Part 4 (2/2)

. . . a thousand miles away.

And a flash of pain through her right hand, spike-steel sharp and electric bright across her stiff and swollen palm, dividing fivefold and racing itself swiftly towards the tips of her cramping fingers. Niki cried out and dropped the mug.

It bounced off the table, dumping hot coffee in her lap before it hit the floor and shattered. She tried to stand, but a fresh wave of pain clenched her hand into a tight fist, and she almost slipped on the wet floor, ceramic shards of the broken cup crunching beneath her boots, and she sat right back down again.

”Hey, what's wrong?” someone asked. ”Are you sick or something?” Someone male who sounded scared and confused, and Niki peered out through her watering eyes at a skinny boy with a shaved head and a ring in his lower lip.

. . . we dream of a s.h.i.+p that sails away . . .

”My hand, ” she gasped, but her voice too small, breathless, lost in the white fire searing its way greedily up her arm, and the stupid, baffled expression on his face all she needed to know that the boy didn't understand. Wasting her time because he would never possibly understand any of it, and so she got to her feet again, shoved roughly past him, past other tables and other people. All of them looking at her now, sly and knowing glances from beady, dark eyes, suspicious scowls, and Niki tried desperately to think through the alternating waves of pain and nausea, light-headed and sick and only trying to remember where the h.e.l.l the restroom was hidden.

And someone pointed the way, finally, though she didn't remember asking them, and she stumbled past the counter and down the long hallway, past cardboard boxes of to-go cups and plastic spoons. What if someone's in there, she thought, but the door was open, the doork.n.o.b loose and jiggly in her hand, and she locked it behind her.

. . . a thousand miles away.

41.

The restroom was hardly even as large as a closet and smelled like disinfectant and mildew, s.h.i.+t and drying urine, and everything too stark in the green-white fluorescent light, too perfectly defined. Niki leaned over the tiny rust-stained sink and twisted the handle marked H, but cold water gushed from the faucet, and there wasn't time to wait for it to decide to get warm someday. She gritted her teeth, held her hand under the icy water, and stared back at herself from the scratched and streaky mirror hung above the sink.

Her own face in there but almost unrecognizable, pale and sweat-slick junky's face, puffy, bloodshot eyes and black hair tangled like a rat's matted nest, and she couldn't remember if she'd brushed it before leaving the house.

That face could belong to almost anyone, anyone lost and insane, anyone d.a.m.ned. Her hand throbbed, and Niki shut off the tap.

”You should have listened to me,” the dead boy behind her admonished, Danny watching her in the mirror. ”It's probably too late now. It's probably in your blood by now.”

”It's killing me,” she said, whimpered, and the center of the welt had gone the color of vanilla custard, the fat pus-tule surrounded by skin so dark it looked as if it had already begun to decay.

”No,” he said. ”It won't kill you. If you're dead, you're no good to anyone. This will be worse than dying, Niki.”

Then something seemed to move inside the welt, something larval coiling and uncoiling in its amniotic rot, and the pain doubled and she screamed.

”Shhhhh,” the dead boy hissed and held one cautious finger to his lips. ”Hold it down or they'll hear you, Niki.

And then they'll come to find out what's wrong in here, and they'll all see what's happening to you.”

”f.u.c.k,” she grunted, and spittle flew from her lips and speckled the brown walls, the lower half of the dirty mirror. ”You're dead, ” she said. ”You got out. You ran the f.u.c.k away and left me alone.”

”You think it's some kind of party over here?” he asked 42 her and smiled or sneered, black teeth and his eyes almost twinkled the way they did when he was still alive. ”Well it ain't, sugardoll. It isn't even h.e.l.l. It isn't anything you can begin to imagine.”

”You left me,” she said again, and he shook his head, the ruined ghost of his pretty, drag queen's face twisting into an angry snarl.

”No, Niki. You left me. You ran out on me. I told you the truth because I loved you, and you f.u.c.king ran.”

”Oh,” she whispered, ”oh, G.o.d,” gasped, consciousness thin and brittle as onionskin now, black at the narrowing edges of her vision, and the thing beneath her flesh wriggled, worming its way in deeper.

”You wanted her,” Danny Boudreaux said. ”You wanted her and now she has you, forever and f.u.c.king ever.”

He laughed at her, empty, soulless laugh like the end of time making fun of the beginning, and Niki screamed again and squeezed the welt between her left thumb and index finger. For a moment the s.h.i.+ny surface of the blister held, a second that might have lasted for hours, days, while she screamed and the dead boy with the crooked neck laughed his apocalypse laugh for her. And then it burst, popped loud, and Niki grabbed at one end of the squirming thing trying to burrow quickly away from her and the dim restroom light.

”No,” she said. ”No, you don't. I won't let you in,” and Niki held on to it tightly, her wet fingers slippery with pus and blood, its transparent body like a strand of water, living tissue that insubstantial, jellyfish siphonoph.o.r.e tendril or some deep-sea worm. It grew taut, then went limp, s.h.i.+mmered like a pearl before slipping effortlessly from her grasp and vanis.h.i.+ng into the seeping red hole in the palm of her hand.

”Sorry,” the dead boy said, sounding almost as though he might have meant it. ”I thought for a minute there you might win after all.”

Niki's legs folded, and she fell to the floor, landed in a heap on the filthy, p.i.s.s-damp tile and sat there sobbing and

43.

cradling her aching hand. Her treacherous right hand become the ragged pa.s.sage into her body, her heart, her soul if that's where the thing meant to go. Bright, clean blood flowed freely from the hole, and she let it bleed. Danny was gone, and someone was banging on the restroom door. She wasn't sure if the lock worked or not, so she leaned on the door and braced one of her boots against the toilet bowl.

”What's going on in there?” a man with a Middle Eastern accent shouted at her from the other side. ”Don't make me call the police.”

”I'm sick,” she shouted back at him. ”I'm just sick.”

”But you were screaming,” the man said. ”I heard you,”

and she could tell that he didn't believe her.

”So I'm very sick, okay? But I'm getting better. I'll be out in a minute. I'm sorry.”

”I will call the police if you scream again,” he said, and then she listened as his angry footsteps retreated down the hallway. Niki shut her eyes, wondering if there was anything in the restroom she could use for a bandage, and waited hopelessly for whatever was going to happen next.

Another taxi ride down Fulton to the evergreen sanctuary of Golden Gate Park, and this time a driver who didn't try to talk her ear off. He dropped Niki in front of the California Academy of Sciences, and she stood on the museum steps for a while, watched as noisy groups of schoolchild-ren were herded about by their teachers. She'd torn away a strip of the sweats.h.i.+rt she was wearing under the blue fur coat and wrapped it tightly around her hand, not so tight that she'd cut off the circulation, but tight enough that it would stop the bleeding and stay put.

She was there because this was where the thing that had crawled inside her said to come. This drab Eisenhower-era edifice of gray stone blocks and concrete columns, an aus-tere and secular church for modern stargazers and al-chemists. In a few minutes, she would go inside and see whatever it was she was supposed to see, but for the moment, better to stand out here beneath the wide blue sky 44 and smell the clean ocean air, the mild autumn breeze, the flowers and gra.s.s, and Niki imagined that she could smell nasturtiums and roses growing somewhere nearby.

Some of the older kids noticed her, and a few pointed rude fingers and stared, laughter for the frowzy Vietnamese woman in her coat that looked like maybe someone had skinned Grover the Muppet and sewn the pieces back together for her to wear. Her messy hair and the sloppy, bloodstained bandage on her hand, and I bet I look like a homeless person, she thought. A street lunatic, a d.a.m.n crack wh.o.r.e, which made her sad, sad and tired, but made her smile, too, thinking about Daria's money, Daria's big house on Alamo Square.

”You don't look so good, lady,” one of the boys said, bolder than the rest, sixth- or seventh-grader in a Sponge-Bob T-s.h.i.+rt and his red hair shaved almost down to his scalp.

”I don't feel so hot, either,” she said and wiped sweat from her forehead, held out her rag-swaddled hand so the boy could get a better look.

”What's the matter with you, anyway?” he asked. ”You got AIDS or something?”

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