Something True (7 page)

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,” Tate said, striding into the fading twilight. “I am home.”

L
aura 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.”

“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.

M
aggie 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.

“It was my fault,” Krystal added. “I kinda knew I shouldn't try to fix that sink, but the book just made it look so easy, and I knew you were busy, and you…”

Tate gave an infinitesimal shake of her head just in case Krystal was going to say something about Laura.

“You just always know what to do,” Krystal finished.

Tate thought about Abigail and Duke, Laura, Out in Portland, her own unfinished bachelor's degree. She sighed.

“I wish.”

“I should have kept an eye on everything,” Maggie said. “I just forgot. With Lill there and all those people, it was like back in the day.”

“Complete with disaster,” Tate said. “Remember the time the coffee grinder caught fire?”

“Or the time the delivery man brought us an ounce of cocaine in the fair-trade coffee beans?”

“Or when I was Krystal's age and you let me close the store by myself. I thought the meter reader was trying to rob us.”

Maggie laughed, but the smile quickly faded from her face. “We blew it this time. That corporate harpy…”—it was a clever work-around for
bitch
. “She doesn't want a good story. She wants to see things run right.”

“I don't know what she wants,” Tate said truthfully. “But I don't think she's going to be coming back tomorrow. And I don't think it's your fault or Lill's or Krystal's. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine for thinking I could pull some sort of heroic save. She's got a company. They've done research. This thing is settled, and they're not going to change their minds because I show her a good time.”

“Then what happens?” Maggie asked. “What happens to us?”

“I don't know,” Tate said. “We go home. We go to bed. We figure something out. Krystal, you want a ride on my bike? I'll take you home.”

Maggie grumbled that she could take Krystal home. After all, they were going to the same place. But Krystal had already leapt up and run outside to the weathered Harley. Tate followed her.

“She'll be fine, Maggie. I'll take her straight back to your place,” Tate said.

She fastened her full-face helmet onto Krystal's head and retrieved a spare half-helmet from her saddlebag. Krystal mounted the seat behind her, wrapping her arms around Tate's waist and squeezing like a boa constrictor. Tate pried Krystal's fingers apart, loosening her grip a little bit.

“I still have to breathe,” she teased.

“What about the girl?” Krystal asked, laying her helmeted head on Tate's shoulder.

Tate revved the engine, hoping to lose Krystal's question in the noise.

“You liked her,” Krystal yelled.

Tate longed for the privacy of a full-face helmet. She didn't want Krystal to see her face, even in profile.

“I don't like her,” she lied.

Krystal said nothing more until they reached Maggie's squat, white cinder-block house in southeast Portland. Maggie was already inside. Tate could see her moving about the kitchen.

“I won't tell her,” Krystal said, glancing at the kitchen window.

“Tell her what?” Tate asked, but she knew. She took the helmet from Krystal, and tucked the small half-shell helmet back in her bag. “It'd break Maggie's heart,” Tate added, as though Krystal had answered her question. “And plus, nothing is going to happen.”

When she looked up, Krystal was staring at her like an anime drawing of innocent confusion. Her pink ponytails stuck out at odd angles, half-crushed by the helmet. Her eyes were wide in the darkness.

“But she likes you,” Krystal said, as though it were a fact, as though it were enough.

“No she doesn't,” Tate said wearily.

“But she does! She
loves
you.”

Tate pulled Krystal into a motherly hug.

“Like in the movies?” Tate asked.

“Yes!” Krystal said. Apparently she was developing Maggie's lack of irony. “Like in the movies!”