Tithe

Chapter 4

That Monday morning, Kaye woke up early, got dressed, and pretended to go to school.

She had been pretending for the better part of a week now, ever since her grandma had insisted she was going to march down to the school and find out what was taking them so long to enroll her. There was no way to tell her that the transcripts were never coming, so Kaye packed a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich and an orange and went out to kill time.

When they had first moved to Philadelphia, she had transferred easily to a new school. But then they'd started moving around, living for six months in University City and another four in South Philly and then a couple of weeks in the Museum District. Each time, she either had to find a way to get to her old school or transfer to the new school. About a year back, the confusion had gotten the better of her, and she'd started working full-time at Chow Fat's instead. They needed the money and, aside from that, they needed the free food.

Kaye kicked a flattened soda can down the street ahead of her. Even she could see that she was going in no good direction, and not just literally. Her grandmother was right about her—she was turning into her mother—no, worse, because she didn't even have an ambition. Her only talents were shoplifting and a couple of cigarette-lighting tricks you needed a Zippo to perform.

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 side-kick. 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.

He took another step, until his chest was against hers. "I want you," he said urgently. His knee moved between her legs.

"We're in a diner," Kaye said, grabbing him by the shoulders so that he had to look at her face. He was pale except for a touch of hectic pink in the cheeks. His eyes looked glazed.

"I want to stop wanting you," he said and moved to kiss her. Kaye turned her head so that he got a mouthful of hair, but it didn't seem to bother him. He kissed his way down her throat, biting the skin punishingly, licking the bites with his tongue. One of his hands ran up from her waist to cup her breast while the other threaded through her hair.

Her hands were still clenched on his shoulders as she wavered in indecision. She could shove him off. She should shove him off. But her traitorous body was urging her to wait a little longer, clasp him a little closer and see what might happen.

"Guys, I was… what the hell?"

Kenny pushed back from Kaye at the sound of Janet's voice. Several strands of long blond hair were still caught on his hand, shimmering like spiderwebs.

He drew himself up. "Don't give me more of your insecure girlfriend bullshit."

Janet had tears in her eyes. "You were kissing her!"

"Calm the fuck down!"

Kaye fled to the bathroom, locking herself in a stall and sliding into a sitting position on the dirty floor.

Her heart was beating so fast, she thought it might beat its way out of her chest. The space was too small for pacing, but she wanted to pace, wanted to do something that would work answers out of her tangled mind. Magic, if there was such a thing, should not work like this. She should not be able to enchant someone she barely knew without even deciding to do it.

The delight was the worst part, the part of her that could overlook the guilt and see the poetic justice in making Kenny unable to stop thinking about her freaky self. It would be easy to like him, she thought, cute and cool and wanting her. And unlike an unattainable faerie knight, he was someone she could really have.

Taking a deep breath, she left the stall. She went to the sinks and splashed her face with water from the tap. Looking up, she saw her own reflection in the mirror, faded red Chow Fat T-shirt spattered with dark droplets of water, eye makeup smudgy and indistinct, blond hair hanging in tangled strands.

Something caught her eye as she turned away, though. Approaching the mirror, she looked at her face again, closely. She looked the same as ever. Kaye shook her head and walked to the door. For a moment, she had thought that the face she saw in the mirror was green.

More coffees were on the table when she got back, and she sipped at the one in front of where she had been sitting. Her cigarette had burned down to ash in the glass tray. Doughboy was telling Kenny about the new car he was restoring, and Janet was glaring at Kaye.

"Your pardon, Kaye," said a voice that was both familiar and strange.

There was a moment when Kaye just froze. Her mind was screaming that this was impossible. It was against the rules. They never did this. It was one thing to believe in faeries; it was totally another thing if you weren't allowed to even have a choice about it. If they could just walk into your normal life, then they were a part of normal life, and she could no longer separate the two in her head.

But Roiben was indeed standing beside their booth. His hair was white as salt under the fluorescent lights and was pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing a long black wool coat that hid whatever he was wearing underneath all the way down to his thoroughly modern leather boots. There was so little color in his face that he seemed to be entirely monochromatic, a picture shot in black-and-white film.

"Who's the goth?" Kaye heard Doughboy say.

"Robin, I think his name is," Janet replied glumly.

Roiben raised an eyebrow when he heard that, but he went on. "May I speak with you a moment?"

She felt incapable of doing more than nodding her head. Getting up from the booth, she walked with him to an empty table. Neither one sat down.

"I came to give you this." Roiben reached into his coat and took out a lump of black cloth from some well-hidden pocket. And smiled, the same smile she remembered from the forest, the one that was just for her. "It's your shirt, back from the dead."

"Like you," she said.

He nodded slightly. "Indeed."

"My friends told me not to talk to you." She hadn't known she was going to say that till it came out of her mouth. The words felt like thorns falling from her tongue.

He looked down and took a breath. "Your friends? Not, I assume, those friends." His eyes flickered toward the booth, and she shook her head.

"Lutie and Spike," she said.

His eyes were dark when he looked at her again, and the smile was gone. "I killed a friend of theirs. Perhaps a friend of yours."

Around her, people were eating and laughing and talking, but those normal sounds felt as far away and out of place as a laugh track. "You killed Gristle."

He nodded.

She stared at him, as though things might somehow reshuffle to make sense. "How? Why? Why are you telling me this?"

Roiben didn't meet her gaze as he spoke. "Is there some excuse that I could give you that would make it better? Some explanation that you would find acceptable?"

"That's your answer? Don't you even care?"

"You have the shirt. I have done what I came here to do."

She grabbed his arm and moved around to face him. "You owe me three questions."

He stiffened, but his face remained blank. "Very well."

Anger surged up in her, a bitter helpless feeling. "Why did you kill Gristle?"

"My mistress bade me do so. I have little choice in my obedience." Roiben tucked his long fingers into the pockets of the coat. He spoke matter-of-factly, as though he was bored by his own answers.

"Right," Kaye said. "So if she told you to jump off a bridge…?"

"Exactly." There was no irony in his tone. "Shall I consider that your second question?"

Kaye stopped and took a breath, her face filling with heat. She was so angry that she was shaking.

"Why don't you…" she began, and stopped herself. She had to think. Anger was making her careless and stupid. She had one more question, and she was determined that she would use it to piss him off, if nothing else. She thought about the note she'd gotten in the acorn and the warning she'd been given. "What's your full name?"

He looked like he would choke on the air he breathed. "What?"

"That's my third question: What is your full name?" She didn't know what she had done, not really. She only knew that she was forcing him to do something he didn't want to do, and that suited her fine.

Roiben's eyes darkened with fury. "Rath Roiben Rye, much may the knowledge please you."

Her eyes narrowed. "It's a nice name."

"You are too clever by half. Too clever for your own good, I think."

"Kiss my ass, Rath Roiben Rye."

He grabbed her by the arm before she even saw him move. She raised her hand to ward off the coming blow. He threw her forward. She shrieked. Her hand and knee connected hard with the stone floor. She looked up, half expecting to see the gleam of a sword, but instead he pulled her jeans hard at the waistband and pressed his mouth against the exposed swell of her hip.

Time seemed to slow as she slipped on the slick floor, as he rose easily to his feet, as diner patrons stared, as Kenny struggled out from the booth.

Roiben stood over her. He spoke tonelessly. "That is the nature of servitude, Kaye. It is literal-minded and not at all clever. Be careful with your epithets."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Kenny said, finally there, bending down to help Kaye up.

"Ask her," Roiben said, indicating Kaye with his chin. "Now she knows exactly who I am." He turned and walked out of the diner.

Tears welled up in Kaye's eyes.

"Come on," Fatima was saying, although Kaye was barely paying attention. "Let's take her outside. Just us girls."

Fatima and Janet led her outside and sat down on the hood of one of the parked cars. Kaye dimly hoped it belonged to one of them as she sat down, wiping tears from her cheeks. Already she'd stopped crying; the tears were more from shock than anything else.

Fatima lit a cigarette and handed it to Kaye. She took a deep drag, but her throat felt thick and the smoke just made her cough.

"I had a boyfriend like that once. Used to beat the shit out of me." Fatima sat next to Kaye and patted her back.

"Maybe he saw you with Kenny," Janet said without looking at her. She was leaning against a headlight, staring out across the highway at the military base opposite the diner.

"I'm sorry," Kaye said miserably.

"Give her a break," Fatima said. "It's not like you didn't do the same thing to me."

Janet turned to look at Kaye then. "You're not going to get him, you know. He might want to fuck you, but he'd never go out with you."

Kaye just nodded, bringing the cigarette to her mouth with trembling hands. It would have been a better idea, she decided, if she had sworn off boys entirely.

"Is that Robin guy going to come after you?" Fatima asked. Kaye almost wanted to laugh at her concern. If he did, no one could do anything to stop him. He'd moved faster than Kaye could even see. She'd been very stupid not to be afraid of him.

"I don't think so," she said finally.

Kenny and Doughboy walked out of the diner, swaggering in tandem toward the girls.

"Everything okay?" Kenny asked.

"Just a couple of bruises," Kaye said. "No big deal."

"Damn," Doughboy said. "Between the other night and tonight, you're going to be too paranoid to hang out with us."

Kaye tried to smile, but she couldn't help wondering how double-edged those words were.

"Want me to drive you home?" Kenny asked.

Kaye looked up, about to thank him, when Fatima interrupted. "Why don't you take Janet home, and I'll drop off Dough and Kaye."

Kenny looked down at the scuffed tops of his Doc Martens and sighed. "Right."

Fatima drove Kaye home in relative silence, and she was grateful. The radio was on, and she just sat in the passenger seat and pretended to listen. When Fatima pulled up in front of Kaye's grandmother's house, she cut the lights.

"I don't know what happened with you and Kenny," Fatima began.

"Me neither," Kaye said with a short laugh.

The other girl smiled and bit one of her manicured nails. "Look, I don't know about Robin and you or anything, but if you are just looking for some way to piss off your boyfriend, don't do it. Janet really loves Kenny, y'know? She's devoted."

Kaye opened the door and got out of the car. "Thanks for the ride."

"No problem." Fatima flicked the car lights back on.

Kaye slammed the door of the blue Honda and went inside.

When Kaye walked into the kitchen, her mother was on the phone, sitting at the kitchen table with a spiral notebook in front of her. When she saw Kaye come in, she gestured toward the stove. There was a pot of cold spaghetti and sausages. Kaye took a fork and picked at some of the spaghetti.

"So you think you can get Charlotte?" her mother said into the phone as she doodled band names on the pad.

"All right, call me when you know. Absolutely. 'Bye, chickadee."

Ellen hung up the phone, and Kaye looked over at her expectantly.

Her mother smiled and took a sip from a mug on the table. "We're going to New York!"

Kaye just stared. "What?"

"Well, it's not totally definite, but Rhonda wants me to front her new all-girl group, Meow Factory, and she thinks she can get Charlotte Charlie. I said that if they can get her, I'm in. There are so many more clubs in New York."

"I don't want to move," Kaye said.

"We can crash with Rhonda until we can find another place to live. You'll love New York."

"I love it here."

"We can't impose on my mother forever," Ellen said. "Besides, she's a pain in your ass as much as mine."

"I applied for a job today. Grandma will be a lot happier once I'm bringing home money. You could join a band around here."

"Nothing's set in stone," Ellen said, "but I think you should really get used to the idea of New York, honey. If I'd wanted to stay in Jersey, I would have done it years ago."

A hundred matchbooks, from a hundred bars that her mother played one gig in, or from restaurants that they got a meal in, or from men that they lived with. A hundred match-books, all on fire.

She was on fire too, aflame in a way she was not sure she understood. Adrenaline turned her fingers to ice, drawing her heat inward to dance in her head, anger and a strange sense of possibility thrumming through her veins.

Kaye looked around her dark bedroom, lit only by the flickering orange light. The glassy eyes of the dolls danced with flames. The rats curled up on one another in the far corner of the cage. Kaye breathed in the sharp smell of sulfur as she struck another matchbook, watching the flame catch across the rows of white match heads, the cardboard covering exploding into fire. She turned the paper in her hands, watching it burn.