Something True (12 page)

“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.

She sighed as she hung up the phone and began frothing milk for yet another cappuccino. How many had she made in her life? A thousand? Ten thousand? A small part of her wished Duke had beaten her to a pulp or at least clocked her once. Maybe then things would have changed. The police would have taken her to the hospital. Maggie would have apologized for calling Abigail. Abigail would finally have seen that Duke was a mistake. Maybe Krystal would have seen violence for the useless waste that it was and pushed her father out of her heart. Maybe Laura would have found out where she was and rushed to her side, crying,
I should never have left you.

As it was, Tate was back at the counter, and Laura was probably in her hotel room making plans for her next corporate merger. Tate considered calling her, to tell her that everything had worked out, but the shop was busy. Maggie and Krystal were both useless. And Laura did not care.

W
ith the morning suddenly free, Laura headed downtown to the shopping district she and Tate had skirted on their tour of Portland's stranger art galleries. She did not find any of her favorite shops—no Armani, no Burberry—but she did find a Nordstrom and a rather elegant, glass-fronted shopping mall with a J.Crew and an Ann Taylor. She was pleased to see that there were places in Portland where one could buy something other than hemp bracelets and skateboards. Some places. Not many.

However, after twenty minutes, Nordstrom had lost its usual appeal. The lights felt sharp. The constant fluttering of the staff was obsequious, not helpful. In an atrium beneath the second-floor escalators, a pianist was playing. Laura thought it was Chopin. But a moment later, she found “A Spoonful of Sugar” incessantly running through her mind, and she realized he was playing Disney tunes, arranged for piano with a kind of classical flair.

She was almost relieved when Brenda called.

“Where are you?” Brenda said. “I hear bad music.”

Laura headed toward the only window on the second floor, secluded in an alcove beyond the juniors' section. The music faded.

“Escalator music,” she offered by way of explanation.

Brenda did not care.

“I saw your credit card invoice,” Brenda said. “You're still in Portland.”

“Thank you, Sherlock Holmes.”

“I thought you'd be headed down to Palm Springs by now.”

In the background, Laura could hear Brenda's other phone lines ringing. She looked out the window. Below her, the city street was quiet. Even at eleven a.m., Portland was not fully awake. If New York City was the city that never slept, Portland was the city that got up late. Laura pondered this while Brenda talked, but then Brenda stopped, waiting for an answer.

“So?” Brenda asked.

There was a half second of silence on Brenda's end, and then her phone exploded again.

“What was that again? I don't get a lot of bars out here,” Laura said.

“The Palm Springs project. Gregory Bonhoffer. Our biggest investor. He says his financial advisor told him to get out of real estate and out fast. Some ridiculousness about overlending and another mortgage crisis. I told him to forget the bank. If that's the issue, we'll go someplace else for the mortgage. But you have to get down there and remind him that real estate is the little black dress of investing. It never goes out of style. He only wants to hear it from you.”

“I'm sure Gregory Bonhoffer wants to hear that he is buying a little black dress for $8.2 million.”

“No one else can take over the Bonhoffer case,” Brenda said. “He's touchy. Let Dayton and Craig take the City Ridge Commercial Plaza project. Just get down there before this explodes.”

“No!” It came out too quickly.

The junior section sales clerk looked up from her register. Two teenage girls scuttled away from a nearby table where they had been sifting through tank tops.

“I'm doing some market research for the City Ridge Commercial Plaza,” Laura said, trying to quash the earnestness that she heard in her own voice. That was not how she and Brenda talked. “There's a coffee shop in that building, a local tradition. That sort of thing. Close them down, and everyone hates us.”

“Are they making money?”

“I haven't looked at their books yet,” she lied.

“What's this place called?”

Laura hesitated.

“Out in Portland.”

“How clever,” Brenda said with bland irony.

“I want to know what this coffee shop needs to do to stay on their lease,” Laura said. “That's all. Is it profit? Money in the bank? How can I be sure that they stay in the City Ridge Plaza and the hippies don't start calling us the Antichrist?”

“And remind me why we care?” That was a typical response for Brenda, but then Brenda yelled to someone in her office, “Can you turn off those goddamn phones?” And that was not typical. Nothing delighted Brenda Phillips, and nothing ruffled her helmet of Brillo-permed hair. “Just tell me what I can do to get you to Palm Springs,” Brenda demanded.

She was angry. It occurred to Laura that she was not the only one who had mixed feelings about her father's campaign. Doug Vester might see the benefits of supporting Stan Enfield by paying for his daughter's leave. But Brenda was just another working-class girl from Charleston who had clawed her way up the corporate ladder. Soon she would have all Laura's work dumped on her desk and no way to complain about it because Doug Vester, Stan Enfield, and by association Laura, were gods in Brenda Phillips's world. Laura could almost hear Brenda remembering this, calculating, trying to figure out how hard she could press on Laura without crossing the men who provided her living.

“Just talk to the board, Brenda.”

“About this coffee shop?”

“Yes.”

There was another silence on Brenda's end.

“Out in Portland?” she asked finally.

“Yes.” Laura kept her tone casual.

“If I talk to the board, will you be in Palm Springs by Wednesday?”

Laura heard the frost in Brenda's voice. Laura was a problem. Her leave was a problem. Out in Portland was a problem.

“Yes,” Laura said. “And thank you, Brenda.”

Brenda hung up without saying “You're welcome.”

Laura tried to enjoy the rest of her morning, but she couldn't. On every corner, she saw a quirky, no-name coffee shop, a dusty pharmacy, or a little deli with hand-painted signs and sausages hanging in the window.
Starbucks
, she thought as she walked.
Rite Aid. Subway. Starbucks. Subway. CVS. Starbucks.
She listed the conquerors all the way to her hotel. It would be so much cleaner, more predictable, and more efficient. One Walmart every twelve miles. One Walgreens every ten. One McDonald's every seven. And one Starbucks on every corner. Two weeks ago, she would not have minded. She liked the consistency. She
liked
Starbucks. But for once she was not thinking about investors, shares, or development opportunities.

When she got to her hotel, she cleared off the table and opened her laptop. There had to be some way to save Out Coffee. Not for profit. Not for Clark-Vester. Perhaps not even for Tate, but for herself, so that when she left she could remember Out Coffee as it had been that first night she walked in, the smell of coffee mixing with the smells of the evening street, the dim light lending the old fixtures a gentle patina. In her mind's eye, Tate would always be standing at the counter, watching the door, waiting for her.

By the time it got dark, Laura had to admit that she was not concentrating. She had five browser tabs and a dozen spreadsheets open on her laptop, and she could not remember what she was doing with a single one of them. She had heard police sirens approaching as she drove away from Out Coffee. Tate could be in jail. Tate could be locked in an undocumented cell, the victim of some deep-seated anti-protestor bias. These things happened. Most police were honorable, but that didn't mean there weren't a few homophobic assholes who would rough up a woman like Tate—or worse. And she had just left Tate in the middle of calamity, with her beloved Maggie about to pass out from heatstroke, the protestors rallying for revolution, and the police approaching.

Laura was in her car, keys in the ignition, before she'd stopped to think.

Out Coffee was nearly empty when she arrived. It was almost ten, almost closing time. She glanced through the door, hoping the reflection on the glass would hide her. Tate was nowhere in sight. She couldn't ask Maggie about Tate's whereabouts. Maggie hated her. The other woman, Lill, seemed only tangentially related to the coffee shop. She hesitated, hand on the door. It wasn't a feeling she was used to. She was used to marching in, placing the contract on the table, and walking out with exactly what she wanted. No, not what she wanted, what she asked for.

She was about to turn away when the girl with the pink hair spotted her through the glass and beckoned frantically. Slowly, Laura pushed the door open.

“Shhh,” the girl said when Laura approached the counter. “Maggie is in the back. Can I get you a coffee?”

Laura shook her head. “I was just…checking on Tate.”

“Tate went to do the bank drop. You have to have a coffee, and don't say decaf because that's lame.”

The girl ran around the counter and grabbed Laura's hand, dragging her to a seat by the window. She must have been in her twenties, Laura guessed, but she moved like a child, uncoordinated and guileless. It was both cute and annoying.

“Stay here!” the girl said.

A moment later, she returned with a cup.

“It's my signature drink,” she explained. “It's called the Dragon-ator.”

Laura took a sip. It was ferociously strong.

“I'm Krystal,” the girl said, sliding into the seat across from Laura. “But I probably won't be here for much longer because my dad is getting out of prison and we're going to get a place together.”

“What did your father do?” Laura asked a split second before it occurred to her that this was probably not an appropriate question for the girl-child in front of her.

Krystal hesitated.

“They say he killed this woman.” She traced a knothole on the wooden tabletop. “She was dealing meth anyway, and she was a prostitute. Dad says they put the wrench in his truck. They didn't even do a DNA test on the blood. It could've been anyone's. I watch
CSI
. If they don't do a blood test, they don't know anything.”

“I'm not sure that's true,” Laura said.

“No, I saw it,” Krystal said. “I saw it on TV.” She glanced over Laura's shoulder and out the window. “They wouldn't put it on TV if it didn't happen…at least sometimes. He's getting out. He wants me to come live with him in The Dalles.” She chipped at the table with one pink-lacquered nail.

“How long have you worked at the coffee shop?” Laura asked to change the subject.

Krystal sighed. “Since forever! Two years. Since I was eighteen.”

Two years
, Laura thought. How quickly two years disappeared. Or four. Or ten.

From the back storeroom, Maggie called out, “Everything okay up there?”

“Totally,” Krystal called back. “Just waiting for Tate to come back.” In a quiet voice she said, “You and Tate are totally cute.”

Laura stiffened.

“I mean it's just like in the movies,” Krystal added. “You can't be together, but you
have
to be together.”

“There is nothing between Ms. Grafton and myself,” Laura said quickly. She felt her face flush.

Krystal cocked her head.

“That's what Tate says too,” Krystal said, and Laura had the uncanny sensation that Krystal was watching her face for a reaction, perhaps reading the truth.