Part 20 (2/2)
”I don't want to die.”
”It's not death. Only another kind of being, that's all.
The things that you will see-”
Eleven of them waiting in the cemetery that night, and the tall man chose her. Ten chances to fail, to be pa.s.sed over, but she was the one he'd been looking for all along.
”The truth is buried inside you,” the white woman promises. ”Ancient fragments, but the angels will find you too late, Theda. The angels will never find you at all.”
And the big car rolls on through the Southern night, as the girl rolls from one dream current to the next, drowning in herself.
At 4:58 A.M. CST, Daria Parker opens her eyes somewhere above western Kansas and stares at the moonlight was.h.i.+ng ice white across the tops of the clouds outside the cabin window of the 767. They look like the tops of mountains, she thinks. They look like the tops of very high mountains covered with snow. And then she remembers where she is and why, that she's on her way back to San Francisco and Niki, and that memory leads her immediately to all the other things she doesn't want to remember, and she closes her eyes again. The airplane hums rea.s.suringly, the steady, everywhere rumble above and below and all around her, and Maybe that's the dream, she thinks. Maybe I'm asleep in my hotel room in Atlanta, and Alex is holding me and this time Niki's okay. Maybe she's never heard the strange message left in her voice mail, and Niki hasn't told her it's already too late, and maybe in the morning she'll be able to figure out a way to fix everything.
And then we all lived happily ever after.
”Wake up, Daria,” Niki says, and she opens her eyes.
So, it really is a dream, and that ought to be another comfort, like the thrum of the jet's engines, but then she realizes that it isn't that sort of dream at all.
”I only have a second,” Niki tells her. ”I can't stay.”
”I'm on my way, baby,” Daria replies and touches Niki's 184 cheek, her skin so dark against the pale tips of Daria's fingers. ”Just like I said. I'm racing the sun.”
”I didn't want to ask you to do this. I wanted to let you go and never have to ask you for anything else ever again.”
”I don't know what you're talking about.”
And Niki Ky looks away, then, looks down at her hands folded in her lap and then up at the movie playing silently on the screen at the front of the cabin.
”We never saw that,” she says. ”I wanted to, but you didn't have time, and I didn't want to go with Marvin.”
”When I get home, we'll rent the DVD.”
”It wouldn't be the same, even if we could.”
”f.u.c.k it. I'll make the time,” Daria says and puts both her arms around Niki, leans forward and holds her tight.
Niki's wearing her blue fur coat, and it smells faintly of dust and jasmine, and Daria wants to bury her face in it and make this be a different dream.
”Listen, Dar. I have to be absolutely sure you understand me, because I can only do this once,” and now Niki's speaking with an urgency that makes Daria want to shut her eyes and wake up. Back in the hotel or on the plane to San Francisco, either one, as long as it means she doesn't have to hear whatever Niki's about to say.
”When we left Birmingham, when we were on our way to Boulder-”
”That was a long time ago.”
”-one morning, we had breakfast at a truck stop, the same day we made it to Denver, the first time we ever saw the mountains.”
”We were always eating in truck stops,” Daria protests and takes her arms from around Niki's shoulders. She turns back to the window and the moon and the clouds.
”This one had a jackalope.”
”They all had f.u.c.king jackalopes, Niki.”
”You're not listening. You have to listen and let me finish this.”
”I'm not stopping you,” she says, wanting a drink, wanting a cigarette, wanting to wake up.
185.
”I gave Mort the rest of my waffles, and you asked me if I was feeling okay.”
”Niki, how the h.e.l.l do you expect me to remember breakfast in a truck stop ten years ago? I have enough trouble remembering breakfast yesterday morning.”
”You have to remember this,” Niki says quietly, just a little quieter and she'd be whispering, and Daria looks at her again. Niki's almond eyes sparkle wet in the dark cabin, in the reflected light from the movie screen. ”You have to remember because I can't get back there myself. I thought I'd be able to, but there wasn't enough time. There's never enough G.o.dd.a.m.n time to do things the right way.”
”Okay, so there was a jackalope,” Daria says, because she doesn't want Niki to start crying, even if this is just a dream, doesn't want a scene and someone trying to help but only making things worse, one of the flight attendants or someone seated across the aisle or in the row in front of them. ”We were having breakfast at a truck stop and you gave Mort the rest of your waffles.”
”You asked if I was okay,” Niki says, wipes at her eyes and blinks. ”I said I was, even though I wasn't. I said I was going to the restroom, but I went outside instead, and you followed me.”
”I don't remember any of this.”
”Then just listen to me, and maybe you'll remember later. I didn't go to the restroom, I went outside instead. It was cold. It was really cold, but you followed me, anyway. I walked across the parking lot and through some gra.s.s and cactus to a place where there was just dirt. I buried something there.”
”Wait,” Daria says. ”Oh, s.h.i.+t. Yeah,” because now she does remember, all of it rus.h.i.+ng back at her-the smell of greasy diner food and the freezing late December morning, the stunted cacti and strands of rusted barbed wire she stepped over to follow Niki.
”I took a ball bearing from my coat pocket. You asked me what it was.”
”And you wouldn't tell me,” Daria says, and then there's 186 a sharp pain in her chest, a red flower blooming suddenly behind her sternum, and she gasps and reaches for Niki.
”Oh, G.o.d,” she whispers. ”Oh, Niki. You wouldn't tell me what it was. You just buried it there and never told me what it was.”
”You never asked me after that. I never thought it would matter.”
Daria gasps again and digs her fingers into the Play-Doh-blue fur of Niki's coat sleeve. In the secret, wet cavity of her rib cage, in the hollow of her heart, the pain flower doubles in size, triples, blood petals and ventricle sepals unfolding, tearing her apart, driving the breath from her lungs, and Niki only sighs and looks down at her folded hands.
”You have to find it for me, Daria. You have to find it and bring it to the bas.e.m.e.nt of Spyder's house.”
Daria opens her mouth to say something, something she has to say because she doesn't think she could ever find the ball bearing, not after a decade, but there's only the pain, eating her alive, picking her to pieces, and then Niki is gone, and a white bird is perched on the back of her seat, instead. It watches Daria with beady crimson eyes, and she wants to scream.
”Do not fail her,” the bird says grimly. ”The Hierophant will need you, at the end,” and it dissolves in a small shower of yellow-orange sparks.
”Oh G.o.d,” Daria wheezes. ”Oh Jesus f.u.c.king G.o.d,” and when she opens her eyes-when she opens them all the way and knows that the dream's finally over and done, that she's awake and this is real, as real as anything will ever be-there's a frightened stewardess beside her, loosening her clothes. And the pain in her chest, that's real too, the demon flower slipped out of the nightmare with her, and, in another second or two, it will burst from her chest and she'll die.
”Be still,” the stewardess says. ”There's a doctor in first cla.s.s. He's coming.”
And then Daria sees the blue strands of fake fur 187.
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