Part 8 (2/2)

”Like wolves?” he asks her, and Niki doesn't answer, glances down at the floor, instead. There's a single red drop of her blood spattering the tiles.

”We should hurry,” she says, and Marvin doesn't reply, and she waits impatiently while he takes time to wipe the floor clean again.

Thirty-five thousand feet above the mesas and b.u.t.tes of Monument Valley and Daria stares through the tiny window in the 767's fuselage, watching the sunset turning the tops of the clouds all the brilliant colors of the desert below. Flying into night, deep indigo sky ahead and fire behind them, and soon there will be stars. A cramped seat in coach because she's too worried about money these days to spring for first-cla.s.s tickets when this will get her to Atlanta just as fast. She has her headphones on, an old Belly alb.u.m in her Discman, Tanya Donelly singing ”Untogether” to simple acoustic guitar, and it makes her miss Niki that much worse. Music from the year they met, though not exactly the sort of thing she would have listened to back then. Too busy trying to keep up with the boys to suffer anything so pretty or vulnerable, too busy learning to be harder than she already was, and for a moment Daria thinks about digging a 74 different CD out of the backpack at her feet. But the song ends, and the next track is faster and edgier and a little easier to take.

She closes her eyes, so far beyond sleepy, but it's a nice thought, anyway, dozing off to the soothing thrum of jet engines, and then the man sitting in the seat next to her touches her lightly on the shoulder.

”You're Daria Parker, aren't you? The singer,” he asks, only a very faint hint of hesitation in his voice, and she almost says No, I'm not. No, but people are always telling me how much I look like her. She's done it plenty enough times before, and it usually works.

Instead, she opens her eyes, the sky outside the window a shade or two darker than before, and ”Yeah,” she says, and the man shakes her hand. Nothing remarkable about him, but nothing unremarkable, either, and she wonders how anyone could look that perfectly average. He introduces himself, perfectly average name she'll forget as soon as he stops bothering her and goes back to the computer magazine lying open in his lap.

”Wow. I knew it was you,” he says. ”I never would have recognized you, but my daughter has a poster of your band on her bedroom door. She'll die when I tell her about this.”

Daria slips her headphones off and tries to remember all the polite things to say to an inquisitive stranger on an airplane, the careful, practiced words and phrases that neither insult nor encourage, but she's drawing a blank, and he still hasn't stopped shaking her hand.

”What's her name?”

”Alma. It's a family name. Well, my mother's middle name, anyway,” and he finally lets go of her hand, has to so he can dig out his wallet to show her a picture of his daughter.

”How old is she?” Daria asks as the man flips hastily past his driver's license, a library card, and at least a dozen credit cards.

”Fourteen. Fifteen next month,” and then he pa.s.ses the wallet to Daria and the girl in the photograph stares back at her through the not-quite-transparent plastic of a pro-

75.

tective sleeve. The sort of picture they take once a year at school, yearbook-bland sort of photograph your parents have to buy, and aside from one very large pimple, Alma looks almost as average as her father.

”She has every one of your records. Even an old ca.s.sette tape she bought off eBay, from when you were in that other band, the Dead Kittens.”

”Stiff Kitten,” Daria says, correcting him even though she probably shouldn't, probably rude, but he just nods his head agreeably and takes the wallet when Daria hands it back to him.

”Right, yeah. Stiff Kitten. Anyway, she paid seventy-three dollars for that old tape, if you can believe it.”

”I don't even have a copy of that myself,” which is true, her last copy of the demo she recorded with Mort and Keith lost before she and Niki moved to San Francisco. ”I haven't heard it in years.”

”Well, let me tell you, I sure have. She plays it constantly.

I keep telling her she's going to wear it out. Personally, I prefer your newer stuff.”

”Me, too,” she says, and the man laughs.

”Would you mind signing something for her? I hate to bother you, but she'd kill me-”

”No, it's okay, really,” relieved that they've gotten around to the inevitable and he'll probably stop talking soon, hoping that she doesn't look relieved, but running out of chit-chat and patience. Just wanting to shut her eyes again, put the headphones back on, and with any luck she can sleep the rest of the way to Atlanta.

The man tears a subscription card out of the computer magazine and Daria signs one side of it with a ballpoint pen from his s.h.i.+rt pocket. ”To Alma, be true,” and ”That's nice,” the man says when he reads it. ”That's very nice.

Thank you. She'll be tickled pink.”

Daria almost laughs, the very last thing in the world she would have expected him to say, tickled pink, and then she sees the tattoo on the back of his right hand. Fading blue-black-green ink scar worked deep into his skin, concentric 76 and radial lines connecting to form a spider's web, and he sees that she's staring at it.

”Stupid, isn't it? Had that done when I was in college.

My wife says I should have it removed, but I don't know. It reminds me of things I might forget, otherwise.”

And Daria doesn't reply, gives the man's pen back to him, and he asks her a couple more questions-what's it like, all the travel, the fans, has she ever met one of the Beatles-and she answers each question with the first thing that comes into her head. Forcing herself not to look at the tattoo again, and then the stewardess comes trundling down the narrow aisle with the beverage cart.

The man asks for a beer, a lite beer, and Daria takes the opportunity to turn away and put the headphones over her ears again. Outside, it's almost dark, a handful of stars twinkling high and cold and white, and she stares at them through her ghost-dim reflection until she falls asleep.

C H A P T E R T H R E E.

Ghosts and Angels Niki wanted to call a taxi, but they took Marvin's car, instead. A very small concession, she thought, give and take, only something to make her seem a little more rea-sonable. On the outside, the old VW Beetle looks like someone's been at it with a sledgehammer and a crowbar; inside, it smells like mold and the ancient, duct-taped up-holstery, the fainter, sweeter scents of his cologne and something she thinks might be peppermint Altoids. A puttering, noisy punch line of a car and ”How much does Daria pay you?” she asks him, though How much doesn't she pay you? seems more to the point.

”Enough,” he says, turning off Steiner onto Fell, the streetlights much, much brighter than his wavering low beams.

”Obviously not enough to buy a new car,” she mutters, thinking that Marvin won't hear her over the Volkswagen's clattering engine, but he does.

”Yes. Enough to buy a new car, if I wanted a new car. I've had Mariah here since I started college. She gets me everywhere I need to go. How's the hand feeling?”

”It hurts.”

”More or less than before?” and Niki thinks about that for a few seconds before answering, staring down at the bandage, thinking about Cafe Alhazred and the old man at the museum who wasn't Dr. Dalby.

78.

”Just about the same,” she says, finally.

”Well, then. It could be worse.”

”I don't need to see a doctor,” she whispers emphatically.

<script>