Katori

My eyes bounced around the room from Eloise to Kaya - who were trying too hard not to burst into laughter- to JC, who slouched lower and lower in the chair. In a few more inches, he would be under the table.

"I seem to be the only person in the dark. What?"

"Well." Eloise leaned back in the kitchen chair and slurped a long, loud swallow of coffee. She was getting immense pleasure out of dragging this out. "Of course, I ran this guy through the system last night before I told Kaya to bring him here. No priors. Squeaky clean. Nothin' goin' on."

"That's a comfort," I replied. I stole a quick glance at JC but he didn't seem very bothered.

"But today, I was writing my report and uh... happened to type Joshua Chasez into the search bar on the computer and... well, take a look."

She flipped the laptop around so I could see the screen. I didn't know what I was looking at, at first. Or,  for that matter, what I was looking for.

Until my eye snagged on a photo of a much younger but familiar face on the right hand side of the page.

"What.... what is this?" I glared at JC now. "Why are you on the Internet?"

He sipped coffee, his blue eyed gaze sliding across the table at a slow, lazy pace. "Let's just say I'm an entertainer. A music artist, to be more exact. I write, I sing, I... have danced. Now I produce other artists. Check it out. I'm actually pretty proud." I detected the briefest wink before he lifted the coffee mug to his lips again.

"You said you called your manager last night. To order a new phone for you. Like... you have a manager and everything? You're... legit. "

Kaya, who was about to explode, rushed around the table to read over my shoulder. "Come on, Tori. I know you weren't into the whole pop thing but you have to remember him. Look..."

She pointed, then began reading aloud. "Joshua Scott "JC" Chasez is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, record producer, and occasional actor. He started out his career as a cast member on The Mickey Mouse Club-"

She paused, almost punching me in the shoulder. "You don't remember watching that show? Britney Spears was on it; Ryan Gosling was on it... Christina Aguilera was on it. That guy was on it!" She finished, pointing at JC.

I kept reading. "... before rising to stardom with N- Oh my God."

"Right?" Kaya squealed, then giggled. "This dude from *NSYNC slept on your couch last night! Isn't that wild?"

"I... I mean..." I looked at JC, trying to figure out how to react this... news. I had a pop...icon, I guessed, living in my house? "Is this... this is you, right?"

"It's me," he confirmed. "It's all me. Most of my life, my entire career, immortalized on the Internet. Forever."

"That's so creepy," I muttered.

"Isn't it, though? I'm used to it. Take a look. Really."

Kaya reached around me and clicked on the images tab. The screen filled with photos of JC from his youth to present day. "Look," she said, pointing at a kid who couldn't have been much older than Nasaan, in a dark turtleneck that highlighted his pale skin, fleshy lips and bright blue eyes. "Remember?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "I remember. Snappy Top 40 pop and sappy cheese toast love songs."

"Hey, I wrote like... half of those snappy and sappy cheese toast songs," said JC. "They made us a lot of money. Put us on the map."

I bet, Mr. Black AmEx. Mr. Money is not a problem. I bet.  

"You'll have to forgive Tori. She was emo, more into like... Tori Amos and Bjork and Sole'. Wouldn't be caught dead listening to-"

Kaya pressed a button and a song began to play, boisterous horns and loud drums set at a party scene at a truck stop. She bobbed her head and bounced on her toes in time to the beat next to me. I turned to glare at her.

"What? This is the fucking funniest thing to happen all year! Just wait until Nasaan finds out."

The kitchen door swung open right at that moment. "Finds out what?" he asked, dropping his bag, coat and boots at the door. "Hey, Aunt Eloise. If you get any calls, I wasn't throwing snowballs at Coach Snyder's SUV."

"Uh huh. Let's hope you weren't."

"Wait till I hear what?"  Nasaan repeated. "What're you looking at?"

"Uhm... well, JC is kind of... uhm. Hmmm." I turned to JC, amused. "How would you put it?"

JC perked, finally, sitting up. "Put it this way. You've heard of Justin Bieber, right?"

Nasaan nodded, then said, "Yeah. Lil' punk wanna be. What about him?"

"Uh... I was kind of, but not really, sort of an original Bieber back in the day. That is to say that Bieber wishes he was as talented as me and my group."

"Back in what day?" Nasaan shook his head, squinting his eyes. "You're old."  

At which JC burst into laughter.

"Nasaan!" I wanted to scold him, but I couldn't stop laughing. "I'm... sorry. He thinks anyone over twenty-three is old."

"So what are you looking at?" He asked, bending over me to peer closer at the laptop. "Oh... shiiiiit. What is...is that a leopard print jacket? Why? What's your hair doing in this picture? How long ago was this? Was I born yet?"

"Man, he's... really got a way of making you feel..."

I grinned. "Old?"

Nasaan shooed me out of my chair and took over the laptop. "So... you were like... a Backstreet Boy?" 

...

"You'll have to forgive Nasaan. He's never met a celebrity before."

JC lobbed a gracious smile in my direction. He gamely and politely answered all of Nasaan's questions about being a musician, being famous, being on the road and what you do with your life when people don't recognize you. "It's okay. We had a good talk. Did you know he's interested in playing guitar? I told him to get into those lessons. Can't get good if you don't practice."

I nodded. Nasaan was interested in a lot of things for about five minutes. His interest in bikes was the only one that had stuck so far. "So this... musician thing. You've always been one? Always wanted to be one?"

"Pretty much."

JC waited for me to kick my feet up and rest them on the coffee table before doing the same. We were both on our second drink of the night and were full of barbecue from Big Daddy Jack's, JC's treat. He had the good sense to use his Visa this time.

It was snowing again, lightly but Nasaan hoped it would pick up overnight so that he could work in the morning. After dinner, he took off toward the bowling alley for a night of acting stupid with his friends and trying to avoid Eloise or her deputies.

Kaya had agreed to meet some friends from work at a downtown karaoke bar. She'd tried to beg off but I made her go. "You can't dump your friends every time a former boy band member comes to stay at your house. I promise we won't have any fun without you."

"You'd better not," she said, pouting as she got out of the truck.

JC moved to the front seat and strapped the seatbelt across his chest. "Let's go have fun without Kaya."

"Took the words right out of my mouth."

After a brief stop at a liquor store a few blocks from the house, I stoked a fire and turned on the TV, then sank into the couch with an old fashioned bourbon cocktail. JC seemed to be taking it easy with a beer.

"By this point," he explained, "I've been a musician longer than I haven't. It's just... who I am. There's a lot I could do. I'm pretty handy with electronics. But like you said Nez Motors is where you belong?" He shrugged. "Same. I can't imagine doing anything else."

"It feels weird to think that in a couple of months I might have to go beg for a job at another shop. Or go work for the hospital. Or I could go outside of Cloudcroft. Drive an hour to and from work. Never see my son or my sister. That isn't the life I imagined. That's not why my grandparents, my father left all of this here for us. We were meant to live better than that."

"That's not a life you'd enjoy."

"And you know so much, pretty boy?"

"I know about being where you belong. I know about not being able to do what you really want to do, about having to do something else while you wait for that chance again. It sucks. It's miserable. I'd hate to see you..."  

His voice trailed off and his eyes dropped from the TV to the bottle he held in one hand, balanced on his thigh. "I don't know you," he continued, his voice quieter. Softer. "And I know I'm saying a lot for someone that doesn't know you but I watched you work today and... you belong at that shop. I'd hate to see you get stuck where you don't want to be. Because what if you can't get... unstuck?"

It's not often that someone hits upon a fear that strikes me to my core. The idea that I could be in a situation and not get out of it was terrifying. I'd always had a Plan B, an alternate route, a way out.  

But this... I was all out of alternate routes. And it scared me.

"The thing is that I have to think about more than myself, here. And I've got to do what I need to do, for Nasaan. At the very least I need to get him out of here. There's nothing in Cloudcroft for him."

"Is his father...interested in -"

"Sean?" A dry, ragged laugh ripped from my throat. "Let me tell you about my lying, cheating, philandering ex-husband. I met Sean in high school- his grandmother still lives on the other side of town. I ended up pregnant. I was seventeen, Sean had just graduated when I had Nasaan. We got married because... that's what you did, back then. At the time, my mother was sick, so we all lived here.

"Sean worked for a transportation company a few towns over. He left for Atlanta to start a new job with them. He was supposed to move us all there once he was settled. Six months, nine months, a year went by. He wasn't really keeping in touch or keeping me up to date on plans to relocate his family."

"I don't like where this is going," JC said, his voice a bit of a moan. The look I gave him probably told him I wasn't fond of the direction of this story, either.

"I felt like he was stringing us along, but he was never going to admit to it. I packed up Nasaan and we took a surprise trip to the east coast... where I found Sean shacked up with some woman. I guess he wasn't expecting to see his wife and son on his doorstep.

"I came home, filed for divorce. He signed the papers. I have honestly not seen him since. I packed up his shit and put it in the storage shed behind the house and that is where it has sat. He never even came back for his stuff. That's how little we mattered to him.

"So no. He isn't the least bit interested in his nearly adult son," I said, fuming. "He's interested in not living in Cloudcroft, in making money and fucking women that aren't his wife."

I pushed myself up from the couch and, drink in hand, headed to the kitchen. I was wearing a sweater and jeans and... sitting next to JC, I was overheated.  

I slipped on a pair of boots and walked out of the door, around the side of the house where the slab of concrete we call a patio was covered in inches of snow. The furniture had been covered with a series of tarps, all hidden under peaks of fallen and windblown snow. I ripped the tarp off of a stack of chairs and pulled one of the top, then planted the chair in the snow and my ass in the chair.

Talking about my ex always got me a little hot under the collar. Not only because of how he had duped us, but because of how long I let myself believe his lies; how many times I fell for syrupy words from a man I believed loved me.   

I sipped my drink and watched the flurries blow around in a light breeze until I heard the kitchen door open and then close.

"It's just me," JC said, his feet crunching through the path around the house.

"We are the only two home, JC. If course it's you."

"I didn't want to sneak up on you." He grabbed a chair and set up next to  me, burrowing his hands inside of his jacket, which he wore over the thermal and the hoodie. I was amused at his thin skin. "So we're doing a good job of not having any fun without Kaya."

"Yeah. Sorry about that. Sean makes me..." My hands clenched, my fingers forming fists. "... emotional."

"Sorry I had to pry into your business. I shouldn't have-"

"No, it's okay. Far too few people actually ask what happened to Nasaan's dad. Do me a favor and don't bring him up when Nasaan is in the room."

JC nodded, quickly agreeing. "One thing I'm learning is that nothing is what it seems with you. Your father's not dead, your ex-husband would be better off dead and you're only losing the shop because the building is being sold."

"You see? There's so much to a story."

"Yeah. It's like writing a song-"

"Oh my God. You're not going to draw parallels to being a celebrity, are you?"

"No. I was going to draw parallels to writing a song. How there's layers, how things might take a turn you don't expect. How there's a surface meaning and a deeper meaning and only a few people might understand that deeper meaning. You get me?"

"I do." I nodded, slowly. "I actually do."

The mood was really somber. And I felt bad, since it was my fault, so I tried to lighten things up.

"So... earlier I was looking through some pictures of you."

"Great," he said, dropping his head and dragging the word out in a groan. "And..."

"Those red leather pants..."

"Uh huh..."

I giggled. "... do you still own them?"

"Probably. Somewhere. Why?"

"Promise me that if you come across them in the future, that you will try them on and send me a picture."

He was already shaking his head and waving his hands around in protest. "I... I can't make that promise. I think burned them."

"You did not burn them. You were too hot in those pants to have burned them. You looked like you were having a good time in those pants."

"I mean... I'm not that thin anymore. They probably don't look as good now as they did back then. I did have a good time, though. A very good time. And I'll have you know that Lenny Kravitz- you know who he is, right?"

"Ye- yes! I know who he is."

"Well you didn't know who I was-"

"Oh, were your feelings hurt?"

"Anyway, I was told that he liked a couple of outfits I wore so... there you go."

"There I go, what? Lenny wore a silver romper with matching boots. He looked like a roll of aluminum foil." I tossed back the last swallow of my bourbon. "That proves nothing. There I go... nothing."

JC laughed, and then was quiet again. And then a violent shiver seemed to overtake his body.

"Tori."

"Hm," I muttered, tipping my head back so I could watch the snow fall.

"It's fucking freezing out here. Can we go in?"

"Is this desert winter air a bit chilly for you, pretty boy?"

I got up and watched JC stack both of our chairs, then cover the pile with the tarp I'd ripped off earlier. Arm in arm, we marched through the snow, back to the kitchen door.

"My delicate skin is offended by these temperatures, yeah. Also, you're drunk on liquor and I don't have that benefit."

I headed straight for the bottle of bourbon that I'd left on the counter and pulled a glass from the counter. After I poured a healthy sip, I handed him the glass.

"Get with the program. I want to be toasted when Kaya gets home. Let's make her nice and mad. Like, pissed off."

"Well, sure. Nurse Ratchet won't torture you."

JC laughed into the glass, which gave it a hollow sound. He drank it down, tipping his head back, then set the glass back on the counter. "That's uhmmm... strong."

"If you make a Native American holding her liquor joke, I really will make you sleep outside in the snow."

"I wasn't planning on it. What kind of pretty boy from LA do you think I am?" He tapped his glass on the counter twice. "Another, barkeep."

"Another?" I sighed but uncapped the bourbon and poured out a finger or two. "I don't babysit, you know. My days of sitting up all night making sure someone doesn't die of alcohol poisoning or choke on their own vomit are long gone."

"Of course. We'd leave all that for Kaya anyway. Pour up. I'm not drinking alone."

I obeyed, then capped the bottle and set it on the counter, then tipped my head toward the living room and settled us back on the couch. The show we'd been halfway watching had gone off. The fire had settled to glowing embers.

I angled myself toward him, one leg tucked underneath me and tipped my glass enough to let a swallow of the honey colored liquid hit my tongue.

"Thanks. For... outside." He bobbed his head forward and back in a deep nod. "I didn't mean to dump on you; I'm sorry. I never... I don't get a chance to really talk about things, you know? Anyway, you're not obligated to care. Or to even bring it up again-"

"Tori... it's okay." His free hand grabbed mine and squeezed. And then he let go and I suddenly felt so... alone. I wasn't. I knew that. I had Kaya and Nasaan and Eloise.

But in this tiny town in a vast desert there was no one that was just for me.