Something True (22 page)

Vita managed to make the whole sentence sound dirty. Tate was glad to see that Cairo had not broken her spirit completely. But she didn't have an “in” with Laura.

“Not anymore,” she said. “Okay?”

“Whatever.” Vita spread out the words like a banquet. “Tate, you call Laura, cry, offer her sexual favors, and this all goes away.”

“A woman like Laura Enfield is never going to be with Tate,” Maggie said with a certainty that hurt all the more because Tate knew it was true. “Look at her. And look at you, Tate. You're a beautiful, strong, independent woman, but someone like that Laura woman isn't going to marry you. She's not going to take you home to her family. And one day, she's going to meet a man…”—Maggie shot a glare in Lill's direction—“…and decide what she really wants is a ‘normal' life.”

“Lill and Stephen aren't exactly normal,” Vita said with a shrug.

“And what is normal, Vita?” Lill asked.

“She's probably repressed,” Krystal added.

“Stop it.” Tate stood up, knocking the table and making the teacups jump. “All of you. Laura broke it off. She dumped me. Go ahead and say ‘You should have seen that coming.'”

Maggie opened her mouth and then closed it. Lill pressed her hands together and breathed deeply. Tate sat back down.

Vita said, “You could still call her.”

“No. I can't.” Tate lowered her voice. “I can't bear it. I can't see her again. It just…has to be over. I'm going home.”

“Wait,” Vita said. “Is she mad at you?”

“I don't know.” Tate stared down at the glass tabletop.

“So she's just totally closeted and can't deal with being with a woman?” Vita asked.

“Basically,” Tate said.

“I called it from the beginning! You have to see this,” Krystal said, pulling out her phone and flipping through the screens, looking for something.

Tate did not care what.

Vita's eyes were brighter than Tate thought was appropriate.

“Call her,” Vita said. “Make her feel guilty. Tell her there's one last thing she can do to make it all up to you.”

“No,” Tate said.

Vita pulled out her own phone. She tapped something onto the screen.

“I'll call her. There's got to be a number listed for the Clark-Vester Group.”

“No!” Tate felt like a teenager in a cable special about peer pressure. This was the part where Vita pulled out a joint and told her that the first hit was free.

Still poking at her phone, Vita said, “Ah…Tate?”

And then, in much the same tone she used when watching videos of skateboard wipeouts or bear attacks, Vita said, “Oh. Oooh!”

“What?” Tate asked.

Vita looked up.

“Maybe you don't want to call her.”

“What is it?” Tate asked again.

“Did you post these?” Vita turned the phone to Tate slowly.

At first, it was hard to make out the images tumbling across the screen, then Tate recognized the party at the Church. Then she recognized the tango lesson. She and Laura had danced for almost an hour under the tutelage of the ballet dancer. The camera focused on them, lingering on Tate's hand as she caressed Laura's back. The video ended with their kiss. Laura was still so beautiful. Tate felt as though the phone screen dimmed all the lights in the restaurant. Tate also felt her mouth go dry and her hands go cold.

“I didn't post that,” Krystal said.

Everyone turned to her.

Vita passed the phone around.

When it returned to Vita, Vita said, “It was posted yesterday, about six p.m., by Orchid1975.” She scrolled through a few more screens, then read. “‘Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Stan Enfield denies any knowledge of the recently posted YouTube videos showing his daughter, Laura Enfield, engaged in sexual activity with another woman.'”

“We were dancing.” Tate's voice came out in a whisper.

“You know what they say about sex,” Vita said, cheerfully. “It can lead to dancing.” She read on. “‘Previously known as a moderate on the gay-marriage issue, Senator Enfield now says he will strongly oppose any gay-marriage or civil-union bills that come before him. He says he knows his daughter is heterosexual and has proof that she is involved with a male attorney from the prominent Beautrix firm.'” Vita stared at her phone for another minute. “You know, the strange thing is that whoever tagged these videos only tagged her.”

The reality of the situation became clear to Tate like a wave crashing in slow motion.

“She thinks I did it,” Tate said. “She thinks I posted these to out her.”

The party's attention focused again on Krystal.

“I didn't do it!” Krystal protested.

“No one else at that party knew her,” Vita said.

“Someone might have recognized her,” Tate said. “She's the daughter of a politician.”

“Yeah, but which one of
my
friends is going to recognize Stan Enfield, let alone his daughter?” Vita asked.

She had a point. Suddenly Vita snatched Krystal's phone away from her and tapped the screen furiously.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“I don't know what you're talking about…” Krystal's tone suggested that she knew exactly what Vita was looking for.

“You've always had a crush on Tate,” Vita said.

“Have not.”

“You're happy Laura broke up with her.”

“I am not.”

“Leave her alone,” Maggie interrupted. “She hasn't done anything.”

“Really?” Vita turned Krystal's phone around so Maggie could see the screen. “What's that?”

Tate did not need to look to know it was the video of Vita's party.

“I swear to God I didn't post it,” Krystal said.

“You know it is possible for the phone company to pull anything off your phone,” Lill said. “Nothing you do on that phone is private.”

“Yeah!” Krystal folded her arms across her chest. “Nothing on my phone is private.”

“This was private,” Tate said quietly. She had gone past angry, like someone might walk past a bus stop. Past angry, past vengeful, past snide. She was just tired. Laura was gone, and wherever she was, she believed Tate had betrayed her. Out Coffee was gone, and it was Tate's fault. And it was Laura's fault. And it was Krystal's fault. And in some tangential way it was Vita's fault, and, even if Laura hadn't shut them down, the store probably would have gone under anyway, and that was Maggie's fault and maybe Lill's fault too.

“I'm going home,” Tate said.

She didn't go back to her apartment. She did not have the energy for Pawel and Rose, who would be full of concern and eager to push her into an armchair in front of
The Price Is Right
. Even if she had not been in an accident, they would be waiting with a handful of junk mail for her to translate, a ploy for her company.
Come in. Have a cookie.
They were so lonely, and she just did not have the strength to add their loneliness to hers.

Instead she parked the Harley at the base of the community garden and limped up to her plot. The sunlight was turning orange as the sun slipped down between the buildings, casting long shadows among the tomatoes. Tate pulled a few blueberries off a vine, but they were sour. Inside the kiwi hut, the tree had started to smell of rusting fruit, a familiar sweet-rotten smell. She stretched out on the bench and listened to the sounds of the city until she fell asleep with her head on the hard wooden slats and her legs dangling over the edge.

Tate woke to the uncomfortable feeling of being watched. She opened her eyes to see a woman's figure silhouetted in the opening of the kiwi tree hut. She blinked. For a second, she thought it was Laura. She sat up shielding her eyes against the brightness outside.

“What are you doing?” the woman asked.

It was Abigail.

Tate dropped the hand from her eyes.

“What are
you
doing?”

“Maggie said I'd find you up here.”

Damn Maggie
, Tate thought. Maggie had never liked Abigail while they were dating, but in light of Laura Enfield, Tate gathered Abigail was looking better and better to the matriarch of gay Portland.

“What do you want?” Tate asked.

“Can I sit?”

Tate wished there was an alternate reality in which she could say,
Get the fuck out of my kiwi tree
and not sound like an idiot. As it was, she scooted to the edge of the bench so that Abigail could sit without touching her. Abigail plopped down right next to her, their thighs touching.

“Oh, Tate,” Abigail said.

Nothing good began with “Oh, Tate.” Tate scowled.

“What?”

“I heard about your girlfriend and Out Coffee. Maggie told me everything.”

“And you've come to gloat.”

“I've come to talk. I loved Out Coffee too. Everyone did. That's why I helped Maggie with the protest.”

Helped
was a funny word for it.

Abigail was wearing a green tunic that set off her fiery orange hair and dark eyes. It was the kind of contrast Tate had once found glamorous. Now Abigail reminded her of a J. R. R. Tolkien creature run through the wrong Instagram filter.

“Tate, I still love you. I was wrong about Duke. I was wrong about everything. The only thing I've ever been right about was you.”

Tate stood before Abigail could do something embarrassing like grab her hand.

“If you know everything, then you know I'm not looking for anyone right now,” she said.

“You knew it would never last with that woman.” Abigail was using her “understanding voice.” It made Tate want to kick her in the shin. “She was just playing with you. But I'm here, Tate. I'm real.”

“We don't have anything in common.” Tate sighed. She did not want to have this conversation.

“Be honest with yourself. Did you really have anything in common with
her
?”

Tate thought about the night in Palm Springs when she and Laura had watched the city lights and talked about their families. She said nothing to Abigail.

“Well? Did you?” Abigail pressed. “Did it ever occur to you that you were out of your league with her?”

Every day.

Tate spat back, “That's great coming from a third cello.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Abigail's eyes got darker.

Tate wasn't really sure. It had never meant anything to her.

“If you think that Armani-wearing pinup girl is your type, you better look in the mirror.” Abigail stood, her face hardening into a more officious version of itself. “You don't even own your own car. You couldn't finish your bachelor's degree. You think you can compete with her? Did you think she was going to move into your studio apartment? Were you going to upgrade and get a one bedroom? Did you think she'd be a barback at the Mirage and ride around on your Harley? That thing is a piece of shit. I'm surprised you haven't gotten killed on it already.”

“You know what?” Tate said. “You're right. She's never going to choose me. I already know that. I don't need you tromping up here to tell me. And you know what else? Compared to me and Laura, you and I are like, fucking, Siamese twins we've got so much in common. And you know what else? I'd trade our whole relationship for one week with Laura.”

Which is all I got anyway.

Abigail folded her arms and glared at Tate.

“Get out.” Tate did not care if she sounded like one of the crazy protestors who crawled up into old growth trees and let their beards grow. “This is my tree. This is my plot. My life has gone to shit, but this is still my goddamn kiwi! Go!”

“I'm leaving,” Abigail said, as though it had been her idea in the first place. “I'm sorry you can't see what's right in front of you. You're obsessed with a straight girl. Most of us got over that when we were sixteen.” She turned and exited the kiwi tree, slapping the branches away with unnecessary force. When she was outside, she turned. “Oh, and you'd better call Maggie. She sent me up here to find you. I wasn't just walking up here for my health. I guess that foster kid ran away, headed out to Eddyville. Maggie said you accused her of outing your girlfriend.”

T
ate had to borrow a phone from a man she found weeding spinach seedlings a few plots over.

“What's going on, Maggie?” she asked when she got Maggie on the phone. “Abigail just came out to the garden to tell me I'm a loser, she still loves me, and Krystal ran away.”

“She wrote a letter. She's left.”

It was the calm in Maggie's voice that frightened Tate. If Maggie had scolded or lectured or rattled off a list of human-trafficking statistics, she would have dismissed the whole thing. Krystal was always coming home late or going out without telling Maggie, and Maggie held Krystal on a tighter leash than she had ever used on Tate when Tate was young.

“Her father was released. She's gone to find him.”

“Why?” But there was no why. He was her father. She loved him.
If he gets out, I'm going to be with him.
“Shit!”

“I know,” Maggie said.

“He hurts women.”

“I know.”

“I'm coming over.”

Tate found Maggie sitting at the kitchen table of her squat white house on Southeast 94th. In her hand, she held a piece of notebook paper, on which Tate saw Krystal's childish handwriting.

The letter read like a suicide note:

Tate raised her eyes to Maggie. “She's serious, isn't she?”

Maggie shrugged. Tate read on.

When she was done, she looked up at Maggie.

“What a load of crap.”

“I did judge her, and I shouldn't have,” Maggie said. “It was Laura's fault. Laura shut Out Coffee down. Laura was the one who couldn't be honest about who she was. It wasn't Krystal.”

Tate stood and walked over to the kitchen sink. A dusty dream catcher hung over the sink alongside a philodendron that Tate remembered from her own childhood. She gazed out the window at the low chain-link fence that surrounded the yard and had once held in Maggie's teacup poodle, Ditto. The grass was brown. A single rose clung to a spindly rose bush by the fence.

“What are we going to do?” Maggie asked. “We can't just let her throw her life away. He'll hurt her.”

Tate turned to face her slowly.

“We'll go get her.”

As soon as Tate spoke, she felt the exhaustion of the past week settle on her. All she wanted to do was to lie down and to sleep for days, for weeks, until she could wake up as another person in another life. But there was no sleep like that except death, which, Tate thought glumly, was the likely outcome of charging into a murderous predator's lair to rescue Krystal from herself.

“‘Blood is thicker than water,'” Tate said, tipping her head all the way back until all she could see was the textured ceiling. “As soon as she comes back, I'm going to throttle her.”

Tate was still thinking the same thing a few hours later. Maggie, Tate, Lill, and Vita were all bundled into Lill's minivan, headed west. Lill had printed out pertinent court cases involving Frank Jackson and was reading them out loud to no one in particular.

“Aggravated assault of a minor. Female. 1995. Attempted rape, 2001. Rape, 2002. Soliciting a minor while in prison.” Lill put the paper down for a second. “How do you even do that?” She went on. “Oh, here's the one we're looking for. In 2007 he pled guilty to the murder of Tabitha Kenelton. It says he raped her vaginally and anally with…”

“Stop,” Tate said. “We know.”

No one said anything else until they had exited the interstate and followed an ever-narrowing road into the coastal foothills.

Tate had been keeping enough attention on the road to avoid the log trucks that took the hairpin turns at 65 mph, but no more than that. She was deep in thought when Lill said, “Is this it?”

Tate reassessed the road ahead. Majestic fir trees lined both sides of the road.

“Where?” Tate asked.

“There.” Lill pointed to a DOT sign:
POPULATION 962
.

At 55 mph Eddyville looked like two run-down double-wide trailers and a bridge. As they backtracked, it was clear there was a bit more to the town. Behind the double-wides were a few mossy ranch homes and at least one two-story house with sparkling white siding.

Signs pointed to Elk Creek Park and the post office. When Tate turned off the highway and onto a street that purported to be Main Street, they saw a minimart with a sign advertising cold beer, home cooking, and ammo.

The words had been hand-painted on the cinder-block wall of the store. They were well painted, Tate noticed, but done many years earlier, so the sign looked like one of those occasionally revealed when a Portland building was torn down and the brick side of the neighboring building was exposed. It was the kind of old relic that tourists liked to photograph, only here, she thought, it was just business as usual. Business as usual, except that there were no living human beings visible anywhere.

Tate pulled into the gravel parking lot. Outside the van, the air was unnaturally still. Tate remembered a headline she had read in the Oregonian:
MAN JUMPS FROM MULTNOMAH FALLS, TO
RESCUE DROWNING SQUIRE.
Noble. Stupid. She could see her own headline forming:
PORTLAND HIPSTER CONFRONTS MURDERER ARMED WITH
…Tate glanced at her companions, who were stepping tentatively out of the van.
ARMED WITH OTHER PORTLAND HIPSTER, AGING BARISTA, AND MONTESSORI MOTHER.
“I really thought we had what it takes,” said Vita Galliano. “We will always remember Tate Grafton.”
It was all a really bad idea.

Before she could say anything, the door to the market opened. A woman appeared in the doorway, looking, for all the world, like a boulder with pink lipstick and a thinning perm.

“Y'all here for lunch?” she called.

This, Tate thought, was the part where the drug lord walked out and told them to leave while shooting the wheels of the van with his shotgun. When they turned the whole story into a B movie, she would get listed as Female Victim #1.

Maggie called back, “No. We're looking for Frank Jackson.”

“Maggie!” Tate hissed. “Shh.”

The woman's granite face grew harder.

“I don't know nothing 'bout Frank Jackson.”

“We are here for lunch.” Tate shot a meaningful look at her friends. “We're not really looking for Frank. We're looking for his daughter.”

“Okay.” The woman eyed them from under veils of electric-blue eye shadow and creased lids. “Special of the day's chicken-fried chicken.”

Inside, the market was divided into three rooms. The room they entered looked like any minimart, minus most of the brand-name items plus twenty-five years' worth of dust. A door by the cash register led down a hot, narrow hallway and into a little diner. The smell of grease wafted from behind the counter. A buzzing radio played the Doors. At the back of this room, a door read
LOUNGE. NO MINORS PERMITTED.
A fading plastic sign showed a pregnant woman with a Do Not Enter sign pasted over her belly.
ALCOHOL AND PREGNANCY DO NOT MIX.

“Have a seat wherever you like,” the boulder said.

They sat. Lill opened the menu.

“Do you think they have vegan?”

“Don't ask,” Tate said.

“What is chicken-fried chicken, anyway?” Vita whispered.

Tate rolled her eyes.

When the woman came back a few minutes later, they ordered coffee.

“So, you lookin' for someone?” the waitress asked.

“Maybe,” Lill said, pulling a packet of stevia out of her fanny pack and adding it to her coffee.

“Outside you said you was looking for Frank Jackson or maybe not Frank Jackson,” the waitress said. “You looking or no? 'Cause you're not gonna find him here.”

There was a silence. Tate mustered her thoughts.

“None of my business,” the waitress said, moving away from the table. “You girls have a good day.”

“Wait,” Tate said. There was something in the woman's antipathy that she trusted. The boulder did not like Frank Jackson any more than they did. “We are looking, and we don't know exactly how we're going to find our friend.” She explained the situation.

“What's the girl's name?” the waitress asked.

“Krystal Jackson. Maggie, show her the letter,” Tate said.

The waitress scowled as she read it.

“I don't got no pity for Frank Jackson. Don't know why this girl does. ‘Blood is thicker than water.' Ha. So is the borax paste we use on the rats, but that don't mean I'm gonna drink it. You think Frank got this girl?”

“We think she went to him.”

“Well she's not gonna wanna stay, and if I know anything 'bout the men in that family, he's not gonna let her leave. You'd better talk to my sister, Janice. That way. Through the bar. Coffee's on me. Anyone who's going up against Frank Jackson is a friend of ours. You're some brave women.”

The encouragement did not make Tate feel any better. She wondered how it was possible that, a few days earlier, she had been lying naked in the arms of a beautiful real estate tycoon, while now she was destined to be killed by Frank Jackson.

She pushed open the door with the pregnant woman sign. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was so dark, for a moment she thought the bar was closed.

“Well, y'already came this far,” a voice called out.

Tate stepped into the darkness. The bar was not closed, and it was not empty. It was just the darkest pit she had ever walked into.

Tate could hear the clink of glasses, the knock of a pool ball dropping into a pocket, and then the murmur of voices starting up again as their arrival was noticed, noted, and dismissed.

As her eyes adjusted to the light, Tate made out a small square room with plastic booths, wood tables, a wall of mirrors embossed with beer logos, and a small television playing the keno games. Really, it was not that much different from the Mirage—except for the men and the elk's head mounted above the bar.

Tate ordered four Budweisers, stopping her companions with a look before Lill could say she was on a “cleanse” or before Vita could ask for a cosmo. But Maggie managed to get out, “A beer in the afternoon? No, I couldn't.”

Tate despaired, but the bartender asked, “Well how's about a nice iced tea?”

He was a massive granite slab just like the waitress, but with a crew cut and a T-shirt, pulled tight over his belly, that read
NO GUTS, NO GLORY.
He must have had a lot of glory, Tate thought, because he certainly had a lot of gut.

“Just drink the beer,” Tate hissed.

“No, no,” the bartender said. “This here's a lady, and she's delicate. An iced tea with a lemon, comin' up.”

“Thank you.” Maggie wiped her forehead. “It's hot out there.”

“I bet you just wilt like a pretty flower.”

Nothing about Maggie said “pretty flower”—lone pine, maybe; weathered sage, perhaps—but Maggie flashed the bartender an uncharacteristically girlish smile. This was getting worse, Tate thought. Maggie had snapped. She was flirting; she was using sex to manipulate the patriarchy that oppressed her. Next she'd be sporting high heels. Then Tate looked at the bartender again. Possibly, just possibly, things were getting better.

“We're looking for Janice,” Tate said cautiously.

“That's me,” the bartender said. “My sister send you in here? It's nice to see some family. I'm right, aren't I? Some family?”

Maggie tapped the pink triangle earring in her right ear.

“I thought so,” Janice said. “So what can I do for you?”

“It's a woman,” Vita whispered into Tate's ear.

I know
, Tate mouthed.

“I thought she was a dude.”

“Shh, Vita.”

“Do you think she's trans?”

Tate shot Vita a look that said,
For the love of God, shut up!

“We're trying to find a young woman who's run off with Frank Jackson,” Tate said to the bartender. “Actually, we're trying to find his daughter, Krystal. She found out he got out of jail and came looking for him.”

“That's sad,” Janice said. She called over to the barback and invited Tate and her company to sit at a table in the corner. When they were all seated, she said, “We've had every kind of trouble with Frank. But I never seen anyone good come looking for him. Usually Frank does the looking.”

“Does he come in here?” Maggie asked.

“Not since I threw him out on his scrawny ass, pardon my language.”

Maggie beamed at Janice.

“You did that?”

“He's a bad man. There a lot of messed-up people out there, but most times, you can see the good person they used to be. It shines through. But if you think you've seen that in Frank, you've just seen his latest scam.”

“Got any recommendations as to how we get in touch with Krystal?” Tate asked.

Janice took a sip of water and wiped the back of her mouth with her hand.

“First, I wouldn't go out there myself, not unless he got ahold of my sister or someone I really loved.”