Part 9 (2/2)

”Yeah, but it's not looking for you, Marvin, is it? It's not f.u.c.king looking for you,” and it scares her how small and far away her voice sounds now, like she's watching a movie or television and the volume's been turned almost all the way down; her heart so much louder than her voice, her heart grown as wide and endless as the black California night spread out overhead.

Claws to tear through time and s.p.a.ce and anything in between, anything in its way. Claws to tear the sky, to tear your heart apart- ”You can't even hear it.”

”I'm going to pull over now, okay? And I need you to be still, just long enough for me to pull over, and then we'll get out of the car if that's what you need to do.”

Liar, the voice growls softly, unbelieving, and now it only sounds like Danny Boudreaux again. Only sounds like the strangled voice of a dead boy, not the vulcanized rubber tongues of d.a.m.ned and scorched machineries. He's just trying to save himself. He's made deals, and if you get away, if he lets you get away- Behind the Volkswagen, someone begins honking their horn, and Niki looks up at the green light again.

”I f.u.c.king swear to G.o.d, Niki, I am not lying to you,”

and Marvin cuts the wheel, nowhere to park but the cross-walk, and for a moment, the still point between breathing in and breathing out, she can't look away from the light, from the eye. Red means stop, green means go, go Niki, go now, while there's still somewhere left to run.

”I'm sorry, Marvin,” she says and opens the door, jerking free of his grip and almost tumbling out onto the pavement, catching herself at the last and stepping quickly away from the car.

”Niki, don't do this! Please, listen to me,” but she's al-82 ready turned her back on him and his musty car and all the other cars trapped there behind the sputtering Volkswagen. She's not running yet, because none of this feels real enough to let herself start running, not just yet, but she is walking very fast, the soles of her boots loud against the sidewalk.

You better run, babe, Danny says, and she realizes that he's following her. You better run fast, because you can bet he's going to be coming after you any minute now.

Niki looks back over her shoulder; Marvin's pulling over to the curb, and she starts walking faster. Her head's grown so full that she can't think-the drivers still blowing their horns because Marvin can't get out of their way quickly enough, Danny and all the other voices, the ruby fire and green ice of the dragon's eye. Everything getting in through her ears and her eyes, flooding her, and there's no way she can shut it all out, no inch of silence left anywhere in her deafened soul.

Where you going, Niki? Danny asks her. Where you headed in such a G.o.dd.a.m.ned hurry?

”You leave me alone,” she spits back, wis.h.i.+ng there were flesh and blood left of him, something solid for her to dig her nails and teeth into, something that could bleed.

”You're dead. You're f.u.c.king dead because you were too afraid to live anymore. You're dead, so leave me the h.e.l.l alone and be f.u.c.king dead!”

That morning you left me, that was the end of the world for me, Nicolan. That morning I trusted you, and you left me alone. I knew you'd never ever be coming back for me.

”Where am I going? Where the h.e.l.l am I supposed to go now?” she asks, not asking him, not asking anyone, just repeating questions over and over and over because she needs the answers more than she's ever needed anything in her life.

That's not true, Niki. Not more than you needed me, not more than you needed Spyder- ”I said leave me the f.u.c.k alone! Get out of my head!”

and she spins around, swinging at empty air, at the insubstantial, unresisting night draped so thick about her.

83.

You'll find the way. She believes in you, so I know that you'll find the way.

Her own scalding tears to blind her, to blur the softening edges of brick walls and blacktop rivers, Divisadero Street become a smeared tableau, oil on canvas, and she thinks if she can only stand still long enough Marvin will find her and take her back home again.

You'll follow the road that Orc took, and Esau. You'll follow the road beneath the lake, the Serpent's Road, because He's watching all the other ways.

And this voice she'll know when she's forgotten every other sound in the universe, when even the stars have burned themselves away to nothing and the earth has finally ceased to spin. This voice seared into her mind so deeply, so raw, its touch can never heal, can never even scar; Niki screams and falls, and there's nothing but the sidewalk concrete there to catch her.

They have set themselves against us, Niki, and they will stop at nothing, not until we're all dead. Not until we are all held forever within the borders of fire and slag and- ”Spyder?” Niki sobs, one hand held up high, held out, and someone's pulling her off the ground, pulling her back up into the world, into the light, into herself. ”Oh G.o.d, Spyder, please help me make them understand.”

There are still two of you to stand against them. Bring him to me, Niki, by the Serpent's Road, the road beneath the lake that burns.

Bring him down to me.

”Spyder! Wait-” but the voice has gone, and the night snaps suddenly back upon itself like a broken rubber band, something wound once too often. She's standing on the sidewalk, and Marvin's holding her so tightly she can hardly breathe. He's crying, too, and she hangs on to him, hanging on for whatever life she has left that might be worth saving.

”Don't you dare do that to me again,” he says and hugs her tighter. ”Don't you dare.”

And she doesn't tell him that she won't, and she doesn't 84 tell him that she will, and in a few minutes he leads her back down Divisadero to the Volkswagen waiting at the corner.

Niki was born two years after the fall of Saigon, twenty-three years after Eisenhower had agreed to fund and train South Vietnamese soldiers to fight the communists. Her parents were among the lucky few, the handful of South Vietnamese evacuated along with American citizens. John and Nancy Ky had become Americans and immigrated to New Orleans, traded in tradition and their Vietnamese names, the horrors of their lives in Tay Ninh and Saigon for citizens.h.i.+p and a small tobacco shop on Magazine Street.

They had named their only child Nicolan Jeane, and would have named the son her father had wished for Nicolas. But Niki's birth left her mother bedridden for more than a month, and the doctors warned that another pregnancy would very likely kill her.

Neither of Niki's parents ever made a habit of talking about their lives before New Orleans, and they kept themselves apart from the city's tight-knit Vietnamese community. They seemed always to struggle to answer any questions Niki asked about their lives before America in as few words as possible, as if bad memories and bad days had ears and could be summoned like demons. Occasionally, there were letters, exotic stamps and picture postcards from halfway around the world, messages from faceless relatives written in the mysterious alphabet that she never learned to read. Her mother kept these in some secret place, or maybe she simply threw them away. Niki treasured her rare glimpses of this correspondence, would sometimes hold an envelope to her nose and lips, hoping for some whiff or faint taste of a world that must have been so much more marvelous than their boxy white and avocado green house in the Metairie suburbs.

And when she was ten years old, just a few days past her tenth birthday, there was a terrible Gulf storm. The ghost of a hurricane that had died at sea, slinging its spirit land-

85.

ward, and she awoke in the night or in the morning before dawn, and her mother was sitting at the foot of her bed.

Niki lay very still, listening to the rain battering the roof, the wind dragging itself across and through everything. The room smelled like the menthol cigarettes her mother had smoked for as long as Niki could remember, and she watched the glowing orange tip of the Salem, a silent marker for her mother's dim silhouette.

”Do you hear that, Niki?” her mother asked. ”The sky is falling.”

Niki listened, hearing nothing but the storm and a garbage can rattling about noisily somewhere behind the house.

”No, mother. It's just a storm. It's only rain and wind.”

”Yes,” her mother replied. ”Yes. Of course, Niki.”

The cigarette glowed more intensely in the darkness, but she didn't hear her mother exhale over the roar and wail of the storm.

”When I was a girl,” her mother said, ”when I was only a little older than you, Niki, I saw, with my own eyes, the sky fall down to earth. I saw the stars fall down and burn the world. I saw children-”

And then lightning flashed so bright and violent, and her mother seemed to wither in the electric-white glare, hardly alive in her flannel housecoat and the lines on her face drawn deep as wounds. Off towards the river, the thunder rumbled contentedly to itself, and Niki realized how tightly her mother was squeezing her leg through the covers.

”It's okay, Mother,” Niki whispered, trying to sound like she believed what she was saying, but for the first time she could remember, she was frightened of the night and one of its wild delta storms.

<script>