Something True

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “Now that I know your name,” Tate ventured, not sure if she should even reference the night they had spent together, “can I ask about the stuff on your tax return? Where are you from? How did you become a commercial real estate developer?”

  Laura sipped her port and surveyed the garden.

  “I live in Alabama,” Laura said, then paused. “No, that’s not right. My name is on a four-bedroom house in Alabama and on a Prius that I never drive because I’m never home. I’ve worked for the Clark-Vester Group for four years. My father would like me to work for him, but I can’t do it.”

  “What does your father do?”

  Laura hesitated. “He’s in policy making.”

  “And you are the boss of Craig and Dayton?” Tate asked.

  “And I am the boss of Craig and Dayton, which they both hate. Craig because he’s older than me and thinks he knows more than me, which he probably does.”

  “And Dayton?”

  “He hates me because he’s younger than me and doesn’t understand why he doesn’t have my job yet.”

  Laura had a clipped, matter-of-fact way of speaking and everything she said seemed to be tinged with a bit of wry humor. Look what I’ve gotten myself into, she seemed to be saying.

  Somewhere, someone plugged in an extension cord and a string of white lights sparkled from the hedge surrounding the garden. A band had arrived and was setting up their equipment. The guitarist struck a single chord.

  “They’re going to be loud,” Tate said. “Would you like to take a walk?”

  They walked on Southeast Belmont Street for a few blocks, then Tate gestured toward a side street lined with mossy bungalows.

  “What about you?” Laura asked. “How long did you say you’ve worked at Out in Portland?”

  “Nine years.”

  “Nine years! I don’t know anyone who has worked anywhere for nine years.”

  Laura was right. It was too long.

  “What about your parents? What do they do?” Laura asked.

  “My stepfather sold insurance,” Tate said.

  Around them, the street was quiet and dark, like a Thomas Kinkade painting that had gone to sleep for the night.

  “Nine years,” Laura said again. “That’s a long time.”

  “I get to work with my friends. The hours are good. I can sleep in or garden in the mornings, close the shop at night, and still get to the Mirage.” Tate’s hand brushed against Laura’s. “I don’t go to bed at night and worry about work. Not until recently.”

  “I’m just doing my job,” Laura spat out. Then she said, “I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t say things like that. That’s not an excuse. Just because it’s your job doesn’t mean it’s right. But I believe in the Clark-Vester Group. I really do. At least, I’ve been impressed with their developments…”

  Tate touched Laura’s wrist. She thought she could feel Laura’s pulse.

  “Shh,” Tate whispered. “It’s okay.”

  Then she leaned forward and kissed Laura.

  Down the block, a motion-sensitive streetlight turned off. The moonlight grew bluer and brighter. From somewhere far away, a saxophone played. Then Laura’s hands were on Tate’s neck and running through her cropped hair. And she was pulling Laura’s hips to hers. Their lips pressed together in a hard, deep kiss that Tate felt all the way through her body. Her very bones longed for Laura’s weight on top of her. Laura sighed and clung to her. And Tate felt each star in the sky spin on its axis.

  Then a car turned down the lane. The streetlight flicked on.

  “Whoo-hoo! You go, girls!” someone in the car yelled.

  Laura stepped back.

  “I have to go. I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” she said.

  “Yes you can.” Tate caught her hand. Her body ached for Laura’s touch. Between her legs she felt a wet heat, so much more intense than the tedious longing of the months before, sharper than any frustration she had ever felt with Abigail. As she gazed at Laura, she was certain Laura felt the same desire.

  “No. I can’t.” Laura pulled away reluctantly. “I misled you. I’m just sorry. Please don’t. Don’t try. Don’t ask me again.” She stared at Tate as if she expected Tate to pounce on her.

  “Did I do something?” Tate asked.

  “No. Yes. You’re…wonderful, but I can’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Laura’s voice trembled, but her stance was certain.

  Tate clasped the diamond that she had worn beneath her T-shirt and pulled on the delicate chain. It resisted for a second, then broke without a sound.

  “You better take this.” She held the jewel out to Laura. “My friend says it’s a real diamond.”

  “It is.”

  “She said if it didn’t work out, I should hock it. But I think you should probably just take it back.”

  “I like your friend,” Laura said, sadly. There was that wry smile again. “She’s probably right. You should hock it. But I’d like you to keep it.” Suddenly Laura was right in front of her, her hands clasping Tate’s arms, her face tilted toward Tate. “Because you’re right. I do want to. I want you. And that night that I spent with you, that was wonderful in a way that nothing in my life is wonderful. And I want to think that a little piece of something I owned, I touched, stayed with you, like I could leave a little tiny piece of myself in that night forever.”

  She looked at Tate’s lips as though she was going to kiss her again, then backed up quickly.

  “So come home with me tonight,” Tate said with a smile.

  “No.” This time Laura’s voice was fierce, her face set. “I can’t do that and be the person I am and do the things I need to do.”

  “Is this about your job?”

  “It’s about everything,” Laura said.

  Tate sighed, gazing beyond Laura down the lane of quiet houses to the faint glow of sunset at the end of the road.

  “I don’t know who you are. Or what you do. Not really,” Tate said. “But here in Portland, if something is fun and good we do it twice. We do it a hundred times. We make a festival out of it and sell beer and T-shirts. We don’t worry about rules or trajectories or balance sheets.”

  “And that’s why you’ve been working at a coffee shop for nine years, a coffee shop that is so far in the red it’s amazing they haven’t repossessed the sugar cubes.” The words flew out of Laura’s mouth. “And you want to show me what’s great about Portland, so you show me some old guys who sit around smoking all day. And they have done what? Achieved enlightenment? Found their inner chi? That’s not a life. This is not a life.”

  Her gesture seemed to encompass the whole street, which was unfair since the houses in that neighborhood went for half a million at least. Their occupants might not be spiritually fulfilled, but they were certainly high achievers.

  “Working at a coffee shop in your thirties isn’t a life. It’s a mistake.” Laura said it so matter-of-factly that neither of them registered the comment for a second. Then Laura covered her mouth. “Oh, Tate, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  Tate stepped back. She felt her throat tighten and she looked away before Laura could see into her eyes.

  “Yes, you do,” she said.

  It was clear what Laura thought, even if she didn’t want to think it.

  “I just meant it wouldn’t be the right choice for me,” Laura said. “Don’t you see, I can’t be part of this city, this life, your life. None of this is possible for me.”

  Tate held out the diamond again, but Laura kept her hands at her sides.

  “Fine.” Tate opened her hand and let the stone fall to the sidewalk.

  She could already hear Vita’s protest: Do you know what that thing is worth?!

  “Good night, Laura.” Tate turned her back on Laura. Over her shoulder she added, “I presume you can find your way back to your car.”

  “How will you get home?” Laura called after her.

  “It’s Portland,” Ta
te said, striding into the fading twilight. “I am home.”

  Chapter 7

  Laura picked up the diamond and clutched it in her hand. Then she hurried away. She had almost reached the street where her car was parked when she heard footsteps behind her. They weren’t pounding, but they were hurrying. She could hear her sister’s voice in the back of her mind.

  “You don’t know what those people are like.”

  They had been sitting at the mahogany dinner table—the “think tank,” as her father called it—the first time Natalie had made that pronouncement.

  “Do you think it’s a culture?” their brother had asked.

  “It’s biological,” Natalie had asserted.

  “Strategy!” their father had declared. “It doesn’t matter what they are. It’s what the voters think that matters.”

  Now, Laura prepared her strategy, as she quickened her step. When she reached the safety of the main road, she would turn. I said no. She practiced her speech, silently mouthing the words. I’m sorry that’s not the answer you want to hear, but I think we can both agree that you need to respect it.

  The steps grew nearer. She could hear the breath, fast and deep. She stepped into the artificial light of the main road and spun around, Tate’s name on her lips.

  But it was a jogger: a young, overweight man, his hair held back by an orange headband. He nodded to her as he passed. Tate was nowhere in sight. And Laura realized it was hope, more than fear, that had quickened her pulse. She had hoped that Tate would follow her. Wasn’t that what Natalie implied when she talked about “those people”? They were ruthless seducers, relentless in pursuit of their prey. Wasn’t that what her sister’s words had…promised?

  Tate had no intention of chasing her down, Laura realized. Laura had said no, and Tate had walked home.

  Laura tried to maintain some righteous indignation as she drove back to the hotel. Spare books and hookahs and port and wet Persian rugs; it was all ludicrous. Who carpeted an outdoor garden with area rugs? And what was she supposed to learn from the evening, if she did enjoy drinking mildly anesthetic water with twigs in it? Was she supposed to emulate Tate Grafton? Burn up her 401(k) and serve coffee all day? Did Tate even know who paid for the unemployment benefits she would get when Out in Portland went under?

  “Taxpayers,” Laura said out loud. “Like me.” She jerked the car from one lane to another. “That’s who’ll pay. That’s who always pays.”

  She headed toward the artery that led to downtown Portland and then made a sharp merge onto the freeway. A purple VW bus veered away like a startled hippo. She slammed the heel of her hand into the center of the steering wheel to honk but hit the steering wheel radio controls instead. The radio blared to life.

  “Into the cataclysm with your pig’s head on, just one more raver in the storm, singing, give me a cigarette and a streetlight love. Give me a cigarette and a hard, fast glove.” The DJ cut in. “And that’s a song we can all relate to, another tune we love here at 94.7. That one just doesn’t get old, does it?”

  “Portland!” Laura cursed. It was as close to the end of the world as she had ever gone, a mossy promontory at the edge of commerce. A nut fringe. A green space on the political map of Oregon, always throwing off the electoral vote with its half-million Teva-wearing, chai-drinking, urban subsistence-farming baristas, all celebrating the simple life while listening to opaque music.

  “This is not the real world,” she complained to the highway. “You can’t just spend your life doing what you want because it’s fun.”

  And with that thought, her anger began, inexorably, to shift. She tried to hold it on Tate, press it to Tate’s face, but it wouldn’t stick. A quiet life, surrounded by friends—that was the life Tate had described. Laura did not dare form the thought: That was the life Tate offered.

  By the time she slammed her car into park in the basement beneath her hotel, she was just as angry, but it had all turned inward. She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel, remembering Tate’s warm, strong hand on her wrist. She had looked up at Tate then. The moonlight had caught a slight roughness in Tate’s cheeks, but the imperfection just made her more handsome. Weathered, that was the word people would use if she were a man. And it would be a compliment. Tate had been in the world. She had worked and gardened and rode her motorcycle and gotten her hands dirty and her heart scuffed. Laura had seen that in her face. Tate’s eyes said she was not afraid of heartbreak; she expected it. She was walking knowingly into it, sad and open-eyed.

  “And you dished it up,” Laura muttered to herself.

  She felt the same punched-in-the-gut feeling she had felt the morning she draped her diamond necklace across Tate’s bathroom counter, but this time she didn’t cry.

  Instead she wandered into the faux atmosphere of the hotel bar. Craig and Dayton were already there, enjoying their faux friendship. Above their heads, a television blared a reality TV show. As she entered, the man on the screen dropped a live beetle into his open mouth. Dayton let out a roar of applause. Craig glared at him and then at Laura.

  “Hi, boss,” Craig grumbled.

  “Tell me we’re not going to do that again,” Dayton said. “What was that? High school show-and-tell? These are my ten favorite coffee shops. Aren’t I cool?”

  Laura sighed and signaled the bartender to pour her a drink.

  “What would you like?” the bartender asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever. A scotch.”

  “Seriously,” Dayton said. “We’re not going to do that again, right? What was that stuff she made us drink? Dude. I don’t get paid enough for that.” His phone blinked, and he picked it up, grunted, and put it back down.

  Laura considered pulling rank—Craig and Dayton did what she told them; that was their job description. But she didn’t. She twirled the scotch around in its glass, staring into the golden liquid.

  Why had she brought them at all? Just to shield her from Tate Grafton. Then she waited them out. She wanted them to go. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit they were there to keep her from giving in to her own temptations. She hadn’t really thought Tate would attack her. She would not have met her if she believed that.

  “No,” she said. “We’re not going to see her again.”

  The sadness must have sounded in her voice because Craig said, “Don’t take it too hard. It’s rough being the one who always shuts something down. My father owned a grocery store. Twenty years he ran that store, then one day Walmart comes into town. Poof. His whole life ended that day. I know what you were thinking.”

  Probably not, Laura thought.

  “You wanted to be the good guy for once. You thought maybe we could save the underdog. But you know, we’re not the bad guys. We’re just…”

  “Change?” Laura suggested.

  “Yeah. Change,” Craig said.

  “That’s nice of you to say,” Laura said.

  “Anyway,” Craig added. “They’re all a bunch of dykes.”

  “They could open a carpet store.” Dayton guffawed. “Carpet munchers! They’d never have to go out to eat. They’d only have to eat out. Am I right?”

  Dayton tried to give Craig a fist bump. The older man stared at him.

  Laura stood, her stool screeching against the floor.

  “That is inappropriate. I should not have to remind you that you represent the Clark-Vester Group for the duration of this trip, and derogatory language is never acceptable.”

  “Whoa.” Craig held up his hands.

  Dayton covered his snigger with the lip of his beer.

  “Don’t get all PC,” Craig added. “With your dad being who he is, I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “I am not my father’s…” Laura stopped. What hadn’t she been for Stan Enfield? She was his beaming poster child at age eight, the founding member of High Schoolers for Enfield at sixteen, college campaigner at twenty, financial manager at twenty-five. “My father is not a homophobe.”
r />   “We’re not hating on your dad,” Dayton said. “I don’t want those people getting married either.”

  “It’s a campaign strategy,” Laura said. “He doesn’t care about gay marriage or gay anything.”

  “Don’t tell me that. I voted for him,” Craig said.

  “I’m going upstairs,” Laura said.

  With that she slammed the scotch back in one shot. She didn’t like scotch, didn’t know why she had ordered it, but she knew it was the kind of gesture that would impress Dayton, and maybe even Craig. The satisfaction of doing it lasted all the way to the elevator. Then the liquor hit her stomach.

  What the hell am I doing? She punched the button for the elevator. Her mind bounded back and forth between Craig and Dayton, her father, and the vision of Tate’s naked shoulders bathed in moonlight. The combination, on top of a shot of scotch, was unsettling.

  “Are you all right?” An elderly woman with a floral-printed cane had just entered the elevator beside her.

  “Yes,” Laura said. “No.” Then the door opened on her floor, and she hurried to the privacy of her room.

  Chapter 8

  Maggie and Krystal were still at Out Coffee when Tate arrived to collect her motorcycle. They were waiting; Tate could tell. All the counters were wiped. The floor was mopped. The to-go cups were stacked in neat rows. Between them steamed two cups of chamomile tea, the same tea Maggie had brewed for Tate when she was a teenager, home sick with the flu. The tea Maggie brewed for breakups and deaths and HIV diagnoses and miscarriages and lost jobs. Comfort tea. Can’t-do-anything-else-but-be-with-you tea.

  Maggie’s face was a question mark.

  “I’m sorry,” Tate said.

  Maggie cupped her hands over her cup and lowered her head. Tate sat across from her. Krystal edged her chair closer to Tate and leaned her head on Tate’s shoulder.

  “No. I’m sorry,” Maggie said. “You told us to make a good impression. Then me, Lill, and Krystal, we tore the place up.” She ran a hand through her short, ginger-gray hair. Her hands looked swollen, and she had taken off the friendship ring that she and Lill had exchanged after their breakup.