Tithe (6 page)

She considered going to Red Bank and trying to find Sue and Liz’s store. She had some money, but she still might be able to sneak on the train for the couple of stops. Her biggest problem was that Ellen hadn’t said what they’d called the place.

It occurred to her that maybe Corny would know. He probably had another hour before the graveyard shift ended and the morning guy came in. If she bought him coffee, he might not mind her hanging around too much.

The Quick Check was mostly empty when she went in and filled two large paper cups with hazelnut coffee. She fixed hers with cinnamon and half-and-half, but she didn’t know how he liked his, so she pocketed little packets of sugar and several creamers. The yawning
woman didn’t even look at Kaye as she rang her up.

Corny was sitting on the hood of his car, playing chess on a small, magnetic board.

“Hey,” Kaye called. He looked up with a not-so-friendly expression on his face. She held out the coffee, and he just looked confused.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” he asked finally.

“Dropped out,” she said. “I’m going to get my GED.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Do you want the coffee or not?”

A car pulled up in front of one of the pumps. He sighed, sliding off the hood of the car. “Put it by the board.”

She pulled herself onto his car and carefully set down her cup, searching her pockets for the fixings. Then she uncapped hers and took a deep sip. The warmth of the liquid braced her against the cold, wet autumn morning.

Corny came back a few minutes later, settling onto the hood. After a considering look, he started pouring sugar into his coffee, stirring it with a filthy pen from his pocket.

“Which you are you playing against?” Kaye asked, drawing up her knees.

He looked up at her with a snort. “Did you come here to fuck with me? Coffee is cheap.”

“Geez, I’m just talking. Who’s winning?”

Corny smirked. “He is, for now. Come on,
what are you really doing here? People do not visit me. Being social to me is, like, tempting the Apocalypse or something.”

“How come?”

Corny hopped down again with a groan as another car pulled up in front of the gas pump. She watched him sell a carton of cigarettes and fill the tank. She wondered if the owner would hire a sixteen-year-old girl—her last paycheck wasn’t going to stretch much further. Corny had worked here when he was younger than she was now.

“Corny,” she said when he came back, “do you know of any small CD stores in Red Bank?”

“Trying to bribe me for a ride?”

She sighed. “Paranoid. I just want to know what it’s called.”

He shrugged, playing out a couple more moves without editorial comment. “My comic book store is next to some CD store, but I don’t know the name.”

“What comics do you read?”

“Are you saying that you read comics?” Corny looked defensive, like maybe she was leading him into some verbal trap.

“Sure.
Batman. Lenore. Too Much Coffee Man
. Used to read
Sandman,
of course.”

Corny regarded her speculatively for a moment, then finally relented. “I used to read X-everything, but I read a lot of Japanese stuff now.”

“Like
Akira
?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Girl comics—the ones with the pretty boys and girls. Hey, do you know what
shonen-ai
is?” His expression was dubious.

“I wish I could speak some Japanese,” Kaye said, shaking her head.

Corny smirked. “I thought you
were
Japanese.”

She shrugged. “So says my mom. My dad was part of some local glam-goth band my mother worshipped in high school. Very new wave. I never met him. It was a groupie thing.”

“Wild.”

“I guess.”

A car pulled into the station, but instead of parking in front of the pumps, it stopped next to Corny’s car. A dark-skinned kid got out.

“Nice of you to show up today,” Corny said, tossing him a set of the keys.

“I said I was sorry, man,” the kid said.

Turning to Kaye, Corny said, “Where you going now?”

Kaye shrugged.

“You want to come with? You could hang out and wait for Janet to get home.”

She nodded. “Sure.”

They walked over to the trailer together.

He switched on the TV and walked back to his room. “I’m going to check my mail.”

Kaye nodded and sat down on the couch,
only then feeling a little awkward. It was weird to be in Janet’s house without Janet. She flipped through the channels, settling on Cartoon Network.

After a few minutes, when he didn’t return, she went back to his room. Corny’s room was as unlike Janet’s as a room could be. There were bookshelves on all the walls, filled to overflowing with paperbacks and comics. Corny was sitting at a desk that looked like it could barely hold up the equipment piled on it. Another box of wires and what looked like computer innards was next to his feet.

He was tapping on his keyboard and grunted as she came in. “Almost done.”

Kaye sat down on the edge of his bed the way she would have if she was in Janet’s room and picked up the nearest comic. It was all in Japanese. Blond hero and heroine—she always thought it was weird there were so many blonds in anime—bad guy with really, really long black hair and a cool headpiece. A cute, fat ball with bat wings fluttering around as a sidekick. She flipped a little further. Hero naked and lashed in the bad guy’s bed. She stopped flipping and stared at the picture. The blond’s head was thrown back in either ecstasy or terror as the villain licked one of his nipples.

She looked up at Corny and held out the book. “Let me guess … this is
shonen-ai
?”

He shot a glance at her from the computer,
but she couldn’t miss the smug expression. “Yeah.”

Kaye wasn’t sure what to say to that, which was probably the point. “You like boys?”

“There’s a technical term for it,” Corny said. “Faggot. Although those are mighty pretty boys.”

“Does Janet know?” She couldn’t understand why he would tell
her
if Janet didn’t know, but certainly Janet would have said something. Janet’s E-mails were summaries of her whole day, boring and full of gossip about people Kaye had never met.

“Yeah, the whole family knows. It’s no big deal. One night at dinner I said, ‘Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.’ It was easier for her to understand that way.” He sounded like he was daring Kaye to say something.

“I hope you aren’t expecting some kind of reaction,” Kaye said finally. “Because the only thing that I can think of is that is the weirdest coming-out story I have ever heard.”

His face relaxed. Then she started to laugh and both of them were laughing and looking at the comic and laughing some more.

By the time Janet got back from school, Corny was sleeping and Kaye was reading a huge pile of kinky comics.

“Hey,” Janet said, looking surprised to see her sofa occupied.

Kaye yawned and took a sip from a half-full glass of cherry cola. “Oh, hi. I was hanging out with your brother and then I figured I’d just wait for you to come home.”

Janet made a face, dumping her armful of books onto the chair. “You make
school
look fun. If you’re going to drop out, you might as well … I don’t know.”

“Do something seedy?”

“Totally. Look, I’m gonna go out … I gotta meet the guys. You want to come?”

Kaye stretched and got up. “Sure.”

The Blue Snapper diner was open twenty-four hours, and they didn’t care how long you sat in the mirror-lined booths or how little you ordered. Kenny and Doughboy sat at a table with a girl Kaye didn’t know. She had short black hair, red nails, and thin, drawn-on eyebrows. Doughboy was wearing a short-sleeved team shirt over a long-sleeved black undershirt; the laces of his hiking boots spilled out from under the table. He’d cut his hair since she’d seen him last, and it was shaved along the back and sides. Kenny was wearing his silver jacket over a black T-shirt and looked exactly the same: scruffy, cute, and totally off-limits.

“Sorry I freaked the other night,” Kaye said, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans and hoping no one wanted to talk about it too much.

“What happened?” the girl asked. Something
made a clicking sound as she spoke, and Kaye realized that it was the girl’s tongue-stud tapping against her teeth.

Doughboy opened his mouth to make some comment, and Kenny cut him off. “’S cool,” he said with a jerk of his chin, “C’mon and slide in, ladies.”

“Kaye,” Janet said, sliding into the booth next to the girl, “this is Fatima—I e-mailed you about her. Kaye’s my friend from Philly.”

“Right. Sure. Hi.” It was Fatima’s party she’d missed two nights ago, and she had no idea what had been said after she left. Kenny was barely glancing in her direction, but Doughboy was watching her like she might do something weird or funny. Kaye wished she’d stayed in the trailer. This was too awkward.

“You’re the girl with the mom who’s in a band,” Fatima said.

“Not anymore,” Kaye said.

“Is it true that she fucked Lou Zampolis? Janet said she sang backup for Chainsuck.”

Kaye grimaced. She wondered if all her E-mails had been relayed like this. “Unfortunately.”

“Does that freak you out—I mean does she, like, screw your boyfriends and shit?”

Kaye raised her eyebrows. “I don’t date guys in bands.” She tried to imagine what Ellen would think of Kenny. It was impossible to picture Ellen meeting Roiben.

“I have this friend, right,” Fatima said, “and
her mother and her sister both slept with the guy that got her knocked up. I mean, how Jerry Springer is that?”

“Erin, right?” Janet said. “She’s in rehab.”

The waitress stopped by their table. She was wearing a brown uniform that looked too small on her, and her name tag read
RITA
. “Can I get you guys anything?”

“Diet whatever,” Janet said.

“Coffee,” Kaye chimed in.

“I want … can I have some Disco Fries, Rita?” Doughboy said.

“I’ll be back with refills in a minute,” the waitress said, smiling guardedly at Dough for using her name.

Kenny turned to get his cigarettes and lighter out of the pocket of his coat, and Kaye saw a tattoo on the back of his neck. It was a tribal design of what looked like a scarab. It made her wonder what other tattoos he might have snaking down areas covered by his shirt. Janet would know.

“Anyone want?” he asked, offering up the pack.

“I do,” Kaye said.

“Whatever you want, you get,” he tossed back, giving her a cigarette with a smirk that made the heat rise to her face.

Janet was talking to Fatima about Erin’s baby, not paying attention to either of them at the moment. Doughboy was picking at the
cheese-and-gravy-covered fries the waitress had plunked down in front of him.

“Want to see a trick?” Kaye asked, suddenly not wanting to back down from the implied challenge in Kenny’s voice. “Let me see your lighter.”

It was silver with an enamel eight-ball medallion soldered to the front of it. He handed it over.

Kaye had learned this trick from Liz back in her mother’s Sweet Pussy days. Liz had offered to teach it to her, claiming that was a sure way to impress the boys. Kaye had had no idea why Liz would want to impress anyone since she already had Sue, but she’d learned the trick and it had impressed bartenders, at least.

Kaye held the metal body of the lighter between the first two fingers of her left hand; then she flipped it first over and then under each finger so that the metal shimmered like a minnow. Faster and faster, she made the lighter hurdle her fingers. Then she stopped, flicked the lid open, and lit it, all with her right hand resting on the table. She leaned over and generously offered the flame to Kenny’s cigarette.

Once Kaye found the record store, she would have to tell Liz that she had been right. Both the boys looked impressed.

Kenny’s lopsided grin was an invitation to mischief.

“Cool,” Doughboy said. “Want to show me how to do that?”

“Sure,” Kaye said, lighting her own cigarette and taking a deep breath of bitter smoke. She showed him, doing the trick in slow motion so that he could see how it was done, then letting him try it.

“I gotta get out of the booth for a minute,” Kenny said, and she and Doughboy scooted out.

Before she could get back in, Kenny nudged her arm and jerked his head toward the bathrooms.

“Be right back,” Kaye told Janet, dropping her cigarette into the ashtray. “Bathroom.”

Janet must not have noticed anything since she just nodded.

Kaye walked behind Kenny to the small hallway. Even though she had no idea what he wanted, her cheeks were already warm, and a strange thrill was coiling in her belly.

Once they were in the hallway, Kenny turned to her and draped his lean body against the wall.

“What did you do to me?” Kenny asked, taking a quick drag from his cigarette and rubbing the stubble along his cheekbone with the back of one hand.

Kaye shook her head. “Nothing. What do you mean?”

He lowered his voice, speaking with a quiet
intensity. “The other night. The horse. What did you do?” He paused and looked the other way before continuing. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Kaye was stunned. “I … honestly … I didn’t
do
anything.”

“Well, undo it,” he said, scowling.

She struggled for an explanation. “Sometimes when I daydream … things happen. I was just thinking about riding the horse. I didn’t even hear you come in.” Her cheeks felt even hotter when she remembered a theory Sue had once explained about why all young girls want their own ponies.

He looked at her as intensely as he had in the attic of the carousel building, bringing his cigarette to his lips again. “This is fucked,” he said a little desperately. “I mean it; I can’t get you out of my head. You’re all I think about, all day long.”

Kaye had no idea what to say to that.

He took a step closer to her without seeming to notice. “You have to do something.”

She took a step back, but the wall halted her. She could feel the cool tile against her spine. The pay phone to her right blocked her view of the register. “I’m sorry,” she said.