Something True (14 page)

W
hen they reached the hotel again, Tate parked in the empty valet dock. There were staff inside the hotel, but the street was empty. Laura returned the leather jacket and pulled off the helmet. With her hair disheveled and mascara smudged by the wind or tears, she looked more beautiful than ever. Tate had to imagine Laura-the-politician's-daughter and transpose that woman's face over the one that looked up at her to remind herself how close she was to heartbreak.

“Tell me something,” Tate said. She still felt the glow of Laura's embrace. Her lungs were still filled with the cool air that drifted down the forested hillside of Saint Johns.

“What would you do if I kissed you?”

Laura looked at her with more tender longing than Tate had ever seen before in any woman's eyes.

“I'd run,” Laura said.

Tate bowed her head to hide her hurt.

Then Laura's hands were in her hair, Laura's tongue on hers. The kiss was so hard and sudden Tate stumbled back.

Then it was over and Laura was inside the lobby, stepping into an elevator, disappearing.

Instead of going up to her apartment, Tate sat in the vacant lot behind her house, listening to the distant freeway and the crickets. Even Pawel and Rose had turned off their late-night shows and gone to bed. It was the witching hour between late night and early morning, the loneliest hour.
Every time
, she thought.

She had been sitting for at least an hour when she was aware of a car pulling up in front of her apartment. For a moment, she wondered if it was Vita, borrowing Cairo's Jeep. But it wasn't a Jeep. It was the long, low curve of a cream-colored Sebring.

Tate watched as Laura got out of her car. She knew she was invisible where she sat on the rickety picnic bench in the overgrown lot.
Don't move
, Tate told herself. She thought of all the other girls she had known. Abigail with her cello. The physics professor she had loved so dearly, who would never return her love. The out-of-work accountant who stole the title to her truck. The tattoo artist who had dumped her when she refused to sit for a full back tattoo of a mermaid. And way back in high school, there was the brief affair with Vita, who made a great friend but a terrible girlfriend, even by terrible-high-school-girlfriend standards.

“Tate?” Laura called softly, looking up at the windows of the house, trying to judge which door to knock on.

Tate was no good with women. She always picked the wrong girl, and she always suffered for it. She knew that, and she knew that, and she knew that, and she called back, “Laura. I'm here.”

Laura's kiss was as fierce and urgent as it had been outside the hotel, but this time it lasted. She pushed Tate back against the rough side of the house and leaned her whole body against Tate, her leg between Tate's thighs, her soft breasts pressed against Tate's chest, her hands in Tate's cropped hair, and her tongue in Tate's mouth. When Laura finally pulled back it was to whisper.

“Take me upstairs.”

Tate felt weak. She knew she had only a minute before she lost all good sense.

“I want you,” she said, surprised at how raw her own voice sounded. “But I want to know that you will be here tomorrow. Because if you're going to leave before I wake up, the answer is no.”

“I'm supposed to be in Palm Springs,” Laura said. “I'm from Alabama.”

“You can't just disappear.”

“I can't promise that I'll move to Portland, that I'll stay here forever. I have a whole life outside this city.”

“I'm not asking for forever,” Tate said, “just for tomorrow.”

Laura's yes was a sigh.

Once in the apartment, Laura pulled Tate to her and kissed her hard on the lips, holding the back of Tate's head and drawing her into the kiss.

“I want you,” she whispered.

She slipped her hands under Tate's shirt and pulled it over her head. Then she pulled off Tate's sports bra, scratching Tate's back in her haste and kissing Tate's naked shoulders once she had thrown the garment to the floor.

“God, you're beautiful,” she said, in between kisses.

Her movements were frantic, as though she could not decide whether to kiss Tate or bite her or rub against her. Quickly, almost angrily, she discarded her own shirt and bra, as though their presence hurt her.

She was gorgeous in the moonlight that filtered through the window. Her breasts were larger than Tate's, heavier, and more feminine. Her nipples jutted out from small areola. Her belly was soft and marked by the slight indentation of her abs beneath a silky layer of skin the color of cream.

Tate cupped her breast and thumbed her nipple.

“Harder,” Laura whispered.

Tate pinched her gently.

“Harder.”

This time Tate pinched hard. A pink flush marked Laura's chest. Laura's nipples hardened. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, drawing Tate's other hand to her other breast. Tate squeezed both her nipples, harder than she thought right, but Laura nodded. A shiver, like a bolt of electricity, seemed to go through her body, and she clutched Tate's hips to hers.

“In my hotel.” Laura unbuckled Tate's belt and ran her hand inside Tate's jeans. “I masturbated. I wanted you. I touched myself, like you did. But I needed you. I need you.” She kissed Tate, and then stepped back, shedding her skirt, her underwear, and her nylons in one swift movement. Her nylons ripped in her haste. When she was completely naked she lay down on the bed, reaching one hand up to Tate. “Come here. Lay on top of me. Fuck me.”

Tate dropped her jeans and lay beside her, leaning over her, supporting her weight on one elbow.

“No,” Laura said. “Hold me down.” She clutched Tate to her.

Tate let her full weight settle on Laura's body. Laura wound her legs around Tate's, as though trying to touch as much of her skin as possible. Tate had never felt so utterly wanted in her whole life.

“You're so strong,” Laura whispered.

Tate felt Laura's thigh press against her sex and she moaned.

“Yes,” Laura echoed.

Tate thrust her hips against Laura as urgently as her body demanded, thinking about nothing but chasing the pleasure that raced through her clit. And even as she forgot herself in the pleasure of Laura's body, and even as Laura gripped her with a fierceness that had lost all manners, it felt like a wonderful collaboration, fun and raw and exciting. Her breath and Laura's breath, racing together. Her pulse beating against Laura's skin. Their bodies understood each other. Their blood spoke the same language.

Then Laura shifted beneath her, just a little bit, a slight angle of her hips upward. Tate felt a deeper heat as Laura's open labia touched hers. Tate's whole body flooded with desire, the pleasure of a second before multiplied by the tiny shift. The sensation was electric. Laura grabbed Tate's hips and held them and leaned up to meet Tate's kiss. All the while Tate felt Laura's desire like a tightly coiled spring. Every movement was full of its energy.

“I'm so close,” Laura gasped. “It's so good.”

Tate thrust against her, relieved by the pressure and tortured by it. Then some mixture of heat and motion, pleasure and anticipation, released Tate from her bondage and she came helplessly, panting as she felt her weight sink into Laura's body.

“I'm sorry,” Tate gasped.

But Laura clearly did not hear her, for her head was thrown back and her mouth open in a silent cry. When the orgasm released her, she pressed her face into Tate's shoulder. Tate thought she heard Laura whisper, “I can't do this,” but Laura's words were already stumbling into sleep. Her breath slowed. Her head fell back on the pillow. Gently, Tate rolled off Laura and nestled her in the covers. She wrapped an arm around Laura's waist and drew her close.

“Don't go,” Tate whispered before she too drifted to sleep. “Just don't go.”

I
n her dream, Laura was at a cotillion dance, a relic of her childhood transported into adult life. The dancers swung past her in a blur, both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Brenda was there, seeming to wear her mother's face, and, in the dream, Craig was her ex-husband. On one wall of the dance hall, a banner read
ENFIELD FOR SENATE
, but it was Laura running for senate, not her father. The partners changed, and the room faded into another scene, a bar perhaps, or a dance hall. Laura looked around but suddenly everything was strange and shadowy, and she didn't recognize anyone.

“Sweetheart,” someone whispered. “Laura.”

Laura woke to Tate leaning over her.

“Don't wake up,” Tate said. “I have to go to work, just for an hour, to get things ready. Don't worry. I'll be back.”

Laura's eye flew open.

“You're beautiful,” Tate said, cupping Laura's face in one hand. “Go back to sleep.” Just as Tate was closing the apartment door, she added, “Please stay.”

Or Laura
thought
she heard “Please stay.” Tate had spoken so softly her words got lost in the scrape of the door across the floor.

Laura waited until she heard the motorcycle roar away before she sat up. The apartment could not have been more than seven hundred square feet. The bed took up most of the floor space. There was also a table, two chairs, a stove with two burners, and a tiny refrigerator. Just enough for one person to survive. Minimally.

“Who lives like this?”

She did not answer aloud, although the answer came quickly:
Me
.

She rose, shielding her nakedness with a sheet. The window was screened with only a filmy blue curtain, like a scrim of sky.

Tate had left a vintage silk robe on a chair. Laura picked it up and pressed it to her face without thinking. It smelled of Tate's cologne, a mix of cedar and tea rose. She breathed deeply.

A note on the chair read:
Dear Laura, I had to go to work for an hour, but I took the rest of the day off. There is coffee in the pot, just turn it on. The password to my laptop is javadyke1976 if you need to do some work.

Laura opened the laptop out of habit, certain there was something she should be doing but uncertain what it was.

Leave Portland
, she told herself.
Never look back.
That's what she was supposed to do. Instead she sat at the small kitchen table and looked around.

On second glance, there was nothing of her spare hotel room in Tate's studio apartment. Only the square footage was the same. Every surface in the apartment bore a trace of Tate's life, from the hand-painted floor mat in the kitchen to the tray of seedlings on the windowsill. Shelves of books lined the walls, bearing authors Laura had been assigned in college but had skipped in favor of business texts: Melville, Hugo, Wolfe, Dickens. On the wall above the kitchen sink, a framed collage of photographs showed Tate and two friends clutching Frisbees in their teeth, Tate and Maggie accepting a plaque at a banquet, Tate and another woman grinning on a windy beach.

It occurred to Laura she did not have one friend she could call to ask the question she so desperately needed answered: Should she flee or should she do what her body told her and pull off the robe and lie naked in the sunlight waiting for Tate's return?

“I have to go,” she said out loud. “Get dressed and go.”

She stood, searching the floor for her bra, her slacks. Tears clouded her eyes but she blinked them back.

“Go.”

She froze, her blouse in hand. She had always treated sex with her husband like business, something to be dispatched of quickly, with minimal contact with the adversary. She did not like him probing her with his fingers. Nor did she like manipulating him with hers. And when he lay on top of her, she felt pressed and breathless.

When Tate had lain on top of her it wasn't enough, and she had pulled Tate closer, clawing her back, biting her, trying to touch as much of her body as she could. She had been clumsy in the attempt. She had been awkward and rough. And she had cried things she could never imagine saying. The Hungarian couple downstairs had probably heard. They had probably turned on Lawrence Welk. It was all mortifying. And still she remembered how Tate's back had arched and her angular face had softened with a look of relief as though she had waited her whole life for Laura's embrace. And Laura knew she had waited her whole life for that look.

She sank down on the bed. No. It wasn't even a bed. It was a futon.

“No one sleeps on a futon,” she said and put her head in her hands.

With her husband, and the two brief, awkward lovers she had had before him, there had always come a moment of clarity when, in the middle of their lovemaking, she thought,
Why is his tongue in my mouth?
Now, at thirty-seven, she finally realized what all the fuss was about. She finally realized what she should have learned in the back of some girl's pickup truck at age seventeen. And she began to cry.

She had cried unreservedly for about five minutes—long enough to ruin her face but not long enough to dispel the feeling that her life was over—when she heard a key turn in the door.
I can't do this
, she thought. The daylight made it all so real, like a spotlight highlighting the difference between this life and her life. She leapt to her feet, grabbing her suit jacket as though Ann Taylor could change everything. At the same time, she caught her face in the mirror—blotchy, red, and utterly pathetic—and thought,
She can't see me like this.

She wiped at her eyes, doing nothing to fix the issue. Then the door opened, and suddenly she had real problems, because the woman who walked in, dropping her enormous purse on the floor, was not Tate Grafton. The woman looked like an '80s rock star, complete with leopard print bodysuit, red leather jacket, and hair teased to a height that could broadcast cell phone signals. The woman wore enough bracelets to kill a man. One swipe from her wrist and even the strong would fall.

Tate's girlfriend
. It was the only thing Laura could think. She had been so wrapped up in her own story, it had never even occurred to her that sweet, earnest Tate might have secrets of her own. Perhaps she too was torn between the life she had and a life she could barely allow herself to want. Now the girlfriend had come home, from whatever hard-rock adventure she had been on, to find proof of her lover's infidelity, nearly but not entirely dressed. Ann Taylor could do nothing for her now.

She's going to kill me
. The thought flashed across her mind like a snapshot from the ten o'clock news. They were called “crimes of passion,” Laura knew. People who committed them got off.

“I'm sorry. I won't come back,” Laura said.

She grabbed her shoes off the floor and made a run for it. She thought she could rush past the newcomer, but an arm blocked her path.

“I swear. It was a mistake. You'll never see me again.”

Then another arm clamped around her shoulders, and she was engulfed. The woman squeezed her tightly. Laura sobbed in surprise.

“Hey there,” the rock star said, pulling Laura even tighter. “You okay?” There was no venom in her voice. “I didn't scare you, did I?”

Laura stopped crying long enough to notice that the hold was more a hug than a death grip. She pulled back and looked at the woman again. She recognized her.

“You're Tate's friend,” she said. “From the bar.”

“Vita,” the woman said, wrestling Laura back into a half-hug. “Tate is going to kill me when she finds out I walked in on you.” Vita finally released her. “I just came by to get some CDs. I'm having a party tonight, and we're going old-school. I wanted vinyl, but no one's got anything good on vinyl anymore. You're Laura, right? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” Laura whispered. “I should go.”

“Tate must have really screwed up if you're crying already.” Vita shook her head. “I'm sure, whatever she did, she didn't mean it. She is a total idiot with women, but she's got a good heart. We've been friends for years.” Vita pointed to a picture of two little girls of about eight. “That's me on the left.”

“She mentioned you,” Laura said.

“Oh, did she? I'm flattered.” Vita put her hand on Laura's shoulder and guided her toward the kitchen table. “Stay. Just for a minute. I have to meet Tate's mystery woman.” She sniffed the air. “Coffee. I think I will.” She turned on the percolator and sat down across from Laura. “Why so sad?”

Laura sat because she felt her eyes welling up again, and she knew that speaking would bring on the deluge, and because she did not know what else to do.

“Tate's hot isn't she?” Vita said enthusiastically.

I can't have this conversation
, Laura thought. But apparently she didn't have to because the rock star was having both sides of it for her.

“She
is
hot. If she wasn't my best friend…damn! Those cheekbones. And you spent the night with her, I see.” Vita noticed the note on the table and read it. “And you're not crying because she left you, because she is coming back in an hour…to kill me when she finds me here. Tate says I ‘meddle.' I don't meddle. I just want what's best for her. And she's got good stuff that she doesn't mind me borrowing…as long as she doesn't notice it's gone.”

The coffee pot hissed. Vita stood and brought two cups to the table.

“Cream? Sugar? Is Tate your first girl?”

“Splenda,” Laura whispered.

“That stuff gives you cancer. You'd better just have sugar. Better be fat than have cancer, right?”

Vita put a mason jar of cream and a bowl of brown lumps in front of Laura.

“It's better. It's raw,” Vita said, gesturing to the sugar bowl.

Laura took a sip of her black coffee and scalded her tongue.

“So?” Vita prodded. “Tate's your first girl, isn't she?”

“It's none of your business.” Laura clutched her blazer to her chest.

“She was! It's like you were deflowered, and I am here to witness it. And you're so
old
.”

“Excuse me?” The rudeness shook Laura out of shock. “I don't know you. I am not talking to you about this. I have to go.”

“No. No. No. Stay. I didn't mean it like that. It's awesome. Everyone's coming out at sixteen now. My friend's daughter is five, and she's already told her mom she wants to be a lesbian when she grows up. No. It's wonderful that you're what…? Thirty?”

Laura softened a little bit at this underestimate.

“This is an important moment in your life, and you're old enough to appreciate it. It's good that you're this old.”

Laura felt Vita's gaze travel up and down her body and wished, desperately, that she was more thoroughly dressed.

“And you're sure this is your first?” Vita asked, gulping her hot coffee as though it were water. “You didn't go to prom with a gay boy and then go make out with your girlfriend while he made out with his boyfriend in the back of, say, a 1984 Chevy Cavalier station wagon?”

“No!”

“You didn't kiss on girls at prep school? Didn't get on the four-year plan at college?”

“I don't even know what that is.”

“You know…you hook up with your freshman-year roommate and have a couple girlfriends in college. Then you graduate and marry an aspiring politician from Yale.”

Laura dumped cream and a few brown lumps in her coffee and stirred vigorously. She sipped her coffee. It was surprisingly good.

“Come on,” Vita said. “Tate has been talking about you nonstop, and she's never going to introduce us. She's afraid I'll embarrass her.”

That was easy to imagine.

“This might be the only chance I get to talk to you…for months if Tate has it her way.”

Months
, Laura thought. There would be no months. The thought made her sad.

“I skipped right to the politician,” she said.

“So you're a late bloomer.” Vita shrugged. “That's cool. You don't have to cry about that. I wish I could go back and relive my first. Did you know you can reduce your chances of getting cervical cancer by almost 100 percent if you sleep exclusively with women? Did you know that? You only have to get Pap smears every three years.”

Laura did not know that, and she pressed her fingertips to her forehead trying to understand how her life had gotten to this point and how it had gotten there so
quickly
. First there was no Splenda; then she was getting a lecture on how many Pap smears she would need if she became a lesbian.

“I'm supposed to be in Palm Springs,” she said.

“There are a lot of gays there too. And did you know you're less likely to get murdered by your spouse? Which means you probably won't get murdered at all,” Vita went on, clearly undeterred by the existential crisis taking place on the opposite side of the kitchen table. “Women always get murdered by their husbands. Everyone knows that.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Laura asked.

“I'm trying to make you feel better.”

Despite everything, Laura felt a smile pull at her cheeks.

“This is supposed to make me feel better?”

“That is why you're crying, right? Because you're gay, and this is new. I'm just telling you some of the unsung advantages.” Vita counted on her bejeweled fingers. “No cervical cancer. Not getting murdered. Not getting pregnant. But if you want kids—not my thing, personally—but if you like the sticky little buggers you know there are almost zero reported incidents of childhood sexual abuse in lesbian households.
And
you always have someone to give you a tampon if you run out. But you know what the best part is?”

Laura opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head.