Because I Said So

by Karin Kallmaker

  She knew she would face setbacks, but she felt capable of managing them. Her anxiety level was falling. The next rent payment was already in the bank, though she had a lot of work ahead of her to make all the commission deadlines. If these trends stayed true she could look for a handwork helper at the beginning of next month instead of waiting until August or September.

  While she was in her workshop she felt like a train running on tracks she’d laid herself, clickety-clacking resolutely toward her goals. If only life with Josie could be so simple. She had hardly spoken to Kesa since that ugly spat in front of Paz.

  She would not think about Shannon, she told herself, and just like that, she was thinking about Shannon. She couldn’t shake the image of Shannon’s eyes wide with disbelief, hurt even, when Kesa had said, “We’re not anything.”

  Well, maybe if Shannon hadn’t ghosted her four years ago Kesa wouldn’t have been quite so final. So they’d gone right back to bed the moment their paths had crossed again. It was nothing more than a carnal itch. Indignation and regrets ping-ponged across her brain until she pricked her finger and made herself concentrate on the work in her hands.

  Seam fixed and rebasted, she made a little clatter at the sink which startled the client awake.

  Aisha covered a yawn with her hand. “I feel like a million bucks. What do you put in that tea?”

  “Trade secret,” Kesa teased.

  They worked together to get Aisha back into the gown. The slightly adjusted seam on the left evened out the client’s minor irregularity in an otherwise rock-hard booty, making for perfect balance.

  “Oh yes,” Aisha said. She checked her silhouette in each mirror, her smile broadening. “My husband will love it. This is going to kick some ass. There’s supposed to be a media crew covering the event and I’m sure I’ll get some camera time.”

  Kesa could tell Aisha was genuinely pleased. As a first time around, it had gone well, and Aisha was likely to be back. “You were absolutely right about the color. The persimmon wouldn’t have popped like this copper does against your skin. It’s bringing out all the gold undertones. You’re like a summer sunrise.”

  Aisha waved a hand at her, the braids twisted around her head. “I’m seriously thinking about going all natural with my hair. Let it be big and bold, like this dress. What do you think?”

  They discussed hairstyle alternatives, though Kesa knew Aisha would take her stylist’s advice far more seriously. Wives of professional athletes were on camera all the time and had a beauty team assembled. “One thing you might consider is giving your manicurist and makeup people a heads-up about the dress color. Let me give you a swatch of the silk so you can start them getting matches. Or have them call me and I’ll send one in the mail.”

  Aisha left all smiles with a couple swatches of fabric and several business cards. Her name in front of the kind of stylist Aisha was likely to have wouldn’t hurt. Kesa cleared up the detritus from the fitting and laid out the garment ready for final sewing tomorrow, and she checked messages on her phone. The first she deleted upon hearing “I’m calling from the IRS about updating your bank account for a direct deposit of taxes we owe you.” She was no fool. The second was from Scam Likely and she deleted it without listening. She didn’t expect more from the third.

  “Hi, Kesa, it’s Melanie, Jennifer’s PA. She’s got this New York art opening in three weeks and needs cocktail length that says both modern art and nods a little toward her Fifties detective role. The studio is paying, and it’s kind of a rush, so you’ve got three times the usual budget to work with. She thought the studio designer was too arty. She turned into the background canvas, know what I mean? And not nearly enough smolder. You get her classy, sexy vibe. Send over some sketches, okay? She can do fittings ten to twelve days from now. I know it’s last minute, but we’d be okay with you promoting the final on social media too. Otherwise standard NDA.”

  Hands shaking, she listened to the message again. And squeed. Loudly. Then replayed the message a third time as she danced to the other side of the room and back.

  Yes, she did understand how to make the woman inside the outfit the star of the show while the outfit still made everyone go “Oooh.” It was terrifyingly exciting, custom creating a high-profile gown for someone like Lamont. Getting to tag it and show it off on Pinterest and Instagram? Priceless!

  It was such good news. She wanted to tell someone. Shannon flitted across her mind. No, absolutely not. A celebratory drink or two and where would they end up? She pushed away the many suggestive images her memory called up.

  No.

  She’d share the news at Mahjong tomorrow. Bring along an extra treat to celebrate, even. Maybe Josie could be happy for her, in spite of their current cold war.

  She stopped dancing as she considered the issue of sketches. She could do them, but the results wouldn’t make her happy. In the past, for really important contracts, she’d asked Josie to touch them up. Maybe if she brought home a tasty dinner Josie might warm up enough to help her out. Heck, with this kind of money involved, she could pay Josie nicely for her time. It might ease the hard chill between them too.

  Meanwhile, there was no time for celebrating today, she told herself. A client with a final fitting, and hopefully final payment, was due in twenty minutes, and she could get a lot done before then.

  She settled in to work and promptly pricked her finger. The sharp stab reminded her too much of the impasse with Josie. Having a paying gig for her would give them a reason to talk. She didn’t know what Paz and Josie were intending to do, or if they were continuing to discuss cohabitating with Shannon. There hadn’t been any mention of the plan they’d said they would work on.

  She was afraid to ask. It might further destabilize their rocky relationship. Josie could simply defy her outright, knowing that if she did that there was nothing Kesa could or would do about it. How did parents ever wield power when they no longer had any? There was nothing she could withhold or give more of that Josie valued.

  Every time she worried about Josie the thought of Shannon was there. The warmth of her touch. The manic way she stirred her coffee. Her voice, low and soft against Kesa’s ear. Shannon’s hands clenched in her pockets as Kesa told her that their past was irrational and to send future information through email. Kesa knew she’d been rude. It had felt necessary to be final about “them.”

  Repeating the past was unacceptable. Her heart couldn’t take it.

  A second happy client sent on her way with a bank transfer payment already in Kesa’s account was the frosting on a nearly perfect afternoon. Kesa ended the day by marking and cutting a Little Black Dress for a new client out of a cheap synthetic to practice the tricky structure of the bodice. She wasn’t going to waste silk on an experiment.

  As the silver of her scissors flashed against the black she found herself reflecting on what Shannon had said last week and she had so brutally dismissed—that they’d have to get used to seeing each other. Paz and Josie dating brought them into each other’s orbits. Just because Kesa had taped up old wounds and spread salve over newly bruised feelings didn’t mean anything was healing. Every time she saw Shannon the hurts would throb.

  What could she do about it? Was desensitizing the answer? If so, she’d have to see Shannon again. And again. And somehow it would get easier. Wouldn’t it?

  Her head was full of questions when she finally switched off the workshop lights and locked the door. After stopping for the luxury of takeout dim sum, she headed for home. Dim sum was Josie’s favorite, and she’d gotten bean paste and barbecued pork baos because Josie liked both. She could make peace with Josie. So maybe it wasn’t so bizarre to think she could find some sort of peace with Shannon.

  Her stomach growled as the car filled with the tantalizing, warm blend of ginger and garlic. At a long stoplight she had to actively resist the urge to pry open the container of har gow and pop one of the melting-good shrimp dumplings into her mouth. She turned up the radio as if it would drown o
ut the smell and sang along with Janet Jackson because she did feel so g-g-g-good.

  Why, then, did her happy heart make her think about Shannon? She had to keep it hardened, she warned herself. She had to get to a place she could tolerate, where meeting up with Shannon would be uneventful.

  She ignored the gut reaction to that idea. Uneventful? When the sight of her hurt expression had made Kesa want to pull her close and say she didn’t mean it?

  They needed ground rules. No angling to be alone. No long looks full of memories. Maybe a drink and snacks at a prosaic chain restaurant, nothing charming or memorable that she would think about afterward, the way she did The Grog and Game. If those were the rules, she could invite Shannon out for a casual dinner.

  That was probably what Shannon had meant all along. It was her own lustful heart that had decided Shannon meant something else. They could have a future that didn’t include the past, couldn’t they?

  The savory, umami aroma of sui mai was calming. She inhaled it all the way up in the elevator. She was happy to see Paz and thanked him as he took one of the bags of takeout and closed the apartment door behind her. “Hungry? If I make rice there’s plenty for three.”

  His handsome face was a comic mixture of I-should-politely-refuse and I’m-starving emotions. “Uh—”

  “Tell him to stay,” she said to Josie as she eased her purse and the other bag of takeout onto the kitchen table where they had both spread out textbooks. They had taken the time to open the curtains now that dress forms and tall bolts of fabric no longer blocked access to them. Josie’s watercolors helped brighten the dingy walls. Spring sunshine poured across the table, giving the worn pine highlights of gold. It almost, very nearly, felt like a home where they lived and not a cave where they got by.

  Josie prodded the bag closest to her with a pencil. “Is there bao?”

  “Of course. Pork and some bean paste too. I know you like both.” Kesa wasn’t forgetting that Josie was the one who’d gone off the deep end in that fight, but just because it hadn’t been her fault didn’t mean Kesa couldn’t start mending the breach in the hopes that Josie would make the effort too.

  Paz’s eyes were very large and puppy-like as one hand inched toward the bag nearest him. “I will happily eat any that you don’t want.”

  Josie slapped his hand away. “Nuh-uh. I love you, but I love bao too.”

  He tried to look wounded but failed. “Okay, I know where I stand now.”

  Kesa actively kept herself from asking about Shannon. She quickly measured rice and water into the rice cooker and tossed in some salt and a cube of frozen ginger. “I’m having a good week so far. Tell me about yours.”

  “I got a ninety-three on my last Infinite Series quiz,” Josie volunteered.

  Paz offered, “I think my interview for a summer internship at Boeing went well. I’m hoping to hear any day.” A light shadow of worry crossed his face. “I’d be able to pay off the last I owe Shannon for my car and still have a bunch left if I get it. For…other expenses.”

  “Anything new and exciting in the world of the US Marshals?” Kesa hoped her voice sounded casual.

  “Not that she could tell me,” Paz said. “Well, she did get a job offer out of the blue. Some private company in Seattle. They have a headhunter meeting with her.” He rubbed the tips of his fingers against his thumb in the universal money gesture. “Muy dinero.”

  Paz’s voice was lost behind a roar in Kesa’s ears. She gathered plates, checked the timer on the rice, wiped the counter, got out the soy sauce, all the while smiling and nodding as if she could hear what he and Josie were saying. Shannon was free to move away, of course. As she’d said, they weren’t anything to each other now. Shannon really meant nothing to her, but her brain was screaming the truth at her heart: You’ve lost her. You’ve lost her forever.

  Josie and Paz went back to their studies and Kesa pretended to focus on her phone and calendar book. Why did she feel as if she’d lost Shannon? She’d never had Shannon to begin with, not then and not now.

  The feeling of loss turned the delicious dinner into lead in her stomach. She’d served up her heart in a giddy schoolgirl, totally lesbian U-Haul move, saying “I love you” after two nights together. Shannon had had every reason to run for the hills, Kesa told herself. For all that she felt finally in charge of her life, and about to rise above the years of struggle to keep it together, was she still a stupid little fool about Shannon? Was she still that dumb?

  The question was easy to answer and she didn’t like the answer one bit. And then kicked herself because Josie and Paz finished up their work and took off for a rally before Kesa remembered to ask Josie about the sketches.

  One mention of Shannon and all her other priorities go out the door? No, she swore to herself. This wasn’t happening and wasn’t going to happen. She hadn’t fought her way to financial stability and peace of mind only to be upended by her foolish heart all over again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I am dog tired. Shannon wondered idly where that expression came from as she slogged home from the bus. An eyestrain headache had been following her for most of the week and she felt as if her bones were screaming, “Oil can!” with every step. She had spent far too many hours at her desk without moving.

  She ought to do some yoga. Stretch out some kinks.

  All she really wanted to do was cover her eyes with a cold cloth and stay prone. Her brain was numb from the workload she herself had chosen to increase. Frustrating, too, was that her advice to elevate the capture of fugitive Seychelles hadn’t born any fruit. There had been no more sightings. The path felt cold now.

  The only break in the long days of poring over briefings had been lunch with the headhunter from Integrity Investigations. It hadn’t been so much a job interview as a sounding out. How did she feel about the private sector? What was her personal philosophy of justice? What had been some of her more tense cases, to the extent that she could discuss them?

  Shannon hadn’t felt so much put on the spot as mostly unpracticed at answering such probing, thoughtful questions about her chosen field of work. When they’d parted the headhunter had simply said, “You’ll be hearing from us,” and expressed his thanks for a pleasant hour.

  It had been pleasant—and unnerving. She went back to work feeling disloyal and unsettled. The feeling had gone away as she refreshed her reading queue. She sifted through the endless details of surveillance from multiple agencies, always looking for the data points relevant to her portfolio of fugitives. The Marshals Service would someday catch every last one of them, she told herself.

  There were so many words on the screen and so little time. She really, really wanted a nap and a cold compress on her eyes. Her back was telling her all about making too many promises to exercise and not keeping any of them. The bus ride home sent her headache into jackhammer status.

  Paz and Josie were enjoying the sunshine in the backyard, their ubiquitous textbooks spread out on the picnic table. Rocks kept handy for the purpose were holding down papers in the light breeze. She thought about joining them after she changed her clothes, but the dappled sunlight would probably make her eyes water.

  They had changed positions when Shannon padded back to the kitchen in her comfy sweats. Josie was snuggled on Paz’s lap, her face buried in his hair.

  “I know, Jo-Jo, but it’s not what we said we’d do.”

  Shannon was about to call out a hello when Josie’s answer rooted her to the spot.

  “We can go to Vegas and be done. Kesa is never going to give us her permission and we don’t need it anyway. No more stress or arguments.”

  Holy beeswax! Were they thinking of eloping? She ducked out of sight behind the curtains, even as she told herself that eavesdropping was wrong.

  “She was really cheerful last night.” Paz laughed a little, adding, “She brought you your favorite bao, after all. And you said she wants to pay you to do sketches.”

  “It’s a bribe. Anything to keep
me dependent.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Paz sighed. “You realize that your sister could have dumped you into foster care, right?”

  “I know.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “Well, it wasn’t because she loves me. I became work she had to do.”

  “Hey,” he said softly. “You don’t really believe that.”

  There was a loud snuffle, and Josie muttered, “I don’t. It’s so hard sometimes. I feel like she never sees me.”

  “Maybe,” he said, just as quietly, “you’re mad because you owe her, like, a lot. And you may never be able to repay her.”

  There was a long silence and then Josie’s voice was muffled as if Paz were holding her close. “I never thought of that.”

  “It’s complicated, cariña Jo-Jo. You and me, we owe people or we wouldn’t be here. We would have never met.”

  “I don’t want to pay the price Kesa wants, which is to be like her. We’re different people.”

  “I don’t know her like you do. But all I’ve heard her say is that she wants you to have a wide open future.”

  “You’re right, you don’t know her like I do.” A shift in volume suggested that Josie had moved back to her chair. “I want to get married, Paz. Waiting for permission we don’t need will take too long.”

  “I don’t want Shannon to worry.”

  “You’re an adult. So am I.”

  “Sí, but I don’t want to make a family by breaking our families. We lose, they lose.”

  Head spinning and heart aching, Shannon had to make herself duck into the living room where she could no longer hear them. She thought about her aunt, who had taken in an infant because blood looked after blood but who had had no love or warmth to spare. It wasn’t blood that had drawn her to Paz or made him accept her overtures of friendship at face value. She’d always felt like the lucky one. He had enriched her life, and that had begun before the horrible night he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was the brother she’d have loved to have had growing up. They were family.