looking so concerned.
”It's almost midnight,” he said. ”Don't forget your medicine. And will you please use the headphones if you're going to keep playing that same song over and over?”
Niki glanced nervously back at the CD, but it was still just a CD again. Nothing that s.h.i.+mmered or rippled like ice water, and she reached for the headphones lying in their place on the shelf beside the stereo as ”Dark in Day”
ended and began again.
Lady lost in all your pain and thunder, all your shattered wonder . . .
She reached down and used one finger to gently flip the disc over so she wouldn't have to see the mirrored side anymore. The safer, printed-on side instead, Tom Waits' Bone Machine, and hardly any of the silver showing through.
Walking where the spinning world grows brittle, and I can't find you there . . .
She plugged the black headphones into the stereo, and Daria's voice shrank to a whisper, a small, faraway sound until Niki pulled the phones down over her head so that the music swelled suddenly around her again, wrapped her 24 tight in electric piano and drums and the constant, comforting thump, thump, thump of the ba.s.s guitar.
You never look over your shoulder anymore, Daria sang, her gravel-and-whiskey voice suspended somewhere inde-finable between Niki's ears, somewhere inside her head.
I'm afraid what you would see. And Niki began singing again, never mind if it annoyed Marvin, because everything she did annoyed Marvin, and singing made her feel a little closer to Daria.
” 'Dark in day, I'd always say, dark in day, that's not so far to fall.' ”
The three prescription bottles were lined up neatly for her on one of the big speakers, the pills sealed inside like flies and ants and moths in polished chunks of amber. All her crazy medicine, her psychoactive trinity: Elavil and Xanax and the powder-blue Klonopin tablets. It made her feel better to have the bottles nearby, especially when Daria wasn't. Niki reached for the Xanax, first station of that pharmaceutical cross, calming palindrome, and the gla.s.s of water that Marvin had brought her almost half an hour before.
Lady lost where night can't reach you anymore, tripping softly 'round the edges you endure . . .
She popped the top off the plastic bottle and tipped it carefully so that only two or three of the pills would spill out into her open palm. Always careful, because she hated it when she poured out a whole handful by accident, that sudden rush like candy from a vending machine, and always a few that slipped, inevitably, between her fingers, bounced or rolled away across the floor, and she'd have to scramble about to find them. She tapped the mouth of the bottle once against her hand, but nothing happened. Niki checked to be sure the bottle wasn't empty, saw there were at least two weeks' worth of tablets left inside and tried again. And that time a single white pill came rolling out and lay glistening like a droplet of milk on her skin. It certainly wasn't Xanax, whatever it was, wasn't anything she was supposed to be taking and nothing she remembered
25.
ever having taken before, that tiny, glistening sphere like a ripe mistletoe berry, and Those are poisonous, aren't they?
she thought, holding the strange pill closer to her face.
Dark in day, Daria sang inside her head, I'd always say, dark in day, that's not so far to fall.
And then a very faint, rubbery pop, and the white pill extended eight long and jointed legs, raised itself up, and she could see that there were eyes, too, s.h.i.+ny eyes so pale they were almost transparent, a half-circle dewdrop crown of eyes staring up at her. Niki squeezed her hand shut around the thing, the impossible spider pill, and glanced quickly towards Marvin. He was still sitting on the sofa, his nose buried in The Moon and Sixpence. So he hadn't seen, had not seen anything at all and he wouldn't, even if she walked across the room and showed it to him.
Pain then, little pain like someone p.r.i.c.king at her skin with a sharp sewing needle, and so she opened her hand again. But the spider was gone and there were only three pink Xanax, instead; Niki put the extra pill back into the bottle, set the bottle down on the floor beside her. She exhaled slowly and then took a deep, hitching breath. Her heart was racing, adrenaline-dizzy rush and beads of cold sweat, a faintly metallic taste like aluminum in her mouth.
You hold it all inside, you hold it all in, you hold it all inside you . . .
Niki chewed her lower lip and concentrated on breathing more slowly, breathing evenly, knew from experience she'd only wind up hyperventilating if she didn't. She stared at her palm like a fortune-teller trying to divine the future from two Xanax; but there was something else there, something other than the pills, so small she hadn't noticed it at first. A pin-point welt, raised skin gone a slightly brighter shade of pink than her medication, and she closed her hand again, making a fist so tight her short nails dug painfully into her flesh.
The song ended, and this time Niki pulled the headphones off, let them fall to the floor among the CDs. The noise drew Marvin's attention, but only for a moment.
She forced a smile for him, something false but credible 26 enough to pa.s.s for a smile, a strained charm against his questions, and he smiled back, relieved, and let his eyes drift once more to his book.
Not real, she whispered, not aloud but safe inside her head, the way that Dr. Dalby had taught her. Not real at all.
Even if it meant something, even if I needed to see it and pay attention and remember I saw it, nothing real.
Like a memory or a ghost. Nothing that can hurt me.
But when she opened her hand again the welt was still there, the swelling a little more p.r.o.nounced than before, and her palm had begun to throb slightly. The patient, faithful Xanax, as well, and four half-moon dimples left by her fingernails; any harder and she might have drawn blood, and that would have freaked Marvin out for sure.
Don't you lock up. Keep moving, and so she pressed her lips to her hand; the small welt felt hot when the tip of her tongue brushed over it, and Niki dry-swallowed the pills.
She snapped the cap back on the Xanax bottle, took the Elavil next, then the Klonopin last of all, this routine me-thodical as counting rosary beads, and she drank all the water Marvin had brought her, even though it was warm and tasted faintly of dishwas.h.i.+ng liquid. If she hadn't he might have asked why, and one question could have led to another, and another. She set the prescription bottles back on the speaker, pressed the OFF b.u.t.ton on the CD player, and ”I think I'll go to bed now,” she said. ”I'll see you in the morning, Marvin.”
”Good night, dear,” Marvin replied, not bothering to look up at her. ”Sweet dreams.”
”Yeah. You too,” she whispered, and then Niki took a deep breath and climbed the stairs alone.
Awaking from a dream of something she should have done differently, something lost, and Niki Ky stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes before she rolled over and looked at the alarm clock. LED numbers and letters that glowed the same murky yellow-green as cartoon toxic waste, 6:07 A.M., and the darkness outside the bedroom
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