For Good (15 page)

“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 straight 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.

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.”

She was thinking of Marydale standing in the kitchen of her farmhouse confessing.
I thought he was going to kill me.

“I don't think it's hard to be gay in Portland,” Tate said slowly. “But if she's lived someplace where it was a lot easier to be with a man, she might just be afraid that she's not good enough for you to, you know, take that risk. At least another lesbian doesn't have the choice. Another lesbian can't choose to be with a man if things get rough. Or maybe she's been burned before.”

“She's been burned before,” Kristen said, staring at the bar top before her.

“You just have to show her that you're not the kind of person who runs away,” Tate said with a friendly shrug. “It'll work out. I know that sounds like such a cliché, but if you're meant to be together, it'll work out.”

“Where are we going again?” Marydale asked as Aldean opened the passenger door of his pickup and offered her a hand up, despite the fact that her Ford F-150 was actually higher off the ground.

“
Your
lesbian bartender's birthday party,” Aldean said.

“Right, right,” Marydale said. “Vita Galliano.”

“If you say so. You put it on our calendar,” Aldean said. “You sponsored her bar at PrideFest. I was going to set up a booth at the Rose City Adult Entertainment Expo that weekend, but no.”

“You were not going to sell top-shelf whiskey to Casa Diablo's Vegan Strip Club,” she said.

Aldean settled into the driver's seat and pushed the truck into second gear.

“Nothing says
drink more whiskey
like a naked girl and some tempeh,” he said.

Marydale wasn't in the mood. She didn't want to go to Vita Galliano's birthday party. She didn't want to listen to the latest gossip from the Mirage. She didn't even want to talk about the new pinot noir barrels they'd bought from the Alderglen Winery and whether or not they would lend the same cinnamon character as the French oak they had used before. She wanted to lie on the floor of the
Tristess
, turn out the lights, and feel the river flowing beneath her.

“You could just call her,” Aldean said, as they turned onto Highway 30.

“I can't cancel on her. I said we were coming.”

“Not Vita. Kristen.”

“I'm not calling her.”

It was only half true. She
hadn't
called Kristen, but she had looked up Kristen's firm and written the phone number on a slip of paper that had drifted around the kitchen of her houseboat for days. Every time she looked at it, she reminded herself of all the reasons an affair with Kristen would never work out. She knew in her mind, but her dumb, optimistic heart beat,
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

“Well, you'll have to cheer up if you're going to sell some whiskey at this party,” Aldean said.

“We're not selling anything. We're going to celebrate one of our local purchaser's birthdays.”

The directions Vita had provided led them into the northwest hills. The roads were narrow and clung to the forested hillside. On the other side, the houses were built on stilts with long driveways like drawbridges over the abyss.

“So this is how the other side lives,” Aldean said. “Didn't know owning a lesbian bar made so much money.”

“I don't know how you could live up here and not get vertigo,” Marydale grumbled. “I think it's Vita's friends' house. Tate and Laura. Laura's big in the green-construction industry. She probably built the place.”

Vertigo or not, the house they arrived at was gorgeous. Inside everything was blond wood and pale furniture. Marydale could see clear through the living room and out the windows on the other side. Far below, the city sparkled with lights. In the living room, a dinner table with a dozen leaves had been decorated with candles and festoons of green garlands.

“Come in, come in!” Vita effused, hugging both of them.

“This place is amazing,” Aldean said.

“Make yourselves at home,” Vita said. “It's not my place, but that makes it even better. You can spill on the carpet.”

The only carpet Marydale saw was a delicately woven rug hung on the wall above the fireplace.

Marydale handed Vita a bottle of First Anniversary, the first good whiskey Sadfire had produced after Aldean arrived in Portland. Vita invited them into the open kitchen and started mixing an elaborate drink with the whiskey they had just brought.

A moment later, Vita pushed a drink into Marydale's hand.

“It's called the Lightning Rod. I invented it for the party. You can put anything in it. Whiskey. Vodka. Gin. Tequila. All of the above.”

Marydale took the drink and managed a friendly smile.

Around them, the other guests looked like a backstage party for an eclectic fashion show. A man in a ball gown talked with animated gestures to a stone-faced woman in coveralls. Two women in schoolgirl jumpers skewered bits of cheese on toothpicks, while a man with a chest-length beard shoveled them into his mouth. Nearby, an old woman in a fountain of lace hugged an Asian boy in a Portland Blazers jersey. On a deck overlooking the city, two women who Marydale guessed to be Tate and Laura, talked to a trio of men in tuxedos.

Marydale wondered if Kristen had a house like this, perhaps in this neighborhood. Her friends would be a different set, all in gray suits, trousers for the men and skirts for the women. They might be having a party right now, drinking sidecars and talking about their respective court cases.

On the deck, the trio of tuxedoed men dispersed. One of them laughed and called out, “Round two. To the Lightning Rod!” And Marydale saw a third woman standing with Tate and Laura, her hair pulled up in a twist, her trim gray suit an elegant contrast to the carnival of outfits around her.

Kristen.

Vita appeared at Marydale's elbow. Marydale jumped

“I'm a bartender,” Vita whispered. “I know
everyone.
”

Vita shuttled off to the next cluster of guests. Marydale looked around for Aldean, but he was leaning against the counter, chatting with the women in schoolgirl jumpers.

Aldean
, she mouthed.

He shot her a look that said,
I'm busy.

To the women he said, “Whiskey's very sensual. You have to be in your body when you drink whiskey.”

Then Marydale's eyes met Kristen's, and although the room was large and crowded with voices, Marydale felt everything go silent and still, as though the mist that sometimes covered the Willamette River at dawn had drifted up the hills and blanketed the party. Only Kristen was visible. Kristen raised one hand, tentatively, not quite a wave. Tate and Laura glanced back at Marydale, spoke something to Kristen, and then disappeared.

And Marydale knew what she should do: make small talk, feel awkward, sit at the opposite end of the table from Kristen at dinner, and go home. The thought made her feel so tired, she knew if she sat down she would fall asleep, like a drunk in the corner of a bar. At the same time, beneath that fatigue, she felt a tense, queer giddiness, like the excitement she had felt when she had broken the conditions of her parole and driven out of the county—just to do it—the feeling that there was no future price that outweighed the exquisite now.

She walked through the crowd and onto the deck. The air outside was cool. Kristen watched her.

“I'm surprised,” Marydale said when she reached Kristen.

Kristen looked down. “I met Vita at the Mirage.”

Marydale took a step closer. She touched Kristen's arm, and Kristen's eyes flew upward. And Marydale knew that she could kiss her, that she
would
kiss her, and maybe heartbreak would follow, but tonight the city lights were sparkling and, despite the orange glow they cast in the sky, there were still so many stars.

“Did you like the Mirage?” Marydale asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you go dancing?”

Kristen offered her a rueful smile. “I'm not a dancer.”

“I don't know about that,” Marydale said.

Their words felt weightier than small talk.

“I'd be so stiff. I don't think I even danced in college. I think once I was walking across the quad and some drunk people bumped into me. That's as close as I got to dancing,” Kristen said. “Do you dance?”

“Not anymore. I did a little Western dancing back home. You can't be a rodeo queen and not take a turn, but I was pretty bad at it. I always wanted to lead.”

“I bet you were lovely. Did you have a big skirt with ruffles?”

“And four hundred pounds of sequins.”

“Ah,” Kristen said. “Armor.” She glanced at the party inside. “I'm sorry about the other day.”

“You're sorry that you came to the distillery?”

Kristen pursed her lips in a pensive expression that did not look like an attorney planning her strategy. “You said no,” she said quietly. “And I didn't listen to you.”

“I don't think anyone could accuse you of forcing me.” Marydale stepped a little closer. “I'll run it by my lawyer, but I don't think it'll hold up in court.”

“But I came by to talk, to see you.” Kristen reached out as if to touch her hand, then stopped. “I didn't come there to make you uncomfortable. And I pushed you into something you didn't want.”

“Well,” Marydale drawled, “I wouldn't say I didn't want it. The trick is just to only want those things that are good for us. But Aldean says we're in the business of temptation. It's only fair that we be tempted. What did you want to talk about?”

“I—”

Vita poked her head out the porch door. “Come on, you guys. We're eating.”

“Sit with me,” Kristen said.

Inside, Tate lit the candles and raised a toast to Vita. Vita thanked Tate and Laura for hosting. Toasts were made. Glasses clinked. White china tureens were passed up and down the long table. Aldean kept up a friendly banter about the rain and the
estery
profile of their latest release. Tate asked about gin distilling. Kristen and Laura talked about zoning laws with impenetrable specificity. And Marydale nodded and laughed and looked up and down the table as the conversation bounced back and forth. But she wasn't really listening. She was feeling the air between her shoulder and Kristen's, the distance between her hand on the stem of her wineglass and Kristen's hand on the tablecloth beside her plate. She was so focused on the millimeters that separated them and on the way Kristen's knee brushed hers beneath the table that she did not hear Vita calling the guests to order, declaring, “You won't believe this.” Vita added, “Marydale Rae! Are you listening?”

“What?” Marydale asked.

 Vita waved her arms over her plate like a referee. “I have a terribly sad story to tell,” she said enthusiastically.

“Vita, don't,” Tate said. To Marydale and Kristen she added, “She meddles. Don't listen to her.”

“Heartbreaking,” Vita said.

“Vita!” Tate scolded, but the table had already fallen silent, all eyes focused on Vita.

“I was at the bar,” Vita began melodramatically. “This woman came in. She talked to Tate for, like, an hour.”

“Hardly,” Tate said.

Vita laughed. “She was there for
hours
. This poor girl was weeping in her Sadfire whiskey. She was
in love
.” Vita beamed, managing to look both loving and predatory at the same time. “Oh, she was so in love, but she was bi, or maybe she was straight, but she'd fallen for this one girl, and the heartless lesbian dumped her. Do you know why?” She didn't wait for an answer. “Because she had the
stain of man
on her.”

One of the men at the table chuckled.

“I don't mind the stain of man on me,” he said.

“And do you know who this terrible lesbian was?” Vita went on. “This cruel woman who wouldn't accept her bisexual lover? Who would say no to a girl just because she'd never been with another woman? And she was very pretty, by the way. This girl was very professional, very polished. I wanted to bed her just to mess up her hair.”

Under the table, Kristen touched Marydale's leg. When Marydale glanced over, Kristen was blushing a red so deep it matched Vita's lipstick.

Vita leaned over, nearly dragging the sleeve of her velveteen leopard-print blazer in the hollandaise sauce.

“Marydale Rae, you'll never get your toaster like that!” she declared.

The whole table laughed.

When they quieted down, Aldean asked, “What does a toaster have to do with it?”

There was another round of laughter.

“For flipping a straight girl.” Vita grinned. “We get one every time we get a girl to play for our team. Signing bonus from the Lesbian Nation.”

Kristen leaned over and pressed her forehead to Marydale's shoulder, hiding her face from the guests at the table.

“Where are you going to put your toaster?” she whispered.

Marydale could hear that she was smiling. She kissed the top of Kristen's head.

Someone said, “Aw!”

Someone else said, “Oh, it's her!”

Kristen looked up at Marydale, and Marydale gently placed a kiss on her lips.

“That's more like it,” Vita exclaimed, and the talk at the table broke into half a dozen smaller conversations, some of the guests discussing toasters and the chance that Marydale might upgrade to a Vitamix, while farther down the table someone described an enormous dildo they had seen at Spartacus Leathers, and another trio of talkers burst into a rendition of “I Kissed a Girl.”

Kristen squeezed Marydale's hand under the table, and they looked at each other. Then they were both laughing at their own embarrassment and at the ridiculous conversations and at the ease that flowered between them and at the sudden certainty that the air around them had changed. Somewhere the first pale crocus had broken through gas-station bark dust. Somewhere, in the darkness, a leafless cherry tree had turned, miraculously, pink with spring.