The Kiss That Counted

by Karin Kallmaker

  Right now it wasn't CJ who needed space, it was her.

  Revelation was not good for the soul. Or the stomach, CJ added to herself. Another sleepless night loomed, and this time it wasn't Daria that kept her awake, it was her own inexplicable urge to put into words things she had never said aloud.

  If it hadn't been the last of her obligatory hours, she was quite certain Emily would have told her not to come back. After she'd finished a long talk with the woman CJ had been comforting, she'd found CJ in the kitchen and said, "You did good, but you're not a licensed therapist, CJ. I'm responsible for treatment, and I'm liable for everything that happens here. I think you did the right thing to show your empathy, but it's not something any client can hear."

  "I understand," CJ had said. She did, too. "I'm sorry."

  Emily had seemed to accept CJ's apology. Nevertheless, she'd said, "I know it's early, but why don't you call it a night? Given the hours I'm sure you'll put into the Brownell thing, we're more than even."

  "Are you sure? You've got a full house."

  Emily had looked at her, and those steady brown eyes had seemed to miss nothing. "We'll manage."

  We means her and Karita. She's putting distance between Karita and me, CJ thought, then she chided herself for her unkind interpretation when Emily added, "CJ, I do a group, you know. You're welcome to come to it."

  CJ had declined. She knew Emily meant well. She was looking forward to advising Emily about fundraising, to seeing if that could be helpful. But she didn't want to be a client to Emily. Or Karita. Or Lucy or Pauline, even.

  Only bars were open this close to midnight in this part of town, and there was no way she was going near a bar at that hour. She didn't need a drink. If anything, she needed something grounding, like a cup of coffee and the time to stir, sip and think. She made a quick U-turn and was relieved to see that the only other car on the road continued in the direction she had been heading. Daria hadn't found her yet. With a quick left, she headed for Pete's Kitchen. Coffee and some fresh baking powder biscuits with butter sounded perfect.

  She got a parking place out front because a patrol car was just pulling away. The diner seemed quiet, though, and it was likely the cops had just been in for their own late night snack. It was the kind of place that served breakfast all day, and when the bars closed Pete's got busy dishing out pre-hangover plates of waffles and omelets.

  The waitress, who sported a pink hairnet over her gray hair, gave her a casual wave toward the back, and CJ picked a small booth where she could see the door. She supposed she shouldn't be here, because all-night diners were the kind of place that attracted Daria and her ilk. At the counter, proving her point, was a small, overly casual twenty-something white man who was taking great pains to look like a teenager. She guessed he was either turning tricks or picking pockets, or both.

  "What can I get you, hon?" The waitress was still behind the counter, wiping down mustard bottles with quick efficiency.

  "Coffee and biscuits, if you've got some up."

  "Won't have fresh ones for probably thirty minutes, but I could have you a plate of French toast in five, get him to leave off all the sugar, if that's more what you want."

  "That sounds perfect. Just two slices of bread—a snack, not a meal."

  "I hear you, hon." The waitress hollered the order over her shoulder, squirted the last of one bottle of mustard into another, then wiped her capable hands. Moments later she was at CJ's table to pour a cup of steaming black brew into an unpretentious white mug, leaving CJ to add fake sugar and the contents of a tiny cup of mystery creamer.

  It wasn't the organic fair trade brew that Gracie's turned out, not by a long shot. Regardless, the first sip was heavenly. The second, in defiance of nutritional reality, seemed to calm her racing nerves. She idly watched the man at the counter making eye contact with two guys who noisily entered, but they ignored him and found their way to a booth beyond a vivacious group of women who were discussing a concert they'd just enjoyed.

  "It's not the end of the world," she found herself muttering under the cover of the other conversations and the clatter of cutlery. "You've always known he killed her, you've just never told anyone before." The truth of her mother's death was long since grieved over. The wound had sealed over with scar tissue, but certainly a battered women's shelter was likely to bruise it. Emily had probably been expecting just such a disclosure all along, and it did annoy CJ to be in any way predictable to other people.

  She expected to always be predictable to herself, however. She hadn't realized she was going to tell the woman about her mother until the words were said. Now she was sitting in an all-night diner because she'd completely surprised herself. Life had been too surprising of late. "That," she muttered at the coffee mug, "is an understatement."

  Daria, Burnett, volunteering to do some fundraising for Emily—all surprises. They paled next to the biggest one: Karita's kiss. The surprising intensity of Karita's mouth on hers, so quiet—the astonishment, the wave of peace, the sense of a beginning. None of it was anything she could have again, so why was she staying when every instinct said she should leave? The wonderful, welcome feelings warred with her fear in a repeating loop until the waitress distracted her.

  "Here you go, hon. Syrup?"

  "No, thanks. This looks great. Just what I wanted." The two piping hot slices of French toast already had a puddle of melted butter in their centers. CJ added salt and pepper before slicing them into bites.

  It was comfort food like she'd been making for herself since she had been tall enough to reach cooktop controls. She was pretty sure it was Aunt Bitty who'd shown her how to whisk eggs and dip in bread, but there wasn't anything she'd ever thank Aunt Bitty for. Or her father for that matter—life is a right, and she shouldn't be thanking anyone for letting her stay alive. She shook off an errant flash of memory, of finding her mother's body in the morning and thinking, at first, that Mommy had slept on the floor before, but never so late.

  The restlessness of her thoughts and the revelations of these sleepless nights reminded her of the first nights she'd spent in Fayette. Some things hadn't been different at all from her life before that point. Neither the detention center nor the Gathering had privacy, both had honed the skill of observing the world through peripheral vision, and everybody thought what was yours was theirs, if they could take it.

  The key difference was that there had been no Rochambeaus or other clans in the juvenile facility. Nobody knew who she was. Nobody knew why she was there. It had taken her less than twenty-four hours to realize she did not have to go back to the Gathering. She felt no blood loyalty or familial duty. In many ways, Fayette, at the age of fourteen, had been her birthplace.

  The parade of social workers had one goal in common, which was making sure she could get a job when she got out. She'd learned how to wire a lamp, change out a pipe, even adjust an engine's timing. The reward for learning those things, and completing classroom work, had been library privileges, which included access to music as well as books. She'd discovered jazz and mysteries, in that order. The Gathering was home schooling in subjects not on any child's curriculum, and her hunger for textbooks—even woefully out-of-date ones—had pleased her keepers. All in all, the day one of the guards had called her "CJ" had been a very good one. She'd been CJ ever since.

  "Should I warm that up for you, hon?"

  "Sure." CJ gestured at her cup. "The toast is great, thanks."

  "Enrique knows his griddle. Come back at six and it'll be my hollandaise on the eggs Benedict."

  As the waitress went back to her chores at the counter, CJ again gave the man-passing-for-teen her brief attention. He was having a long, money-poor night, from the look of things, though he had an easy going smile for any and all who came through the door. She supposed he'd already cased her, and concluded that she was a lonely business type who'd been dumped by her date or she wouldn't be eating at Pete's by herself at this hour.

  Lonely? Maybe, just a little, bu
t in Fayette she had learned the difference between loneliness and solitude. Solitude allowed her to look back at Aunt Bitty and see the cruel, damaged harpy that she was. Finally, she had seen the Gathering not as a proud remnant of an alternative way of life, but a self-perpetuating social canker that fed on violence, thieving and exploitation of everything. Her father, without a doubt, was a murderer, at least twice over.

  Clarity about her past hadn't changed the present, however. She'd known she had to tell the social workers things they liked to hear. She'd made bad decisions, and wanted to make good choices from now on, yes she did. She'd found Jesus—some of them loved that one, praise the Lord. They didn't need to hear her say her father was a murderer—they already knew that. That's why he was in Big Sandy, for the con gone wrong and the dead man. What did it gain her to tell them he'd also murdered her mother? What on earth had it gained her tonight to tell a perfect stranger?

  That's why she was drinking coffee after midnight, enjoying her solitude in a crowded diner. She didn't understand why she'd broken silence. Karita had undoubtedly heard her little story, and now Karita thought she knew what made CJ Roshe tick. Like the jailhouse shrinks, she had no idea what CJ remembered and why she kept her list of names.

  Searching all her memories, the bad ones, the not-so-bad ones, going back as early as she could, CJ couldn't find a single one where she'd done something without knowing why. She gave store clerks a five bill, then said it was a ten and cried loud and long until they gave her the difference. If she didn't Aunt Bitty would hit her and she already knew what Aunt Bitty had done to Uncle Vaughn. For a long time, that was her reason for everything she did. By the time she was nine she could run any number of quick confidence tricks. No matter how hard she tried, the only compliment Aunt Bitty had ever given her was, "Your eyes could have a whore paying for sex."

  Fear of Aunt Bitty and the ever-present knowledge that at any moment her father could decide that she, too, didn't deserve to go on living, had made her eager to please, but it wasn't the only reason she had excelled as a con. She had been her father's willing apprentice. In the solitude of Fayette, she'd figured out why. She'd conned people and lied and taken their money because she enjoyed it. Thieving was in her blood, in her genes. She was good at it and the thrill was undeniable.

  She sipped her coffee. That was also something social workers hadn't needed to hear.

  It was the same feeling with selling real estate now, a feeling of pleasure and success, staying just this side of the ethical line, not because she was doing the moral thing, not because she'd reformed or found the Lord, but because talking people out of money through legal means kept her out of jail. So why, tonight, had she broken silence? Why was she spending time and energy helping Burnett? Why wasn't she running for her life from Daria and the inevitable swarm of cousins? Self-preservation was her bottom line, but she had put herself at risk and she couldn't name anything good that would come of it, no sure thing. All she had was tissue paper dreams.

  She'd chatted up Karita because she couldn't take her eyes off her. She'd flirted with her at Gracie's, talked to her at the shelter, even offered to help with a piece of her life, and she didn't even intend to get Karita into bed. What kind of con was that?

  CJ Roshe was Cassiopeia Juniper Rochambeau in hiding. She couldn't be someone's girlfriend, or mentor, or even buddy. Yet she was still in Denver when she ought to run because she wanted CJ Roshe to be real. That meant this time the con she was running was on herself, trying to make lies into truth.

  After a glance at the man still lingering over his coffee at the counter, CJ put some bills together and carried the check over to where the waitress was wiping plates. "Keep it," she said, when the woman mentioned change.

  A trip to the bathroom was definitely in order, and she was ready for some sleep, in spite of the caffeine. She would go home, get out the list, remind herself who she was and why she did things, and go to bed. For now, ignoring Daria and even ignoring Karita, was what she needed to do.

  As she emerged from the bathroom she saw that the chatty group of women had clustered near the cash register and everyone seemed to be offering a ten or twenty and asking for change so they could split up the check. From where she stood she counted three wide open backpacks and two more purses offering up cell phones and billfolds. What she noticed the man at the counter had as well. His brow was furrowed as he stood up as if to pay his check as well. He stretched casually, making no sudden moves. By the time he was in position, CJ was behind the group, her arms spread and making a big show of pushing the huddle out of her way.

  "Sorry, it's a bottleneck, sorry, excuse me…" She pushed purses and backpacks around to the front of their owners. One backpack she had no choice but to bump off the woman's shoulder so she was forced to catch it before it hit the ground. "Sorry, clumsy of me—oh!" She added loudly, "This guy wants by us."

  The women naturally gave ground, reassembling themselves into less space. Nearly all of them glanced at the thoroughly annoyed man. CJ didn't make eye contact—no point to him knowing her actions hadn't been accidental.

  With all those eyes on him, it made sense for him to pass over a dollar for his coffee and hurry out the door.

  "He was cute," one of the women said.

  "They're all cute to you," a friend promptly announced and the hubbub resumed.

  After another minute's wait, CJ hurried out to her car and got safely inside. She laughed into her refection in the mirror. Cassie June would have probably had three of the wallets and walked away whistling. Four years in detention had taught her the importance of choosing the right side. But it didn't change who she was. She hadn't wanted to spare the women the loss of their ID and credit cards to some lowlife predator, she'd just wanted the thrill of outsmarting the guy and him none the wiser. A short, quick con, and she'd won, and that's what mattered to her.

  That was her life, and Karita would never understand it. She'd be repelled if she knew that every day, every hour, CJ had to choose to "do the right thing." It was as unnatural a frame of mind to Karita as generosity and inherent goodness was unnatural to CJ. They really had nothing in common, and no magical kiss, no amount of lusting and flirting, would change that.

  It was the truth, and it annoyed CJ that she was still repeating it an hour later, staring at the bedroom ceiling.

  Chapter 11

  Sucking on her bruised thumb, Karita thought it was time for a heartfelt but distinctly un-elfike curse. "Goddamn!"

  She stuck her thumb into her iced tea and glared at the narrow weatherstripping and even teensier copper nails. No doubt she was going about the project entirely the wrong way but she was horrid at do-it-yourself projects and being willing to learn and try didn't seem to make a difference. Gran had never lacked the helpful ingenuity of her neighbors when it came to fixing something with little to no expense—it had always been easy to trade a few hours of home repair for a few hours of babysitting.

  Marty was probably right. The last time she'd mentioned the many fixes the little house needed, he'd suggested she take out a mortgage on the land and pay for licensed contractors. Living without a house payment was pretty dandy, though, and it seemed like a smart idea to at least do what she could on her own before committing herself to monthly payments.

  Maybe weatherstripping all the west facing windows, from whence came the icy winter winds, wasn't one of the things she could do.

  The throbbing of her thumb abated, but it was oddly reminiscent of the throbbing somewhere behind her heart when she thought about last night. She could still hear CJ's fat, emotionless tone as she said "He killed her."

  Her own turmoil had only worsened when she'd discovered that Emily had sent CJ home, and that CJ had left without saying good-bye. She didn't know when she would see CJ again. She kept chiding herself for being hurt—what did she expect? They'd kissed, and okay, for her, it had been an amazing kiss, but a kiss did not make a relationship, or create obligations or change the fact that the
y both had dates later tonight, with other people.

  She didn't have a clue why she'd thought it wise to go out with Pam and she surely didn't know why CJ had said yes to Lucy. It was idiotic that for want of a little courage she'd said nothing that meant anything to CJ. So it had been a great kiss, a fantastic kiss, and she had felt a yearning heat she couldn't even name. Movies always had a kiss solving everything, easy as melting butter in a hot pan. Well, it didn't work that way for her, obviously. That kiss had made it harder to think through her feelings, and more difficult to talk to CJ.

  She and Mandy had talked nonstop. Everything had been interesting. Damn it, she'd loved Mandy and thought she'd been loved back. So much laughter and passion gone up in smoke the first time life got a little bit tough to juggle. Better to have found that out early on, Karita tried to tell herself. What if you'd been the one sick and needing a hand to hold instead of your grandmother? She wouldn't have been there for you. Sooner or later she was going to call you a fake, and say you were stupid.

  Deeply annoyed that she was having the very same argument with herself, she gave whacking nails with the tack hammer another try. Then she said several more bad words, but did successfully control the urge to hurl the hammer out the nearest window. Her mood alone said she shouldn't be around harmful objects. A shower and a night out with a friend—it wasn't too late to be just friends with Pam—was what she needed.

  If she hurried her shower a little she'd have just enough time to stop at the rescue and do a couple of quick chores for Nann. Puppies and kittens always made her feel better.

  Ninety minutes later Karita mopped her brow wearily as she leaned against the desk in Nann's office. She was so glad Pam was the cell phone type.

  "Pam, I am so sorry. I stopped off for just a minute at the animal rescue where I volunteer and got caught up in the deluge. There's a growing wildfire south of Mount Fallon, and it's driving lots of critters up the canyon."