“Yes I can. I’m sorry, Out Coffee is a losing business proposition,” Vita said. “While you’ve been busy propping up Maggie, I’ve been managing one of the most successful bars in Portland, owned by one of the shrewdest lesbian entrepreneurs you’re going to meet. Out is in a terrible location. It’s a difficult business model. The retail space is too big for the business. The market is saturated. And Maggie has the business savvy of Mother Teresa. It’s going under. I’m sorry to be blunt, but if you didn’t already see that, then you’re blind.
“And those sandwich boutiques this Laura Enfield woman wants to move in, they are hot. And they would be great for Portland, especially that neighborhood. They have totally capitalized on the organic, locally grown, free-range market. Everything that enters that store is compostable except for the customers.” Vita paused. “Who are compostable too I guess, but you see what I mean.”
Tate rested her chin on her knuckles.
“Yes.”
“No. You don’t,” Vita protested. “That face says you don’t.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I’m saying Laura Enfield is in this for you. That’s what this little charade is all about whether she is ready to admit it or not, and you like her.”
“I do.”
“So…tell me about her. I’m your best friend. Why is this all such a secret suddenly? What’s she like? What does she do? What does she do to you?”
Tate looked out over the moonlit lot with its weeds and its rusting shopping cart overturned beneath a wild cherry tree.
“That first night we played two out of three at 8-ball, she said if I won she’d tell me a secret or at least tell me something true,” Tate said. “I lost. I scratched on the eight. But the thing is, when I’m with her, I feel like she’s just on the verge of telling me that true thing. And I want to hear it. And I want to tell her…everything.
“Like tonight. She asked if I was happy. I told her all the crap, and then I told her we’d sit here and talk and it would make me happy. I knew that, but I knew it more when I said it to her.”
For once Vita did not have a glib comeback. When she finally spoke she said, “I haven’t seen you like this before.”
“She was pretty clear the other night,” Tate added. “Whether or not she wants something to happen she doesn’t think it should. I don’t want to get my heart broken again.”
“Too late for that.” Vita steepled her fingers under her chin. “But maybe right now, she’s feeling like she messed up. She panicked. Maybe now she’s wondering what she can possibly do to make up for it.”
The following day, Tate woke early to ready Out Coffee. Then she rode back home to change in preparation for Laura’s arrival at nine a.m. Her conversation with Vita had left her feeling at turns hopeful and guilty. If what Vita said was true, Laura had no intention of saving Out Coffee. But if what Vita said was true, then Laura had intentions for her. She alternated between these two poles a few more times while she washed her face. When she was finished, she ran a hand over her short hair and regarded the face that stared back at her in the bathroom mirror.
Happy. That was where her emotional pendulum finally came to rest. It had been so easy talking to Laura. Even though Tate had good friends who loved her, there was a corner of her heart that had been empty the day before and now was full of sunlight. Today, Tate thought as she shrugged into a white T-shirt, I get to see her again. She tried not to think about how short the day was or how likely it was that in a few days Laura would leave.
“Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset,” Tate quoted out loud. It was a poem she had memorized for her literature class nine years earlier. Then she thought, Maybe there’s still time.
Everything seemed possible in Portland in the summer.
Unfortunately, Tate was not the only person who had been spurred to action by the beautiful day. When she got to Out Coffee, she saw a string of people standing outside. There was Maggie, a host of stern, craggy women in political T-shirts and leather vests, and several men with long, gray ponytails.
Tate pulled her Harley up short and removed her helmet.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
The women would have looked menacing, except that they looked so much like Maggie. Up close, Tate recognized them from Maggie’s women’s group. One waved to her. Another flashed a peace symbol. Two of them started singing “Kumbaya.”
“We’re all here!” Maggie called.
“Why are you all here?” Tate asked.
Maggie stood beside a woman in a CLINTON/GORE ’96 T-shirt and a man with strings of handmade clay beads strung around his neck. And next to him stood…Abigail. Tate stopped short.
“Why is she here?” Tate demanded.
Abigail wore a green sundress. She really did have an exorbitant amount of freckles. They covered her from hairline to the plunging neckline of her dress. She was like a pale person perpetually walking in dappled shade or, perhaps, more like a white T-shirt on which someone had spilled a latte.
“Maggie said you needed me,” Abigail called.
Her eyes were bright. She wore the same sweet, eager smile she had worn when they were first courting, before she decided that Tate could not understand her because Tate had never played the cello.
Third cello, Tate thought.
“Maggie said Out Coffee was getting bought out by some corporate bitch, and you were the only one who could save it,” Abigail added.
“We’re not going to let corporate America oppress us anymore,” one of the leather-vested women yelled.
“No, we’re not!” Maggie chimed in. She looked flushed and excited.
Someone yelled, “There she is!”
Tate turned to see Laura a few paces behind her, the Sebring parked on the other side of the street.
Oh no, she thought as Abigail led the crowd in a chorus of “Hell no, we won’t go.” She glanced from Maggie to Abigail, trying to decide whom to throttle first. Then everyone in the crowd lifted their arms in unison. The whole thing had suddenly gotten worse. They were—Tate now saw—handcuffed together. And at either end of the line, the last protestors, Abigail and a woman in a SAVE THE RAIN FORESTS T-shirt, were handcuffed to one of the drain spouts that ran from the roof of Out Coffee to the sidewalk.
“Freedom!” Maggie’s voice rose over the rest of the crowd, clear and proud as though she was marching behind Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez and Marx and Gloria Steinem and all the rest. “Freedom now!”
“But you’re chained together,” Tate pleaded. “You chain yourself to buildings when they are going to be bulldozed, when someone’s going to cut down a heritage tree.”
No one was listening.
“You can’t demolish this building without demolishing us,” Abigail yelled.
Tate glanced at Laura. She looked perplexed.
“No one is demolishing anything,” Tate said. “Laura Enfield is here to see if her company wants to rent business space to Out Coffee. She wants to see if we are reputable business people.”
“If they want to get in, they’ll have to bulldoze our living bodies,” the man with the beads said. “They will have to crush our entrails and crack every bone in our bodies and tear out our eyes.”
It all seemed a little too visceral to Tate. The crowd cheered.
“Americans have become too complacent,” Maggie added. “What happened to the union? When did we stop organizing?”
These were, in general, sentiments that Tate agreed with, inasmuch as one could agree with rhetorical questions shouted over a chorus of “Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs!”
But there was also the matter of Laura, standing at her elbow, saying, “Should I go?”
Tate was suddenly very aware of her proximity, the smell of her perfume, like the complicated smell of lemon blossoms.
“No. No. This is nothing,” Tate said.
“Nothing?” Laura
’s eyebrow shot up.
“We do this all the time. It’s like a Portland tradition,” Tate said.
Krystal appeared at Laura’s elbow.
“I could make you a cup of coffee,” she offered, apparently forgetting that Laura would have to climb over or under the line of protestors chained in front of the door.
Near the end of the line, Maggie was swaying. Her eyes were closed. Tate imagined she was reliving her glory days as an activist in San Francisco. Perhaps she was getting doused by imaginary crowd-control hoses because she went down, pulling several protestors with her.
“It’s so hot,” she said, looking up at Tate from her newfound seat on the concrete. Her face went pale. “I can’t feel my hands.”
The handcuffs fit tightly, and her hands looked more swollen than usual. Tate was worried that Maggie had hurt herself. Old women fell, broke their hips, and went into nursing homes. She could not imagine Maggie stuck in some facility with “green” and “vale” in the name, far away in Gresham or Oregon City, without her friends and her causes.
“Are you okay?” Tate rushed to her side.
“No,” Maggie said as though it was obvious.
“What’s wrong?” Tate asked.
Maggie stared at her. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. We’re supposed to win.” The man next to her tried to fan her, but one of his wrists was cuffed to Maggie and the other to another protestor.
“My dad could get out of these,” Krystal said. “He knows how to open a pair of handcuffs like nothing.”
Tate glanced down the block. A two-toned sedan was moving in their direction, slowing down, pulling to a stop on the opposite side of the street. It was not quite a police car, more like a prop from a 1980s B movie. The black portion of the car was covered with a matte paint that screamed I did this in my garage and inhaled the fumes. There was a white stripe painted up the front of the hood. There was also a logo on the door, something between the Marine Corp’s globe and eagle and a barber pole. And there, in the front seat, filling the whole front window with her greasy pompadour, was Duke Bryce.
“Oh!” Abigail exclaimed.
“Laura, I think you’d better go,” Tate said.
“I thought you did this all the time,” Laura said with a slight smirk.
“Yeah…no.”
Duke opened the car door and stepped out, one hand balled in a fist and a menacing look in her eyes.
Abigail yelled, “It’s not what you think, Duke.”
“You don’t want to be a part of this,” Tate said. “I’m sorry. You are a senator’s daughter. I know these people look like they stepped out of the 1970s.” She gestured to the line of protestors. “But every one of them has an iPhone and is waiting to right the world’s wrongs on YouTube.”
Laura glanced between Duke and Tate.
“I know her,” Tate said. “She’s my ex’s current. This is all a mistake, just please go.”
Laura looked behind her. On the other side of the street, the Oregon Adult Theater advertised its latest promotion on a bright yellow letter board: FEATURE-LENGTH FILMS! LIVE STRIPPERS! THE AMAZING CANDY COCKLES EVERY SATURDAY! Laura was clearly doing a little bit of cinematography in her head. She was standing in front of a pornographic theater, surrounded by hippies in handcuffs and lesbians shouting, “We’re here! We’re queer! We’re drinking coffee!” There was no way for it to look like a photo op with the voters.
In the distance, Tate heard real police sirens.
“I think I’d better,” Laura said.
She surveyed the crowd one more time, shook her head, and turned on her sharp, gold-tipped heels. Just like that. Tate wished Laura had hesitated for just a moment, at least idled in her car, but the Sebring pulled away, and Laura did not look back.
“I’ve had about enough of you,” Duke bellowed.
Tate turned, looking helplessly at Duke and then Abigail.
“What are you talking about?”
“I see how she looks at you!” Duke added.
From the line of protesters, Abigail mounted her own protest.
“I don’t. I never loved Tate.”
“Down with the corporate overlords!” one of the men yelled.
“She dumped me for an oboist,” Tate said. “Or hasn’t she told you how she cheated on me and told me it was my fault because I didn’t like Vivaldi?”
“Oh, I know about the oboist.” Duke managed to make oboist sound like a racial slur. “I’ll deal with her later.”
So Abigail was up to her old games, Tate thought.
“But right now, I’m dealing with you,” Duke said. “You ready to settle this?”
Tate threw up her hands.
“There’s nothing to settle. I don’t even know why you’re here…why I’m here…why any of these people are here.” She pointed at Maggie. “I’m just trying to get her out of those handcuffs before she passes out.”
Maggie’s narrow frame almost disappeared between the protestors. She was sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall of Out Coffee, but Tate had the impression it was the woman in the Clinton/Gore T-shirt and the man with the beads who held her upright. Her breath came in gasps.
“Yeah? Is that all?” Duke asked. “You really expect me to believe that? You think I don’t know what you’re doing to her?”
“No. Yes. I’m not doing any…”
Tate did not see the blow coming. One minute she was standing in front of Duke wondering how it was possible that, after ruining her life once, Abigail could actually come back and do it again. Then the next minute, she felt a force like a small quarterback hit her side and suddenly her face was pressed against the hood of Duke’s car.
“She’s not going to save you this time,” Duke said into her ear.
Duke’s shoulder pressed into her back. All Tate could see was the seam where the black and white paint met. She thought she remembered Pawel saying he used to hypnotize chickens by laying them on a line painted on the ground. Back in Hungary. Right before he chopped off their heads with a hatchet.
“Let go of me,” Tate cried.
“Not until you leave Abigail alone.”
“I don’t even like her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Duke had her pinned to the car, but she could still move her legs. She took the opportunity to plant her boot just above Duke’s knee.
“Get off me.”
She pushed her foot hard into the soft muscle above Duke’s knee. She had not almost-graduated with a BA in physics for nothing. Torque was on her side. Duke stumbled backward, releasing her hold on Tate’s shoulder.
Tate straightened.
“What the fuck?” Tate brushed the dust off her cheek.
“You scared?” Duke thumped her fist against her own chest. “You gonna fight me? You gonna fight like a girl? You gonna pull my hair?”
“I can’t believe you actually beat your chest at me,” Tate said.
It was all so absurd. Suddenly Tate had had enough. Enough of Duke. Enough of Abigail. Enough of Maggie making all the wrong choices for the right reasons. Enough of Laura always walking away.
Tate had played rugby for a few seasons and now, like riding a bicycle, it all came back. She lunged at Duke, crossing the space between them in a single stride. Just as she reached Duke she dropped her shoulder and performed a nonregulation, below-the-belt tackle. Duke went sprawling with Tate on top of her.
Krystal cheered.
Maggie revived long enough to cry, “We’re feminists. Solidarity. Fight the patriarchy, not each other.”
And just about then Tate realized that, while rugby may have come back to her, she had not been in a fight since she was nineteen, and that had won her a black eye and a lump on her jaw that lasted for a month. She had a good three inches on Duke, but Duke had a hundred pounds on her. In seconds, Duke had flipped Tate onto her back and planted a knee in her chest. She felt her breath escape like the air in a punctured balloon.
Tate was
waiting for Duke’s fist to connect with some part of her face that she would rather use for other purposes—an archetypal nose was not improved by being smashed into the frontal lobe—when she heard the police sirens turn down their street.
“They’re coming for you.” She choked out the words.
Duke looked around.
“They will arrest you,” Tate gasped. “They won’t even know you’re a woman. They’ll think some big fucking Elvis impersonator is trying to beat the shit out of a girl.”
“You’re a dyke, and everyone knows it,” Duke said.
“I will play the helpless girl.” Tate coughed. “I swear to God, I’ll be Scarlett fucking O’Hara when those cops show up.”
Duke dropped the fist she had raised over Tate’s head and stood up, giving Tate’s boot a last kick for good measure.
“Fuck you!” she said.
A moment later, a police cruiser pulled up and two young men stepped out, hands hovering over their guns.
“What’s going on here?” one of them asked.
The other officer knelt beside Tate.
“Are you all right?”
Tate touched the back of her head where Duke had slammed her against the pavement.
“I think so.”
The officer looked from Tate to Duke to the protest.
“What happened?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” Tate said.
“She started it,” Duke grumbled, but she had seen the wisdom in Tate’s threat and headed for her car. The other police officer stopped her and spoke to her in low tones that Tate could not hear.
“Can you get them apart?” Tate asked the man who knelt by her side. “Maggie over there, she’s not doing so well.”
An hour later, the protestors were separated with the help of a fire truck and a pair of bolt cutters. The police officers had taken a statement. Duke had driven away. Krystal, Maggie, and several of Maggie’s friends were installed in the front window of Out Coffee, retelling the events with increasing bravado. And Tate was back at the front counter, tending to a long line of customers and fielding calls from their supplier, who had sent the morning’s delivery with a new driver who was now hopelessly lost on the other side of the river.
Something True Page 11
