Murder of Angels (15 page)

And this is the night that Daria Parker met Keith Barry, this muggy summer weeknight in 1993, before Dr. Jekyll’s was even Dr. Jekyll’s. It was still called the Cave back then, an all too accurate name for the dark and smoky little dive on the east end of Morris Avenue. Just past the train tracks that cut the city into north and south, tucked in snug among the empty warehouses and cobblestones, the gaslights that had long since been converted to mere electricity. A decade earlier, Morris had been littered with nightclubs and restaurants, the place to be seen until it wasn’t anymore and the parties had moved on. This night,
that
night, the marquee read
ECSTATIC WRECK
in red plastic letters; the band Daria fronted after Yer Funeral had finally disintegrated, trading grinding hardcore for something only slightly less violent, but something that gave her melodies and words enough breathing room that she didn’t suffocate in the roar of her own music.

Through the glare of the lights, she caught glimpses of him sitting out there alone, sipping beer from a plastic cup and watching her. He was the only person in the club besides the albino kid who tended bar, and the guy at the door, and a booth full of goths who all seemed more interested in trying to hear each other above the music than listening to the band. An audience of one, and in those days, that wasn’t so unusual. It hadn’t mattered to her, one or a hundred. As long as she could play, and as long as there was someone, anyone, to listen, that was all she needed. They played their set, all the songs they had. Sometimes Daria was singing to him, because he was there, and sometimes she was only singing for herself, only slapping the strings of her black Fender bass for her own satisfaction. Back then, the music was better than sex, better than any drug she’d ever tried, almost heaven, the words and chords and toothache, heartbeat throb of the drums behind her.

Keith Barry clapped and wolf-whistled between the songs. She smiled and squinted through sweat and her tangled hair and the lights, trying to put a name with the hard, almost-familiar face. When the set was finished, he hooted for more, and she mumbled a thank you into the microphone. They didn’t play an encore, because they didn’t have anything else to play. As they left the stage, she realized that three of the fingers on her right hand, her thumb and index and middle finger, were bleeding. But it was nothing she couldn’t patch up with a few drops of Krazy Glue and some Band-Aids, nothing that wouldn’t heal. Three bloody fingers were a very small price to pay for the rush that would probably keep her going until the next show, whenever and wherever that might be.

Daria followed the others down the short, smelly hallway leading back to the ten-by-four closet that passed itself off as a dressing room. She wiped the blood from her injured hand onto the front of her T-shirt, three dark smears on yellow cotton, three more stains, and she could point to them in days to come and say, “See that shit there?
That
was a damn good night.”

“Pretty sweet, Dar,” Sherman James said, and then he slapped her hard on the back. Sherman wasn’t bad, but she knew he was a lot more interested in his engineering classes at UAB than his guitar. “Too bad only half a dozen people heard it.”

“Hey, fuck ’em,” she said. “They don’t know what they’re missing, right?” and Daria put her bass down on the tattered old sofa taking up one wall of the room. She found a spot on the concrete floor where she could sit cross-legged and have a closer look at her fingers. Sherman made a dumb joke about playing to ghosts and roaches, and Donny White, who had known Sherman since high school, clacked his drumsticks loudly against the graffitied, swimming-pool-blue wall and laughed like it was actually funny.

“Yeah, man,” Donny snickered and tapped out three quarter time on the plaster. “Audiences are for pussies. We don’t need no steenkin’ audience—”

“Speak for yourself,” Daria muttered, wrapping a Band-Aid tightly around the pad of her thumb. “A few more warm bodies sure as hell wouldn’t break my heart.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I know what you
think
you meant.”

And when she looked up, the almost-familiar face was staring sheepishly back at her from the doorway. The man wearing the face was tall and scarecrow thin, dressed like a bum, and his name finally came to her—Keith Barry—the name and what it meant. He’d played guitar for a local punk band called Stiff Kitten, the best thing Birmingham had going for it until their vocalist had died a few months earlier. Her death was the stuff of local legend. She’d gotten wasted on vodka and speed and driven her car under the wheels of a moving freight train.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she replied. Daria smiled for him, and he almost smiled back.

“You’re Keith Barry, aren’t you?” she asked. “You used to play with Stiff Kitten.”

He looked confused for a second, like an actor who’s forgotten his lines or missed a cue, then slowly nodded his head.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“Damn,” Sherman said. He stood up too quickly, almost knocking over the rusty folding chair where he’d been sitting. He held one hand out expectantly. “Dude, you guys were absolutely fucking killer.”

“Thanks,” Keith Barry said uncertainly, looking down at his shoes or the floor, not shaking Sherman’s hand.

“No, dude, I mean it. You guys fuckin’ rocked,” Sherman burbled recklessly on. “That really sucked, though, Sarah dying like that and all. She was fuckin’ hot.”

“Yeah,” Keith Barry murmured, and now there was hardly a trace of emotion in his voice. He nodded again and raised his head, staring directly into Sherman’s eyes. “It did. Do you always talk so goddamn much?”

“Jesus, Sherman,” Daria groaned. “Will you sit down and shut up for one minute?” Sherman’s smile faded, and he sat back down in the rusty chair.

“Listen, can I, uhm, can I talk to you a sec?” Keith Barry asked her then, tugging nervously at his shirt collar.

“Sure,” and she wrapped the last Band-Aid around her index finger, then stood and dusted off the seat of her jeans. He led her back down the hallway and stopped at the stairs leading up to the stage. Daria leaned against the wall, both thumbs hooked into her belt loops.

“I’m sorry about Sherman,” she said and looked back the way they’d come. “He isn’t a dork on purpose, not usually.”

“Oh hell, don’t worry about it. You guys have a name?”

“You got a cigarette?” she asked, and he fumbled at his shirt pocket, but turned up only an empty pack and a few dry crumbs of tobacco.

“Thanks anyway,” Daria said, wishing she’d thought to buy a pack before the show. “Right now we’re Ecstatic Wreck, but that’s just until we think of something better.”

“Ecstatic Wreck, hunh? Hey, that’s not so bad. I’ve heard worse,” and she could tell how hard he was trying not to show the jitters, but his hands shook, anyway, and there were beads of sweat standing out on his forehead and cheeks. Keith Barry’s heroin addiction was almost as famous as Sarah Milligan’s run-in with the train.

“Yeah, well, I played with some other guys for a while, but they all joined the army, if you can believe that shit. Anyway, tonight was our first show.”

“No kidding? Wow,” and he rubbed nervously at the stubble on his chin. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you you’re good. Hell, you’re better than good.”

“Thanks,” she said, a little embarrassed for both of them and trying not to show it. “That means a lot, coming from you. I used to go to all your shows.”

“You want to maybe get a beer or go for a walk or something?”

She thought about it a moment, then shook her head.

“Sorry,” she said. “That’d be cool, but I have plans already.” She didn’t, unless load out and the drive home alone counted as plans. She didn’t have anything until work the next day, but the fevery sheen in Keith Barry’s eyes made her nervous, warned her to keep her distance, here be tygers and plenty worse things than tygers.

“Maybe another time then,” he said, sounding disappointed, but he smiled and ran his long fingers through his dirty, mouse-brown hair.

“Definitely. Absolutely.”

They shook hands, his palm cool and slick with sweat, and she left him standing there. She turned and walked quickly towards the dressing room, walking fast before she changed her mind.

“Hey,” he called after her. “What’s your name?”

“Daria,” she called back, without even turning around.

Two weeks later, Ecstatic Wreck played the Cave again, another Wednesday night, and this time there were a few more people. The stingy reward for a couple hundred fliers and word-of-mouth.

Keith Barry came back, too.

They played all the same songs in a different order, and added a jangling cover of David Bowie’s “Starman.” When the show was over, Keith was waiting at the edge of the stage.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said and handed her a cold bottle of beer. She looked at the beer, then at Keith Barry. He was dressed a little better than before, and his hair was combed; his hands weren’t shaking, and there was a confidence in his voice that told her he’d fixed before the show. She took a sip of the beer, promised the boys that she’d only be a minute, and let him lead her to a booth near the very back of the club. He said the sound was better back there, as good as the sound could ever get in a dump like the Cave. Then he introduced her to a skinny guy in a baseball cap and a blue mechanic’s shirt with the name
MORT
stitched on the pocket.

“My man Mortimer here, he was our drummer,” Keith said and sat down next to Mort, motioning for Daria to take the seat across from them. Mort looked uncomfortable, but said hi and smiled. Daria looked over her shoulder at the stage, Sherman and Donny already breaking everything down, and then she looked back at Keith.

“I really should help them,” she said.

“C’mon. They’re doin’ just fine on their own,” Keith replied and pointed at the empty seat again. “There’s something we got to talk to you about. It’s something important.”

“Something important,” she mumbled and sighed, but sat down. She took another swallow of beer, and it soothed her dry, exhausted throat.

“We want to put the band back together,” Keith Barry said. “We’ve been talking about it, me and Mort, and we think it’s time we got off our lazy asses and went back to work. Sarah’s gone, sure, but there’s no reason we have to bury Stiff Kitten with her.”

Daria stared at him a minute, then glanced at Mort, and he must have seen the growing impatience, the suspicion, in her eyes, because he just shrugged and began picking apart a soggy napkin.

“That’s really great,” she said, turning back to Keith. “But what’s it got to do with me?”

“What’s it got to do with you?” he repeated, as if he wasn’t exactly sure what she was asking. “See, that’s what I was just getting to.”

“He wants you to dump your band,” Mort said without looking at her, still busy dissecting the napkin. “He wants you to play with us.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“No,” Keith said, glaring at Mort, glaring like he could kill a man with those eyes alone. “I’m not fucking kidding. We need a singer and a bass player, and we’re never gonna find anyone better than you.”

“I’d be a shit,” Daria said, “if I walked out on them like that. We’re just getting started.”

Keith frowned, then sighed and slumped back into the booth. “They’re not the ones you should be worrying about,” he said, and lit a cigarette.

“They’re my friends—”

“Sure, they’re your friends. And I’m sure they’re sweet guys. But you
know
that they’re nowhere near as good as you are, right? You know they never
will
be.”

“Jesus,” she whispered, and stared hard at Keith Barry through the veil of smoke hanging in the air between them. “Yeah, I know that,” she said, finally. “But I also know that your arm’s got a bad habit.”

Keith took another drag and shook his head. “I guess that must make you Sherlock fucking Holmes.”

“All I’m saying is, I want to know if it’s something you got a handle on, or if it’s got you. You’re sitting there asking me to ditch some really good guys. I think I have a right to ask.”

“You some kind of fucking saint?” he asked angrily, and she knew that was her cue to thank them both for the beer and the compliments and walk away. But she chewed at her lower lip, instead, and waited for him to answer her question.

“You’re about to blow this thing,” Mort said, scattering bits of shredded napkin across the table in front of him. “The lady asked you a question.”

Keith smoked his cigarette and stared past Daria, towards the stage.

“You gonna answer her or not?”

“Yeah,” he said, finally. “It’s under control. I just fucking need to get back to work, that’s all. It’s not a problem.”

She nodded her head and finished her beer. It was even hotter back here in the shadows than it had been on stage and she was starting to feel a little dizzy, a little sick to her stomach.

Walk away,
she thought.
Tell him thanks and walk away and just keep walking.

“Look,” she said, all the false cool she’d ever have rolled up in that one word. “I’m gonna have to think about this for a couple of days.” And then she set the empty beer bottle down onto the table in front of her.

“No problem,” Keith said. “I’m not asking you to make a decision right this minute. I know you need some time.”

“I just gotta think about it, that’s all.”

“This is my number at work,” Mort said, and he slid a business card from a northside machine shop across the table to her. “Just ask for me. And whatever you decide, thanks for thinking about it.”

“You won’t be sorry,” Keith said, like it was already a done deal, and stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray. “You won’t regret it. I swear. Me, you, and Mort, we’ll wake all these motherfuckers up.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” she said. “I’m not making any promises,” and Daria slipped Mort’s card into a pocket and walked back to the stage alone.