The Kiss That Counted

by Karin Kallmaker

  "Thirty seconds? Do you know what that space costs for every ten seconds?"

  "But you already wrote that check, Nate." CJ knew he was going to say yes and tried to keep the glee out of her voice. "I'm not asking you to write another one. Once Cheri knows what you're doing, she will kiss you. And so will your daughters and so will all the women who work for you. So will I, if that's worth anything to you."

  Nate laughed. "You could sell exhaust fumes at a NASCAR rally, you know that?"

  CJ ginned so hard her cheeks hurt. "So I've been told. I try to use my powers for good, though. Listen, one more thing. I'm going out of town for a few weeks, so I'm dropping a big packet of information in the mail. Do me a favor, don't treat it like other stuff from me—read it, okay? The name and number of the shelter director is in there if you have questions. When I get back I'll approach Brownell. Your support already in hand will make a big difference."

  She put the phone down and glanced at the clock. Sure enough, she heard Karita's voice asking for her, then Burnett giving her a hearty hello. With a nervous shiver, she picked up her small suitcase, knowing she wouldn't be back for a while. The sight of Karita's long, silver-gold hair sweeping around her shoulders didn't help the shivers, but the steadfast, loving look in those amazing blue eyes did. "That time already?"

  "Yeah."

  "Have a good trip, you two." Burnett hugged them both. His boisterous declaration had heads popping up over cubicles.

  "Hey! You're not going on vacation by yourself, are you?" Julia peered curiously at Karita, gaze narrowed.

  CJ was shocked, and pleased, to realize Julia was giving Karita a skeptical once-over. When she got back she'd assure Julia that Karita was good enough for her, good enough and then some.

  Tr e came out of his cubicle, saying, "Weird enough you're actually taking a vacation, but with another human being? Since when?"

  Grinning, CJ hooked her arm around Karita's. "Since now."

  Karita gave Tre a big smile and touched the small framed print of an elegant Vietnamese charcoal drawing and script lettering that he'd hung on his exterior cubicle wall. "I love Nyugen Du. This is such a beautiful poem." To CJ's amazement, Karita traced the first line with her fingertip, reading it aloud in Vietnamese.

  Tr e laughed, answered rapidly in his native language, then said, "When you get back we'll have to have lunch or something."

  "I'd love to hear how things really are faring in the Red River area." Karita turned to CJ. "Ready?"

  Just when I thought the llama was the big surprise. It could take years to learn all there was to this amazing woman, years she looked forward to with all her heart. CJ knew she probably had the sappiest look of all time on her face as she answered truthfully, "Yes, I'm ready."

  They got on the elevator to a chorus of well wishes. A person might almost think they were leaving on a honeymoon or something. Burnett's quiet, supportive nod said he suspected the truth and CJ was okay with that. There were things that family ought to know.

  "Guess what was in my mailbox this morning?" CJ stole a kiss as the elevator descended.

  "I've no idea." Karita kissed her back.

  "A notice from the Denver Traffic Court. I forgot to go to traffic school. They're very upset with me and I need to pay a big fine Turns out going to community service didn't save me a dime."

  Karita was still laughing as they boarded the shuttle bus to the airport. Her laughter was a healing balm to CJ's strained nerves. She was going back to Kentucky, back to Fayette, and part of her was terrified But she also knew, strange as it seemed, that she had an elf by her side.

  The distant roar in CJ's ears hadn't subsided. From the moment the judge had said, "Sentence reduced to time served" she'd been lightheaded. Shock, probably. Or she was walking on air because the weights of the past, carried so long, had been knocked off her shoulders by the rap of a gavel.

  Getting off the transfer bus in the side yard inside Fayette's walls didn't help reconnect her to her body. She followed the other inmates through the massive barred door and her nose twitched at the strong odor of pine disinfectant mixed with the acrid stink of the grease used to keep the steel door hinges oiled. She stood quietly at the end of the line, already on the guard's radar as the new arrival who was the oldest by twenty years, and who wasn't wearing county-issued orange.

  That they hadn't made her change her clothes helped CJ damp down the blind panic that still threatened to overwhelm her. If they were going to incarcerate her, she'd be in a jumpsuit by now.

  The girl in front of her started to sniffle again. CJ wished she had a tissue to give her. She couldn't have been more than thirteen, and her dark braids and haunted eyes reminded CJ of herself all those years ago.

  "You can survive this place." She hadn't realized she was going to speak to the child. "I did."

  The girl gave her a suspicious look and didn't answer.

  I don't know her story, CJ thought. I don't know how to make her believe me. "I'm nobody special. Only thing I had in here was my brain. You've got a brain too. I can see it in your eyes."

  "No talking in line," a guard called.

  One by one the teens in front of her were processed through the large door to the new arrivals' holding room. CJ could see beyond the thick glass and marveled that the off-white walls and falsely cheerful mural of woodland creatures hadn't changed one iota. But she wasn't going through that door, she reminded herself. Today she got to walk in the other direction.

  When CJ reached the front of her row she gave her papers to the bored guard and waited as they were examined.

  "You were here a long time ago." She fixed CJ with a steady, gray-eyed look. "Sure you don't want to stay?"

  "I am quite sure." CJ's heartbeat refused to slow, even when the guard gave her a ghost of a smile.

  At the bottom of the first page the guard signed her name and then ran a seal over it, adding a layer of luminescent ink that blazoned the date and time. "You are now an inmate of Fayette County Juvenile Detention Center."

  CJ caught her breath. The echo of those same words, said more than twenty years ago, was heavy in her ears. "And now?"

  The guard turned to the second page, signed and inked again. "Please proceed through the door to your rear." She handed CJ her papers without another glance.

  A muffed buzzer sounded as CJ approached the door. After it rolled to the left, she went through it to find herself in a small Plexiglass enclosed space. The door at her back rolled shut, another buzzer sounded, and the opposite door opened.

  A disembodied voice said, "Follow the yellow line."

  She did as she was told. The yellow line promptly ended at a tiny window. Another guard with another set of dispassionate eyes glanced at her paperwork. She handed the papers behind her and said to CJ, "Follow the red line."

  It was only a few steps around the corner, but she was brought up short by one of the broadest-shouldered women she'd ever seen. "Stand on the X," she was ordered.

  She did. The woman looked her up and down, then carefully studied the contents of a folder. "Are you Cassiopeia Juniper Rochambeau?"

  "Yes," she said firmly. It was the last time she would have to admit it. She didn't mind Cassiopeia so much—no one had ever called her by it. She'd always been Cassie June. Even Cass was better than that.

  The guard lifted a photograph taken at the courthouse booking station from the folder and held it next to CJ's face. "It's a match," she called. She put the photograph back in the folder and walked away in the direction CJ had come from. "Follow the green line."

  The green line ended at another thick, steel door, which swung open with a soul-chilling screech. A blast of sunlight left her dazzled as she staggered her way to freedom.

  "I wasn't even back to the car before she called." Karita switched CJ's cell phone to her other ear as she turned into the visitor's parking lot. "It went even better than the lawyer thought."

  Emily still sounded simultaneously protective and disapproving. "So s
he's not having to spend any time in jail?"

  "They took her into custody at the courthouse and she went to the county jail. She stayed there just long enough to get transferred to the facility where she was all those years ago. They'll process her back out to make it official Approaching it as an extension of her juvenile case let the judge treat her like a juvenile and put the whole thing under her juvenile record. She's agreed to finish. making restitution and has to show the proof to a parole officer's in Kentucky. Once that's done her record is sealed. She could even legally apply to change her birth name to the one she's been using. She said she'd take out a loan and be done so she could move on with her life." Karita knew her voice went all mushy and soft, but she couldn't help it. " To get on with our life."

  Emily's voice was drenched with skepticism. "You'll get to have your life, the one you want, even though she's some hotshot businesswoman? I'm so afraid you're going to get lost in her life."

  Karita sighed happily as she parked near the exit gate. "On the fight here, do you know what we talked about? It was her idea, completely. I told her about the Peace Corps and she thought that if I got a credential, I'd be a lot happier teaching English-as-a-Second-Language courses to Vietnamese immigrants than I am working in a law office. She doesn't think that's flaky at all. I wouldn't make as much money, but I'd be happier and if the lack of money is ever a problem for her, for us, she promised to talk to me about it. She thinks that's a wonderful way for a person to spend her life." She swallowed hard.

  "Oh." Emily's tone softened slightly. "She may have a point there. So…she's not a karmically bankrupt yuppie? You're sure?"

  "The fundraising thing she's doing for you isn't a fluke, Em. She's a good person, in spite of being raised to be a bad one." She started to add that neither she nor Em had been tested the way CJ had, but she heard a doorbell ring in the background on Emily's end of the line. "Answer the door. I'll call you later."

  She snapped CJ's cell phone closed and dashed tears out of her eyes. CJ had held her hand on the plane, pale and worried. But she'd talked about Karita's future with a glow deep down in her dark eyes, and Karita had glimpsed the gold she'd seen during that first astonishing kiss. It was the color of CJ's soul, and she felt blessed to be the one who finally got to be warmed by it.

  "All the magic worked, Gran. It all worked. I wished, as hard as I could, and I tried to be brave when I had to be, and everything is going to be okay." She wasn't an elf, but she felt as if magic was all around her, and would continue to be, with CJ in her life.

  CJ stepped out into the sweltering, thick afternoon. The humidity threatened to choke her to a standstill but her heart was already over the nearest fence. After a grateful gulp of air that helped clear her head of the lingering smell of disinfectant, she walked across the yard toward a small guardhouse and a chainlink gate.

  Karita was looking at her through the gate, wiping away tears.

  She took a shuddering breath and addressed herself through more thick Plexiglass to the lone guard. "Rochambeau. I don't have any personal effects."

  The woman's dark face was impassive. She retrieved a card from a small printer behind her and pushed it through a thin slot. "Sign here."

  CJ did as she was told, then watched the guard sign directly under it, then ink over both their signatures with the date and time. She slapped it on a little copier, then gave CJ the result. "You are now released from the Fayette County Juvenile Detention Center." In a bored tone, she added, "Good luck in your new life."

  It didn't seem real. She turned her head to gaze at Karita through the gate and then, yes, it was real. She was free. "Thank you, but I don't think I need luck." She grinned. "I've got magic."

  The gate rolled open.

  She walked through it, head up. Good-bye Cassie June.

  Karita swept CJ into her arms, laughing and crying. "I want to take you home, right now, this afternoon. All we have to do is drive west until we see the Rockies."

  Karita was squeezing her so hard that she couldn't breathe. "It's at least a thousand miles, crazy woman. It'll take a whole day. Let's just get a fight. If we're lucky we can sleep in your bed tonight."

  "What a wonderful thought." Karita pulled her toward the rental car.

  "And if we can't get a fight we'll just hole up in an airport motel and pretend we're rabbits. Or marmots. Or llamas." She looked up at the blue-white sky. This is what it felt like to be free. It was like flying, on the inside, in waves of golden light.

  "No llamas. Spitting is not my thing."

  Laughing, she took Karita's face in her hands. This is what it felt like to be free and in love, she thought, and then she kissed that wonderful mouth, kissed the streaks of tears, kissed the nose, kissed everything. She was free in her soul, finally, and could give her heart completely, at last.

  "I like this," Karita said between smooches, "but I would like even more to get far away from here. Soon."

  "Can I drive? I want to leave here under my own control."

  Karita gave her the keys, tears again shimmering in her eyes.

  Once they were in the car, Karita turned up the air-conditioning. "I'm sure areas of Kentucky are lovely but I'll be happy not to visit this particular part of the state again."

  "I'm with you, absolutely." CJ pulled out onto the county road. The rental's air-conditioning was still struggling to cool the car. "I should have taken off my jacket."

  She squirmed to get her left shoulder free, awkwardly trading hands on the wheel.

  "I'll hold it," Karita said as she reached over to keep the steering wheel steady.

  CJ finished wiggling out of the suit jacket, aware that she had, without a second thought, put her life in Karita's care. It felt wonderful.

  "Thank you." Once she was settled, she clasped her hand to Karita's. They rounded a gentle curve in the road. Easy as that, Fayette disappeared from the rearview mirror. "I gave it some thought, and you can call me Cass if you want."

  "I like CJ." Karita drew CJ's hand to her lips. "I always have."

  CJ spread her fingertips against the warmth of Karita's mouth. She was going to spend the rest of her life, day in and day out, earning this woman's love. "I never thought I'd say this, but I like her, too."

  The End

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