Her Good Name

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “I bought a fixer-upper in Iona last year,” he said. “I’m six-one, wear a size eleven shoe. I get my kids every other weekend and for six weeks in the summer.” His eyes shifted when he talked about his kids, indicating to Chrissy that he was not a man comfortable with his past.

  “And you’re in Cam and Amanda’s ward, right?” she asked.

  “Right.”

  “Are you active?”

  He hesitated. If she’d really thought this date might go somewhere, alarms would have gone off in her mind. She wondered if he’d answer or if she’d pushed too far. Then again, he’d asked how much she weighed. Fair was fair.

  “I go when the kids are with me.”

  At least he was honest. “Why not every week?” she asked, taking another bite of her roll and finally realizing why the first bite had been unsatisfying. The restaurant used unsalted butter. She scowled. That was the problem with these American-fare restaurants—the food was so bland—down to the butter apparently. She grabbed a salt shaker and sprinkled salt over her roll. He watched her closely as she took another bite, meeting her eyes with a confused look. “Unsawted utter,” she explained around the roll in her mouth. “Why on’t you oh oo urch evey week?” Ha! Talking with her mouth full ought to scare him off if nothing else did.

  “I don’t like my ward very much.”

  She swallowed and then laughed, covering her mouth so as not to blow crumbs. He looked annoyed. “What does the ward have to do with it?” She’d been in a lot of wards in her life, and there was always something to like about them—if you were looking for good things, anyway.

  “What’s wrong with unsalted butter? We all have preferences.”

  “I never promised to eat unsalted butter,” she said. “Covenants count for something.”

  He paused, and she smiled at her victory. “I’ll take that into consideration. Cam’s my home teacher. I like him.”

  Under the table, Chrissy wiggled her toes inside the heeled boots she was wearing tonight. She wished she could kick them off, but that would make running for the door much harder to do should she decide an escape was necessary. However, so far she was actually enjoying herself.

  They were silent for several seconds, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. “You called yourself a Mexican. I thought Hispanic or Latino was more politically correct.”

  “In the same sense that you’re North American or Caucasian, yes—though I’m a Latina, not a Latino—but if a Hispanic is from Mexico, como yo.” She put a hand to her chest. “Then they are Mexican, but if they are Dominican, or Puerto Rican, or Colombian, you’ll blow that whole PC thing out of the water by calling them Mexican. Hispanic or Latina keeps everyone happy—hence the political correctness factor.”

  “Are you full Mexican?” he asked. She took that to mean he was looking at her at least as closely as she was looking at him—enough to notice that her skin wasn’t very dark, but more of a brown sugar color. Her eyes were also a dark gold, not brown. She tried not to focus too deeply on his attention to detail, even though it did intrigue her.

  “My dad immigrated when he was a child. My mom’s white and grew up in Arizona. They somehow met in Idaho Falls—I never did hear the whole story about how that happened. Anyway, they divorced when I was eight and then Livvy and I bounced between them and Abuelita until we were old enough to figure out our own course.”

  “Abuelita?”

  “Abuelita means Little Grandmother. She’s actually my dad’s aunt—his mother died when he was little—but Abuelita was like a grandmother to us and an amazing woman. A couple years ago she moved back to New Mexico to live with her daughter. She’d had enough of Idaho winters.”

  He nodded and seemed to have run out of questions, so she chose one to keep things going. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a loan officer.”

  “Sounds boring,” she said, eyeing the rolls and wondering if she dared have another one. She was getting older, and the five pounds she used to worry about had turned into ten over the last year, reminding her to be careful about carbs. However, she had ordered veggies instead of fries with her burger.

  “Boring and tedious,” Matt-Michael-Melvin agreed. “But I’m good at it, and it pays the bills. You work at an insurance company, right? That sounds pretty boring too.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m good at it, and it pays the bills,” she said, smiling as she echoed his words. “The agent I’m working for retires in fifty-four days though, and I’m trying to decide what to do next.” Brandon, Kent’s son, would be taking over the office, but she wasn’t sure she could stand working for him. “I also do consignment work for Lupe’s Dress Shop—I’d do that for a living if I could.”

  There was silence again. It probably wasn’t a good sign that Matt-Michael-Melvin couldn’t think of anything else to ask her. However, she had plenty of questions to fire at him, and she wasn’t all that worried about signs.

  “So, why did you get a divorce?” she asked, then raised her finger to point at him and squint one eye. “No games.”

  He looked at her over the rim of his glass and swallowed as he put it down. Now he looked uncomfortable. “Natalie had a reality problem and I had a temper problem.”

  “You hit her?” Chrissy sat up straighter. Half-active and abusive? Check please!

  “No,” he returned quickly. “I never hit her. We had some hard years and neither of us handled it very well. She shopped, I yelled. We got a divorce, and she found herself a wealthier man to marry.”

  The meals arrived and they busied themselves with prepping their food and then chewing for awhile—half-time without a show. The hot meat and crisp veggies rejuvenated Chrissy, but she didn’t want to stop the info dump they had found themselves in the middle of. Feeling magnanimous, she waited until he put down his half-eaten burger and took a drink before asking her next question.

  “How long ago was your divorce?”

  “Eleven years.”

  “How old are your kids?”

  “Nineteen, sixteen, and thirteen. Two girls with a boy in the middle.”

  She smiled, a bit hung up on the fact that his kids were all teenagers. But he was forty-one—strange to think he was only six years older than she was. What had happened to the fancy-free twenty-two-year-old girl she’d been just yesterday?

  She wondered how she could find out his name without tipping her hand. Matt-Michael-Melvin was a mouthful. Maybe she’d just call him Mmmmmm. Her eyes moved to his thick arms and bright blue eyes. She decided Mmmmmm fit him just fine.

  She did the math in her head. “So you didn’t serve a mission?”

  He paused, but seemed relaxed when he spoke. “Much to my parents’ displeasure. They were even less impressed when I later divorced the girl I thwarted the mission for.” He shrugged as if it were no big deal. By the way he didn’t meet her eye, she suspected it was a very big deal, even now. He returned fire. “Why haven’t you been married?”

  She attempted to be nonchalant in her reply as well—so much for not playing games. “You’d have to ask the guys I date.”

  “The guys you only date once?” he asked, smiling and popping a fry in his mouth. A drop of ketchup landed on his chin. He didn’t notice.

  “Yeah,” she said, lifting her burger again and finding her thoughts going in a direction she hadn’t felt them wander into for awhile.

  Would she want to date this guy, Mmmmmm, again? Strangely, the answer wasn’t the solid no she’d been counting on. “Must be something in my approach.” An approach that so far seemed to actually be working this time.

  “Or the guys you date.”

  Mmmmmm held her eyes as he took another bite, smearing the chin-ketchup. She couldn’t look away from those eyes, and though she tried to ignore everything she’d ever heard about chemistry between two people, she suddenly wished she’d worn the red top instead of the blue one. Bright colors accentuated her figure, though her shape was hard to hide no matter what she wore. Blessing o
r curse, she was busty and hippy, which at 5'1" could be less than complimentary if a girl didn’t make it a priority to dress in such a way that showed she still had a waist, but she hadn’t done anything special tonight.

  On the heels of that thought was the reminder that Mmmmmm was an Idahoan, white, divorced with kids, lifelong Mormon. She was a never married, converted Mexican-American woman from a broken home. Calculating differences had always been a part of Chrissy’s life and although she liked to give people the benefit of the doubt, it was impossible to ignore that chances were good he thought Mexicans were only good for cleaning toilets. And yet, he didn’t talk to her that way. He didn’t look at her that way, either.

  He was watching her again. She found herself sitting up straighter and wondering if he liked what he saw, blue top not withstanding.

  The chorus to Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” shattered the moment and sent Chrissy grabbing for her purse, trying to find the phone before it sent the caller to voice mail. She was glad for the distraction. Her thoughts were getting away from her. The number on the phone was unfamiliar. She offered Mmmmmm an apologetic smile as she pushed the talk button and lifted the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Can you come pick me up?”

  Rosa. Chrissy’s heart sank. Was she not having a good time at Young Women’s? “What’s the matter?” Chrissy asked, dropping her head a little bit, as if that would keep her conversation private.

  “They’re all done,” Rosa said, her tone sounding insecure. “It started at six.”

  “Six?” Chrissy asked. “I thought it started at seven.”

  “I guess they changed the time but didn’t know they should call me. It’s over now. Please come pick me up.”

  Several options ran through Chrissy’s mind. The Young Women’s leaders could drive her home, but Rosa didn’t know them very well yet. Livvy had gone to parent-teacher conference with the boys so Chrissy didn’t want to call her. Plus Livvy was already somewhat hesitant about her children’s involvement in the Mormon Church and making her leave the conference early would not work in Chrissy’s favor. And the fact was that Rosa had called Chrissy—no one else.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” Chrissy finally said. She hung up and looked at her date of the last twenty-two minutes. He quickly looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she hadn’t started things out so aggressively. She’d thought it would be like the other dates, and now wished she’d gone about things different since Mmmmmm was . . . well, different. She didn’t know what to say.

  Mmmmmm shrugged and took another bite of his burger, not making eye contact. “You warned me.”

  She pulled her nicely waxed eyebrows together. “Warned you?”

  He looked up and met her eyes again, but they were harder, keeping her out, not looking at her the same way as before. “You don’t do second dates,” he said.

  He made it sound like she’d planned this all along. “It’s just my niece. She needs a ride home.”

  “Sure,” he said, picking up a ketchup-soaked fry, looking embarrassed and a little angry. Chrissy bit the inside of her lip, vacillating between defending herself and just letting it go. It sounded cliché, but no one understood what her life was like.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said as humbly as she could, pulling her debit card out of her wallet in preparation to pay for her own dinner. It didn’t seem fair for him to pay when she was leaving early. “You seem like a really nice guy.” It sounded terribly trite and she hated how the tempo of their banter had been replaced with tension.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Nice guys finish last, right?”

  “It’s not like that,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice. Why was he being so difficult? Could it be he’d been enjoying things as much as she had? Maybe he didn’t want it to end, either. “If you want, we could, uh, try this another time.”

  He finally met her eyes. “If I want?” He shook his head and looked even more annoyed. “You don’t need to do me any favors.”

  Chrissy sat there.

  “No big deal,” he said before she could think of a reply. He raised his other hand and waved her away. “I’m working on remodeling my bathroom, and I’ve got tile to rip out. Drive safe.” He gave her a dismissive look and took another bite.

  She didn’t know what else she could say that he wouldn’t twist around, so she simply nodded, stood up, and headed toward the cash register. She hated leaving her leftovers behind, but didn’t want to draw things out by asking for a box.

  “I need to pay for my meal,” she said to the gothic-looking girl at the register. The server was fetched, the check split up, and Chrissy glanced toward Mmmmmm as the gal took Chrissy’s card and license to the back office. Apparently the front credit card machine was broken. Chrissy hoped they’d finish before Mmmmmm caught up to her. She might be outspoken and quick on the draw with banter or retorts, but that didn’t mean she welcomed open confrontation. She also knew that if it had been his cell phone that sent him running, she wouldn’t want to face him at the register.

  “Here’s your card and license,” the cashier said, her hands shaking just enough to be noticeable. Must be all the Coke she drank while working; Chrissy had downed soda all shift long when she’d waitressed.

  Chrissy glanced at the twenty-something clerk only long enough to notice the ring in her eyebrow and the name tag that read “Sid.”

  “Thanks,” Chrissy said as she shoved the cards into her purse and hurried toward the door.

  She slid into the driver’s seat of her car, a red two-door that had hit 180,000 miles a few months ago. She’d gotten in a car accident last summer and had to replace the hood and front right fender with black counter-parts. She glanced at Mmmmmm through the window as he paid and wondered, if under different circumstances, things would have worked out between them. But there were no different circumstances. Ignoring the slight pang of reality as she pulled out of her parking space, she reassured herself that Matt-Melvin-Michael was hardly the man who would change her life—nice arms or not.

  Chapter 3

  She knocked twice and removed the “Sid” name tag from her shirt. Her clothes and hair smelled like the café—grease and ranch dressing. Gross. She’d forgotten her coat, but it didn’t matter since she was sweating anyway.

  The big metal door opened and she slipped inside. “I’ve got six,” she said to the only other person in the room—Tony—as soon as the door thudded shut again. The flickering fluorescent light overhead had a kind of strobe effect that nauseated her. She handed over the photocopies she’d made of that night’s credit cards.

  “Did you get my text this afternoon?” Tony asked as he took the papers. She always met him in the same place—an empty office at the back of a bar. The loud music on the other side of the wall, coupled with the lights and her queasy need for a hit, made the walls seem as if they were moving.

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding toward the papers. “She’s in there.”

  “Six at thirty bucks apiece is one-eighty. Plus an extra fifty for the one I requested,” he said with a pleased smile. He tapped the side of the bag he always carried with him. “Do you want it in cash or in product?”

  “Product,” she said decisively, her eyes already trained on the pack. It hung around his neck and over one shoulder, lying against his left hip like a big purse. “I’ve still got a paycheck.” Though it wouldn’t last long, she was sure. It would only take one person to trace the card thefts back to her before everything blew. She knew those thoughts should bother her, but they didn’t. The people whose information she stole would get their bad debts removed, and the banks and credit card companies made so much off of the interest on their loans that they barely felt the loss of a few dollars. It was the perfect crime, and besides, all she did was find the info.

  “Tell me about her.”

  She swore he was dragging this out only to annoy her. “Um, she was, like, old, like forty o
r something. Brown hair, dark skin—Mexican.” They all looked the same. But she knew he wanted details, so she did try to pay attention. “She paid with a debit card, so she’s got a bank account and she was dressed nice.” She kept to herself that the woman’s car was a total hunk of garbage.

  “Wedding ring?”

  “Um, no, she was with a guy, but she, like, ditched him.”

  “Good,” he said, finally unzipping his pack and removing a plastic bag with several smaller drug-filled baggies inside it. Before handing it over, though, he unzipped another compartment and put the papers inside.

  She clenched her teeth, sure he was moving slow on purpose. It had been more than a week since she’d last brought him any names. He knew she was desperate.

  “When will I see you next?” he asked.

  “I work again on Friday, but weekends are harder. Too many people around.”

  She finally snatched the drugs from him and turned them in her hand, counting each hit, verifying that she’d gotten her money’s worth. He handed her two more baggies—the extra for the specific ID she’d found—and her heart rate sped up even more. Her hands were shaking—had been all night—and her breathing increased just knowing that relief was so close. She put the extra hits in the bag and put the bag in her pocket before immediately removing it again to count the hits a second time.

  “Just get me what you can,” Tony said with a smile. “You did good for me tonight.”