Paul’s career was on an upswing. Also saw that he’d stopped doting on Kit the way he used to.” Her lined brows lowered, and her mouth twisted with the memory. “We all saw it. But Layla hit on him, thinking that if it was a billy girl he wanted, any billy would do.”
“And Kit didn’t hit back?”
“You clearly don’t know our Kit.” Charis shook her head, but the smile on her face now was warm. “She’s never as curious about what people do as why they do it. It’s the questions that intrigue her, the mystery. So she sat Layla down, bought her a drink, and ‘interviewed’ her about her behavior. Learned that despite a marriage that left her wealthier than all of us put together, Layla believed she was never given a fair shake in life.”
“Who has?”
“Said she had to work for everything she’s got.” Charis huffed, too.
“Who hasn’t?”
“And said she had to raise herself to be street-smart. Told Kit she has a ‘back-door’ education.”
“What’s that?” Grif asked, sipping.
“My guess? Something her first boyfriend talked her into.”
Grif choked.
Charis waited until he settled again, and continued with a smile. “Anyway, long story short, Paul didn’t want a billy, and he didn’t want Layla… but he also didn’t want Kit anymore, either.”
“So what, he just walked out on her?” Grif squinted at Charis’s responding nod, then glanced again at the former couple. “And she can just give him a hug? Chat like nothing happened?”
“That’s Kit,” Charis said. “She tries to see the best in people, even when they don’t deserve it.”
“Are you hinting at something, Charis?”
Charis leaned forward to check on her baby. The child’s eyes were drooping despite the decibels ricocheting in the air. She sat back. “It’s not a hint.
Grif frowned. “I don’t mess with people.”
“Don’t mess with this, either,” she said, waving around at the room, the people in it. “You were asking us earlier why we live the rockabilly lifestyle, but it’s not that hard to understand. Living nostalgically is just one more way to pretend that death isn’t going to happen to us. Don’t you see? Instead of deferring it with technology, or defying it with babies,” she nodded down at her child with a half-smile, “we celebrate the past, keep it alive by reliving the best of it.
“But staying alive,
“You’re not guaranteed a future,” Grif pointed out.
“The way Nic died proves that.” She looked at her baby and frowned, as if trying to read the future across the child’s soft, unlined brow. “You want to know the most horrifying thing about it? Her death wasn’t indicative at all of the way she lived. That violence just doesn’t fit with… all this.”
Grif knew what she meant. You expected violence to touch only those who dealt in it. But when it claimed people like his Evie? Like Nicole and Kit? It meant that even if you sucked the marrow from life, your future could be snuffed out at someone else’s whim.
“Kit lost the people closest to her at a young age, so she surrounds herself with things that make her feel alive, and yeah, that includes the past. You do, too.”
Grif shook his head. “I don’t got much left from my past.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant you also make her feel alive. I can see it.”
“Oh.” Grif shifted in his seat, face burning at her words. He looked at Kit, again wished her nearer, then cleared his throat. “So what about you? How do you cope with a cloudy future?”
“I’m Mexican. Same as Fleur and Lil over there. So we were raised Catholic.” She pointed to herself. “Under the iron fists of Sister Mary Francis of the Immaculate Conception School. So whatever I do, I do it with unwavering discipline and relentless guilt.”
Grif smiled, and clinked his tumbler against her sad-looking water glass. “I’m a product of St. Paul’s myself.”
Charis sipped, smiling back. “When I was little, I even aspired to become a patron saint. I could recite the Mass verbatim, and Hail Mary myself into a coma. And I saw God everywhere.”
Grif narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
She nodded and leaned close. “We were actually pen pals. I’d write Him letters in Latin and leave them in my closet.”
“Why the closet?”
She shrugged. “Because He didn’t appear after I set my front yard’s bushes on fire, so I decided He was shy.”
Grif laughed so deeply it stretched his lungs. He realized that despite his recently removed celestial state, this was the most overtly religious conversation he’d had in a long time. Charis shrugged, and resumed rocking her baby one-handed, the other hand draped over her belly.
“Wanna hear a secret?” Charis lowered her voice and leaned close. “A few weeks ago I was dying of hunger. I mean, this little bean inside of me was taking all my energy and nutrients for itself, and I was feeling so hollow I thought I could eat my young.”
“Ironic.”
“I know, right?” Her eyes flared wide. “Anyway, I was eating a bag of Cheetos, the whole damned thing, mind you, and I saw a Cheeto that, I shit you not, looked exactly like Jesus Christ.”
Grif stared at her.
“With his head bowed in prayer.” She shrugged when Grif just kept staring. “But smaller. And cheesier.” She frowned. “And a snack food.”
Grif signaled for another drink.
“Anyway, the point is, I couldn’t eat it.” Charis shook her head like it surprised her. “I just couldn’t bite Jesus’s head off, you know?”
He frowned. “So what’d you do with the Cheeto?”
“Oh, I put it up on eBay. Someone might buy it as a relic.” She rocked her baby with a dismissive shrug before stilling suddenly, mistaking his silence for disapproval. “Hey, I’m not crazy, okay? If I don’t at least get enough to pay for shipping, I’m just going to feed it to my kid. She’ll eat anything.”
They both looked down at the Savior-eating child. She was smacking her lips on air as she pacified herself to sleep.
“Hey, can you stay with her for just a second? I really have to… you know.” She widened her eyes as she stood.
Grif jerked back. “Oh, I don’t know. Me and kids-”
“I’ll be just a sec, I swear.” And she waddled off before he could reply.
Grif realized his head was beginning to pound again. He rubbed the base of his neck, thinking he’d just ignore the little thing. She was sleeping easy, anyway. Why rock a steady boat?
“Cheers,” he whispered to the dozing child, before returning to his distant vigil over a woman celebrating the life of someone who was already dead.
Charis took her damn time.
Sipping some more rum, Grif stole another glance at her slumbering child. She looked vulnerable lying there, chubby-limbed, with mere tufts of golden hair giving the aspect of a plucked bird. Yet somehow all the promise of the human race was wrapped up in those fat, milky cheeks, and pretty bow mouth.
Glancing at Kit, back at the bar and hugging Lil, Grif thought of what Charis said about the way Kit surrounded herself with the things that made her feel alive. He could see that. She was trying to recapture a time when things seemed simpler, more stable. He wished there was a way to tell her that even in the fifties nothing was really what it seemed.
The thought sharpened in his mind to the point of discomfort. Instinctively he dropped his head, but the pain struck full-out then, stabbing his skull and severing his thoughts. The left side of his face tingled, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Biting back a cry, he clenched his head, arm brushing against the rocking car seat. The sleeping baby startled.
