Black Silk (24 page)

It was not that Fish didn’t love her or that Darla thought that he didn’t. This was not a question of love. This was a question
of context. Context influences all things and Darla wanted to step out of hers.

“Take me to where the Xs are, Shelley. No Ys, only Xs.” Darla opened her wings and began to turn still talking. “Take me to
the East Side, Shelley. Take me to the other side.” She faced Shelley again laughing, bringing her hands back down her beaded
bag trailing light like feathers.

Shelley exhaled and turned back to Moe’s. She pushed the door open again, taking in the transition the place had made from
jazz café to swinging bar. Fish was looking at her when she found his face. She displayed the universal sign for leav-ing—a
thumb out the door. Fish declined with a wave of his hand, a nod of his head, and a wink from behind a dangling dreadlock.

Shelley shook her head and smiled. “Damn my brother is smooth.” This was not unusual, this splitting into two-thirds and one-third.
Shelley knew that he was happy there in the midst of sibling madness and mayhem infused with an unspoken order—biological,
social, spiritual—forming bonds, covalent, hydrogen, stable unstable—swapping electrons like crazy. He was in his scientific
element. He was observer. He was delighted. In his gut this was foreplay. Darla would observe another galaxy. They would report
back, each overflowing with material to analyze, ripe for postulating and considering. They would talk and fuck and make four
A.M.
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talk and make love and make music. It had never been discussed. It had never been
conscious but still it was his desired path.

Back outside with the impossible blue of the darkening sky reflected in the window behind her, Darla snapped her purse shut
and rubbed her lips together freshly marooned. “It’s you and me, kid.” Shelley retrieved a wad of keys from her pocket and
headed toward her car. Darla threaded her arm through Shelley’s and with a flip of her neck threw her wild mane of coarse
curls over her shoulder.

Shelley walked taller. She was proud to have this beautiful woman on her arm. Although she didn’t know it, Darla could stop
the heart of any living thing just for being in her presence. But Shelley was not too proud. This woman was not only a friend
but also her brother’s wife.

“So where are going, Shelley?”

Shelley knew that Darla was on some sort of journey. She also knew that she could only be transportation, not catalyst nor
destination.

“Well, my dear, there’s dancing at Babel, pool at Pat’s, or reminiscing old hags reeking of Miller Genuine Draft at the Inn;
take your pick.”

“Hmmm.” Darla pulled up her dress and rubbed her thighs considering her options in one of her moments of self-unconsciousness.

“No Inn tonight. Dancing or pool. Oh they’re both so sexy but in entirely different ways. The thought of all that techno is
ruining my high though… pool it is.”

Shelley loved old cars and Darla felt at home in the belly of the Maverick as they crossed the river. The low raspy beat of
the V-8 engine all around her like a heartbeat in a mother’s womb. Darla pulled her simple black dress back down to just above
her knees. “Yeah, let’s play pool.” Satisfied with her decision, Darla turned to look at the scenery. Smokestacks, ghostly
and barely discernible, towered over the riverbank.

Darla relaxed on the plane of transition. It was a place of familiar excitement going from one place to somewhere unknown.
The seams of highway had been the rhythm. Each place had always been much like the last but there was always that promise
of possibility that things would be different.

“How, how, how, how—Boom, boom, boom boom.” John Lee Hooker was on the Thursday-night blues hour of college radio. The three
stars were back next to the moon again. Darla, Fish, and Shelley she had named them a year before when they were all living
at Shelley’s. Three stars in the house of the rising sun. Shelley’s house had good sunrises and sunsets. Darla felt herself
slipping into a melancholic remembrance and slapped her legs to wake herself.