ASSUMPTIONS

By DixieHellcat

Kenny had worked in Sacred Heart Hospital’s cafeteria for a couple of months on the day Mike, one of his coworkers, poked him in the ribs and said, “Yo, Ken, ya brutha just landed over there.”

The black man’s tone was cheerful, but Kenny froze. He had no real brothers, and the two men who might call themselves that were two people he never ever wanted to see again. Surely he had covered his tracks well enough—after so many years no one could have found him here in California. “Who? Where?” Frantically he tried to remember where the nearest exit was, in case he had to tuck tail and run.

“Damn!” Mike snorted. “You white boy enough as it is, don’t go gettin’ ghost on me! I was just clownin’ wit’ya.” He pointed across the room, and Kenny relaxed when he saw the finger aimed at the back of a tall thin man with a reddish-brown ponytail hanging out the back of his baseball cap. It definitely wasn’t either of the burly brothers who had enjoyed using their skinny sissy cousin for a punching bag. “He looks kinda like Hank, with that hair, but then he opened his mouth an’ he tawked lahk yew.”

Kenny had to laugh at the fake drawl. The other cafeteria employees ragged on his accent, but their teasing was generally much more good-natured than what he had put up with at some of the other menial jobs he had worked at around LA. He grabbed his coffeepot and headed toward the table where the man had sat down. It would be nice to hear a real Southern accent, like an echo from home.

As he approached he saw the customer bow his head over his plate. It reminded him of his father, and he caught his breath and stopped. When the man lifted his head and attacked the flat sandwich, handful of chips and limp pickle spear before him, Kenny trotted on up. “There’s somethin’ I don’t see ever’day ‘round these parts,” he said brightly. “Blessin’ food, I mean.”

The man looked up. He was freckled as Kenny, but wore thick glasses and hadn’t shaved in a few days. His grin was big and real, though. “And there,” he replied, “is somethin’ I don’t hear every day out here! A Southern accent, that is. Where’re you from?”

“Kentucky, originally. How ‘bout yourself?”

“North Carolina.”

“Well, it sure is a pleasure to meet you!” Kenny switched the coffeepot to his left hand and stuck out his right. “I’m Kenny. Can I get you anythin’? Coffee or what have you?”

Though the man shook hands, he paused before he spoke. “I’m Clayton,” he said finally. “Nice to meet you. No coffee, thank you, but I could use a Sprite, or 7 Up, somethin’ like that.”

“Comin’ right up!” Kenny hurried off and was back in no time with a cold drink. “So what brought you out here?”

“Here, as in to this hospital? I’m visitin’ a sick friend. Here, as in southern California—oh, you know, work.” Clayton took a drink. “You?”

This time Kenny was the one who hesitated. He had never told a living soul what had driven a scared kid to drop out of high school and spend every penny he had saved from odd jobs on a bus ticket as far away from Baltimore as he could get without swimming across an ocean. He had told his dead parents, in his mind and his prayers, but no one else. “Aw, y’know,” he mimicked the other. “Thought I’d see th’ world.” He was saved by the supervisor yelling at him to go get some more cookie dough out of the freezer.

Clayton stayed a good while, sipping on his soft drink and looking around the cafeteria as people came and went. “I don’t get out much,” he explained when Kenny stopped by with a refill. “Or, well, I do, but it’s always work, and I stay pretty busy. I travel a lot—this is the first time I’ve been home for any length of time in over a year! So I don’t get much leisure time to just sit and people-watch.”

“Boy, don’t I know that!” Kenny agreed. “They keep me hoppin’round here like my head’s on fire an’ my hind end’s a-catchin’.”

“So I see,” Clayton chuckled.

“What is it you do? If I’m not bein’ too nosy. I don’t mean to be, I just like talkin’ to folks,” Kenny hastily added.

“No, it’s okay. I’m, uh, a teacher, sort of. I travel around, and talk to groups a lot. I teach them about children with special needs.”

“Oh! Like kids in wheelchairs, or that’re retarded?”

“We’re tryin’ to move people away from those kinds of words, but yeah,” Clayton nodded. “The words you use influence how you think about things. We want people to learn to look at the child, not the wheelchair.”

Kenny thought about that for a minute. “Y’know, that does make sense. What a wonderful job that must be. I wish I could help folks out that way.”

“But you have a great job for helping people right here!” Clayton’s reply surprised the heck out of Kenny. “I bet almost everyone who comes into this hospital passes through here at some point. Patients, visitors, staff, you name it. You’re a cheerful guy. Think of all the people whose days you could make better without even realizin’ it.”

Now that was something that had never crossed Kenny’s mind. “You may have somethin’ there. My mama always said ‘bloom where you’re planted, Kenneth’.”

Clayton laughed out loud. “Sounds like somethin’ my mama would say.” He finished his lunch and got up to go. “My friend will be in here recuperatin’ for a wile, so I’ll probably see you again. Think about it, Kenny. Really. “

Kenny did think about it, and made a little more effort to give everybody a pleasant smile. It wasn’t always easy, the way some folks acted, but he was surprised at the smiles he got in return. He got another smile when he cleared the table where the teacher had sat and found a crisp five dollar bill under the empty plate. Thrifty as he was, he tucked it away for later. He had his lunch, and was more than ready for it when his break time came around.

This was his time to relax, and escape into a good book. He found a nice sunny bench to settle on with his can of Vienna sausages and a pack of saltines. One day when he had time to study, he wanted to get his GED, and even dreamed sometimes of taking college classes at night; but for now the best education he could get came from the books he snapped up at yard sales and thrift stores. He fished his newest used paperback out of his back pocket and dove in.

“Hey Red,” called Hank, another cafeteria worker, smoking nearby, “whatcha readin’?”

“Oh, this one’s really good. It’s about this guy named Charlie, and he’s—“ Kenny was about to say retarded, but he thought of his talk with the teacher. “—he’s not real bright. But he goes to this doctor, and they do an experiment that makes him just super smart. He’s smarter than the doctors even, and that makes him all cranky. And they did the operation on a mouse first, and it made him smart too—but now the mouse is sick, so I dunno what’s gonna happen to—“

“Huh!” Hank shook his head and took another drag off his cigarette. “Books are too much work. I’ll stick with the TV.”

Kenny didn’t get that at all. TV was okay, but books beat it all to heck. Time reading went by way too fast, and time working far too slow. Today, though, he kept the teacher’s words in mind and tried to share cheer with every person he served, and the afternoon flew by. It made his day nicer too, especially when a pretty therapist smiled back at him! He noticed her name on her badge, then hoped she didn’t think he was staring at something else, since it was clipped to the front of her white coat—right above her perky bust, which was as pretty as her tanned face or her unusual name, Maribel. He thought she was Mexican—she looked like it, except her eyes were grey and not brown, and that was unusual enough that it made her even prettier. Maybe it was wrong of him to think about her, or her bust, but he did…and not just then but later. Hey, he was a guy, after all. At least you couldn’t get arrested for thinking, or dreaming, or imagining how soft and warm a girl’s body would feel right up against yours in your lumpy old bed, or how good it would feel to have her touching you in just the right spot, while she blew hot breath in your ear, and wouldn’t let go till she had wrung every drop out of you…

Clayton came in again several times over the next days, for a snack and the quiet time alone he seemed to enjoy so much. He wasn’t some grumpy hermit, though; he always brought a good tip, but what was more important was his good conversation. He had read some of the same books Kenny had, too, and it was great to sneak a minute and talk about things like that. “Everybody needs a life of the mind,” Clayton said one day when Kenny mentioned it.

Kenny liked that idea a lot, and wished he had a friend to share that with. “Hi there!” he yelled one day when he looked up from stacking trays and saw the tall ponytailed man come into the cafeteria. “How’s your friend?”

“Much better, thanks. The staff are treatin’ him like a prince, which is just the way he likes it. This is a very good hospital.”

“You bet it is!” Kenny plopped a 7 Up in front of him, and then had to grab a rag and clean up what he spilled on the table top in his excitement. “Why, do you know I heard some big shot from the music business is here havin’ heart surgery?”

Clayton’s eyebrow went up. “Is that so?” he asked. He tried to look interested, but he wasn’t especially. Kenny could tell. Years of living on the run, so to speak, had given him a terrific ability to read people. He knew when people were truthful or just being polite, and he knew when somebody was trouble, the way a deer knows a hunter’s near.

That was what made him notice the two women sitting across the cafeteria, later on. Once again Clayton was lingering, seeming happy to sit and drink his pop and watch people come and go. The two women whispered back and forth to each other, and stared and then looked away fast. They were trouble all right—not for Kenny, but for Clayton, because that was who they were staring at.

Kenny eased up to the table with his cleaning rag in hand again. “Do you know those ladies sittin’ by the window?” he asked in a low voice. “They’re lookin’ at you an awful lot. Don’t look back.”

Clayton didn’t look, but he sighed. He didn’t look scared, just tired all of a sudden, and maybe a tad annoyed. “No, I don’t know them, but they…think they know me. Guess I’ve got that kind of face.”

Kenny could tell that wasn’t so either. “You’re not in trouble with the law, are you?” he asked, even though he thought he knew the answer.

Clayton laughed quietly. “No, but it could create a fuss if I’m recognized. Darn Jerome for bein’ right…is there a back door I can slip out?”

“Yeah, but you don’t wanna use it. That’d prove to them you’re—somebody. Whoever it is they think you are. But you walk right out, they’ll figure they were wrong.”

“Maybe.” Clayton was nodding as he stood up. “Can I ask a big favor?”

“Course.”

“After I leave, they’ll probably ask you about me…don’t tell ‘em anything. Especially not my name. Please?” Kenny just nodded, and didn’t say a word. “Thanks. I may not be able to come back, but I hope I can.”

As Clayton laid some money on the table and left, Kenny finished cleaning up, then continued his rounds. Sure enough, the gals across the way all but jumped on him as soon as he got close. “Who was that man? Was he—gasp—what did he say to you? Who was he?”

“Lordy, ma’am, ah don’t know.” Sometimes his accent came in very handy for playing dumb. “Ah jes’ work here.”

They groaned. “Oh God, you even sound like him!”

Poor dumb girls, Kenny thought. Can’t even tell a Kentucky accent from North Carolina. From clean across the big cafeteria, though, how would they know how Clayton talked? Who was he, really? All through the rest of the day, through the drive home and the evening, right up till he pulled out his lumpy old couch-bed to turn in, Kenny mulled it over. He trusted his instincts, and he just couldn’t see the friendly teacher doing anything notorious. So he must be famous, Kenny mused as he tried to get comfortable and began to doze off. He sure don’t look it, though…

He didn’t see the man for a couple of days, which he hated, not just for the tips, or the mystery, but for the company. As well educated as Clayton plainly was, he never made Kenny feel like he looked down on him because he wore a polyester smock at work and poured coffee for people. That was really why Kenny was pleased to see him walk in finally. “Hey!” Kenny greeted him. “I was worried your friend got worse…or those crazy ol’ gals scared you off.”

“Oh, it’d take more than two wild fa…women to scare me,” Clayton grinned. “My friend is being discharged today, but I smelled cinnamon rolls down here, so I had to come by and check it out.”

“The dough’s frozen, but they’re right good. I get myself one sometimes when I can afford it.” It was mid-morning and the traffic was thin, so after Kenny got him a sweet roll and some milk he dared sit down for a minute. ‘I’m real glad you came back. I was wantin’ to ask if you know anything about, um, GEDs. How much does it cost to get one? An’ will they let you in to take night school, y’know, like college, if that’s all you got?”

He was embarrassed about asking, but Clayton, true to form, didn’t laugh at him or sneer. He allowed as how he wasn’t sure how much the test cost, but there were places Kenny could call to find out, or even look it up on the Internet. Kenny couldn’t afford a computer of his own, of course, but he had practiced on the ones at the local library, and it was loads of fun. “I bet there might even be sample tests online, that you can take to prepare for the real one,” Clayton said.

“That’d be great. I don’t know that I could do it by myself though. I…don’t reckon you could help me, could you? It’d be good to have a teacher’s help.”

“Probably not,” Clayton said, but he didn’t look happy about saying it. “I’d love to, but I don’t have a lot of free time. I’m gonna have to get back to work before long. You’ll do fine though.” They talked a good few minutes more. Nobody yelled at Kenny, and he felt downright enlightened by the time the other man got up to leave. Clayton grinned and dropped a ten on the table. “Get yourself a sweet roll,” he said. “My treat. In fact, get yourself a couple to take home too.”

Kenny couldn’t protest very loudly, although he did the best he could to insist the tip was way too generous. Clayton wouldn’t hear of it, so he finally shut up. It seemed unappreciative to keep arguing, so he settled for thanking him again as he got to the cash register to pay. “It’s Kenny and his long lost twin!” Judy, who ran the checkout laughed. “You two could be brothers. Hell, Kenny, if you had long hair and glasses you could almost pass for him.”

They looked at each other. Kenny hadn’t paid it much attention, but now that he did, their height, build and color were nearly identical. Clayton saw it too, and he frowned a little as if he was thinking hard. “Kenny—c’mere a minute.” He pulled Kenny aside just outside the cafeteria doors. ‘Listen, would you like to make some extra money—oh, that sounds so dumb, I’m sure you would. I just thought of somethin’ you could do for me. It’d only be for a few hours, or maybe a day, and it wouldn’t be any work at all.” Kenny stood dumbfounded while Clayton dug around in the back pocket of his pants. “Don’t tell me I lost the darn thing again—whew, no, there it is.” He handed Kenny a business card. “You get off here about six, right? Think about it, and come on by this address afterwards, if you’re interested.”

He was gone before Kenny could get over his surprise enough to ask any questions or even look at the card. It read FIFTY2THIRTY PRODUCTIONS INC., EXECUTIVE OFFICES, and had an address after that. When he had come to Los Angeles, the fact that it was the center of all the TV and movie and music making had never entered his mind. Even though he loved to sing, it was not that shiny world that had brought Kenny here, but just knowing it was as far as he could afford to run, and big enough to get lost in. A production company didn’t sound like it would have anything to do with Clayton’s work as he had described it.

The card was just another layer of mystery added to this man who acted so honest and open, but had a lot to hide. Throughout the day, Kenny’s vivid imagination worked overtime. Did Clayton make dirty movies? Did he pay radio stations to play the crappy records they usually played? As wild as his fantasies got, reality always reined him in like a spooked mule brought back to the plow. Kenny could read people, and he knew it, and he simply could not make himself be suspicious of this man. If Clayton knew of a job Kenny could do, it was an honest one, and that was that. At six, he clocked out, tossed his grimy smock in his back seat and pointed the rattly old Toyota toward the address on the card.

He ended up at a big office building, nice but not too high-toned. The carpets and walls were neat, and the place smelled clean. It was clearly not the sort of place you would expect crooks to work from. On the elevator, Kenny nervously tried to smooth out his rumpled shirt and jeans—he knew good and well he didn’t look fit to walk into any job interview! He almost turned and ran before he reached the door marked with a brass plate that matched the card, but it opened just then. “Hey, Kenny!” Clayton said. At least it sounded like Clayton—the door opened into a short dark hallway, and Kenny couldn’t see him very well. He followed anyway, past an empty desk and some closed doors, and through another door into an office all lit up. Kenny stared around him at the fine furnishings, and then at the other man, who wasn’t wearing glasses now…or a baseball cap…or a ponytail, for that matter…and who without them looked suddenly familiar. “Lord have mercy—I know you!”

“Yeah, probably so,” Clay Aiken replied. “Along with nearly everybody else around, or so it seems some days. That’s why I had to resort to this.” He picked up the baseball cap with the red ponytail attached to the back. It was lying on a long, soft-looking couch, next to a laptop computer that made Kenny’s mouth water. “I could’ve gotten mobbed tryin’ to visit the hospital without some kind of disguise. I nearly did as it was, you remember.” Now Kenny understood the girls’ funny actions. “I apologize for all the secrecy, but I…thought of somethin’ that would benefit us both, and I wanted to keep it private, just between us.” He flopped down onto the couch. “Have a seat.”

There were several big chairs in the room, but Kenny didn’t sit down right away. He walked around the big office taking it all in and trying not to fall over his jaw dragging on the floor. The walls were covered with incredible pictures of Clayton—Clay—with all manner of big stars, singers and actors and politicians, even Presidents. And then there were the platinum records! He couldn’t believe he had jawed for days like a big doofus with someone he had seen on TV and heard on the radio. Finally he did sit down. “Um…Mr. Aiken…”

“Uh uh!” Clay shook his head. “Isn’t Clayton still good enough?”

“Well, yeah, uh, Clayton…I’m proud you called me over here, but I don’t rightly know why, or what I could do to help you out. It’s not like I’m tough, or smart or—“

“Oh, stop it!” Clay glared at him. “Not bein’ well educated doesn’t mean you’re not smart. You’ve got a different book in your back pocket every time I see you. And you have no idea how much you’ve done for me already. It’s been so heartening these past days to look forward to conversing with somebody who didn’t see glitter or dollar signs when he looked at me. Thank you.”

“Uh, gee, thanks. I mean, you’re welcome.”

“Besides, I don’t want to hire you as an accountant or a bodyguard. I’ve got those already.”

Clay and his big grin weren’t a bit different here than hanging around the hospital cafeteria, and that made Kenny easier in his mind, and brave enough to ask, “Then what do you want me to do?”

The grin faded, and Clay looked uncertain. “It’s not exactly something I want you to do. It’s somethin’ you have, somethin’ I used to have and haven’t for a good while, and maybe won’t again anytime soon. A life. A normal regular life. I want to borrow yours, or rent or lease it. Whatever. People keep sayin’ how much we look alike, and they’re right. The more I look at you the more I see it. I think I could pull it off, just for a few hours at your job, or maybe a day there. It sounds insane, I know, and if you got up and left I’d understand, truly I would; but I couldn’t let it go without askin’.”

It did sound crazy, but crazy in a way that could be a whole lot of fun, and yet was very sad. “I saw you on the Idol show. It hasn’t been all that long ago either! It must be awful to all of a sudden not be able to do anything much without folks snoopin’ into your business.”

“It doesn’t bother me as much as it did at first,” Clay shrugged. “I got really upset that first summer. Sometimes I’d almost cry, it was so frustrating. But I’m so blessed in it, with what I can do now for others, so it’s not so bad…usually. But I’ve been on the road tourin’ for nearly a year, and now that I’m back home, it starts to sink in again, that my life is pretty restricted in a lot of ways. Meetin’ you, and just hangin’ out, made me miss all those little typical things even more.” He sat up straight and looked right at Kenny like a man getting ready to trade for a horse. “It’d be simple, really. All you have to do is not go to work one day, and let me go in your place.”

“Oh, it’s not that easy! I’ll have to train you, just like I was trained when I went to work there. You may not think it, but that’s a real demandin’ job. Makin’ sure the trays are stacked right, and the coffee’s always fresh, an’ gettin’ the trash out without makin’ a mess—there’s an awful lot to remember.”

“I’m sure there is, but I bet you’ll be a thorough instructor.” The grin snuck back onto Clay’s face. “I promise I won’t get you fired. Just one time would be so nice. Do you think you could let me do it?”

He looked so hopeful that Kenny’s heart almost hurt from feeling sorry for him. “Sure. A whole day to laze around an’ still get paid? You bet.”

“One thing, though,” Clay cautioned. “Nobody I work with knows this, either. So you can’t go out that day. It’d be too suspicious if somebody saw you when you’re ‘at work’.”

“That’s okay. I can stay home, and read. Maybe I can get that GED book I saw at the mall, an’ start in on it.”

Clay was thinking hard again. Kenny knew it from the way he chewed on his bottom lip. “Tell you what,” he said, “you can hang out at my house for the day, if you wouldn’t mind takin’ my dog out back once or twice.” Kenny was sure he was going to fall right out on the floor. Him, with salad dressing on his jeans and his hair smelling like burnt toast, invited to spend a day lounging around a star’s home! “It’s not much to look at, but you’re welcome to come.”

“Not much? This office is bigger’n my apartment! You’re on!”

+++

If Clay were honest (which he usually was, though he hated phrasing it that way—it sounded too darn much like Simon Cowell) he had to admit to himself that he enjoyed being, on occasion, just a bit bad. This little adventure would catch him major hell from any number of directions—RCA, his management, Jerome, even his mom—if they knew. That was the beauty of it, though. They weren’t going to know. For a day, he was going to be a regular guy at a regular job, doing regular stuff like stopping to get gas; and only he and his accomplice would ever know.

Until he blurted his wish out, Clay hadn’t realized just how self-serving it must sound; but Kenny, bless him, had taken to the game immediately. Before he left the office, he’d even confided how much fun it would be to put one over on his coworkers. From his account, it didn’t sound as if they intended to be brutal, but cruelty was equally cruel whether intentional or not. Kenny wasn’t stupid; he was sensitive and smart, just country, and not highly educated. Clay wondered what had brought him to LA from Kentucky, apparently alone and barely scraping by, but he would not push his new friend. Being able to help Kenny too was just another bonus to this situation, as far as Clay was concerned.

When the big day arrived, Clay was wakened—early—by knocking. He stumbled to the front door to find Kenny bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “Hop to it, Mister Big Star! I’m not havin’ you fiddle around an’ lose me my job from bein’ late!” He stomped in and looked around. “Lordy, what a house! You said it wasn’t much, so I wasn’t expectin’ a mansion!”

“It’s hardly a mansion,” Clay chuckled as he shook the fuzz from his brain. Kenny’s bright good nature was like having the sun walk in his door. It touched him, too, to be reminded that this house that was rather modest as LA went really would seem a palace to many, many people. “I don’t need anything too big, when most of the time it’s just me and—“ A furry brown meteor shot through the kitchen and intercepted them in the living room with a yip. “Raleigh,” he finished. “This is Kenny, girl. He’s gonna puppy-sit with you today.”

Kenny put down his worn gym bag, handed Clay his uniform, and squatted on the floor. After a few sniffs and licks, Raleigh’s tail began to wag so hard her whole back end moved with it. Clay left them to get acquainted while he ran to the bathroom. He threw on a polo shirt and jeans and pulled the maroon smock over it, then flatironed his wavy hair just enough to persuade it to lie flat and smooth like Kenny’s. When he emerged, he found Kenny sitting on the couch and Raleigh sprawled across his lap on her back, getting her belly scratched and declaring her undying love with every pant and wiggle. “Oh, now I’m gettin’ jealous,” Clay said, but laughed when Kenny looked up with an almost guilty expression. “I’m kiddin’, for Pete’s sake. How’s this look?”

Kenny’s eyes widened even more. “Whoa. Y’know, we really do look alike. You remember ever’thing I taught you, don’t you, about work an’ all?”

“Yes, I do. I wouldn’t try this otherwise. I wouldn’t jeopardize your livelihood just to indulge a whim.” I know you need the job too much, Clay added mentally. “Make yourself at home. You won’t have to worry about the phone—voice mail’s on, and I’ve already told everybody I’d be incommunicado today—“

“Come again?”

“Wouldn’t be takin’ calls. I told everybody I needed to concentrate on listenin’ to demos.” He gestured toward the stack of CDs that lurked on an end table beside the stereo. “I’ve got my cel phone with me, but it’s turned off. I just want to have it for emergencies.”

“Good Lord, don’t be lettin’ folks see that!” Kenny exclaimed. “They know I couldn’t afford such.” Clay nodded. ‘How’s it feel? I mean, gettin’ up an’ goin’ off to work like plain ol’ folks.”

“It feels…I dunno. When I was in high school I worked at this place called the Italian Oven, and we had to wear uniform shirts.” Clay tugged at the smock. “This reminds me of that, sort of. Sometimes I was proud of the uniform, and sometimes it felt like it was stranglin’ me. It’ll be good for me to get a day like this. I’d better not forget what it’s like to be ‘plain old folks’, ‘cause I could be back there anytime.”

“Not hardly!” Kenny scoffed. “Not when ever’time I turn around you’re on my TV or in the paper. No, you’re not goin’ noplace soon.”

Clay acknowledged with a shrug and a small smile. “Anyway, raid the fridge and get comfortable. Read, watch TV—I’ve got DVDs, and satellite and Tivo—or use the computer. No porn, though. I don’t want the Enquirer to find my email addy on some XXX emailer’s mailin’ list.”

“Oh my, no! I wouldn’t ever do that. I mean, I like pretty girls as much as the next feller, but that—it’s just not right. There oughta be more to it than that.”

“No wonder we get along so well,” Clay laughed. “Or you can listen to some music…” He stopped, as his eyes fell again on the demos and an idea came to him. “In fact, you could do me another big favor. Those CDs are from songwriters, wantin’ me to record their material. If you wanted to, you could listen to some of them and let me know what you think of them. A fresh pair of ears would be a big help.” He handed the discs to Kenny, who gulped as if he had just been given a big bearskin hat and assigned to guard Buckingham Palace. “Guess I’d better go—oh, I need one more thing to look authentic—“ Clay went to the bookshelf, scanned his library and pulled out a paperback. “This should impress anybody who gets nosy about your current reading preferences.”

Kenny moved Raleigh (who was nearly asleep again and not pleased at being disturbed) and came to look at the cover: Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. “I saw that at the Salvation Army one time! It looked neat, but it was hardback, so I couldn’t afford the two dollars.”

Clay looked into the clear green eyes so like his own, and said a quick silent prayer to ask forgiveness for forgetting how blessed he truly was. “Then that’ll make it work even better.” He stuck the book in his pocket and fished out his keys. “See ya this evening—“

“Hold your horses. If you drive up in that big ol’ thing parked in your driveway, you’re gonna have to explain to a heap of folks how I won the lottery, or snuck off to Vegas.”

“Whoops.” Clay pulled off his house key, then traded the keys to his SUV for Kenny’s battered compact. “So you have somethin’ in case of an emergency, heaven forbid. Spare house key’s in the umbrella stand by the front door. Don’t get locked out! See ya.” He trotted out, fired up the old Toyota and drove away, feeling freer than he had in ages.

+++

Kenny waited till he saw his car vanish down the street. Then he let out a whoop of delight. He felt like a kid turned loose in a toy store! The holler brought Raleigh to see what the ruckus was about. He’d always liked big dogs, but she was the cutest little thing. First he celebrated by chasing her around the living room for a while, till she started to get antsy, and he knew what that meant—he put her leash on her and took her out to pee. Then he found the remote and played with the satellite TV. He really had no idea there were so many stations out there.

After some of that he started to get hungry. A bowl of corn flakes didn’t last very long. Clay’s kitchen was as huge as the rest of his house, and stocked to the top with all kinds of food. Kenny made toast, and found bacon in the refrigerator already cooked. It just had to be heated up in the microwave, and he also ran upon a plastic doohickey to make scrambled eggs in the microwave with. He had that and some milk, and slipped Raleigh a piece of bacon. She was gonna be his friend for life after this. The milk made him a little sad, because it came in a glass bottle. He remembered his grandma getting milk delivered that way when he was little, and the memory made him miss her. Looky here, Grandma, wish you could see me now, sittin’ up in a big singin’ star’s house in Hollywood! She would be proud, but then she always had been proud of him, when he sang in church as a kid, or anytime.

It had been a spell since his stomach had been this full, but Kenny fought off the temptation to crash, not even in the big recliner chair he realized was real leather. There was too much for him to do to waste time napping! He had to keep his promise to Clay about those songs. First, he found Clay’s CD (stuck on a back shelf, which made him laugh—Clay probably got sick of hearing or seeing himself) and listened to it all the way through. It was really good. He’d liked Clay’s voice on American Idol, but he couldn’t afford the CD new, and it never showed up in the used racks. Maybe Clay could get him one cheaper, although he hated to ask and seem to be trying to take advantage.

Then he started playing the demos. He made two stacks, ones he could imagine Clay singing, and ones he just couldn’t. He had to start a third pile for maybe’s after a while too. After he listened to about half of them, Kenny looked up and couldn’t believe it was after noon! He was hungry again, and tired too. Listening was harder work than he’d imagined. “Back to the kitchen, huh girl?” he asked Raleigh. She was a smart little dog, and knew a lot of words, most of them having to do with food.

In Clay’s freezer Kenny found some Hot Pockets. He’d seen them in the grocery, but fast food like that was way out of his budget. Clay had said to make himself comfortable, though, so Kenny thought he’d risk fixing one and try it. It was so good that before he knew it he had eaten it all, and put another one in the microwave. While he finished it off he went to get the GED book out of his old bag. It had cost a lot, but he was eating so much today he felt like he could go a day or two without much, and that would make up for the hole in his wallet the book had put there.

He sat down and studied it for a while. Raleigh jumped up beside him and curled up. She was used to just sitting with somebody, so Clay obviously wasn’t a big party kind of guy. When Kenny took a break he got himself a soda and got his nerve up to turn on the big computer on the desk in the corner of the living room. He thought he might find out some more about GEDs on the Internet, and was he right! In no time flat he knew where to go take the test, and how much he would have to save up to pay for it. He even found two practice tests! He printed them both off to take home, along with the other information, and put it all in his bag.

The afternoon had rushed by like a fast train, so Kenny decided to satisfy his curiosity and look around the house before Clay came back. The furniture was nice, though there wasn’t much of it. He remembered Clay saying he had been traveling around for nearly a year, so he guessed he hadn’t had time to shop. The place wasn’t dirty, but it was pretty messy. In the living room a plate sat here and a glass there, and clothes and towels were tossed on the floor in the bathroom. Kenny cleaned up some—he was naturally a neat person. Having lots of jobs that involved cleaning made him more so. Probably the times his uncle had whipped him in a drunken rage for making a mess did too. Kenny shivered and tried not to think of those times.

The bathroom was eye-popping, though, almost as big as Kenny’s place all by itself. He sniffed some great after shave, and looked at more hair goop than he ever knew they made for guys to use. Next to the sink lay a tool with a cord and plug. It looked like a girl’s curling iron, but it was flat. It gave Kenny an idea. He went to the living room and got Clay’s CD, and propped it up next to the mirror so he could see it; then he plugged the iron in, and when it got hot he messed with his hair some. When he finished he really did look a lot like Clay, except the hair didn’t stick up in spikes quite as well. He figured that was what the goop was for, though. He grinned at himself in the mirror, and grabbed a hairbrush and sang a little. If he squinted, the reflection he halfway saw then was downright spooky. Even Raleigh seemed confused—she sat and watched and then barked. “Aw, it’s still me, girl. Just ol’ Kenny.”

Kenny left the iron to cool off and went to put the CD away. Just then he heard the front door open. Clay came in, walking like his feet hurt, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Kenny. “Okay, this is gettin’ eerie now,” he said. “If anybody ever wanted to kill me, they could just bring you in instead, and nobody’d ever know the difference.”

“Until I tried to sing,” Kenny disagreed. “No way I could do what you do. So how’d it go?”

Clay grinned like he’d done something. “Good,” he said. “Very good.” He handed Kenny the book he’d taken with him. “They all think you’re a genius in disguise now. Don’t panic, just read this and enjoy it. Have you ever seen Star Wars? Then just remember if anybody asks you anything, the guy who made it read this too. It’ll make sense when you read it.” Kenny was stunned. The idea people might actually think he was smart made him a little nervous, but he liked it. “And I filled your car up with gas, and took it at lunch and got it tuned up—no, don’t argue with me, man, I thought I’d have to use that emergency cel phone before I got a mile away from here! How on earth do you get around in that heap of junk?”

“I manage. So was it…what you thought it’d be?”

“Yeah.” Clay nodded his head slowly. “It was amazing, what normal life feels like. Just talkin’ to people who weren’t tryin’ to get anything more out of me than a hot cup of coffee...oh, that reminds me—“ He dug in his pockets and held out a double handful of bills and change. “Here’s your tips.”

“But you earned ‘em!” Kenny protested, then thought how stupid that sounded when Clay had all this money.

“No, you earned ‘em. Several people made specific mention that they’d been in there before, and how nice your smilin’ face was to see. So they’re definitely yours. Along with this petite, pretty occupational therapist who seemed very glad to see me—I mean you. I flirted with her a little bit for you…well, mostly for you.” Now Clay’s grin was really bad, and Kenny’s heart sank for a moment. He wouldn’t stand a chance competing with a rich singing star for a woman. Not that he’d ever had the nerve to go after a woman, after what he’d been through to get away from one. Then Clay went on to say, “It was refreshing to talk to a woman like a regular guy. But keep an eye on her. I think she really does like you.” Kenny doubted that, but Clay had done so much for him already, he wouldn’t argue about that one thing. He could pretend it was true, and knit it in with his imaginings, alone at night.

As soon as Raleigh sniffed Clay’s shoes she wasn’t confused anymore! She yipped and ran around in circles till he picked her up and hugged her. Then he got all worried that he’d get dog hair on Kenny’s smock. Kenny didn’t care. He washed it every day anyway. He showed Clay the tests he’d gotten off the computer, and asked if what he ate was okay. “It’s fine!” Clay groaned. Kenny put his smock in his bag and then told Clay what he’d done with the demos. Clay was amazed, and thanked Kenny over and over.

The only time they almost argued was when Kenny got ready to leave and Clay got out his wallet. “I went to the ATM ‘cause I thought you’d probably rather have cash.”

“But I’m gettin’ paid for work today when I didn’t even go!”

“Yeah, and you worked here for me today, so you’re gettin’ paid. Doesn’t the Bible say ‘a workman is worthy of his pay’? How much do you think?”

Well, Kenny sure couldn’t argue with the Bible. “Uh, gee—I know. Enough to pay for the test. That’d be the best thing you could give to me.”

Clay looked like he was going to argue, but he just rolled his eyes and gave it to Kenny, along with a hug. “Thank you, man. You don’t know how much today meant to me. I appreciate you trustin’ me.”

“You? You trusted me with your house here, an’ all your stuff.”

“Then we’re even. You think maybe…I could do this again sometime?”

Clay got that hopeful look again, and Kenny could have kidded him and said maybe, but he told the truth. “Sure. When bein’ a big star makes you crazy again, you give me a call.”

+++

Clay did call again, a couple of weeks later. He didn’t come right out and explain, but from what he did say, Kenny gathered he had had one rough day, something to do with the new CD he was making. He just needed to get away from ‘all this’ for a day, he said. God bless him, Kenny thought, and sent Clay off in his freshly washed smock, while he played with Raleigh and listened to some more of those demos. Everything was fine, till the phone rang after lunch, and Kenny with his mouth full of the sweetest juiciest apple he had ever eaten answered without thinking. ”Clay, it’s me, Arnie,” said the man on the other end. “Don’t hang up, dude. I’m sorry about that thing at the studio yesterday.”

Kenny nearly choked, and thought as fast as he could. “Um, you better be more specific about what you’re sorry for—dude.”

“About the songs, man. I got shitfaced two nights ago and I was still hung over. I know I was bitchy as a fuckin’ drag queen, and I’m sorry. What songs you record is your call.”

“Yes, it is.” If somebody was trying to tell Clay what songs to sing, no wonder he was mad as a wet hen! Kenny was almost as mad just thinking about it. “I’ll listen to anybody’s ideas, uh, Arnie, but it’s my name on the front of that CD so it’s my responsibility what’s in it, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, yeah, I do, and after Clive removed his foot from my ass and reminded me the time to talk about renegotiating your contract is drawing nigh, not to mention you’re a good guy and I like you and he likes you, I figured I should clear the air.”

“I’ll—“ What was that line he’d read just the other day? “I’ll take that under advisement.”

Whew, that must’ve been it, since the other man laughed. “Sounds like you, Clay. Now what about those other demos?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I have been studyin’ on some of ‘em.” Lord, he sounded like such a hick! He had to hush and hang up this phone, but instead Kenny found his hand going toward the stack of CDs. He flipped through them and named several he liked and a couple he didn’t.. “Now I haven’t exactly settled that in my mind yet, but this is what I’m thinkin’ right now.” Arnie seemed pleased, but Kenny was shaking after he got off that phone. He nearly puked up the big lunch he ate, and Raleigh got in his lap and licked his face like she knew how tied in knots he was. He was still halfway sick by the time Clay came in, but he knew he had to tell him what had happened.

Clay thought it all was hilarious. “Arnie’s an okay guy,” he said, “but he was top-full of attitude yesterday. Mostly he argued with me, but he took on almost everybody, like…”

“Like he wanted to get in a pissin’ match in the studio,” Kenny guessed.

“Exactly!” Clay laughed. “Now let’s sit down and listen to these, so I know what you told ‘em about them.” They did, and Clay called for two of the biggest pizzas he could get and gave Raleigh a whole piece. He spoiled her worse than Kenny did! “I like your judgment on these, Kenny,” Clay told him. “You have got a great ear.” That gave him a warm feeling. Clay wanted to pay him double, but he would only take the amount his pay for that day would be. It meant he would get paid twice, but it made Clay happy and Kenny had to admit he sure needed it.

Half of one pizza was left, and Clay packed it up and sent it with Kenny. “I ate enough leftover pizza in college to do me a lifetime,” he grunted. “We used to eat it straight out of the fridge for breakfast.” Kenny tried that the next morning. It was Saturday, and when he sat down with his GED book and his cold pizza he felt almost like a college student. He had to eat the pizza cold anyway, because all he had in his apartment to cook on was an old stove top; but later that day he took some of his earnings and went to the Goodwill. He found a microwave and a toaster oven that both worked. For supper he fixed himself a frozen burrito, and felt like a king. Clay just doesn’t know what good he’s done me, he thought happily.

What Kenny didn’t know was that Clay saw his pride as a challenge of sorts. Many of his spare moments were spent in working out subtle ways to give Kenny a little extra help, without making him feel like a charity case. The pizza was one. Clay sneaked another in the next time he slipped off into his borrowed life for the day; he stopped at a used bookstore he passed on the way home and filled the back seat of the Toyota. He fibbed a little and told Kenny he couldn’t stand to see somebody throwing out perfectly good books, but since he had read most of them did Kenny want them? The eager delight in the man’s open face as he dug through the box nearly moved Clay to tears.

Later on, another bright idea struck. Kenny wouldn’t let Clay buy him any new clothes, but Clay had plenty in his own closet, and the two of them wore exactly the same size. When Clay felt the invisible walls of his world closing in again, he gave Kenny a call, mentally going through his wardrobe while the phone rang. I can even let him pay me a few dollars, if he insists…hey, there’s a suit back there that’d look good on him. I’m tired of it. This is amazing, that I’m in a position now where I can get rid of old clothes just ‘cause I’m tired of ‘em…he’s not answerin’, hope they didn’t cut his line off again…doggone him, wish he’d let me help more…The voice that finally answered was a faint croak. “Kenny? It’s Clay. What’s wrong?”

“Ohh, I got the crud.” Kenny coughed. “It’s okay. How’re you?”

“I’m fine. YOU aren’t! Whatcha got over there? Soup, cough syrup, what?”

“Aw, I’m all right, Clay. Ain’t nothin’ that’ll kill me.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Clay’s brain shifted gears. He’d been terrible about letting his female roommates take care of him if he got sick in college, but at least he’d learned something from watching them. Half aghast at his own daring, he threw on a hat, his glasses and a jacket, and made a run to the supermarket and the drug store. His good purpose must have led God to watch over him more than usual, because he wasn’t recognized or hassled by one fan.

Kenny’s ‘apartment’ was one room with peeling wallpaper and sheets for curtains. Kenny looked appalled when he opened the door. “Oh, gosh, you didn’t have to come here…”

“Somebody needed to! Your face is all red. Bet you’ve got a fever. Bet you don’t have a thermometer, either, and I didn’t think to buy one, dang it. Go lie down.” The kitchen consisted of a stained fridge, a scarred countertop holding several small appliances, and some shelves built of cinder blocks and two by fours. More makeshift shelving lined the single room, and groaned under the weight of books. At least, Clay congratulated himself as he unpacked the sacks, he had thought of another sneaky way to help: he had bought enough groceries to keep Kenny going for several weeks. The guy needed it—the shelves were barren—and Clay had taken notice of what was gone from his own stocks, so he could guess what Kenny liked. “I got soup you can stick in the microwave. It’s chicken. It’s got natural antibiotics in it.” While one heated, he took cough drops, syrup, tissues and other things that were nice to have if you felt rotten over to the foldout couch-bed where Kenny lay tucked under a worn quilt. Following his direction, Clay left part of the stuff there and took the rest into the bathroom, more like a shower alcove with a sink and toilet. The familiar maroon polyester smock, slightly damp, was tossed over the shower rod. He brought it out with him. “Shouldn’t they give you two of these at least? The restaurant did us.”

“We have to buy ‘em.” Kenny took a big drink of a cold Snapple. “And I couldn’t afford but one.”

Of course not. “You’re not gonna be in any shape to work tomorrow.”

“Hourlys don’t get sick time paid. So it’s not like I got much choice.”

“What am I, potted meat? If you trust me to take your keys, I’ll come get your car early in the morning and won’t even have to wake you up. I’ll leave my ride here then, in case you need it. The spare key’s up under the back bumper.” As usual, Kenny started to protest. “Oh, knock it off! What kind of friend would leave you in a bind like this? I’ll let ‘em know at the studio I’ve got an emergency and it’s none of their darn business what it is, but I’ll be out of touch for a day or two…or I could work nights on the CD till you’re a hundred percent again…hm. Whatever. Just rest and get well, willya?” Kenny got very quiet, and didn’t argue further. Maybe Clay’s superior logic had brought him to see the light; or maybe he was just too pooped. Either way, Clay felt fulfilled as he drove off with the smock in his back seat.

As if to try and thwart his intentions, though, the next day at the Sacred Heart Hospital cafeteria was a monster. To his credit, Clay never found himself tempted to yell ‘don’t you know who I am?’, even after the sixth time the supervisor had yelled at him for not doing something after not telling him to do it. Who Clay was didn’t matter, but it infuriated him that anyone, especially someone he considered a friend, was treated this way. He’d worked so hard toward winning acceptance for people with disabilities that he had almost forgotten that those without could be treated just as badly. On the positive side of things, the pretty OT came through the line again at lunchtime. Clay threw an Aiken wink her way, then reminded himself to tell Kenny about it so he’d know what to say if she moved. She didn’t respond much, though. Maybe she thought his wonky eye was only acting up.

Kenny was feeling better by evening, but Clay declared he probably needed another day of rest. After he changed, Clay hurried to the studio. Whispers surrounded him; the consensus, according to the deli guy who always delivered their supper there, was that Clay had a secret flame somewhere. How funny was that? Nobody would’ve believed the cheerful smile on Clay’s face came merely from doing something nice for someone who had done something nice for him.

Several hours’ work there, though, followed by only a few hours’ sleep, left Clay feeling a bit less charitable, especially when he looked outside at rainy morning streets. It was tempting to roll over and invoke stardom, but only briefly. Clay had always wanted to be the support for his little brother, only to find Brett could get by just fine without his support. He supposed now he was finally finding an outlet for all that leftover big-brother feeling. He simply could not leave Kenny in the lurch.

The hospital cafeteria was a zoo that day too, and Clay felt like he barely breathed at all till early afternoon. While cleaning up after the crowd, he noticed a woman sitting alone in the back corner. A coffee cup sat in front of her, so he took the pot over to offer a refill. Outside, the rain had cleared, and sideways shafts of sunlight glinted off tears that ran silently down her round pleasant face. Clay halted. “Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked quietly.

She blinked, as if only now registering his proximity. “No more coffee, thanks.” Her voice was low and husky. “I could run from here to Bellflower on the caffeine I’ve had already.”

“Anything else I can do?” he persisted.

She dabbed at her eyes and runny nose with a napkin, and shook her head. “I’m sorry…My daughter is very sick, and the doctors don’t know what it is.”

All of Clay’s millions couldn’t do much to help that. “Don’t apologize for bein’ sad,” he said. “How old is she?”

“Nine.”

“I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

A small smile made the face that had seemed plain brighten like the sun. “You’re not from around here, are you? Where’s home?”

“Nor…Kentucky.” That was a close one, though from things Kenny had let slip Clay wasn’t sure exactly where he would call home.

“Well, thank you for your positive vibes, Kentucky. I was never big on religion. I tend to get the opposite of most things I want. But I’ve exhausted most of my other options.”

“That tends to be when the Lord works best.” Clay knew that from experience. He stepped aside as the woman rose to leave, and another stray slant of sunshine sparkled off a small point on the sticky floor. “Hey, look here.” Clay bent and picked up the shiny penny. “An angel’s thinkin’ of you,” he said and held it out.

“Is that so?” Her smile was still sad, but it widened a touch at his words. The sun tangled in her bobbed brown hair and lit it with warm gold.

“Yeah. They drop these when someone needs to know they’re remembered.” The grandmother of one of Clay’s kids at the Y had told him that story long ago.

“How do you know the angel wasn’t thinking of you?” Her eyes were the color of whiskey, and held his in challenge.

I’ve got more pennies from the angels than I ever imagined. “’Cause I said so.”

Her fingers closed over his. “What’s your name?”

“Kenny,” Clay said, and for a foolish instant wished he were free to say otherwise.

“I’m Lyneve.” What a marvelous name, he thought. She took the penny. “Thank you, Kenny. I hope I see you again sometime.”

“I hope so too.”

Her whiskey eyes followed Clay around the rest of the day, and back to Kenny’s hole in the wall where he returned the smock to its by now revived owner. “You’ve got another one comin’ in, Tuesday I think,” Clay told him. ‘I told the cafeteria director I—you got paid back some money you loaned a friend.”

“You got that all backwards,” Kenny chuckled, “but thanks. It’ll be easier to stay clean now, not havin’ to wash this one out ever’night an’ hope the draft through the cracks blows it dry ‘fore mornin’.”

Clay nodded, and as had become their custom he passed on the news of the day: a very pregnant nurse’s very public fight with her boyfriend; an intern with munchies of questionable origin who wandered in and ate most of the rack of snack cakes, then wandered back out; and the quiet woman with the very sick little girl. He asked only that Kenny keep an eye out for her and be kind, which he really didn’t need to ask—Kenny didn’t have an unkind bone in his body, so far as Clay could ascertain. The voice that still vibrated somewhere around his sternum, and the eyes that still followed him the way some pictures do, he did not mention.

“God bless her,” Kenny said fervently. “I’ll watch out for her, sure ’nuff.” Clay turned to the door. “Hey, Clay…what you tol’ Mr. Lococo, ‘bout the new smock…”

“That you got paid back a loan to a friend? You can remember that, can’t you? It’s true. You’ve loaned me a lot. You loan me your life, when mine seems unbearable. You won’t let me repay you what I think that’s worth. A smock isn’t nearly enough.”

“So—you think of me like a friend, kinda? Not just some guy that works by the hour an’—“

“I worked by the hour,” Clay said. “Every job I ever had, I worked by the hour, till God blessed me with this. All my friends worked by the hour. Now at least I still have one friend who does—if you think of me as a friend, that is.”

“You bet,” Kenny said, and this time he was the one doing the hugging. He had suffered through being sick and alone more than he cared to think about, but this time he hadn’t had to. That by itself, and feeling like at last he had a friend in this big city, was worth more than all the money Clay (probably) had.

A couple of days later, Kenny saw a woman he thought must be the one Clay had talked—and talked, and talked—about. She sure had made an impression on the guy, and Kenny thought he could see why. Maybe she wasn’t perfectly put together like the girls on magazine covers, but she had a sweet smile. She even stopped one of the housekeepers, called her by name, and insisted on buying the woman a cup of coffee. Yep, she seemed like the kind of girl Clay would notice. They had talked about girls before, mostly when Clay was trying to talk Kenny into asking the pretty OT Maribel out, but Kenny didn’t have the nerve for that just yet. It made him feel guilty as it was, what he thought about her sometimes. He was surprised he didn’t light up the whole cafeteria blushing sometimes when she looked at him and smiled, with those dimples and pretty eyes of hers the color of a stormy sky, and he remembered what he had imagined doing with her. Girls took things the wrong way at the drop of a hat though. Let him say something not quite right, and before you could say Jack Robinson she was liable to accuse him of Lord knew what. It was bad enough being accused of something when you didn’t do anything, but being even partway to blame would be ten times worse, and might even draw the attention of that past he had run so hard from.

He was pretty busy, so he didn’t get a chance to speak to her right off; but he felt her watching after he poured the coffee and went on. It was a hard feeling to explain, like an itch on the back of his neck, but it was there. When things slowed down he went back to check on her. “Thank you for asking about Sunny,” she said. “I think I gave you the wrong impression before, though. She’s not my daughter, not yet. I’m a social worker and she’s been in foster care most of her life; her mother died under suspicious circumstances. Sunny’s been in three foster placements, but she ended up being removed from each because of…shall we say, questionable environmental impact.” Kenny didn’t have a clue what that meant, so he just listened. “I took her to stay with me, and fell in love with her. She’s such an endearing child. But recently she started having all these medical issues, until I was so worried I had to get her hospitalized to figure out what’s wrong before…”

She sighed and Kenny patted her hand. “Don’t you go givin’ up faith, now,” he said. She took his hand. Her eyes got all soft, and her fingers moved around on his in a manner that he knew, and that made his stomach tighten up like a fist. He tried not to pull away too fast—the lady was in such a mess, she couldn’t be trying to come on to him—but he did jump up and grab her empty paper plate, cup and napkins. “I better get on back to work.”

She frowned, and got up too. “And I’d better get back upstairs. Sunny’s napping, but she misses me if I’m not there when she wakes up.” There was a dish of Jello on the table and she picked it up. “I’ll take this back to her. Her mouth is very tender, so she can only eat very soft foods, and she loves Jello.”

That sounded so sad, but on the way to the trash can Kenny saw through the glass door of the cooler something that gave him a great idea. He finished cleaning up, then slid around a corner to be private, and pulled out his worn-out wallet to see what he had in there.

+++

Lyneve Holt was more than a little puzzled as she returned to her foster daughter’s hospital room. The man she had met two evenings ago in the cafeteria had had an impact on her far more profound than he likely could ever have imagined. He had consoled and encouraged her with a quiet confidence and a subtle strength that was rare and remarkable. When his hand clasped hers, it felt as if he had touched her deep inside, in a place few if indeed any ever had, and like a silly schoolgirl she had pondered and hoped for another opportunity to cross his path. Now she had, and it was not the same. Today Kenny had seemed awkward, even uneasy, when she reached out for another touch. It made no sense, but she let it go. Men were the last thing on the planet she had leisure to consider just now.

On the pediatric floor, she stopped at the nurses station to store the dish of lime Jello in their fridge, then slipped back into the room. Sunny was still sleeping, and she sat quietly by the bed and held her hand. Her brown skin was soft as velvet, and marked with a myriad of scars from the abuse that had dogged her from one placement to the next. Lyneve had never come up with any explanation for why such a sweet child had wound up with not one but three families in a row that hurt her. That was why she had taken Sunny in herself—and now the girl she had come to love was so terribly sick, and no one seemed able to determine why…

After a while, Sunny stirred and finally woke up. A large sty had arisen seemingly overnight on one eyelid, and she squinted out from under it at Lyneve. “Hi, Mama Eve.”

“Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling? I brought you some Jello.”

“Goodie!” Sunny grinned. “Can I eat it later? My tummy hurts.”

“Of course. It’s not going anywhere.” She helped Sunny raise the head of the bed and turn the TV on. A tour of the stations discovered two reruns of Gilligan’s Island on TBS, and they sat together and giggled at the silliness.

Afterwards, Sunny decided she felt like having that Jello, and Lyneve was about to go get it when there was a knock at the door. To her amazement, Kenny’s red head poked inside. He grinned when he saw Lyneve, but then his eyes moved to the bed and widened. Sadly, Lyneve understood; Sunny did look bad. To his credit, though, he recovered quickly. “I hear there’s a lil’ girl in here likes Jello,” he declared in his Southern drawl. “I didn’t know what kind, though, so I thought a whole rainbow’ud be best.” With that he pushed the door open with one very large foot to show he was holding a tray laden with every flavor of Jello that Sacred Heart’s cafeteria had to offer, arranged in prismatic order. Sunny squealed with delight.

Lyneve was moved, and impressed with the way Kenny perched on the edge of the bed and chattered with Sunny. His behavior toward Lyneve herself baffled her even more, though. He avoided touching her or even meeting her eyes, though she noticed him look her way on occasion. Where before he had behaved shyly, now he seemed more uncomfortable, even wary. He stayed a short time, but his attention was all for Sunny. She loved his accent, and giggled every time he spoke. “You sound like Clay Aiken!” she told him.

“I do not!” he retorted playfully. “He’s from North Carolina. I’m from Kentucky. We don’t sound alike at all! How’d you like it if I told you you sound like whatsername, J Lo?” That sent Lyneve’s little Latin dear into another spasm of giggles so hard she started to hiccup. “You like that Clay Aiken guy?”

Sunny brightened. “Yes! I hadn’t even ever seen the American Idol show, but Mama Eve watched it so I watched it with her when I went to live with her two years ago. We liked a lot of them, but Clay was the best! I wanted to go see him sing, but that’s when I started to getting sick, so I couldn’t go. I made her go with her friends, though.” She pointed to the boom box on the shelf. “I listen to him on the CD all the time.”

“Yeah, he’s a pretty good ol’ guy,” Kenny nodded, then got up. “I reckon I better run ‘fore they try to fire me down there.”

The penny Kenny had found and given to Lyneve lay on the tray table across the bed. She picked it up and held it out to him. “If they do, you can always take this back to fall back on.” His expression was blank. “The angel penny. Remember?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, I reckon. I really gotta go. I’ll try to come see you again, though, baby. An’ don’t you let nobody hurt on you, now.” He hugged her tight, nodded to Lyneve and left.

“I like him,” Sunny declared as she attacked her Jello.

I thought I did, Lyneve thought, and I thought he did me. Now I’m not sure at all what happened, or who he is.

A nurse came in later to lance the sty, which was really a cyst of alarming size on Sunny’s eyelid. With quick efficient motions she cleaned and dabbed anesthetic cream over it, sliced it open and drained it, and left them with a compress. Sunny didn’t say a word, but she squeezed Lyneve’s hand till her fingers were white. “I know it hurt, honey, but it’ll be better now,” Lyneve promised her.

“I hope so…My sides hurt too.” Lyneve looked and found new streaks of darkened skin, like fresh bruises along the child’s ribs. When they took the damp compress off later, Sunny’s eye was swollen and black as if she had gotten the worse end of a bar fight.

+++

Kenny was so upset after he left the little girl’s room he could barely keep his mind on the rest of his work. He didn’t know what all he might have fouled up by the time he clocked out, and for once he wasn’t all that sure he cared. As soon as he got home, he called Clay. ”Hey, um, I saw your friend.”

“Lyneve? How is she? How’s her daughter?”

“Not really her daughter.” Kenny told him what he had found out, and then told him about going to see the child. “I don’t know what…I walked in there an’ the first thing I thought was Lord, who’s beat this baby up so?”

“Huh? Who could’ve done that? Not Lyneve.”

Kenny couldn’t answer that right out. Instead he went on to his other reason to call. “She likes your music, Clay. Do you reckon maybe you could do some lil’ somethin’ for her?”

“Oh yeah, I think we can arrange somethin’ along those lines. Will you go with me, though? If somebody asks, I’ve gotta be able to say somebody at the hospital got me word.”

Kenny agreed, but after he hung up he wasn’t at all sure he was doing the right thing. He went to bed and tried to think good thoughts about how happy meeting Clay would make little Sunny; but all he could think of was the way she looked, like she’d been beaten within an inch of her life, and the way it felt to be beaten like that…

Kenny could read people, and he would never in a million years pick Lyneve with her gentle voice out as a child abuser, any more than he could have made himself believe Clay was a crook. But from his studying he had learned a little more about thinking logically, and logically the child looked hurt, and logically she was the only person who was in a position to be hurting the child.

He tossed around on his lumpy bed half the night. His instincts were most always right, but they had never run smack up against logic this way before…or up against his deepest fears.

And worse yet, Clay liked the woman, he really did. Kenny had finally found himself a friend, and now, as he finally dozed off from sheer tiredness, he worried he had all innocently gotten his friend mixed up in something very bad.

+++

Clay stepped out of the limo and took off his sunglasses. He grinned at Jerome as his big bodyguard buddy accompanied him through the front doors of Sacred Heart. Sometimes the trappings of stardom could be fun. They walked through the lobby, and Clay could sense a stir building behind him as he passed, like a wake left by a plane through the air.

Kenny was waiting by the elevators, tugging at his smock. “Hey, pal,” Clay greeted him with a big smile, and got a watery, nervous half-grin in reply. He didn’t say much else, other than introducing Jerome—they had agreed to keep the extent of their friendship quiet, so Clay could continue to get his brief respites from the rare air of celebrity—but he couldn’t figure why Kenny was so tense. Maybe he was seeing Clay Aiken, pop star, rather than Clay, his friend. Clay hated that, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. That was, after all, who was here to visit little Sunny—Clay Aiken, pop star.

When they got off the elevator, it created a flutter at the nurses station. Clay stopped to say hi, explain why he was there, and sign a few autographs. Out the corner of his eye he saw Kenny go to a door, knock and poke his head in. He finished up with the excited nurses as quickly as he could and trotted over. “Um, I tell ya whut,” Kenny was saying, “maybe this isn’t so good a time then, I can—“

Clay put his hand on Kenny’s shoulder and the other man almost jumped out of his clothes. My goodness, what’s got him so jumpy? “What’s up?” he asked. Kenny started to sputter something, but Clay had already stuck his head in the room. Lyneve sat on a rolling stool beside a cushioned reclining chair, holding an ice pack to the bruised face of the small dark-haired girl sitting there. When the one brown eye visible met Clay’s, the child gasped, then shrieked his name and struggled out of the chair while Lyneve tried to help, torn between scolding and her own shock. The girl shot across the hospital room and wrapped her arms around Clay’s waist, that being about as high up as she could reach. He laughed and hugged her neck, then disengaged enough to lower himself to her eye level. “Well, that’s a terrific greeting! You must be the little girl I’m lookin’ for!”

“I’m Asuncion Ruiz,” she replied, with a smile so wide Clay thought her swollen lips might split, “but everybody calls me Sunny. Before long I’m going to be Asuncion Holt, when I get to be Mama Eve’s daughter for real.”

“Good for you! Everybody needs a good mom.” Sunny stared up in undisguised amazement at Jerome’s bulk. While he crouched to get acquainted, Clay looked up. Lyneve’s whiskey-colored eyes were wide with surprise and disbelieving joy, though the dark circles beneath them spoke of a mother’s worry. Clay slowly stood, and fought back the mad urge to take her in his arms—she couldn’t know they had already met. “And you must be Lyneve,” he said with a smile. Speechless, she just nodded. “Kenny told me you two were fans, so I thought I’d drop by to say hi. Do the doctors know yet what’s happening?”

“No…They did blood tests, but the last one made her bleed all under the skin. It was as if the vein just popped. They haven’t done any more since then…” She kept staring. “Clay. Clay Aiken. You’re really here? You’re really him?”

“So the paparazzi tell me.” That made her smile, that smile that seemed to rise straight from her heart and wrap itself around his. “It’s great, how you took her in. You’ll make her a great mom. Do you have other children?”

“None, and didn’t really have any intention to. I’m a social worker, Kenny may have told you—where is he, anyhow?”

Clay looked around and spied the corner of a maroon smock through the half-open door into the hallway. “Kenny! C’mon in and join the party!” He did, though for a moment Clay would’ve sworn he was about to start wringing his hands; but then he squatted on the floor to talk to Sunny and seemed happier. Clay shrugged and returned his attention to Lyneve.

“Anyway, I figured managing the care of a couple hundred children should be enough to satisfy my maternal instinct. But Sunny was removed from three foster homes because of concern about abuse—unexplained injuries and so on. She never admitted anything happened at any of the homes, of course. She’s been in the system almost all her life; her biological mother was a prostitute found dead on a street in East LA, probably beaten to death by a pimp or a john. For a child like Sunny, any home was probably better than none.”

Clay thought of his own childhood, of his biological father and his stepfather. “Even hurtful attention is attention,” he said. “It beats indifference.”

Lyneve nodded. “You speak from experience, I know. I read Learning to Sing.” He tried not to blush. “I stood on my head to get the restrictions on staff adoptions waived, and the paperwork is grinding its way through the bureaucracy as we speak. I only hope she lives to see it.” They both looked around at another giggly shriek, to see Jerome scoop Sunny up in his arms and deposit her gently in her chair.

“They seem to be hittin’ it off well,” Clay laughed. “Do you want to take a break, maybe go for a walk? We’ll stay with Sunny.”

“Excuse me? Mr. Aiken, I am a fan. My friends on the net would disown me if they found out I was in the same room with you and didn’t take every available advantage of the opportunity—well, every available appropriate advantage.”

Now Clay was certain he was blushing. Jerome chortled, and Kenny…Kenny scowled and grunted, “I gotta go check in downstairs,” and bolted. What in heaven’s name had gotten into the guy? Was he jealous—maybe he had eyes for Lyneve. Clay mentally shook his head and moved the distraction aside. He did persuade Lyneve to sit down in a comfortable chair and put her feet up, while he took over the stool and fed Sunny some butterscotch pudding and basked in her nonstop chatter.

Every minute or two he heard the door open, and after a few moments close: the curious peeking in to catch a glimpse of him, he guessed. Sometimes it made him feel like a zoo exhibit, but this time he let it roll off. Sunny was much more entertaining…as was her mother-to-be, every time he sneaked a glance and saw her watching him. It had seemed so incongruous, that he who rarely took a drink had thought instantly of her eyes as the color of whiskey, but the more time he spent in her company the more sense his instinctive reaction made; she warmed and dizzied him, like strong drink, but far more enjoyably.

+++

The man of Lyneve’s wildest dreams had walked into the nightmare of her life, and she was still reeling. She sat and watched Clay Aiken, Clay fergodssake Aiken, feed her daughter whose little hands were too puffy and sore to hold a spoon, while Jerome leaned against the wall of the hospital room with his arms folded and grinned benevolently over all, like some linebacker angel.

As her amazement ebbed, it was replaced by a quiet delight that this man really was as advertised—and by confusion. Kenny, who had evidently arranged this whole visitation, who had touched her soul once with such heat and then turned cold and distant, was still keeping his distance. The sense of rightness, of place, she had felt at their first meeting was gone; or, not exactly gone, but displaced. She had felt it again, but when she looked into another pair of green eyes…Clay’s. It was absurd. She was a fan, so of course she would respond to actually being in his presence; but she had never imagined responding with her whole being this way. Sunny was doing her best to charm Clay, and succeeding—he laughed at her corny jokes she’d learned from the Disney Channel, and she even coaxed him to sing ‘Proud of Your Boy’. Even so, his head turned regularly toward Lyneve, and those eyes reached for her and held her fast.

A nurse slipped in with a blood pressure cuff. Clay stood and moved aside, greeting the nurse by name. She was clearly excited, but her motions were brisk and gentle. Still, Sunny watched nervously, and when the cuff inflated her lip quivered and tears sparkled in her eyes. Clay rubbed her shoulder lightly and tried to distract her by chatting about the shots he had to get to go overseas.

Kenny returned, and without a look at Lyneve announced, “There’s a commotion kickin’ up out yonder. ‘Less y’all wanna get stampeded, you better get a move on.”

Jerome unfolded his arms and headed for the door. “Gimme a few, boss,” he told Clay with tongue in cheek. “I’ll clear it out some.”

“Do you have to go?” Sunny protested to Clay as Jerome left with Kenny in tow.

“’Fraid so, darlin’. I do have a real job, y’know. I’ve gotta be at the recording studio in a little while.” He picked up the pudding cup and spooned up the last bit. “Anythin’ else I can do for you?”

Sunny giggled and ducked her head. God, what is she cooking up, that sly little thing? Lyneve wondered in amusement. “Yeah. You know when you went to be on the Idol show, and you walked in and ol’ Simon was sitting there, and he ask you why you’re there, and you look at him like he was crazy and you said…Say it! Please!”

Clay giggled too, then spread his arms wide and with an innocent shrug declared as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “I’m the American Idol!”

Sunny burst into laughter and flung herself into his embrace. Lyneve had to laugh too, remembering how the unpretentious charm of the boy on the TV screen had caught her affection, but she stopped laughing when she looked down and almost cried out. Blood was oozing from beneath two of Sunny’s fingernails, below where the cuff had been placed. Clay followed her gaze and gasped, but covered his shock well. Lyneve jumped up and grabbed some gauze; he was already reaching to take it from her. When their hands met, she felt exactly what she had as a kid when she and her brothers and sisters used to drag their feet across the carpet in the depths of Pennsylvania winter and then shoot sparks at each other. It was the same spark she had felt when Kenny had first taken her hand, and she was suddenly infuriated: at herself for being so inexplicably fickle in the midst of crisis; at Kenny for being so damned incomprehensible; even at Clay for being, well, just for being. She moved away.

He insisted on sponging Sunny’s hand off, and spoke softly and reassuringly to her while he helped her back into bed. “The doctors here are really great. They took good care of a friend of mine when he was very sick a while back. So don’t worry. They’ll get you fixed up in no time. Think of ‘em like angels. God sent ‘em to help you get well. There’re angels all around, takin’ care of you. You can’t see ‘em, but they’re there.” Lyneve watched Sunny calm, and felt herself relax a little too, then turned to look at Clay standing next to her beside the bed. One of his long fingers rested on the penny that still lay on the tray table. “They have ways of lettin’ you know they’re around.” His gaze drifted down to the coin, and he smiled that crooked smile, and suddenly the pieces of confusion rushed together into a pattern so crazy it just might make sense.

“Have we met?” she demanded. As a social worker she was a trained interviewer, and when he looked sharply up and their eyes met his flicker of guilt was unmistakable. She pushed his hand aside and picked up the penny. “In the cafeteria, maybe? Where this was lying on the floor, dropped by an angel, and someone gave it to me?”

Those eyes, the eyes identical to Kenny’s, the eyes Lyneve was now sure she had looked into before, widened. “I…understood Kenny gave you that?”

“So did I. Who is Kenny, Clay Aiken, and who are you?”

+++

For one of the few times in his life, Clay really wanted to lie. He wanted to keep his secret, but he found himself incapable of lying to this woman. Her eyes were intoxicating, even now when flashing fury…or maybe especially now. “Please don’t tell anybody. Kenny and I noticed the resemblance between us when we met, and I…come in and work for him, occasionally. It doesn’t hurt anything. He gets a day off with his pay to relax and study, and do some things for me, and I get—“

In an instant, Lyneve’s face changed, from pique to total comprehension. “You get a normal mortal’s life for the day,” she breathed. “Of course.”

That threw him off balance and unnerved him even more—he hadn’t expected that reaction. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t as if I was tryin’ to deceive you deliberately, or—“

“Oh, hush.” Right now, no matter how fast he talked Clay couldn’t finish a sentence around her. She started to laugh and reached out to him. She felt so amazingly right in his arms. “I thought I was coming unhinged,” she murmured into his shoulder. “The Kenny I first met just wasn’t the one I met later. A couple of days later, unless I miss my guess.”

“You’re very perceptive.”

“But now he’s not even acting the way he did then. He seems…angry, maybe.”

“Maybe he’s got a crush on you too.” Oh Lord, did I just say that?…apparently I did, Clay thought with a gulp as Lyneve’s eyes grew big. The moment was broken when Sunny, her tears dried, wanted a full explanation. She was a bright little girl, and caught on quickly, and happily promised to zip her lips—just in time too, as Jerome returned to report he’d cleared most of the paparazzi out of the hospital proper. “I’ll try to come back and see you again soon,” Clay promised with hugs all around, and whispered in Lyneve’s ear, “but don’t be surprised if I’m wearin’ a smock.”

To the music of her laughter, he slipped out, to be greeted by flashing cameras and Dr. Kelso, Sacred Heart’s chief of medicine, grinning and pumping Clay’s hand like he was running for office. Clay tried not to snicker; he had seen the doctor’s less congenial side on several occasions while working for Kenny, but restrained his amusement. “You should have given us a little notice you were visiting, Mr. Aiken, and we could’ve provided an escort.”

“Oh, I had an escort.” Kenny had been hovering just outside the door to Sunny’s room, but when Clay turned to give him credit he was gone. It was just one more baffling inconsistency. Clay resolved to talk to Kenny as soon as he could and sort things out. He waved to the photographers and headed for the elevator with Jerome.

+++

Kenny was on the other side of the hospital before he slowed up. His heart was pounding and his knees shook. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him when he saw people with cameras that when Clay walked out of that room they would start taking pictures. Those pictures could end up anyplace, in a newspaper or on a computer, and be seen by anybody, including the people he could not let himself be seen by.

He found a corner to sit down in before he fell down, and sat with his arms around his body until he didn’t feel quite so scared and sick. Then he made his way back to the cafeteria. He was glad to find nobody had missed him much, but lunch time was coming on, so they sure would have. Nobody knew right where he had been either, and he didn’t offer. With all these worries and suspicions chasing each other through his head like a litter of half-wild kittens, it was hard for him to keep his mind on his work. Mr. Lococo yelled at him several times. Once he didn’t even know it till he heard somebody yell back at Mr. Lococo to lay off, and when he realized it was Maribel he was about as embarrassed as possible. He filled up her Diet Coke, mumbled thanks and ran for the back.

Just about the time he couldn’t take any more, he saw Lyneve come in and look around. He knew where all the exits were, and went out one fast. If she was looking for him, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to find him just yet. Kenny stood out in the hallway and got his breath, and thought this might be as good a time as any to try and settle some of this confusion in his head. He went to the elevator, and a few minutes later knocked on Sunny’s door and peeked in. “Kenny! Did you bring me more Jello?” she said all excited.

“Naw, sweetie, I’m sorry. We, uh, ran out. They ought to have more later though. I just wanted to see about you.”

“I’m great. Thank you for bringing Clay! He’s wonderful. Mama Eve likes him too.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Kenny said with his heart heavy. “I was wonderin’, um, how your Mama Eve is treatin’ you.”

“She’s the best. My other foster families, they were okay, but they always had other kids and stuff. It’s just Mama Eve and me.”

“I thought I heard those other folks…they hurt you.”

Sunny shook her head hard. “No! I’d fall down or something, and then the man from the Children’s Service would come and ask me did they hurt me, and I told him no, but he never believed me and they took me someplace else. I tried really hard not to get hurt, but sometimes it didn’t take much. I bumped into the bathroom door one night, and they tried to make me say somebody hit me but nobody did. I don’t know why they wanted me to. It wasn’t true. I’m with Mama Eve now, though, so it’ll be okay, if I can get well!” Kenny sure wanted that for her too, and he started to think maybe he had judged Lyneve too quick. He sat down on the side of the bed and went to hug her. “Ouch!” she said, and when he looked the top part of her arm was all bruised. It was swollen and tight-looking.

“When did this happen?” he asked her.

“Just a few minutes ago.” It was right where the nurse had taken her blood pressure, but nobody got beat-up looking from their blood pressure being taken…but unless Lyneve had just happened to hurt her in that very way and that very spot a day or two before, it couldn’t be from her either.

Just then Lyneve came in with a little plastic cup with a lid on it. “Well, this is a surprise!” she said when she saw Kenny. “Sunny, look what Ruby brought you—homemade banana pudding!”

“Wow, I can’t hold a candle to that!” Kenny laughed and got up to go, but paused and looked at Lyneve. She looked so tired and worried, he decided to let his instincts do the thinking, instead of his fear. He moved his head toward the door and hoped she would understand he wanted to talk outside. “Um, miz Lyneve, I wanted to tell—“

“It’s all right, Kenny. If you’re worried about your and Clay’s little secret, don’t be. He told me. Actually, I busted him.” She smiled for a second. “I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing for him. So if that’s why you were so tense earlier, you can relax.”

“Well, it’s not exactly that.” Kenny’s mama had always said confession was good for the soul, and in this case he guessed he’d risk it. “I was upset about lil’ Sunny. I thought…I thought somebody…that maybe you hurt her. But it can’t be!” he busted out, and told her about Sunny’s arm.

She looked even more worried. “I’ll get the nurse to look at that. I don’t know what’s happening. She’s like a little China doll; the least bump brings injury all out of proportion. I can see where you could come to that conclusion, I guess…” All of a sudden she stopped talking, and got a thinking look. “Maybe other people have too. Sunny insisted her other foster families didn’t abuse her, but no one believed it. They thought she was trying to protect the families, to keep her home. But maybe she wasn’t.”

“She told me that too,” Kenny said.

“Maybe this disease process, or whatever it is, has been working all along, getting worse as she got older. I didn’t have her case until the last foster placement, so I don’t know the details of the other two…but I can find out! Let me go get the nurse to look at this arm, and then I’m going to call my office and get the old files sent over.” Lyneve grabbed Kenny and gave him a great big hug. “Thank you!” she yelled and ran off down the hall. Kenny wasn’t sure what it was she was thanking him for, but it sure seemed to have made her happier than a pig in mud. He was happier too, not about Sunny’s strange sickness, but that he had settled in his own mind that it was indeed a sickness, and he told Clay so that night when he called.

“That’s a relief!” Clay said. “I didn’t know what in the world was wrong with you. Actin’ all mad, and then I tried to give you some props and you just vanished!”

“Some what kind? Oh, that. Naw, I’m not cut out for that.” Kenny hated not being honest with his friend, but he knew Clay wouldn’t be his friend much longer if he knew the truth about him. A big star wouldn’t be associating with a man who might well be wanted. Even though Clay didn’t act like a big star, he was a good man, which meant the same applied, just for different reasons. “You handle the picture takers, whaddyacallem—paper ratzies.”

That made Clay holler. “Ha! No chance I could ever talk you into takin’ my job for a day, then?”

“No sir!” As serious as his mind had turned, Kenny still had to laugh too, at the idea of himself in that limo with a big bodyguard like Jerome. Thinking about all those women screaming at him scared him right out of laughing, though. How did Clay keep them from making up all manner of tales about him and carrying them everywhere? Kenny hoped he could ask sometime, without raising any suspicions.

“You just keep doin’ yours then, till you’re ready for somethin’ better, and I’ll keep borrowin’ it as long as you’ll let me,” Clay was saying. “Wish I could tomorrow. I’d love to see Lyneve and find out what she got out of Sunny’s old case files, but I’ve got to be in the studio all day.”

“I bet I can get up there sometime tomorrow,” Kenny said. “I’ll go ask her.”

He never got the chance. The next day, during the hour the cafeteria was closed to clean up from breakfast and set up for lunch, Kenny slipped upstairs to the kids’ floor. The door to Sunny’s room was open and people he’d never seen were hurrying in and out. Ruby, the housekeeper who had brought Sunny food, was nearby with her cleaning cart, so he asked her, “What’s goin’ on?”

When she turned around, she was crying. “They’re gone.”

“They—wha—oh Lordy, no—“

“Not like that, baby. Miss Holt called up to her office at the Children’s Services, for some old paperwork on little Sunny. She was all excited about it, said she thought it might help them figure out what’s wrong with the child. A man brought it and stayed a while, but when he left he went around by the elevators and used his cel phone. I went by him with my cart and he kept right on talking—nobody pays us any mind, you know that. People like you and me, we’re invisible to people like him. I heard him say he thought Miss Holt was hurting the child, and they better send somebody over here to help him take her away from her. Well, I couldn’t believe I’d heard right, but then he said he’d go down to the lobby and wait for the police. So I went to the room and I told her, flat out. She put the little girl in a wheelchair and rode down the service elevator over there with me, and I took them out that corner door at the foot of the fire stairs—the one we keep unlocked, so the smokers can go in and out?” She jerked her head toward the room. “Been cops all over the place ever since. They talked to me, I didn’t tell ‘em nothin’. That sweet lady never did a thing to harm anybody, let alone that lamb. I know it, and anybody with sense would too, and if you say a word, boy, I’ll swear on my granddaddy’s grave you lyin’—“

“No, Ruby, no, I wouldn’t ever…” Kenny was too shocked to think, but he had to and fast, because just then a nurse saw him, and went over to a tall skinny black man in a suit coming out of the room and said something to him.

The man was police, Kenny knew it, and he started to backpedal, hoping he could get to the elevator, but he couldn’t before the man in the suit called out his name. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He was all polite, as if anybody would have a choice after that. Kenny just tried not to shake when he went into the room. It looked so bare without Sunny’s face, smiling no matter how bad she felt. The policeman, whose name was Detective Archer, asked about Kenny visiting Sunny, and Kenny told him how that came about. Then he asked if Kenny had ever seen Lyneve hurt Sunny, and Kenny said No, that he hadn’t, and he didn’t believe the child’s mama would ever harm her. “Ms Holt isn’t the child’s mother,” the detective said, “and that’s immaterial anyway, unfortunately. Children’s—“

“I know. Children’s mamas hurt ‘em all the time. So do their other kinfolks. I know.” He guessed that was what had made him assume the worst about Lyneve at first, without even knowing her.

Detective Archer was quiet a minute, and then he asked about Clay. That really scared Kenny, so he just said how they met when Clay came in to see a sick friend, and Kenny hunted him up when he found out Sunny was his fan. That seemed to satisfy the man, but Kenny still warned Clay as soon as he could. “I hope they don’t come around botherin’ you,” he said. “I feel bad enough ‘bout all this, seein’ as how if I hadn’t of said whatever it was I said to give Lyneve the idea to call her office up, she might not of gotten these folks all suspectin’ her. I sure don’t wanna be the cause of you gettin’ in trouble too.”

“If the police call, I’ll set somethin’ up with my attorney,” Clay said. “I won’t be in trouble, and neither are you! Don’t worry, or feel guilty about anything. I’m just worried about Sunny. She shouldn’t be moved this abruptly as ill as she is. And…I’m worried about Lyneve too.”

“Yeah, I know. There’s nothin’ worse in this world than somebody sayin’ you did somethin’ you didn’t, and there’s no way you can prove otherwise. I bet she took Sunny to another doctor or a hospital though, someplace where they can figure what’s wrong with her.”

Clay agreed, but it was plain as day he was not happy about it.

+++

Sunny dozed in the back while Lyneve drove south. The life of a fugitive did not suit her well. Perhaps it was because she had grown up with little material wealth that now she so valued her creature comforts: warm bath, iced drinks, hot gossip online, cool sheets wherein one could ponder said hot gossip…She caught her thoughts’ drift, and roundly scolded herself. Lecherous daydreams were not safe indulgences, when her child’s life and her own freedom were at stake; and they hardly even seemed appropriate, now that she had actually met their subject. Clay was so kind and caring, she had wondered if she could ever again allow herself such crazy fancies. Still, she couldn’t help but wish he were real: that is to say, to wish he were a guy from work, or a guy she had met in line at a movie, someone she could have a chance with, without the pain of knowing it was as unlikely as snow in Tijuana.

One hand freed itself from the steering wheel, crept into her pocket and found the penny he had given her. Even amid this madness, she could, touching it, imagine him with her: long legs stretched out across the back seat of her old Pontiac, cradling Sunny tenderly in his lap and humming to her while she slept; tucking her into a motel bed, then lying down across the other bed and holding Lyneve close, watching over them both through the night, standing by her till everything was all right.

[END PART ONE OF THREE]

Go to Part Two

-----------------------

~Posted 5.20.2005~

You can contact the author at theleewit@mindspring.com

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