Tags:
Fiction,
General,
Psychological,
Fantasy,
Contemporary,
Horror,
Women,
Female friendship,
Alabama,
Witnesses,
Schizophrenics,
Abandoned houses,
Birmingham (Ala.)
that what you think I’m doing?” she whispers and opens her eyes, is dimly disappointed that nothing’s changed, still the same bright San Francisco morning filling up the bedroom and wounded, sleeping Niki still right there in front of her. The room smells like cigarette smoke and clean linen, no trace whatsoever of the lilies on the table and she wonders if they even have a scent.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“I’m losing her, Marvin. She’s slipping away from me a little bit at a time, and sooner or later she’s gonna get it right. Maybe next time, or maybe the time after that—”
“Unless she doesn’t really want to die,” Marvin says and produces a pale green ceramic ashtray, seemingly out of thin air, and hands it to Daria. “It’s not that hard to die. And we both know Niki’s not a stupid lady.”
Daria taps her cigarette once against the rim of the ashtray and doesn’t look at Marvin. Doesn’t look at anything but the tiny heap of powder-gray ash marring the clean ashtray, the glazed finish, and she knows that Marvin washed it by hand. He washes and dries everything by hand because he says that dishwashers are too rough on dishes.
“You might as well know I never bought into that whole ‘cry for help’ thing,” she says. “If somebody needs my help, if Niki needs my help, she knows how to ask for it without putting me through this shit.”
Marvin nods his head once, noncommittal nod, and then he goes to the bedroom window, stands there with his back to her and Niki, staring down at the traffic on Alamo Square. Daria crushes the butt of her cigarette out in the ashtray and sets it on the table.
“You think I don’t know how much Niki needs me here?” she asks, but he doesn’t answer, and Daria sighs loudly and reaches for her pack of cigarettes, her old Zippo lighter.
“You’re smoking too much again,” he says very quietly.
“Yeah? Well, it’s a goddamn miracle I’m not doing a hell of a lot worse than that,” and Daria has to flick her thumb across the striker wheel four times before the Zippo gives up an unsteady inch of blue-orange flame.
“She was playing your music,” Marvin says. “Friday night, before she went up to bed. She plays your music all the time these days. I finally had to ask her to use the headphones because she’d put one song on repeat and it was driving me crazy.”
The Zippo’s flame sputters and dies before Daria can light the cigarette hanging limply from her lips. She curses and flips the cover shut again, turns to face Marvin and the Sunday morning sunshine streaming in around him.
“Look, I don’t need you laying some kind of fucking guilt trip on me, okay? Jesus,” and she takes the cigarette from her mouth and puts it back in the pack.
“You said you wanted to know everything.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me before now? If you thought it was important that she was listening to my music Friday night, why didn’t you tell me that to begin with?”
“Take her with you, Dar,” Marvin says, and he glances at Niki; she’s rolled over onto her left side now, and her face is buried deep in the white cotton folds of sheets and pillowcases. “That’s what she needs. Just to be near you for a little while. Just a few days—”
“No,” and something in the way she says it, spitting that one word out at him, so emphatic, so final, something cold and ugly in her voice—but nothing she can take back, no matter how it makes her feel. “You weren’t with us when she freaked out on me in Boston. I can’t work and watch after her at the same time.”
Marvin rubs nervously at his stubbly chin, his dark cheeks specked with darker whiskers when he’s never anything but clean shaven.
“Then take me with you, too,” he says. “ I’ll watch her when you can’t.”
“I said no, Marvin, so don’t ask again. Does she even look like she’s in any shape to be on the road?” and Daria pauses, knows he isn’t going to answer