For Good

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “I live in a houseboat,” she said. “It’s like a trailer on the water. It’s poor white trash with a view.”

  Kristen ran her hand down the front of Marydale’s sweatshirt, and Marydale felt her nipples harden.

  “You’re lonely. You’re bored,” Marydale said. “I’ve dated other women who thought it’d be fun to fuck a con for a while.”

  She didn’t tell Kristen that she had broken off most of those affairs. The ones she hadn’t ended deliberately had ended in the silence of her unreturned phone calls.

  “You’re not going to take me to the company party,” Marydale added.

  “If you knew how awful those parties are, you wouldn’t ask.”

  “Have you even been with other women?”

  “It’s just you.” Kristen whispered. She unbuttoned her blazer and dropped it on the floor. “You’re the only woman.”

  “That doesn’t change anything.” Marydale said, but she felt like her blood was changing.

  Kristen unbuttoned her blouse, her gaze fixed on Marydale. Then Kristen rose, unzipped her skirt, and let it fall. Behind her, the wraparound windows looked out on the river and the neighboring houseboats.

  “Tell me to stop,” Kristen said.

  Marydale could almost feel Kristen’s lean thigh between her legs. She felt as though the delicate muscles of her core had awakened and were pulling tight, yearning, the fibers of her body sending out chemical distress signals. Release: her body already knew how good it would be with Kristen, how much better it would be than the quick, blunt orgasms she had had with other women. Her body longed for it. Her legs felt weak. Her stomach filled with stars. Don’t, a voice in the back of her mind said. You’ll regret it.

  Slowly Marydale knelt down by one of the benches and undid the latch that secured the hold. She lifted up the seat of the bench to reveal a tiny staircase. Kristen looked momentarily surprised; then she stepped out of her heels. Marydale lowered herself into the small bedroom in one practiced move. She held her hand out to Kristen, who climbed awkwardly down. The bed took up the entire room, and there was barely enough space to stand upright. Marydale turned on the pink salt-rock lamp by the head of the bed.

  Kristen set her glasses on the bedside table. A second later, they were in bed, Kristen wrapping her nylon-clad legs around Marydale’s heavy work pants. Her weight felt divine, and Marydale moaned. She pulled at Kristen’s bra, and Kristen dragged Marydale’s sweatshirt over her head. Then they were all arms and legs, fumbling as they tried to undress each other without ceasing the luxurious pressure of their intertwined bodies.

  “Wait, wait,” Kristen breathed.

  She stood up just long enough to pull off her nylons and her underwear. Marydale admired her body, as lean as a model, but real, not airbrushed to preadolescent perfection. She had a faint stubble of blond hair on her legs, a small surgical scar above her belly button, and red marks at her waist and around her chest, where her undergarments had pressed into the skin. Marydale thought she was even more beautiful for these slight imperfections, and then she couldn’t think of anything, because Kristen pushed her back onto the bed. After a brief struggle, Kristen released the button of Marydale’s fly and pulled her pants off, casting them on the floor as though their presence offended her.

  Marydale had worn red lace panties because she had been almost out of clean laundry. Now Kristen stroked the rough lace, her movements quickening to a frantic pace that matched the urgency Marydale felt.

  “I’m going to tear these,” Kristen said breathlessly.

  Marydale gasped. Kristen gave her a sly smile and pulled. The elastic lace stretched and snapped back in place, stinging the delicate skin of Marydale’s sex and sending a surge of desire through her body. She raised her hips, longing for Kristen to ease the sensation or to amplify it. Kristen pulled again, but the lace only stretched.

  “What is this stuff?” Kristen laughed, and in her laugher Marydale heard an echo of the life they could have had. If they were lovers, girlfriends, wife and wife, if they were friends, it would be like this. Sex would be a funny, delicious game, and the pleasure they felt would be deeper than their skin, deeper than Kristen’s fingers inside her…now…moving in and out, the damp fabric of her panties pushed aside.

  “Fuck me,” Marydale cried out. She felt her body mounting toward orgasm.

  Kristen pull Marydale’s panties off and mounted her, sliding her leg between Marydale’s thighs, tilting her hips so their bodies touched at their hottest, most intimate center. Marydale gasped. Kristen settled deeper into her. Marydale pressed upward, reaching for that heat. Perfect. Excruciating. She wanted to cry out for more and she wanted to hover there forever, their sexes touching but the architecture of their bodies preventing the deep rubbing that would relieve her longing. She wanted to tell Kristen how good it felt, better than any other woman she had ever been with. She wanted to beg her, Don’t leave me.

  Then, before Marydale knew what was happening, Kristen shifted her position so she was riding Marydale’s thigh. Marydale felt the moisture from Kristen’s body, as Kristen dragged the folds of her own sex up and down Marydale’s leg, crying out with each pass.

  “I want you. Oh God, I want you!” Kristen grabbed Marydale’s shoulders. “It’s so fucking good. Yes. Yes!”

  With a final thrust, Kristen collapsed on Marydale’s chest. Her hair was damp and tousled. Marydale stroked it while Kristen caught her breath.

  A moment later, Kristen rolled off her.

  “Now you,” Kristen said. A red flush had spread across Kristen’s chest and up her neck, and yet…she looked like a barrister.

  Marydale fell back against the pillows and stared up at the water-stained ceiling. Her body throbbed. She knew she would come with one thrust of Kristen’s thigh, a few seconds of Kristen’s fingers on her clit. If Kristen placed her delicate lips against Marydale’s sex, rolled her tongue against her clit…Just the thought made Marydale’s body contract.

  “You’ll have to give me some pointers. I’m a little out of practice,” Kristen added.

  Marydale thought Kristen meant to be flirtatious, but she sounded efficient, a woman used to getting complicated tasks done quickly. Kristen glanced at the delicate gold watch on her wrist. Somehow it had survived the hurricane of their disrobing. Marydale could almost see the buttons of Kristen’s prim, ruffled blouse buttoning themselves back up again, her suit reasserting itself, like a time-lapse flower blooming in reverse.

  Kristen sat up a little, leaning on one elbow. “Well, my dear?” she asked.

  Marydale glanced at Kristen’s athletic legs next to her own fleshy thighs. Compared to Kristen’s breasts, her breasts felt huge, heavy and obvious, like her desire. She felt the long nights in the Tristess jail stretching out behind her. We both knew this couldn’t last…the right choice.

  “Fuck.” Marydale rolled away from Kristen.

  “What is it?”

  Marydale groaned. Her unmet desire felt like a physical pain, but as surely as she knew she would come at Kristen’s slightest touch, she knew she would cry as soon as the orgasm released her. She could feel the tears welling up from deep inside her throat.

  “This isn’t going to work,” she said.

  “What isn’t?” Kristen asked innocently.

  Kristen had gotten what she came for, Marydale thought, just like she herself had taken her pleasure with the women she picked up at the Mirage.

  “I know how this goes,” Marydale said.

  “What?”

  “This.” Marydale motioned to the rumpled bed and their clothing on the floor. “I’ve done this, too, and”—she hesitated—”I want more than this.”

  “I do, too.” Kristen sounded earnest.

  Marydale’s body sang out, Believe her, believe her, but she knew better.

  “You’ve never been with another woman,” Marydale said. “Even if I wasn’t a felon, even if I was a lawyer or a doctor…you left me in Tristess for a reason. You’re strai
ght or straight enough. You’ve got that option. You want something simple.”

  “I want you.”

  “For today, but what happens when your law firm finds out? What happens when you get labeled the lesbian partner?”

  “I haven’t made partner yet.”

  Marydale picked up her sweatshirt. “And would you? If you were with a woman? Would you fit in?”

  “This is Portland,” Kristen protested. “It’s the twenty-first century. Nobody cares about that stuff. This isn’t Tristess.”

  “I think you care more than you know,” Marydale said.

  “That’s not fair.” Kristen’s gray eyes were very dark. “Give me a chance.” She sounded like an attorney negotiating a plea deal.

  “I did,” Marydale said, “back in Tristess.”

  She turned from Kristen and pulled her sweatshirt back over her head, the Sadfire motto circling her chest: SPERO. AMANT. DOLERE. Hope. Love. Grieve.

  5

  Like many places purported by some to be sinful dens of lechery, Portland’s only lesbian bar, the Mirage, was not as fraught with tantalizing mystery as Kristen had expected. At four o’clock, it looked like any other neighborhood dive bar. The walls were dark. The lights were low. The seats were empty. The walls were covered with large mirrors etched with BUDWEISER and pictures of horses charging through snowy forests because that…had absolutely nothing to do with being a lesbian in Portland.

  The bartender emerged from the back just as Kristen was about to turn around and leave. Dressed in a leopard-print bodysuit, she fulfilled Kristen’s half-realized expectations more than the mirrors and the inflatable Corona bottles hanging from the ceiling.

  “We’re open,” the bartender said. “What can I get you?”

  Kristen scanned the rows of flavored vodka. “You don’t have Sadfire whiskey, do you?” she asked.

  “Of course!” the bartender said, as though Kristen had just guessed a secret password. “We love Sadfire. They sponsor all our Pride Week events. Neat? On the rocks?”

  “Neat.”

  The bartender poured a shot and slid it across the counter. “Have you met the owners, Marydale and Aldean?”

  Kristen choked on the familiar names, coughing as the whiskey hit the back of her throat.

  “The Consummation Rye is no joke,” the bartender said sympathetically. She filled a glass of water for Kristen. “Marydale is amazing. She does all this work with paroled felons, real social consciousness. My best dishwasher came through her program. Only stayed with us six months, but that’s okay. She got a job bartending at some fancy whiskey bar downtown. That’s the point of working with felons, right? Reintegration? Anyway, make yourself at home. Special today is popcorn shrimp and fries. Let me know if you want some food.”

  The only other customer was a woman with short, dark hair who sat at the other end of the bar, glaring at her laptop. Kristen stared at the mirror behind the bar, wishing she had brought her laptop or a book. She had left her phone in the car. It felt like the moment to take up video poker, just so she’d have something to do. She had imagined herself dancing with some faceless woman on a crowded dance floor—although why she thought that would happen at four o’clock in the afternoon she could no longer fathom. In her fantasy, Marydale appeared, watching jealously. I thought you were straight, Marydale said. How could you have thought that? Kristen asked, leaving the woman and falling into Marydale’s kiss. But in her fantasy, the Mirage was also crowded, suffused with red light and redolent with the smell of rich perfume, not stale beer. She nursed her whiskey for a long time.

  Five o’clock brought a few more customers, including a trio of male construction workers who seemed to be regulars despite the fact that it was a lesbian bar. The bartender disappeared for a long time and reappeared wearing fake eyelashes.

  “Can I get you another?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kristen said. “I should probably be going.”

  “I’m Vita,” the bartender said.

  Ignoring Kristen’s refusal, she poured another shot of Consummation Rye into Kristen’s glass and set a bowl of peanuts in front of her.

  “I went to a therapist once to figure out why I was attracted to women with personality disorders,” Vita said as though they had been having a conversation from which this comment flowed naturally. “He said, if you can’t talk to the people you know, just pick a stranger, a random stranger. Tell them everything. You’re never going to see them again. If they think you’re a Freudian mess two days away from being committed, so what? You don’t know them. And you get practice.”

  “Practice doing what?” Kristen asked, wondering if she should just leave a twenty on the counter and walk out.

  “Talking,” Vita said. “I’m a bartender. I’m a professional. I can tell.” She set her elbows on the bar and leaned in, examining Kristen closely. Her eyelashes looked like caterpillars. “You’re depressed.”

  “I’m not,” Kristen protested.

  The woman at the end of the bar spoke without looking up from her computer.

  “Don’t pay any attention to her. Vita talks shit all the time.”

  The woman looked like a lesbian, with baggy tuxedo pants and suspenders over her crisp white shirt. Kristen wondered for a foolish second if she should buy a pair of suspenders or cut her hair. Maybe if she shaved her head and got a rainbow flag tattooed on her biceps Marydale would forgive her, would take her back, would…love her. She sipped her drink and sighed. She hadn’t been that silly when she was eighteen. Even her visit to the Mirage suddenly felt pathetic. What was she supposed to do? Go back to Marydale’s houseboat and say, I went to a gay bar; will you go out with me now?

  “I’m not depressed,” Kristen said quietly.

  The woman with the laptop looked up and gave her a half smile.

  “Vita’s good, though. She can read people, even if they hate it. This your first time here?”

  “No. Yes. I was just in the area.”

  Kristen had never just been in the area. The mossy Eastside neighborhood held nothing of interest except the green-roofed bungalow that housed the HumAnarchist, and that was not the kind of interest Kristen wanted to visit regularly.

  “It’s a nice bar,” the woman said. “I met my wife right here.” She tapped the bar.

  Vita said, “Let me tell you! They were crazy for each other from the minute they saw each other. It was like pythons mating.”

  “No,” the woman with the laptop said with a wave of her hand. “It was not anything like pythons mating. Vita makes stuff up.” She held out her hand, and they shook over the expanse of empty barstools. “I’m Tate.”

  “How did you meet your wife?” Kristen asked. “I mean, you were here, but how did it happen?”

  The story that followed was sweet and romantic with lurid interludes from Vita. Apparently Tate had fallen in love with the woman who was trying to buy the coffee shop where Tate worked. Tate’s future wife, Laura, had been a real estate developer and, at the time, deep in the closet. Laura’s father was a conservative politician. Tate had been out, proud, broke, and lost.

  “And somehow it just all worked out,” Tate said. “That was almost ten years ago. Laura started a development business here in Portland. I went back to college.”

  “They’re sickening,” Vita said. “You’d think they met yesterday. They can’t keep their hands off each other.”

  Tate shook her head. “No, Vita. That part is your imagination.”

  Vita laughed. “But I do tell a good story.” She turned to Kristen. “You got someone special?”

  “No.” It came out sounding mournful.

  “And that’s your story, isn’t it?” Vita said. “Did she dump you? Cheat on you with an oboist?”

  “An oboist?” Kristen asked.

  Tate said to Vita, “You know, a woman is allowed to come in and have a drink by herself without you prying into her personal life.”

  “You should tell her.” Vita nodded toward
Tate.

  “Tell her what?” Kristen asked.

  “All your dark Freudian secrets. If you’re going to pick a stranger to talk to, Tate’s the one. She’s good people. I mean it. I’ve known her since I tried to burn her house down back in high school.”

  “Since before then,” Tate agreed.

  “See?” Vita said, and with that she disappeared into the back.

  “Sorry,” Tate said. “That’s just Vita. There’s a line between her business and other people’s business, and it means nothing to her.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Tate glanced at her laptop but not with any real interest. Kristen took a deep breath.

  “Did you…?” Kristen began tentatively. “…always know you liked women?”

  “Absolutely,” Tate said. “Since I was little.”

  “Before puberty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And your wife?”

  “She was married to a man for a while, but she says she knew before that.”

  “Damn.” Kristen took a sip of her whiskey.

  “Are you…?”

  “There’s this woman.” Kristen rotated the shot glass around in a circle.

  Maybe Vita was right. Maybe there were stories one couldn’t tell friends, Kristen thought, or maybe she just didn’t have any real friends.

  “She thinks I’m straight, and she thinks I’ll leave her.”

  And she’s a felon, and I did leave.

  “Are you straight?” Tate asked.

  “I don’t know. She’s the only woman I’ve ever dated. She’s the only woman I’ve ever been attracted to. But sometimes I think there’s only ever been her, man or woman. She doesn’t believe me though.”

  “It’s hard.”

  “Portland is so liberal. I don’t get what she’s worried about.”