ASSUMPTIONS

By DixieHellcat

(Part 2)

+++

The little girl and the woman who wanted to be her mama were never far from Kenny’s thoughts after that, and from things Clay said now and then Kenny knew the same went for him. Other than that, though, things went on pretty well. One rainy day Kenny holed up in an empty corner of the cafeteria to eat his lunch and read, and when Maribel came in he jumped up and ran to see if she needed anything, with his coffee pot in one hand and his book in the other. The book was about soldiers in a prison camp in World War Two and how they escaped, and Kenny couldn’t believe when she noticed it. She said her aunt had had it when she was a kid and she had read it along with every other book in every family member’s house. After that, he got up the nerve to talk to her a few times, and listened to her complain how she’d rather be helping people be able to dress themselves again and eat without help and all the things OTs were taught in school how to do, instead of writing reports about the stuff she didn’t have time to do because she was writing reports. She wasn’t just a pretty girl, but a great person, and he didn’t know if that made what he dreamed about her worse, or better.

Clay helped him get ready for the GED test, and after a while he was just about ready. With a high school diploma, or what amounted to it, he could get a better job, take those college classes, do anything and go anywhere. When he could, he still snuck up to the peds floor to visit with the kids. Sometimes Maribel was up there too, doing her therapies, and he’d watch without her knowing it. She was so smart, and kind and patient. He wasn’t sure he had that much patience, but he really liked kids, and wished he could do something to help them. Maybe he could teach, or be a therapist. He knew it’d take an awful lot of schooling, but maybe someday…

Then one afternoon, Kenny was hauling out the last of the lunch trash. The cafeteria was dark, the doors shut to set up for supper, but two of the head doctors came in anyway. They called Kenny over, and they fired him. It was simple as that. At least the one, Dr. Cox, acted halfway sorry to be doing it, but Kenny was so mad he didn’t care. He was so close to getting out of this poor white trash hole, and now he was going to have to start all over and go look for some crappy job that paid enough to buy peanut butter and bread and milk.

He stopped to pull off his grubby smock and throw it in the trash can he’d just emptied, before he stomped out of the cafeteria. He almost ran somebody over out in the hallway, and wouldn’t you know it, it was Maribel. She asked what was wrong, and he told her, and being a woman and all, right away she took advantage of him being all upset to hit on him. That was his first thought when she asked him out, at any rate, and it came right out his mouth too. Then she got all mad and stomped off, and Kenny stood there and realized what he’d done. Again, he’d assumed because of what had happened to him in the past that he knew all about what was happening now, when he didn’t know a dang thing.

When he hollered and ran after her, he didn’t expect her to stop, but she did. She didn’t even know he knew her name. He said he was sorry, and she said the same, although she didn’t need to. She even made this goofy noise with her mouth, like a tape running back to start the whole dumb conversation over. It made him laugh, and he said he’d go out to eat with her. He’d never known she was funny too. Kenny missed her more every minute, even while she was sitting right across from him eating pizza and cussing when it was too hot and talking with her mouth full.

She didn’t make fun of his car either, and when he took her back to the hospital and hers wouldn’t start he was secretly a little glad, even though he guessed it was mean and selfish of him. It meant he got to spend a little more time with her. Bel didn’t seem too put out about it either. She even said she’d miss him too, and then she said she’d help him find a new job. Kenny was too embarrassed to say that any job she came up with would probably need a heap more educating than he had, but it was good of her to offer. It made him feel more hopeful, enough that when she found some good old soul music on the radio he started to sing along.

He had never heard the like out of a woman. Bel went wild. You would’ve thought she’d never heard a fella sing before. Kenny tried not to laugh too hard when she said he ought to go out for some reality show. He thought Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m not like Clay. He sang so great nobody cared he looked funny at first. And besides, he sure doesn’t look funny now, except when he fixes up to look like me. All the same, it had been a coon’s age since anybody had praised his voice, so he enjoyed it. What he enjoyed more was when he got her to her house, and she gave him her number and said he could call her. He was so excited he kissed her at her front door and then ran to his car and took off before she changed her mind.

By the time he got back to his apartment Kenny had calmed down—some. His legs were still wobbly in a good way, though, and he could still feel her soft, soft lips on his, and taste something like licorice on her breath. It was better than the best fantasy he’d ever had, by a long shot. He had to come down, though, and realized he still had one long haul in front of him. One of the first things he saw when he let himself in the door was his extra smock, hanging on a hanger by the window to finish drying. It reminded him of another very bad thing. Losing his job at the hospital meant he didn’t have a job for Clay to borrow anymore. That meant no more extra money, but Kenny didn’t think he’d miss that as much as having some time to read and study, and playing with Raleigh, and especially hanging out with Clay talking about things smart people talked about. Most of all, he was going to miss having that friend. With an unhappy heart, he picked up the phone. I ought to give him that smock if he wants it, he thought, just as a remembrance.

They talked for a bit before Kenny figured out how to tell him. “I, uh, thought you might like knowin’, since you’re the one been on me about it…I went out an’ ate pizza with Maribel tonight.”

“You did? All right! So how’d it go? Not that I’m pryin’,” Clay giggled.

“It went good. Real nice. She even gave me her phone number.”

“Yes! Gotcha! Congratulations, man.”

“Yeah, um…thing is, I won’t get to see her as much, ‘cause, uh, they fired me.”

“They what?” Clay said it real quietly, and then when it sunk in, hoo-ee, did he blow his stack. He ranted and raved about how Kenny was the best worker in the cafeteria and somebody needed their heads examined for letting him go. Then Clay stopped and took a deep breath. “Well, okay,” he said. “So, you want to come work for me?”

+++

“You what?!?”

Maribel could not believe her ears. She’d called Kenny early, suspecting he would already be up and ready to go pound the pavement for a job, despite her assurances that her DJ friend would be happy to help him out. Just one listen to that marvelous voice of his would sell April! He struck her as that kind of guy, though, full of homespun pride and unwilling to accept much help. Instead, she had found him just waking up, excitedly explaining he had already been offered a wonderful new job.

He hadn’t wanted to go into it over the phone, but was shy of her coming to his apartment: understandably so, when she saw it. It was barely bigger than a rental storage, and threadbare, though neat and spotlessly clean. Bel smiled inside to see his small library, but ached to see Kenny, so caring and compassionate and lively, forced to live in such circumstances. Maybe, she hoped, this terrific new job would open new doors for him. It was a pleasant surprise—which lost all of its pleasure when he launched, wide-eyed with childlike delight, into his account.

“Clay Aiken,” she repeated, almost nauseous with shock. “How the hell did you get mixed up with the likes of him?”

“Likes of him?” Kenny laughed. “Lordy, Bel, you sound like the man stole your horse or somethin'. Here’s how it come about. “

As he described the charade Aiken had perpetrated on the hospital with his naïve assistance, it made more sense. “Whatever,” she shrugged when he finished his tale. “You won’t have to worry about him, though. April’ll be back Monday, and she’ll be glad to help you get work.”

“I got work! Great work, too, I’m sure. Dunno what Clay wants me to do exactly, but that makes no never-mind to me. It’s gonna be…” At her head shake he frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, except I know too much. April and I have been friends since college, and when I hang with her, naturally I hang with her friends in the radio and music businesses. They hear things about people, and they’ve heard plenty about this Aiken guy. He’s the butt of some pretty rough jokes. He’s ambitious, and manipulative, and duplicitous, and just plain weird. From what I understand, he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants. If what he wanted was to play a little game with Sacred Heart, then—“ Bel shut up before she said something wounding, like he found an innocent to play it on, Kenny…you.

Kenny’s mouth hung wide open. She imagined he had never heard such unvarnished commentary, and wished she could have softened them, but he deserved the truth. His response was not what she expected, however. “I’m not real educated, Bel, but I do know enough to know whoever you been talkin’ to most certainly is not talkin’ about the same person I am. I’ve known Clay for months. He’s a good Christian fella, with a real good heart—“

“Then why are you still living in this hovel, if you’ve known him for months and he’s got such a good heart?” she challenged. “He’s got millions, I hear, though April and her friends can’t figure out how. Radio won’t touch him, and yet women throw themselves uselessly at him in concerts by the thousands, and buy his cheesy CDs by the millions. However he’s getting it, he could spend a little for charity.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Kenny looked as if she had slapped him. His voice dropped and tightened. “I don’t want no handouts, an’ I never want Clay to think I’m tryin’ to take advantage of what he’s gotten himself to be. There’s enough folks aimin’ to do that as it is. He’s a good friend.”

No, you’d be a good friend, Bel groaned mentally, but I doubt he would be. From some of the more sensational speculations that had been shared with her, God only knew what kind of ‘job’ Kenny might be coerced into. “I just don’t think it’s wise to get tangled up with some wannabe star. He didn’t even win the damn talent show! I’ll get with April, and we’ll scope out what’s available jobwise—“

“You’re not listenin’ to me!” Kenny’s face darkened, as it had the previous evening when he had stormed out of the hospital cafeteria, angry at being fired. “I have got a job, workin’ for somebody I like and trust. Now, are you gonna believe me, or your friend’s friends that probably never met the man an’ don’t know shit from Shinola about him—“

“Shit from what?” She was dazed just at hearing a swear word slip from those sweet lips.

“Shinola. It’s shoe polish. An’ you’re changin' the subject. Don’t bother callin’ your friend. I don’t expect I’d want a job got for me by somebody that’d jump to conclusions that way.” Bel didn’t know if he meant April, or her, by that, and was chilled by the thought that what had begun between them the night before with such promise could end so abruptly. The feel of his mouth on hers had warmed her through the night; she looked down at his big hands, rough from manual labor but so graceful in their motions, and remembered how she had wanted him to touch her—had wanted it, and still did.

The tense silence between them was broken by the anemic jangle of Kenny’s phone, an old desk model that looked like he had scavenged it from a dumpster. “Hey, Clay…yeah, sure, anytime. Listen, reckon it’d be okay if I brought somebody else along?…Awrighty then. See ya in a little while.” He hung up and grabbed Bel’s hand, his grasp unshakable. “C’mon. I’m gonna prove to you your highfalutin’ friends are all wet.”

+++

“So where is this mansion?” Bel peered out the car window at the fine homes they passed, unable to imagine any of their owners allowing Kenny’s aged Toyota to be seen sitting in front of their door.

Behind the wheel, Kenny giggled. “Right up thisaway,” he said as he turned down shady side roads, through an area almost rural in its peacefulness, and finally into the driveway of a house, pleasant enough, and definitely big, but hardly the showy place she expected of the diva she’d heard such scorn heaped on. Kenny hopped out, ran around to open her door, and then trotted, not to the front door, but the back. She followed, probably looking as confused as she felt. “Company goes to the front,” he explained while he knocked. “That’s how we do it in the South, anyhow. Yo, Clayton! You asleep in there?”

If the house had not been what Bel anticipated, neither was the man who answered the door. Descriptions and the few pictures she’d seen had prepared her for a scrawny shrimp of a person, not this tall drink. Of course, when Kenny said the guy had impersonated him she supposed she should have readjusted her expectations. She also hadn’t expected Clay Aiken to wear glasses, flip flops, pajama bottoms, an old T-shirt and stubble, accompanied by a big grin that turned into a yelp when a small terrier ran between his legs and outside. “I got her!” Kenny scooped the dog up with one long arm, as if well practiced at it. “Hello, Raleigh. Yeah, I love you too, girl. Now get back in that house ‘fore your daddy has to spank you. You gotta make that dog mind, Clay, else how’re you gonna make your kids mind?”

“I think my wife’ll probably have to be the disciplinarian. I’m too soft a touch.” Clay grinned, and hugged Kenny. Surprisingly, Bel did not feel the urge to wince. “I’m sorry about your job, Kenny! I didn’t do anything to get you in trouble, did I?”

“Lord, no. It’uz just budget, Dr. Cox said, and I had the least seniority. I hate you won’t have a way to get out anymore, though.”

“Won’t have much time now anyhow, with the CD almost done, scheduling the tour, etcetera etcetera.” Clay turned toward Bel. “You did get somethin' good out of it though, didn’t you? Hello, Maribel, how you doin’?” His hands took hers firmly, his smile bright. His eyes, unsettlingly like Kenny’s, held hers, and she was suddenly reminded that the Kenny whose kindness had soothed her most stressful days had sometimes not been Kenny at all, but this man. Instead of feeling infuriated, however, she found her hands and her smile rising to meet his. “I’ve been onto Kenny for ages to tell you he liked you. I’m sorry it took this, but I’m glad to see you two finally get together! C’mon in.”

“Well, I’m sure ‘nuff glad for it,” Kenny grinned and escorted Bel inside and to a seat on a sofa, then flopped down on it as though he belonged there. The living room looked like, well, a bachelor pad, albeit one with some obviously expensive furnishings, like the huge flat screen TV and state of the art entertainment center. A pair of socks lay wadded up on the floor beside the plump leather recliner, along with a half-empty bottle of Sprite, and the décor was hardly the persnickety Fab Five production that catty comments would have led her to look for. Other than a gathering of small figurines on a shelf and a framed certificate of some kind on the wall, the place was hardly decorated at all. “Partway ‘cause of her, an’ partway ‘cause I’m lookin’ forward to workin’ for you for real. So whaddya say, boss man?”

Clay’s ears, which were not as radar-dish like as snide jokes implied either, actually reddened. “Well, um, I’ve been reconsiderin’ that.”

Leading Kenny on with the promise of a glam job and then pulling the rug out from under him? Bel thought. Maybe I won’t have to call this creep out. Maybe he’ll show his true colors all by himself. And yet, as sure as she had been that this was not a man worthy of trust, as glad as she should be to break this connection clean, the thought saddened her. Mostly that was for Kenny; the shocked disappointment reflected on his face would only worsen as he realized this ‘idol’ was not what Kenny’s gentle innocence had wished him to be. She was surprised, though, that one moment of contact had left her too wishing Clay Aiken could possibly be what he seemed. “Clay! You don’t want me workin’ for you? How come? You know I’m a hard worker, and I won’t tell a soul your business—“

“I know that! It’s not that at all. It’s not about you, Kenny. You’re a good guy, and a great friend.” Clay thumped down in the recliner and stared down at the little dog wiggling at his feet. “That’s the problem, really. I saw how differently you acted when I went to the hospital to visit Sunny, with the limo and Jerome and all the pop star frosting. You’d be the best employee anybody could ever have, but…it seems like practically all the friends I’ve got out here work for me, and I worry sometimes that if I didn’t have jobs for them, they wouldn’t be around me. I can get you a terrific job at half a dozen places, and I will. I won’t leave you in the lurch. But I don’t want to have you as an employee, and lose you as a friend.” He clasped his hands loosely in front of him and stared at them, and Bel was quietly startled to realize she believed him. His accent was so like Kenny’s, and it reminded her how far Clay too was from all things that had been familiar to him.

After a moment’s silence, she was startled again by Kenny’s laughter. “Aw, Clay, now you don’t think that poorly of me, do you?” He scooted to the end of the sofa nearest to the recliner. “We got to be buddies ‘fore I ever knew about this star stuff. You’re a good fella, an’ you’ve gone way far outta your way for me, an’ I’d be your friend no matter what.” He put out his hand.

Clay looked up, and a ghost of a smile rekindled. “I kinda hoped you’d say somethin’ along those lines. If you’re sure you’re okay with this, I’d love for you to be like my personal assistant. An old friend of mine from home did it for a while, but he’s gone back to North Carolina, and I really want somebody I can trust.” They shook on it. “For now, just check in with me in the mornings. I need you to do the things I can’t because of the ‘star stuff’. Run errands, pick things up—I have to go overseas in a couple of weeks, and you could stay here and watch the house while I’m gone. I wouldn’t even have to take Raleigh to the kennel then.”

“Overseas?” Bel had kept her seat toward the opposite end of the sofa. “I guess that’s about recording, publicity, that sort of thing.”

Clay shook his head. “I work with UNICEF, and I’m goin’ to Indonesia to see the schools after the tsunami, and talk to the teachers.”

Right. She’d seen the celeb-studded fundraisers in the aftermath of the monster wave, and she supposed it was as good a way as any to get money for assistance and toot one’s own horn at the same time. “Why teachers?”

“Clay’s a teacher,” Kenny said, his mouth open. “Whoa. That’s somethin’ else, Clay. Aren’t you scared you’ll get drowned over there—oh shoot, I forgot you don’t like the water. I shouldn’t of said that. But he is, Bel. See his diploma over there?”

Sure enough, when she got up and looked closer, the single frame on the living room wall held a bachelors degree in special education from someplace in North Carolina. Clay would know a classroom from the inside, then. So why hadn’t the DJs who knew every scrap of salacious gossip mentioned something so positive? It made no sense.

Behind her, Clay and Kenny were happily hashing out Kenny’s job description. “Hey,” Kenny said, “I remember once my…uh, some guys I knew, they went to this rasselin’ show, an’ they said a lot of the security fellers looked just like the rasslers. This one ol’ fella, he looked just like Stone Cold Steve Austin, an’ he told ‘em sometimes he’d go out and make like he was Stone Cold, so the real Stone Cold could get in the car an’ go without the fans all on him. Reckon I could do that for you sometimes?”

“That’d be too dangerous,” Bel objected, returning to sit closer to Kenny.

Clay’s giggle even sounded somewhat like Kenny’s. “Not unless you count bein’ loved to death as dangerous. My fans aren’t much of a threat, except to my waistline, plyin’ me with peanut butter fudge and the like. It’d be nice sometimes to not be killed with kindness, though. That’s an idea, Kenny. I mean, if it worked at the cafeteria, it might work elsewhere.”

He’d be better as a backup singer, Bel thought but did not say. Though she was still wary, she was reluctantly starting to warm to Clay, and did not want him to think her the kind of woman to immediately start seeking favors from a celebrity.

While she pondered, the conversation had moved to Clay’s CD currently in production. Apparently Kenny had helped pick out several of the songs he was recording. “What about that one song?” Kenny asked. “I can’t think of the name of it but it went—“

He sang a line or two. The song wasn’t bad at all, and his clear smooth voice brought a small smile to Bel’s lips. Clay’s reaction was somewhat different; his jaw dropped. “Lord and Taylor, man! You have got a voice, you know? Why didn’t you ever tell me you could sing like that?”

“Huh?” Kenny stopped and flushed. “Well, it didn’t exactly ever come up in talk, y’know, an’ who would I think I was, singin’ in front of you?”

“Who would—oh, my goodness! Sing that again,” Clay ordered, and this time he joined in. Bel knew little about the mechanics of music, but she knew the two men’s voices harmonized to perfection. The effect was breathtaking. Clay’s brow furrowed immediately in thought. “If you still want to try the body double thing, we can’t get you on stage—“

“Oh my Lord, no! I mean, uh, I—I couldn’t get up in front of a bunch of people an’ do that. Not ever. No. Don’t tell me to do that, Clay, I couldn’t.”

Kenny almost gasped, and Bel caught his hand in hers, alarmed to feel it tremble. “He wouldn’t if you didn’t want to, Kenny. I’m sure. A friend wouldn’t do that to you.”

She tried to keep a casual tone, but hoped Clay took her words as the challenge she meant them to be. When she stole a glance, though, Clay’s face held nothing but concern. “Course not. But I don’t want you to waste that voice either! How about we get you in the studio, see how you like it, maybe lay down some tracks on that song and one or two others—the ones you picked out, probably, since you know them a little already. Could you go for that?” Kenny nodded, excitement replacing the anxiety in his eyes.

Bel decided to put that call to April on hold, for the time being.

+++

Clay waved with one arm and clutched Raleigh with the other as Kenny and Bel left. They had stayed all day working out the details of Kenny’s job, with a pizza break at lunchtime. Kenny was thrilled, and Clay was relieved; he would never have wished for it to happen this way, true, but he was secretly glad for it. Kenny’s numerous talents were being wasted stacking trays and wiping tables!

On the other hand, Maribel had sat quietly most of the day, absorbing, watching and listening. Clay thought she was a bit wary of him, and suspected she wanted to be sure he wasn’t trying to turn Kenny into his personal servant. He couldn’t blame her. In fact, he liked that in her; to have known someone on a personal level for a relatively short time, yet to be careful and protective of him, was something Clay found quite admirable. She and Kenny would be great together…but their departure only made Clay’s house seem more silent and solitary. He got Raleigh some supper and crashed in front of the TV with the leftover pizza, and finally turned in early.

He dreamed about an amusement park, or a fair, someplace with rides and crowds and sunshine. Jerome was nowhere to be seen, but no one bothered him as he walked, his hand down by his side holding a small brown hand. Sunny skipped along, grinning up at him from behind a mass of blue cotton candy, and Lyneve smiled down at her from her other side. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. They rode the rides, and laughed at Clay’s abysmally bad aim at the games, and then, though he didn’t remember how, they were at a house, a small well-kept place with blue shingles and flower boxes out front and a swing set in back. Sunny was duly tucked in with a huge purple stuffed gorilla Clay had somehow managed to win, and he sat down on a comfortable bed in another room, pulling his sneakers off.

In another blink, Lyneve was kneeling on the floor, drawing his socks off and massaging his feet with firm gentleness and kisses. He leaned back on his elbows, his murmurs of pleasure melting into groans of need as her hands moved up his legs and slid his shorts down. Just as the sweet strokes of her fingers and lips on him became unbearable, she rose, and he looked up at her looking down at him with desire and love. She surrounded him, took him into herself, and sighed his name as sensation sharpened, and peaked…

When Clay woke, the proof of his dream was, slightly embarrassingly, evident. He cleaned up and crawled back into bed, wondering if he were crazy or just lonely.

+++

Kenny dove into his new work, and though Bel watched with a still wary eye over the next two weeks, she never perceived even a whiff of Clay treating him like an underling, or in any other manner she would find objectionable. In fact, she had to concede, Clay’s actions matched his words in every way—he called Kenny his friend, and behaved accordingly. Her own cautious overtures toward him became gabfests; Clay was full of curiosity about her field. She even told him how her grandmother’s stroke had first exposed her to the work of therapists who helped their patients relearn the activities of everyday life, and he shared memories of OTs he had met during his ‘past life’, as he sometimes called the years he had planned so assiduously for a career as a teacher. He surprised her again with the foundation he had set up to help children with special needs, and his passion as he spoke of righting injustices done them touched her deeply. Bel had rarely met someone as apparently genuine as him, which begged the question as to why he was an object of such reviling from some quarters.

Being an old mystery buff, she tried, of course, to find out. She asked April, and some other DJs, and got in reply lifted eyebrows, curled lips and snickers. Clay Aiken? He was a joke. Everybody knew that. Someone’s sister dated a guy who worked for Idol, and he heard that Simon Cowell had said so and so, and it couldn’t get much more legit than that. Traveling to see a natural disaster? Raising money for kids in wheelchairs? That was sappy, Jerry Lewis stuff, suitable only for old women and those who courted them. The speakers, whoever they were (and Bel was appalled to find April, who she thought she knew so well, was no different) clearly considered themselves above that. No, they wouldn’t mention such on the air; their listeners didn’t care, and they’d get laughed off for even bringing up that anathema name. And as for more salacious conjecture about him, it (fill in the speaker’s chosen it, whatever their particular hobbyhorse might be) was plain as the nose on your face, or those Dumbo ears of his. Anybody could see it, couldn’t they?

Couldn’t they?

Well, Bel had a pretty wide base of experience, good perceptions, and friends of all kinds, and quite frankly she didn’t see shit, except a funny, goofy, smart, and very real person—a person far more real than these acquaintances. Sure, she knew the negative and the sensational sold, but if they wanted to assume their veil of superiority and faux sophistication at the expense of the truth, she had no use for them.

Besides, that would just leave her more time to spend with Kenny, and that suited her fine. He hadn’t made a move yet toward that hot monkey sex they had joked about on the first night they had gone out, but she was patient. He had a lot of changes to integrate, between the new job and having her in his life. When he was ready, she would be; ready to savor the touch she dreamed of, to feel his mouth and hands all over her. She thought he might be timid, hesitant, boyishly awkward, and she wanted to take that and mold it; she wanted to hear him moan her name more than she could have put into words. It was worth the wait though, to see him zipping around town, proud of his new cel phone, eager to get into a real live recording studio, and excited about saving enough to get a new apartment and a better car. Clay offered to pick up the tab, but true to Bel’s expectations, Kenny politely declined. His pride drove Clay nuts, which she found amusing.

She had not quite settled her residual uncertainties, however, and they were only exacerbated when on several occasions she walked into the middle of a conversation between the two men only to see it halt in mid-stream, and Kenny turn away red-faced. Suspicion scratched at her, worsened when Kenny unexpectedly informed her one day he wouldn’t be working the next and sidestepped her queries. Though she tried to deny it, she knew she had to confront her disquiet to put it to rest. The perfect moment came when Clay asked to visit the rehab clinic at the hospital that same day. She greeted him cordially, escorted him into her closet-sized office and shut the door. “What are you hiding?” she demanded. “Don’t give me the aw-shucks routine either. What is it you and Kenny keep discussing that you don’t want me to know?”

Clay flushed a little, but he grinned too, definitely not the reaction of a man caught in an unspeakable deed. “I really shouldn’t—Kenny didn’t want you to know, although I told him tryin’ to better himself was nothing to be ashamed of… “

“WHAT??” She strove to keep from screaming, or attempting to choke the man.

“He didn’t finish high school, Bel. He’d been savin’ up to take the GED, and studying. I’ve helped him some—not that he needed that much help. He’s smart as a whip, self-taught mostly, but he feels that lack of formal education acutely. Knowing you have a college degree, he was afraid if you knew, you might—oh, I don’t know what he thought you might do! Dump him, or whatever, I guess. Anyhow, he was about ready to go for it when he got fired from the hospital. So that’s what we’ve been talking about, workin’ out a day he could take the test, and that’s where he is right now.”

Bel was humiliated. Tears stung her eyes, and she hung her head, fighting to regain control. “Okay.” What a useless thing to say.

She felt Clay move closer and take her chin in his hand, urging her to look up at him. “What did you think?” he asked, his tone utterly baffled.

“I don’t know.” She thought of Kenny and his sweet foolish pride, and almost wept. The look of concern she had seen in Clay’s eyes before was back, not for his friend this time but for a woman he barely knew. I should be ashamed, not Kenny.

“Don’t tell him I told you, or he might clobber me. I’ll try to talk him into tellin' you himself, probably after he passes, which he will with flyin’ colors.”

“Absolutely.“ Her voice cracked, and Clay drew her into his arms. “I don’t know exactly what I expected of you, Clay Aiken, but this definitely wasn’t it,” she murmured against his shoulder.

“More the big star trip?” he teased. “Not for me. I didn’t get this life to feed my ego. I got it to use it to help others, to do things God needs to have done.”

Bel believed that now, and determined she would never hurt him by telling him any different. “Yeah,” she said, straightened and dabbed at her face. “C’mon, let’s go meet some patients.”

If she had had any doubts left, they were wiped clean when she saw the reaction of the patients to Clay, and his to them. Old people smiled when he sang a few bars, and children clung to him. Kids were the best judges of character; they had no preexisting notions, or filters of bias. As for Clay, he did not turn away from sights the average person would have cringed at. He kissed an old woman’s cheek, drawn by stroke, and cheered a little boy, his face wired together after being shot by accident in a drive-by, through his speech therapy. She was honestly sad when he had to leave. “When are you leaving for Indonesia?” she asked as she walked him through the back corridors of the hospital.

“Day after tomorrow. That’s why I gave Kenny today off, ‘cause I’m kinda hopin’ he’ll help me pack tomorrow, and run get anything I forgot. I can also have a lil’ talk with him, man to man, about how keepin' secrets from somebody you care for is not a good thing.”

The mischievous arch of his eyebrows made her chuckle; but he had one more surprise for her. They reached the outside fire door, but just before Clay pushed it open he paused. “Havin’ said that, I’m gonna go and violate it by askin’ you to keep one.” He leaned forward and kissed Bel lightly on the cheek. “Don’t tell Kenny, but I’m a little bit jealous of him.”

In another situation, with another man, Bel might have let a small flirtatious smile slip. In still another, she might have slapped him. As it was, she simply stood agape as Clay slipped out the door, to the waiting car and the enormous but friendly bodyguard, and the glamorous life she only now realized must not be very glamorous after all. With true sympathy echoing in her heart, she returned to her work, until she took a break to keep a promise to Kenny. His abrupt firing had left him no time to say goodbye to a myriad of people at Sacred Heart, so he had sent her off with a list, which she was working her way through.

Today her targets were three chronically ill youngsters on the peds floor. Apparently, Kenny had made a habit of visiting with them, and, Bel suspected, sneaking them allowable snacks every chance he got. One was a patient of hers, though how she in her frequent treatment visits had missed crossing paths with Kenny she couldn’t imagine. By the time she dropped in on each, to bring them and their families news and greetings from Kenny, the work day was almost done. The hospital’s day never ended, though, and she meandered out to the nurses station to spend her last few minutes catching up on the latest dirt.

Dr. Dorian, an intern, stood talking with several nurses and a housekeeper. He was usually cheerful and funny in a Hawkeye Pierce sort of way, but now his face was deadly serious. “—just hoping we can get the kid stable. Damn the woman! Who would do something like that to a child?”

“Whassup, JD?” Bel asked as she joined the conversation. He acknowledged her with a nod; he respected the therapies and worked well with therapists, which scored high in Bel’s estimation. Some weeks before, he recapped quickly for her, a child had been taken from the hospital against medical advice by her foster mother after allegations of abuse. Yesterday, they had reappeared in admitting. The girl was badly bruised and bleeding internally, so ill she had had to be sedated heavily for her comfort and safety. The woman had been arrested, then released on bail—she had been a well-respected professional—with an order to stay away from Sacred Heart.

“It’s weird, actually,” JD concluded. “Why would a woman in her position, a social worker, who everybody she dealt with, including here, loved, take in a kid—who’d already been abused, I’m told—and then systematically abuse her further? The clinical picture is pretty damn anomalous too, for that matter. I’m going to ask for some additional tests; there are things we’re seeing that just don’t add up. For one thing, Maribel, her joints look seriously swollen for some reason. I’m writing an order for OT to take a look at her when she’s stable.”

“That’ll be me. But joints swollen from being beaten? That is freaky. I’ll peek in and say hi, if she’s awake enough.”

A nurse pointed Bel toward the door in question, and she slipped in. The blinds were drawn and only one small light over the bed lit the quiet room. A woman in housekeeper’s uniform sat by the bed, her back to the door. “Mama Eve…” a little girl’s voice rose faintly from the bed, as if from a dream.

“Shh. You rest, babe. It’ll be okay. Dr Lopez is gonna help.”

Bel didn’t know a Dr Lopez: probably one of the pediatricians on staff she hadn’t worked with. She approached and touched the woman’s shoulder. “Hi, how’s she doing?” she whispered.

The woman froze. “She’s tired. She needs to rest. I was just going.”

Obviously she was afraid of a reprimand for being somewhere someone in an administrative office had decreed she wasn’t supposed to be. Bel patted her shoulder. “We won’t stay long then.” One look said the housekeeper was right too; the child was only semi-conscious, and black and blue. “Hi there, Sunny. My name is Maribel. I’m a therapist, and when you start feeling better I’ll come back to see you. I just wanted to say hi now. We can do some exercises later to get you up and going again.” As JD had said, the small brown hands were inexplicably puffy as if attacked by serious arthritis. Bel couldn’t think of any sort of abuse that could cause such injuries, and was slightly glad she couldn’t. Sunny sighed, her eyes mostly closed, but did not reply. Bel looked around at the housekeeper, and was mildly surprised to see tears in her eyes and worry on her compassionate face. On impulse, she hugged the woman, then handed her a tissue. “She’ll be okay. Everybody will do their part. You do your job, I’ll do mine, and the doctors will do theirs.” And the police will do theirs, hopefully, she thought but did not say.

With a sniffle and a nod, the woman turned and was gone. Bel followed, and returned to her office in a thoughtful mood. As she doffed her lab coat and gathered her things, she heard hurrying footsteps and raised voices in the hallway, in the general direction of the main entrance to the hospital. When she went out she found a bustle of activity there, beyond the usual, and heavy on uniformed security personnel. A question to a secretary she knew there got her the story. “The guard working parking saw someone he thought he recognized in the lot. It was the woman that beat that little kid, the one upstairs in peds. They figure she was trying to get in, heaven knows why!”

“I was up there just a few minutes ago,” Bel replied. “Dr. Dorian wants me to assess the little girl, when she’s well enough. I didn’t see anybody out of the ordinary then, though.”

“Thank God.” The secretary indicated a stack of flyers on her desk. “I just copied those to be sent out through inhouse mail to all employees. I think they’re going to post a cop outside the room too.”

Bel picked one paper up, still warm from the copier. Her blood chilled, but she casually folded it and tucked it in her pocket. Kenny always wanted to be kept abreast of the hospital gossip, but this would be one unsettling tale to pass along, and she wasn’t quite sure how, or if, to explain her part in it

The face staring out from the flyer was the same face she had seen weeping in the hospital room where little Sunny lay.

+++

Bel debated with herself all the way to Kenny’s apartment, and concluded she should tell him only the basics of the child’s sad story, with minimal mention of her own look-in. If worse came to worse, some enterprising detective might assemble small pieces seen by one person or another, and figure out she hadn’t run straight to the nearest cop with her sighting (possible sighting, she reminded herself; there was no evidence Lyneve Holt had even gotten into Sacred Heart tonight). Bel had always talked her way out of the usual teenage-girl scrapes, and the occasional speeding ticket, but guileless Kenny wouldn’t stand a chance against a determined interrogator. Better he know as little as possible.

That resolve lasted through about four sentences of her story. “Sunny??” Kenny yelped. “She’s back in the hospital? An’ Lyneve’s—in jail—oh Lordy!”

Bel stopped. “Okay, let me not waste my breath. It sounds as if you know more about this than I do.”

Her suspicions were confirmed, as Kenny breathlessly related how he (and his evil twin Clay) had befriended the child and the woman, and how both were convinced Lyneve could not have harmed Sunny. Bel agreed the clinical presentation did not add up, and shared JD’s misgivings as well. Then she paused, shifted uneasily in her spot beside Kenny on the old hide-a-bed sofa, and considered one last time what she now wanted to do. “And there’s something else.” She plunged ahead with her account of the meeting in the hospital room.

Kenny’s eyes widened. “Naw, she wouldn’t be able to stay away, she loves the baby too much.” He fumbled around in his pants pockets, then among the sofa cushions, till he unearthed his cel phone. “I gotta tell Clay—“

“What?” Bel grabbed his wrist. “No!”

He jerked free. He had been peeved with her before, but now for the first time he looked at her with true anger kindling his eyes into green flame. “What is it you’re thinkin' mean of him now? That he wouldn’t want any part of such? That he’d just as soon keep his reputation clean as a hound’s tooth? He never did a thing to you, Maribel, how come you hate him so bad?”

“I don’t!” she cried. “I never did. I didn’t trust him at first—you were right, it was because of what I’d heard, but getting to know him, I know better now. But I never hated him. I hated the idea of somebody taking advantage of your good nature.”

Surprisingly, Kenny snorted, and even sounded slightly cynical when he replied. “Clay’s the one that oughta be worryin’ about bein’ taken advantage of. It’s awful not knowin’ if somebody likes you—or doesn’t—for who you are or what you are.”

Bel accepted his implied reproof with a duck of her head. “I know better now,” she repeated, “thanks to you. But I just don’t think he needs this right now. He’s going to Indonesia in two days, for pete’s sake. People should focus on the good he’s trying to do, not some reflected semi-scandal.”

“He needs to know, Bel. See, he liked Sunny a lot…an’ he liked Lyneve an awful lot. He ought to know. Although it’s good of you to care about him.” Kenny laid the phone down, and touched her cheek. “An’ it’s good of you to have cared so much about me, when we’d hardly even met. You didn’t know me from Adam an’ Eve’s housecat, really, an’ you still wanted to…protect me, I reckon?” His laugh was less steady. “I’m not used to a woman actin’ that way about me.”

“Get used to it,” she sighed, and smiled into those incredible eyes, and watched the lids lower, intensifying his gaze on her. As he moved toward her, she was sure she felt his lashes flutter against her skin. Their lips met with the same sense of fit of that first kiss at her front door; but this time it went on, and on, deepening. His mouth was soft and hot and firm, his tongue a master at its art, playing tease and tag with hers. A soft moan escaped her throat at the lush taste of him, and then another when, just as she tilted her head to catch his lower lip and suck, he tensed and began to pull away. “Kenny—Kenny, please, don’t stop, don’t—“

The knock at the door brought Bel back to reality as if she had been slapped. Kenny gasped, his fair cheeks flushed as if he had been running. “Hello? Detective Archer, LAPD. Anybody home?”

Kenny’s flush blanched. He went to the door, moving slowly and stiffly as though suddenly chilled, and opened it. “Hello, Kenny,” said the pleasant-faced black man in a business suit. “Sorry to bother you at home, but the cafeteria supervisor at Sacred Heart told me you weren’t working there anymore. Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

“Sure.” Kenny’s voice was hushed, and Bel would have sworn he shuddered slightly as he stood aside to let the policeman enter.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the detective said when he saw Bel sitting on the sofa. “I didn’t realize you had visitors. Should I come back later?”

“Naw, c’mon in an’ let’s get this over with.” Kenny sat down beside Bel. She recognized the tightness in his jaw and neck, and the fine tremor of his hand when she clasped it. It reminded her of the tension she had seen in him when Clay had suggested he sing in public. What was it about these situations that so frightened him? What could he possibly think he had to fear?

In the same quiet tone, he introduced Bel. “Pleasure to meet you.” Detective Archer shook her hand. He looked around for a place to sit, but Kenny’s bare living space held only the sofa, and Bel was not about to leave Kenny’s side. “So you work at Sacred Heart?” he continued, standing. “If you worked today you may know the case I’m here about. Kenny, Sunny Ruiz is back at the hospital. Lyneve Holt was taken into custody and booked; she’s out on bond. I know you were acquainted with them when you worked there, so I just wondered if Miss Holt had tried to get in touch with you.”

“No,” Kenny said simply. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of her. Can’t say as I’m happy to hear y’all put her under arrest, either. I still don’t see Lyneve hurtin’ a soul, let alone her own baby.”

“I’d have to agree.” Bel added, then wished she had bitten her tongue, but it was too late. “A doctor asked me to look in on Sunny this evening, and I’m already seeing things that just don’t jibe with physical abuse.”
Now, interestingly, it was the detective who looked uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot and scratching absently at his short graying hair and mustache. “When we interviewed Miss Holt, she told us she had taken Sunny to Mexico, to a doctor there who supposedly is a specialist in rare childhood diseases. He ran tests, she said, but unfortunately for her she couldn’t produce documentation to that effect, although she insisted this Dr Lopez would send the results as soon as they came. The hospital administrator and the Department of Children’s Services weren’t satisfied with that, and they pressed charges. If evidence to the contrary is presented, though, the situation may change.” He stood quietly for a few moments on Kenny’s threadbare rug, just looking down at them. Kenny looked toward the window, but Bel returned the detective’s regard evenly. “Till then, she’s under court order not to see the child. She doesn’t need to get herself into any more trouble. So if you do hear from her, young man, you might want to emphasize to her the importance of adhering to that directive.” Kenny didn’t move. “You do understand what I mean, right?”

Before Bel could fully rein in the impulse to slap the man, Kenny’s head turned. “Perfectly,” he said softly, staring the detective down. “Or are you one of those people who assumes a Southern accent automatically knocks fifty points off a person’s IQ?” She had never heard Kenny sound so crisp, or cold.

Archer chuckled. “Not a bit, son, not a bit. I’ll see myself out. Thank you both for your time.”

“Whew,” Bel breathed when the door closed. “That was a new experience. I’ve never lied to the police before.” Kenny’s face was an expressionless mask that melted when she reached for him. “I shouldn’t have told you any of this,” she groaned into his neck, suddenly near tears. “I didn’t mean to get you into a compromising situation.”

“Aw well. What was it a fella in this Mark Twain book said? ‘Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb’.” He hugged her tight. “You didn’t do wrong, baby, ‘cause I don’t believe Lyneve done any wrong. I do think you’re right though. Maybe I shouldn’t tell Clay. He’s got no need to get himself involved in all this hoo-ha.” After another fierce squeeze, he startled her anew by pushing himself to his feet and pulling her up with him. “Neither do you. Get on home, sweetie.”

She didn’t like it, but she went. Pushing him might only worsen the fear she sensed in him—the fear she had perceived before the knock on his door.

+++

By morning, Kenny felt like he’d been in a wrestling match all night. He didn’t want Bel caught up in the storm that might break loose if his past caught up with him, and he was sure she wouldn’t want any part of him if it did; but it killed him to think of keeping his distance from her now. Last night, he had wanted her so bad he thought parts of him might just pop. She had too, or seemed like it; but who knew about girls?

On top of all that, he worried what to tell Clay about Sunny and Lyneve. That was made a little easier when Bel called from Sacred Heart to say Sunny wasn’t allowed to have visitors, which meant Clay wouldn’t feel like he had to go racing over there. So when he went over to Clay’s to help him pack, Kenny had about decided how to go. As soon as he got there, he told Clay Sunny was back in the hospital. “Bel doesn’t think Lyneve hurt her, and neither do some of the doctors. So maybe this’ll get set right soon.”

Clay was glad to hear that, but not that Sunny was sicker, or that Lyneve had gotten arrested. “I don’t even have a way to contact her!” he said sadly and looked around at his stuff lying around to pack. “If I just knew she was okay…”

Kenny had determined he would go no further, but Clay looked so lost. He thought of how bad it hurt him to imagine being separated from Bel, and imagined Clay feeling that or worse. He’d lied to his friend enough as it was, and all of a sudden he could not do it one more time. “She’s okay,” he said. “But don’t let on to anybody. Bel saw her last night. She’d got ahold of a housekeeper’s dress some way, and snuck in to be with Sunny.”

Clay frowned with worry. “That’ll get her in even deeper with the authorities, if she gets caught,” he said, but then he smiled. “I wouldn’t expect less of her though, would you? Thanks, man.”

“For what, gettin’ you over a barrel with the police?”

“For being the person I hired you for. Somebody I could trust. A friend.” When Clay stuck his hand out Kenny shook in the hip way Clay had showed him, which made Clay laugh so hard his glasses nearly fell off. They got Clay’s things together. Raleigh sniffed and ran around and got underfoot till Clay put her up in her crate while they toted his bags out to his big SUV. “Check on her a couple of times a day,” he told Kenny. “Unless you changed your mind about stayin’ here while I’m gone. I guess it was selfish of me to suggest that; you wouldn’t want to go off and leave your own place unwatched.“

“I’ve been studyin’ about that, an’ I might do it after all.” Kenny figured he’d be harder to find out here, in as close to countryside as LA had.

“Cool!” Clay grinned. “I don’t mind if you have company over either, as long as you don’t throw any wild parties. I don’t want to come home and find my house trashed and you on Celebrity Justice. I can’t see you and Maribel trashin’ anything, though…”

He lifted his eyebrows and made a funny face, but Kenny barely noticed. “Yeah, um, I kinda wanted to ask you somethin’ else, Clay. You’ve been around way more’n me, I’m sure—with girls, I mean—“

“Don’t be so certain! This geek never got many girls, and now I’ve gotta wonder why they act interested.”

“Yeah, but still…How does a fella know when’s—you know—the right time to…I mean, when she’s kissin’ you like no tomorrow, she could still spin on a dime an’ start hollerin’ she’s not that kinda girl—an’ I wouldn’t want for her to be, like—aw, I dunno.”

“I doubt Bel would ever take that tack.” Clay leaned up against the side of the SUV and crossed his arms. “If a guy were makin’ an unwelcome move on her, she’d be more likely to tell him where to go and how long to stay there.” He laughed, and then got more serious. “People make…mistakes. They have lapses in judgment. If they like and respect each other, though, and if they’re honest with each other, those are less likely to end badly. For example, I think you’d better tell her about your GED; once you get the highest score in history, you probably won’t be able to keep it to yourself!” Kenny laughed with Clay, but his stomach knotted up. Honesty. He couldn’t be completely honest with her, not with his past…could he? “You care about Bel, and she cares about you. When the time is right, you’ll know. You’ll talk out whatever you need to. You’re right about one thing: don’t assume. Ask.” Kenny mulled it over, and as much as it hurt, it made as much sense as anything Clay had ever said.

Clay gave him his spare house key, and he was about ready to leave when his cel phone beeped. The little thing still made him jump when it went off, but he felt like a big shot when he answered it. The conversation took only a minute. “Well, what was that all about?” Clay wanted to know.

“It was the GED lady. I passed.” Clay was at least part right: in spite of his worry, Kenny couldn’t help but grin like a goat eating briars. So much that he had always hankered for was coming to him. He just didn’t know if he was going to have to close these open doors and run away from them.

+++

For the better part of three days, Bel’s only contact with Kenny came through brief and noncommittal phone exchanges. He was busy, he said, and little else. Finally she had had enough. She called his apartment, and when he didn’t answer, his cel. After innumerable rings, he did answer, and when he tried to turn that Southern politeness into another brush-off she snapped. She wanted to know what it was he felt he could not trust her with, and it was more than some damn high school equivalency test. She restrained herself from saying that, though—as stupid as it was that he felt he had to hide that from her, she didn’t want him to think Clay had broken a confidence. “What is wrong with you, Kenny? Or is it something wrong with me? Did I do something? Did I not do something?” He started to splutter, scrambling to come up with some excuse, but Bel was finished with excuses. “Are you angry with me? Are you afraid of me?”

The sputtering stopped. The silence on the other end of the line was so profound Bel almost asked if he was still there, but the sound of deep breaths told her he was. She waited. “I’m not mad at you, Maribel. Please, don’t you think that. Maybe…maybe I am scared of you, a little bit. An awful lot has changed, awful fast, and I thought I wanted it, but maybe I don’t, exactly. I just needed some time, to get off by myself an’ think, an’ pray, an’ try to figure out what to do.”

“I…” Bel swallowed the words she longed to say. Clearly he was struggling with some inner conflict, and he didn’t sound as if he needed to be boxed in by I love you, even though she knew with all her heart it was true. “Can I help?”

Silence, and then a soft sigh. “Yeah, maybe you can. I’m stayin’ at Clay’s house. Can you come on over after you get off of work this evening?”

She did. The front door of the big country house was shut tight, she noticed as she pulled into the driveway. She grinned to herself, and went to the back. The door was ajar, but the screen door was closed. When she opened it, a mélange of amazingly savory smells welcomed her. She followed them to the kitchen, where she found Kenny, in sock feet and with smudges of flour on his jeans, surrounded by pots and pans. He clutched a cooking fork in one hand and his cel phone in the other. “Oh Lordy, she’s here,” he gulped when Bel peered in. “I better go on…yes ma’am, I think I got it…yes ma’am…thank you so much!”

Bel gaped. “What is all this?”

“Well, uh, I got to wishin’ for some of my mama’s home cookin’—an’ Clay said he thought maybe his mama could talk me through doin’ some, an’ I could use his kitchen things…I dunno how good it is though. May not even be worth eatin’. May not even be worth feedin’ to Raleigh—she is one spoilt lil’ miss—“

“I think,” Bel said, her mouth watering, “the Southern term is ‘hush up’, Kenny.”

He dished up things she, a native Californian, had never experienced before: tender cube steak, batter-fried like chicken, then simmered in a smooth white milk gravy; greens spiced with red peppers and a hint of pork; mashed potatoes with chunks of meltingly soft potato left in. With earnest care, Kenny spooned pale batter onto a cookie sheet. Bel watched, less interested in the process than entranced by the way his tongue tip peeped between his lips as he focused on his task. He popped the sheet into the oven, and minutes later pulled out golden brown mounds of bread, moist and light inside. “Drop biscuits,” he said proudly.

“So, what’s the occasion?” Bel set the small breakfast-nook table in the kitchen for two.

“Aw, does there have to be an occasion? I just wanted good ol’ food, an’ I figured you’d prob’ly never seen some of this.”

“You got that right; but it all smells wonderful.” Napkin in place, Bel was ready to dive in and sample everything, but paused when Kenny bowed his head. She had been raised to say grace too, but it had drifted away from her, as had much both good and bad about her childhood. She closed her eyes for the first time in a long time, and thought hopeful things. She found herself carrying the bulk of the conversation; Kenny was responsive, but not overly talkative. He didn’t eat a lot, either, despite his insistence that this spread was simply to satisfy himself. Bel was used to seeing him eat like a starving man, but mostly he sat and watched her eat as if studying her, absorbing every detail and committing them to memory. She nearly called him on it, but on the couple of occasions she made eye contact before he looked away with false casualness something she saw in his eyes stopped her: something deep, and slow, moving there in a space words might be ill suited to manage.

She helped with the dishes, while he took Raleigh out, fed her her dinner and put her up for the night. “Now,” she said, turning from the dishwasher, “I think it’s time you—“

“Showed you the house!” he blurted with forced eagerness, grabbed her hand and took off. Most of the place, Bel had to note as Kenny towed her down the hallways chattering, did not have a lived-in look, or even a moved-in look. Given time and, perhaps, motivation, though, she suspected Clay could make a true home of it. That was not the topic uppermost in her mind just now, but she resigned herself to letting Kenny talk himself out, and seizing her moment when it came.

Finally, he stopped and said, “Well, that’s it, I reckon, so let’s get on back to the livin’ room, I feel like I’m nosin’ around in Clay’s business if I wander around in here too much…”

“You missed a room.” Bel pointed to a nearby door, closed.

“Aw, naw, that’s Clay’s room, I ought not—“

“What, I get the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous tour and don’t get to see the master suite?” She pushed on the door, half expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. The bedroom was no showplace either—the bed was big, comfortable, and totally unmade, and clothes and sundries were scattered. “He still hasn’t grasped the idea that his mama isn’t here to pick up after him anymore, has he?” Bel snickered, then flopped across the bed. “Oh, lay off!” she fired back to Kenny’s noise of protest. “When else am I going to get the chance to say I slept on a star’s bed?”

She rolled onto her back and grinned lecherously up at him. His lips parted; he took a breath as though to speak, and he leaned forward, but then turned away. The motion could not hide a telltale bulge in his jeans, however. More baffled than ever, Bel rolled from her back onto her elbow. “I did, one time. I didn’t mean to, Clay asked me to help him look for some CDs he borrowed an’ had to give back, while he was gone to a meetin’. After I found ‘em I set down on the bed for a minute, an’ the next thing I knew I was sacked out an’ heard him comin’ in.”

Bel giggled at his guilty tone. “And I just bet that’s the worst thing you ever did in your life, huh?” The giggle faded when he hung his head and stared at his big feet. “Kenny…something’s wrong. I know it. Please, tell me what it is?” She strove to keep her composure, but her throat tightened with concern, and a note of pleading crept into her voice despite her best efforts.

Kenny stood motionless for another moment, then turned, his hands clutched in front of him. “I got you a present.” With no further word to clarify her confusion, he knelt by the bed and pulled a small box from his pocket. Inside was a fine gold bracelet with a tiny charm: four opals formed the shape of a butterfly’s wings. “It’s just from a pawn shop, but it’s got papers an’ all. It made me think of you, how you’re so bright an’ pretty, an’ I thought…maybe you’d think of me whenever you wore it.”

She let him clasp it around her wrist, then caught his hands in hers. “That sounds too damn much like goodbye for my liking. I don’t understand what’s happening, and I am not letting you out of here till I do.”

“I might have to leave here, Bel. Los Angeles, I mean, an’ go…well, someplace else. I picked up a little bit of Spanish workin’ round here, but I’d way rather go where they speak more English. Canada looks awful pretty from the pictures, up in the mountains an’ woods…I don’t wanna leave Clay in a pickle, an’ I sure ‘nuff don’t wanna leave you, but—I’ve been layin’ low for a long spell, but now, with all this mess with Sunny an’ Lyneve, the police know who I am. That Detective Archer is a fine enough fella, but he’s the law, an’ he’ll do what he’s gotta do. It might just be a matter of time ‘fore they come after me—“

“Stop it, Kenny!” Bel cried. She let go of his hands, sat up and reached for his face. “You’re not making any sense. What on earth could you do to make you so afraid of the cops?”
His mouth quirked slightly in an ironic half-smile. “Sometimes it ain’t what you did,” he said, “it’s what folk think you did.” His long fingers brushed the back of her hand once, before he moved away and sat back on his heels, just out of her reach. For a moment he sat silent, drawn in on himself, and then his shoulders squared as if in resolve. “I was raised up in Cowell County, Kentucky,” he began. “It was just my mama an’ daddy an’ me. They weren’t supposed to be able to have any kids, so I was their lil’ miracle, they always used to say.” Irony tugged at his cheek again. “We lived on the farm, raisin’ soybeans, an’ Mama was a manager at the blue jeans plant in Goose Springs, so we weren’t rich but we never did want for anything. It’s so beautiful up that way, the greens of spring an’ summer, the wild color in fall, an’ the snow an’ quiet in winter. I never imagined bein’ anyplace else.

“When I was eleven, I was stayin’ over with some buddies from school. Mama an’ Daddy went to a meetin’ at the church—Buildin’ an’ Grounds Committee, I believe it was. On their way home, out the old highway towards our place—it was only two lanes then—some ol’ fella got liquored up an’ crossed over the yellow line. It killed ‘em both, right there. Daddy had took out a mortgage to get new tractors an’ such, so the bank got the farm, an’ the county sent me to live with my uncle in Baltimore, Maryland.

“Far’s cities go, I reckon Baltimore’s all right. There’s some nice folks livin’ there. But it wasn’t home. An’ my uncle Trent, he drank a lot. His first wife had left him over that, just up an’ gone, even left their two boys there. He was mean when he drank, an’ they weren’t much better. Jake, the younger one, he was about my age, an’ at least he’d try sometimes to be decent; but his brother Bryce was fifteen when I went there, an’ he ruled the roost when his old man was soused, which was most all the time. If they weren’t makin’ me pick up after them or wait on ‘em, they were beatin’ up on me for fun—they were both big ol’ boys like their daddy, an’ I obviously ain’t.”

Bel’s hands rose silently to her mouth, transfixed in horror. Kenny did not look at her as he spoke, his gaze fixed on some distant point in the past. “Bein’ as how he drank so much, Uncle Trent never could keep a job, so as soon as we got old enough all three of us had to go to work. I got me two or three odd jobs a-goin’ at a time though, an’ put up money on the sly as I could, ‘cause I’d never seen a red cent of what my parents worked for, and figured right quick I wasn’t liable ever to. Soon’s I graduated school, I was gonna high-tail it outta there, an’ knew I’d need all I could get to get by. Bryce didn’t even bother to finish; he dropped out an’ went to workin’ on a fishin’ boat. Jake I dunno about. I didn’t end up stayin’ that long.

“Uncle Trent couldn’t keep a job, an’ he couldn’t keep a girlfriend either. Seemed like ever’time I come in there was a different woman in the house. They didn’t pay me much mind, an’ I didn’t them, till this gal name of Betty. She went with him off an’ on for a couple of years, started when I was fifteen, an’ she could party just as hard as he could, or more. She’d treat me nice sometimes though; like, she’d try to get him not to whoop me if I messed up.

“One day, it was the summer before my senior year of high school, Uncle Trent was passed out in the back bedroom. Jake was gone to ball practice or some such. I was fixin’ me a TV dinner. Peas an’ diced-up carrots…mashed potatoes, an’ Salisbury steak. It’s funny, how I still remember that, an’ the fake wood paneling in the livin’ room where I was sittin’ eatin’ it an’ watchin’ TV when Betty come over. I let her in an’ she went back there, but she couldn’t get Uncle Trent rousted up, I reckon. She come back an’ sat down next to me on the couch, an’ started gettin’ real sweet-like, an’ breathin’ in my ear an’ down my neck. Then she rubbed on my shoulder, an’ my leg, an’ then she reached—in—“

Kenny stopped, his breathing quick and anxious, his face taut with remembered shock. Bel could not move. “I pushed her off, an’ she started in to callin’ me names. She said she always got what she wanted, an’ I better shut my mouth an’ give it to her or she’d tell Uncle Trent I was—I forced myself on her.” His voice was as hollow as his eyes. “If she did that, I knew good an’ well there wouldn’t be nothin' left of me for the police to pick up but a bloody mess.

“The minute she left, I threw some clothes in my backpack an’ found my little stash of money. I started to take some food, but I didn’t want anybody to say I’d steal. I left the TV dinner where it was, an’ I walked down the street, an’ then I started runnin’.” And you’ve been running ever since, Bel thought, sickened with hurt for him. “At the bus station, I counted up to see how far away I could get, short of swimmin’ to Hawaya. California sounded good. So, I got off the Greyhound here, a week later, the day I turned seventeen.

“I kept out of sight much as I could. I stayed in shelters for a while, with the homeless folks—come to think about it, I was homeless, wasn’t I? I lied about my age to get an ID, lied about my address to get a drivers license an’ a job, lied about the job to get a place to live. But I kept on hopin’ that one of these days I wouldn’t have to lie any more, that some way it’d all work out. I wouldn’t have to run like the fella in that book Victor Hugo wrote. I could better myself, an’ have a real life. An’ then, I met Clay, an’ you, an’ I thought well Kenny, maybe this is your chance.

“But the more I’ve thought on it, I see I can’t use y’all like that. It’s wrong. There’s been times I’d of turned myself in just from sheer tiredness, an’ if I was half a man I expect I would’ve; but that wouldn’t do y’all any good either. For Clay with his singin’ an’ tryin’ to help poor kids an’ all, bein’ associated with a—an accused rapist wouldn’t do him anything but harm.” His face contorted when he spoke, as if saying the word was a physical pain. “So disappearin’ seems best. He’ll wonder, but he’ll get him another assistant an’ go on. I’d appreciate if you’d just let on to him like you don’t know any of this. Maybe it would’ve been more of a favor to you too if I’d of gone on without openin' my mouth, instead of dumpin’ all my—shit, on you, but here it is.” His hands rose slightly in a gesture of giving over, then dropped back to lie limply on his thighs. Still, he did not look at her. “I’m nothin’ but a big ol’ coward for doin’ this, I reckon; but I couldn’t make myself leave without tellin’ you I love you…and I thought you might try to come lookin’ for me, and I’d rather lose you to the truth than hold onto you with a lie.”

It all made sense now: the shyness, the compassion, the intolerance for those who judged without facts, the dread of being noticed. “Kenny?” Bel said. Finally he lifted his head, and for all the logic her brain now found in his behavior, it was the quiet, lonely, frightened courage in his wet eyes that broke her. She stretched her arms out toward him, the butterfly charm sparkling in the fading evening light. “What are you talking about, Kenny?” she whispered fiercely, past the tears sliding down her face. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere—and neither are you!”

She was so close, her fingers strained to touch him. For an awful instant, when he caught his breath and tensed, she thought he might jump up and run. If he did, she would follow, begging him not to rip her heart from her chest and take it away into the wilds with him. He looked as confused as she had felt; and then he rocked forward onto his knees, wrapped his long arms around her waist and hid his face in her lap with a small sob. Bel sighed with relief, stroked his soft wavy hair, and gently massaged his rigid shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay, baby. It is. You don’t have to be afraid. You didn’t do anything wrong. Any sane human being could see that. You’re not capable of violating someone that way.”

“You’d think anybody with a lick o’ sense ‘ud know Lyneve couldn’t of hurt her baby girl either,” he mumbled into her pants leg, “but they’re gonna put her under the jail if she can’t prove it. I can’t prove I’m tellin' the truth either.”

“People like that woman are a lot of hot air. We can find out what if anything happened with this without ever getting the legal system involved. We can hire a private investigator. Clay might know of somebody, in fact.“

“Ohh, Lord!” Kenny looked up at her with a grimace. “I hate Clay findin’ all this mess out—he trusted me, an’ I’ve done nothin’ but lie to him, he’s gonna be so upset—“

“Now who’s jumping to conclusions?” Bel demanded. “Clay’s not the kind of guy to turn his back on a friend in need. You taught me that, remember?” She grinned, and was thankful when he smiled shakily in return. “I do think we need to check things out before you go spilling your guts to him, though. Odds are this Betty never even followed through on her threat. And if she did, there’s a little something called sexual assault of a minor, and that is a crime. She’s the one who should be afraid, sweetheart. Not you.”

His eyes, magnified to impossible bigness by the tears standing in them, did not waver from her face. “I believe I could go to jail, if it come to that,” he said quietly, “long’s I knew you believed me.”

Bel’s vision blurred. “God,” she choked. “Just look at yourself, Kenny. What else could I do?”

Still smiling slightly, he lowered his head to rest it in her lap again. They sat in silence for a good while…until Kenny rubbed his cheek lazily against her thigh, and sighed. The movement was like the striking of a match, the breath like blowing on embers to kindle them to flame. Bel let out a little cry, and her knees parted slightly as though of their own will. Kenny started, his face distressed anew when he turned it toward her. “Bel? Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I wouldn’t, oh dern—I’m sorry—“

“No.” She caught his shoulders. “Don’t apologize, Kenny. Don’t apologize for making me love you the way I do…and don’t apologize for making me want you the way I do.”

Surprise replaced distress in his face: surprise, and something else, something she had only imagined seeing there. “I’m still not right clear on that hot monkey sex thing,” he offered after a moment.

“Me neither,” she chuckled. “Have you…are you a virgin, Kenny?”

He shook his head. “I went out with a few girls in high school. Not many, they didn’t have much use for a hick like me in the big city. And then, after…well…”

“I know,” she breathed. “I want to take away all that hurt, all that fear. Don’t be afraid of me.”

He rose on his knees, and with his thumbs tenderly wiped her damp cheeks. “I’m not.” The big hands cupped her face and drew her down to kiss him, his mouth moister, more open than ever before. Without breaking contact for more than a second, Kenny slowly stood, bending to meet her, and following her down when she lay back on the bed. One of his knees rested on the mattress between her legs, and she scooted her bottom downward just far enough to press her crotch against it. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice her attempt to quell the raging throb of her arousal…but only moments later his mouth broke free of hers. He lifted his body and looked down at the target area with a crooked grin of reproof. “Whoa, what’re you doin’, honey, tryin’ to get ahead of me?”

He moved so his knees now straddled her hips, and the noise that escaped her was half laugh and half groan. “So much for my preconceived notions…sweet innocent Kenny is a tease!!”

The grin widened. “Not for long. I couldn’t do that to you.” He lingered, though, gazing down at her. “Y’know, when you used to come through the line in the cafeteria, an’ I’d always look at your name tag…” His eyes wandered down to her bosom, where they halted.

“And not just to read my name, I suppose?”

He blushed. Was it possible for him to be any more adorable? “I couldn’t stop thinkin' about you. Wonderin’ how it’d feel to touch you there…even though I thought it was mean of me to think it, an’ low down an’ evil—“

“You’re not evil, baby. You’re human. Don’t you think I’ve thought the same about you? I imagined how good your lips would taste crushed against mine, how strong your hands would feel against my skin…” She took his hands in hers, kissed the palms—and ran the pointed tip of her tongue feather-light up one long finger. “One good tease deserves another.” Kenny shivered and almost yelped, then pretended to scowl. “No more teasing.” She laid his hands decisively on her breasts, and sighed and watched as he unbuttoned her blouse and slid it off her shoulders; but then he halted. Was he having second thoughts, still captive of his traumatic past? “It’s okay, sweetheart—but if you don’t want to right now, that’s okay too. I want you, but I want you to want it too. I want to go at your pace.”

“No, it’s not that.” He fumbled around the margins of her bra. “It’s just, you’re gonna hafta help me out here. I’m not so good with girly underwear stuff.”

Relieved, Bel giggled and sat up. “It’s easy. It’s a front loader. Here, I’ll show you.” She undid and rehooked the clasp a few times, not fully removing anything. “Now you try.” That tongue tip poked out between his delicious lips again, as he studiously attacked the clasp; then his mouth opened in a silent ah of satisfaction when he was rewarded by bosom pouring forth. His mouth found her breasts, and he pulled her ponytail loose to let her hair fall in dark flow past her shoulders, but his fingers halted just at the ends. He picked up the tip of one lock and wielded it like a paintbrush around her aureolae, drawing slick circles with his saliva around her erect nipples. The prickly tickle of her own hair against her hardening points was almost unbearably arousing. There was no hint of fumbling now in his touch, or hesitation in his sly chuckle at her breathless gasps. Her fingers clenched in his knit shirt, and the undershirt beneath, and she had them halfway up exposing his flat and lightly furred belly before she caught herself. “Oh—sorry—“

He had lowered his mouth to her breast again, then lifted it, about to kiss her again. “Fer whut?” She would never have imagined his accent could get any thicker.

“I want to—go at your pace—I don’t want to go too fast for you, make you uncomfortable—but my GOD, Kenny, you’re making me crazy here!”

He shifted back, smiling like a cat with cream on its whiskers. “Ah thought that wuz th’ idea.” He peeled his top clothing off, and her hands moved toward him like a hungry woman toward food. Her palms explored his lean torso; her fingers traced his ribs and pecs, and her nails tickled his nipples. His eyes half closed, watching her tan hands move across his fair skin, till he groaned, grabbed her wrists and pulled her against him. His mouth plumbed hers, and his sudden forcefulness made her clutch his shoulders. She had envisioned herself taking the lead when this moment came, but he was having none of that. “Mah pace?” he rasped against her lips. “Can ya keep up with mah pace, Mar’bel?”

“Yes. YES.” Bel let go of him just long enough to squirm out of her pants, and was about to turn her full attention to divesting him of his, when she was stopped by his sudden wide-eyed look of shock.

“Oh, no…ah don’t have protection,” he groaned.

“I’m on it,” she panted. “For my periods, but let’s let it do what it’s made to do for a change. And I trust you don’t have anything contagious down there.”

“Nothin’ down there but freckles, an’ ah don’t think they’re catchin.”

Her giggle became a gulp when his jeans slid down over his slim hips, followed by his worn cotton boxers. “Oh, my…happy birthday to me!”

“Is it really yer birthday?”

She shook her head, trying to comprehend the enormity of the surprise package before her. It was thrilling, and a little intimidating! “Not till next month,” she finally got out.

“Ah’ll keep that in mind. Gotta getcha somethin’ real special.”

Bel smiled. ‘You’ve already given me a gift beyond my most absurd dreams. Yourself. Your love. Your trust.” She took his mouth gently with hers, and then bent low to kiss his head, sure she felt it tremble beneath her lips. “And this. Is that all for me?—My God, you really do have freckles on your penis!” she exclaimed with delight, and watched him blush…all over. “I never liked freckles on a man before…but I never loved, or wanted, a man this much before. I need you so much, Kenny. I need you now!”

“Mah pace,” he reminded her, and shifted forward, pressing her back onto the mattress with his body. “Ah’ve wanted this fer sooo long…wantin’ yew, an’ wishin’ yew’d want me.”

“Me too.”

She basked in the heat of his eyes raking her nearly nude body, and her hips twitched involuntarily when he ran his fingertips along the waistband of her green striped hiphugger briefs. Instead of removing the last barrier of clothing between them, though, his hands paused, then slipped between her thighs and pressed, spreading them wide. He touched the crotch of her panties, soaked through from her need, and his stare fixed there simultaneously burned and shook her. “Is that all fer me?” The answer she would have given was lost when he began to stroke her through the fabric. She felt herself spasm, and leak, and knew he was watching the wet spot get bigger and bigger. “Yer such a teensy thing, Mar’bel, ah don’t wanna hurt yew…ah wanna be sure yer good’n’ready…”

“I—I—oh God I’m ready, please, Kenny, please—“ Residual speech went completely out of her head when his mouth covered hers, his tongue thrusting into her the way she wanted to feel him thrusting below. Apparently reducing her to pleading moans satisfied his criterion for being ready; she felt him take hold of her panties and slip them off. Still kissing her, his fingers dipped inside her and spread her wetness around her quivering bare flesh, and her moans became little whimpers, helpless under his mouth’s dominion.

“Are yew ready?” he murmured against her lips. Bel could feel him hard and pulsing against her thigh, and the fact that he held himself in check long enough to be sure, to ask, nearly pitched her over the edge by itself.

“Yes, yes, Kenny, ah—ahh—“ Words were lost to her again as he guided himself into her. His first few strokes were slow, followed by several quick, almost anxious thrusts, switching back and forth in a tantalizing, tormenting dance that drove her mad with need. His gorgeous face flushed, his body taut and sweaty, as he settled into a rhythm that built with exquisitely excruciating slowness to a crescendo. She rose to meet every hammering movement of his hips, until climax grabbed her and flung her back onto the bed panting and screaming his name. He replied with a mighty groan, his back arched like an archer’s bow as his release joined hers.

She came down, reveling in the sight of him. His lashes fluttered, and his closed eyelids rose, and when their eyes met Bel felt a completion deeper than the most intense physical pleasure could ever have given her. Kenny smiled a slow, lazy smile, and dropped onto the bed beside her. They lay sprawled in silent, spent contentment, while Bel absorbed what they had done, and how much she would enjoy doing it at least every day or two for the rest of her life. Kenny looked to be dozing off; she studied his face in repose, following the fine bone structure with her eyes. She’d never seen him so utterly relaxed, and wondered if it were more from the great sex or the relief of finally sharing his agonizing secret. It would be nice to find this Betty, she decided, and throttle her for what she had done, for damaging this precious treasure of a man to satisfy her own appetites.

Bel was considering joining Kenny in a nap when he stirred and sighed a little, and ran his hand up her flank. Every day or two, hell; doing it again right now sounded better by the second! “Bel?” he said, his eyes still closed.

“Mm-hm?”

“Y’know awhile ago, when I was talkin' about…me, an’ what all?”

“Mm-hm.”

“I, um, didn’t tell you ever’thing.” She made an encouraging little noise. “I told you about how I left school to come out here to California, but…I never did finish up. That’s how come I’ve been in all these dead end jobs like at the hospital. I haven’t got any diploma.”

She hid her face in the rumpled bedclothes for a second, so he couldn’t see her smile. “So?” she finally said, playing innocent, or more accurately, saying exactly what she would have if Clay had told her nothing. “You could take the GED, you know.”

When she looked up, Kenny’s eyes were on her. “Yeah. I wanted to, but I hadn’t had much time to study, an’ it cost near a hundred dollars an’ I never could get that far ahead. Clay helped me study though, an’ I saved up from what he paid me an’ I was all set to do it when the hospital fired me. But I did get to take it at last, last week.”

“When will you know your scores?”

“I got ‘em in the other day.” At her expectant glare, his cheeks pinked. “The lady said I got the best grades of anybody in LA this year. One of the best in the whole state.”

Bel nodded, satisfied and not at all surprised. “Well, Bob’s your uncle.”

“Do what?”

“It means ‘there you go’. My best friend in OT school was Scottish. That’s how they say it.”

“Ohhh-kay.” Kenny’s mocking look made her burst into laughter.

“Now,” she demanded, “’how come’, as you say, you told Clay this deep dark secret and not me?”

“I asked him about it back when I met him,” he protested, “’cause he was a teacher, he said. So I thought he’d know how for me to go about doin’ it.” He hesitated. “I reckon I was ashamed for you to know, ‘cause, well, ‘cause I liked you, an’ you with your college an’ all, I figured you’d think I was dumb, an’ I wouldn’t stand a chance with you, if I ever did…”

She groaned in exasperation. “Kenny, you’ve read books half the people in college pretend they’ve read just to pass a class! Do you know what I thought the first time I walked into your apartment, and saw Dickens and Shakespeare and Faulkner on that beat-up table of yours? I thought ‘no wonder I was attracted to him’. Smart men are so damned sexy!”

His eyes widened. “Really? You really thought I was—hee—sexy?”

“Oh, you betcha.” Bel wrapped her arms around him and snuggled up, kissing his warm chest before she deposited her head there.

She could have stayed there all night, if not for a scratch at the bedroom door. “Raleigh!” Kenny groaned, rolled over and looked for his jeans.

Bel joined him. “While you take care of Miss Diva Dog, I’ll go see if I can find where Clay keeps his clean linen. Assuming the guy has any, of course. If not I’ll just launder these before he comes home on Monday. We do have till Monday to…shall we say, dirty them up some more, right?”

With one leg halfway in his pants, Kenny froze, and stared at the bed with an expression of unspeakable horror. ‘Oh Lord…we just…an’ on his bed…I’ll be embarrassed to ever look at him straight again!”

Bel nearly cackled aloud, but the thought of Clay’s wistful confession to her lessened her mirth. “Don’t be,” she said. “I don’t think it’d bother him.”

+++

Clay came home from Indonesia profoundly unsettled by what he had seen. The devastation far outreached his most extravagant imaginings; and yet, so did the nerve and determination of the people to rebuild their homes and carry on with their lives. The experience made him even more thankful for the big beautiful house he returned to.

His homecoming, however, unhinged yet another set of preconceived notions, when he opened his back door to be greeted by the unmistakable smell of his mother’s milk gravy. He walked into the kitchen, where Kenny and Maribel were, from all indications, whipping up a dinner as fully let out as any he would have found in North Carolina. “Aw, shoot!” Kenny yelped when he saw Clay poke his head in. “We thought you’d be another hour!”

“I wanted to come on home instead of go to the office for any more meetings,” Clay said as he welcomed Kenny’s usual bear hug and Bel’s rather unexpected embrace. “What is up with all this?”

“Practice,” Bel grinned, flour smeared on her cheek, and brandished a cel phone. “I never cooked Southern before. Your mom is an incredible teacher.”

“An’ we figured after a whole week over on the other side of the world eatin’, uh, whatever those folks like to eat, you might be needin’ some home cooked food,” Kenny added.

“I am needin’ some home, period!” Clay was touched. “You’re stayin’ to eat, aren’t you? Both of you? Let me get out of your way, I’m no good in a kitchen. I’ll be right back.” He cleaned up from the long plane ride, received a proper greeting from Raleigh, and tossed his things in his bedroom (where he noticed someone had been thoughtful enough to make the bed). By then, the smells of country fried steak, green beans and yams had his stomach complaining loudly about the delay. Back in the kitchen, the final preparations were being made. “You two work well together,” Clay observed as he watched; Kenny and Bel moved through the kitchen around each other like a pair of ice skaters with years to become acquainted with each other’s patterns, gestures, thoughts. He didn’t remember that level of comfort, or the way they looked at each other, or touched each other, and smiled as though speaking a silent language only they could translate. Something had changed between them; and while Clay was happy for them, he suddenly felt a little left out.

Neither of them knew it, of course. They set the table, and pumped him for stories about his trip, and were shocked and moved by what he related. As he spoke, and ate the meal they had prepared, the loneliness receded somewhat. Bel had finally accepted him, and Kenny he had never had a doubt about. They might have something special, but they were his friends, and when and if he found someone to love, he prayed that would not change. As far as that finding-someone thing, that he would have to put in the Lord’s hands, to do in His own good time.

Clay overate, but so did the other two, and all three ended up crashing in the living room with full bellies. Raleigh had gotten far too many table scraps too; she lolled across Clay’s lap with an occasional grunt. “So,” he said, “what’s gone on here? How is Sunny? Has there been any word from Lyneve?”

“Well,” Bel began, “I didn’t get a chance to tell Kenny this either—I’d just come in when you did, Clay. But Lyneve Holt was picked up outside Sacred Heart today. She was only in the parking lot, talking with some of the housekeeping staff, but that was too close for somebody’s comfort, apparently. Mr. Todd, the hospital administrator, sent security to escort her off the grounds. It made sense to me to begin with—I was right there coming back form lunch when he came to the main entrance, so I heard most of the exchanges—but the security guard came back and told Mr. Todd she had some papers she wanted to go over with the doctors treating Sunny. It sounded like the test results she was reported to be waiting for, from that doctor in Mexico, and I actually opened my big mouth and told Mr. Todd so.” Bell shook her head, her long dark ponytail dancing, and scowled. “Made no impact on him at all. He had her thrown off campus just the same. The last I saw of him, he was text-messaging his secretary to call a TV station. Maybe he thinks he’ll get the hospital some free publicity, make it look good; but if she’s telling the truth, if she has paperwork showing her child is sick and not abused, he’s cruising to get the hospital in some deep doo-doo. Something similar happened back east several years ago—the family hired Johnnie Cochrane to represent them, and he took some dumb hospital to the cleaners for wrongly accusing them of abuse. Lyneve’s more likely to turn up on the local news with a halo than him.”

“And she should!” Clay sputtered. “You mean she may have the proof in her hands and nobody will even look at it?!? I—I—“ He threw up his hands and yelled out loud. Kenny sat silent, seemingly in shock. “And I can’t even find her, to help her…I know. I’ll call a private detective, first thing tomorrow. The police arrested her, so they have to know where she’s staying. Maybe a professional will know how to get that out of them. Then I’m gonna talk to her, and I’m gonna call my lawyer, and that administrator whatsisname is gonna wish he had never blown her off!!”

Bel blinked. “Wow. Good thing I didn’t know enough to tell Lucas Todd who he was messing with. You can build up one impressive head of steam, Clay.”

“When it’s this kind of injustice? You’re darn right I can, and I will. Neither of them deserve this.” Injustice was and always had been one of Clay’s hot buttons. He did not let himself wonder if he would be this enraged for someone else, someone who didn’t follow his thoughts through his days and sweetly haunt his body through his nights the way Lyneve did.

“I believe I agree,” Bel replied. “So do several staff doctors. Sunny’s stable, no worse, but no better. It just doesn’t add up to a picture consistent with abuse. You can’t do anything till morning, though, so cool off for now.” She stretched. “Whew. I could use a cold drink. Anybody else?” At Clay’s agreement she disappeared into the kitchen. “Damn, we’re out! I thought we got some yesterday at the store, Kenny.”

Kenny still seemed lost in his thoughts, but he returned with a snap and hopped to his feet. “I’ll go get some. It’s not far. I’ll be back soon.” Before either Bel or Clay could protest, he was out the door and gone.

“I didn’t mean he had to run right out!” Bel emerged from the kitchen in time to see Kenny’s shirttail vanish toward the door. “Damn.” She flopped down on the sofa.

“Don’t swear about soft drinks. They’re not worth it.” She sat up with a dumbfounded look. “Sorry,” Clay recanted. “It’s a bad habit of mine. That, and correctin’ people’s grammar. I’m really tryin’ to stop it.”

After a moment, the face of disbelief dissolved into amusement. ‘No wonder some people think you’re a stick in the mud.”

Clay rolled his eyes. “Yes, they do, and do I look like I care much?”

“Not particularly,” Bel conceded. “Not as much as you care about, say, this situation with Sunny and her would-be mom. Do you always get this fired up when you believe someone’s being falsely accused?”

It was the question Clay had feared to ask himself, but coming from her, the answer was suddenly clear. “Yes. You better believe it. I can’t stand that. Neither can Kenny,” he pointed out. “He’s just got a better handle on his feelings, I guess. The Aiken temper gets the better of me sometimes.”

“But generally in a good cause, I suspect.” Bel nodded slowly, as if satisfied, then grinned broadly at him. “I didn’t know what to make of you when Kenny first told me about you, I must admit. All I knew was what I’d heard at third or fourth hand. But the reality…what was it the queen of Sheba said about Solomon? ‘Behold, the half was not told me’.” Clay had to giggle; he wouldn’t have expected her to quote Old Testament. “I like you, Clay Aiken, quite a lot.”

He tilted his head. “Thank you very much, madam. I like you quite a lot too—though not as much as Kenny does, I bet—or,” he dared add, “as much as you like him.”

When her grey eyes melted, Clay knew. She got this goofy little half-smile she made no effort to conceal. “Yeah,” she said simply. “That’s about right.”

Clay wasn’t sure he had ever felt so happy and so sad at the same time.

+++

Kenny drove to Sacred Heart as fast as he and the old Toyota could go. After finding at last somebody to trust and love, somebody who know all the darkness of his past and loved him anyway, it was almost unbearable to lie to her again. If his hunch was right though, he could keep a dreadful thing from happening, and be back before Bel or Clay knew any different. It was safer for both of them this way. Bel could talk so brave about how the cops might not even be looking for him, but he was still too scared to share her hopefulness. If one of them was going to get into trouble, better it be him. Still and all, he noticed himself doing the speed limit mostly, not racing to beat the traffic lights, and all the things he had trained himself over the years to do to avoid being noticed by the law.

He and Bel had talked a lot over the weekend about the mess in his life. She said he had survival skills, that he was as streetwise as any gang member in South Central or the other rough parts of LA. He didn’t know about all that, but he had survived, so he guessed she was part right anyhow. He did, finally, break a rule, though—employee parking at the hospital was closest to the place he was headed, so he put the Toyota in a space there and left it, even though his parking sticker was long expired.

A group of people in housekeeping uniforms stood outside, smoking. They started to move away when Kenny got out and went toward them. They tossed the lit butt ends of their cigars and cigarettes down on the pavement and went into the hospital through the fire door—the one door that, against policy, was left unlocked from the inside by the staff 24-7—the one door that somebody could get in through without being noticed, if somebody who knew about it told them.

He recognized Ruby among the group, even though she didn’t smoke, and he thought he recognized somebody else too, someone with smooth brown hair, tugging at her uniform dress like it didn’t fit her very well. She was the last one going in, and Kenny caught up before she could and reached for her arm. “Lyneve!”

She spun on her heel and nearly yelled. “Cl—Kenny?”

“Sh! Yeah. Don’t you go up in there, Lyneve. You wanna get out of trouble, not get in more.”

“You don’t understand, Kenny!” She pulled her arm away from him. A little bag was hanging from a cord around her neck, and she stuck it down the front of her uniform. “I took Sunny to Mexico, to a doctor I used to work with here, who moved back there. I knew if anyone could piece this puzzle together, it was him. And he did. I know what’s wrong with her, and I know what to do, and they won’t listen. Can you even conceive of what that’s like—“

“Yes, I can!” Kenny hissed. “I know just what it’s like, to know the truth, an’ know in your heart of hearts nobody’s gonna believe you, an’ live ever’ second of your life afraid that nobody ever will, that they’ll all believe th’ lie. I know, honey, believe me! But breakin’ their rules isn’t gonna help a bit. Now, you c’mon with me, an’ we’ll go—“ He started to take her hand and turn around to go back to his car, and four big security guards seemed like they appeared right out of the air and surrounded them.

When Kenny could bear to imagine the day the law finally caught him, he had always been a little scared he’d scream, or cry, or fall out in a dead faint. He was really surprised at himself when it actually happened, and he didn’t move, or think, or feel much of anything at all.

+++

Bel had to admit Clay was one of the best people to talk to she had ever known. They had ranged over a number of topics, and now he was sharing his gladness at the phone call his mom had gotten while he was in Indonesia, from his little brother in the Marines, telling them he wasn’t being sent overseas anytime soon. Absorbed in his account, her attention was seized by her wrist watch. “Where in the world did Kenny go to get sodas?”

From his expression, the lengthiness of Kenny’s absence was just registering with Clay as well, but before he replied his cel phone rang. “Hello?...well hey man, did you have to go to Nevada to get some Sprite?...You’re where?” Clay’s jocular grin and tone vanished, and he listened in silence, his eyes intent, his brows knitted. “Yeah…of course, Kenny, come on!...We’ll be right there.”

He jumped up from the recliner, dumping a startled Raleigh onto the rug, and was already halfway across the living room by the time he snapped the phone shut. “Whoa, what’s wrong?” Bel asked, suddenly alarmed at the abrupt change in his demeanor.

“Kenny’s at Sacred Heart—with Lyneve. He figured out how she was gettin’ in without being seen, and he went to try and intercept her. Which he did, but then security intercepted them. They’re being held in the administrator’s office, waitin’ for the police.”

Bel gasped and came to her feet. Clay turned around, his gaze sweeping the room, then grabbed a key ring from a hook by the TV. “Where are you going?” she asked, and realized what a stupid question it was at the same time he looked at her as if she were stark raving mad.

“I,” he ground out through clenched teeth, “am goin’ to get my friend out of this mess he got into by bein’ too nice for his own good. And to find out if this woman lied to me or not. Where are you goin’?”

Her keys were in her pocket. She pulled them out, then looked at the angry man before her, and shoved them back in. “With you, it would appear.”

[END PART TWO OF THREE]

Back to Part One ~ Go to Part Three

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~Posted 5.27.2005~

You can contact the author at theleewit@mindspring.com

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