Something True (25 page)

“Can I come up?” Laura asked.

Of course she wanted Laura to come up. She wanted Laura to carry her up the stairs, throw her on the bed like a romance heroine and say,
Tate, I love you. I've told my family everything.
But that would happen when Vita stopped womanizing and Maggie got a job investing stocks for Wells Fargo.

“Why?” Tate asked.

Laura released the death grip she had on the steering wheel.

“I need to talk to you about the videos.”

The videos.

“Come up,” Tate said reluctantly.

She wrestled the crutches out from the backseat of the SUV and swung herself out of the car on one leg. But when she reached the stairs, she tucked the crutches under one arm and headed up on two feet.

“Wait.” Laura stood beneath the bare bulb and the cobwebs, as out of place as a marble sculpture. “You're not supposed to walk on that leg.”

“It's a little late for that.” Tate took the first step. She did not even wince. “I'm not going to hop upstairs.”

“Just sit down and climb up. I'll hold your crutches.”

Tate eyed Laura. Her perfect suit. Her perfect face.

“I don't think so.”

“But you could make it worse.”

“Hiking up a mountain so I could get shot at by some gun-wielding Mennonite made it worse.” At the top of the stairs, Tate turned to Laura again. “And I'm not worried about my foot. I'm worried about my pride.”

After everything Laura had put her through, it was still so easy to be honest. She hoped her smile was as wry and untouchable as Laura's.

Inside her apartment, Tate lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. Laura produced a bottle from her purse and handed it to Tate with a glass of water.

“The doctor said you should take one.”

So it was going to be
that
kind of conversation, Tate thought, the kind that was better with narcotics. She did not feel like arguing. The water tasted metallic.

“I didn't post those videos,” she said, as Laura settled into a chair on the opposite side of the room. “I'm sorry that someone did. I'm sorry that happened to you. I think it was Krystal, but she swears it wasn't. I'll ask around, but I don't know if I can take them down.”

The medication hit her faster than she expected. The world began to swim around her. The titles of her books blurred. Her photographs came in and out of focus.

“But you shouldn't have shut us down like that. You could have at least warned me. I didn't deserve any of this. I didn't do anything to you,” she murmured. “Why did you even come back? How did you find me?”

Through the fog of fatigue and hydrocodone Tate saw Laura float toward her. Then her crutches were gone, her jacket lifted from her shoulders, and she was lying down. Laura leaned over her, her brow furrowed, her eyes in shadows. She seemed to be searching Tate's face for something.

If I asked, she would stay
, Tate thought. Then she closed her eyes and was instantly asleep. In her dreams, Laura took off her suit. Her pantyhose pooled on the floor. Then her arms were around Tate, her legs across Tate's hip. They were both naked.
I love you.

Tate startled awake. Laura was still dressed, still standing over her, staring at her with a look of consternation.

“Laura.” Tate hated the tremor she heard in her own voice. She wanted to be commanding, aloof. “I care about you.”

I love you.

“I care about you too,” Laura said, kneeling beside the bed.

Tate closed her eyes.

“But,” Tate began, “I'm tired. I don't feel well. I want to make the right decision this time. I don't…I can't…I need you to make this easy for me, and, please, just leave.”

Speaking the words hurt more than hitting the metal rails of the steel bridge, but it was the right thing to do. Tate knew. This was the answer she should have given Laura the first night at the Mirage.
You won't even tell me your name?

I
t took about twenty minutes for Laura to admit to herself that she had become a stalker. No…the stalking had been completed successfully. Now she was an intruder.

For the first seconds after Tate told her to leave, she simply stared at her, waiting for her to wake again. Then for several minutes she watched to make sure Tate was all right. The painkiller had hit her so quickly she had nearly collapsed, and Laura wondered if the dosage was too high or if she was having an allergic reaction. But after several minutes, Tate rolled over on her side and curled her body around a spare pillow. Clearly asleep. And all Laura wanted to do was stand over her and watch her stern face, worried even in sleep. So noble, so true. But something about hovering over the sleeping form of a woman to whom she had just administered drugs—even if they were prescribed—said “serial killer.” Laura sat down at the kitchen table, which wasn't much better.
Go
, she told herself, but instead she rested her chin on her folded arms because she felt certain that if she left now, she left forever.

Laura was not sure how long she had been asleep with her head on the kitchen table. It could have been hours or just a fleeting second. It was still dark out. A moment later, she realized she had been awoken by the sound of Tate crutching the eight or so steps it took to reach the bathroom. Click, step. Click, step. Tate watched the floor carefully, but even on crutches there was something confidently athletic about her movements.

Laura watched the light come on in the bathroom. Tate had not closed the door. Why would she? She was alone in her own apartment. Supposedly. Laura worked through the scenario. If Tate turned the light off when she exited, she might not see Laura at the kitchen table. She might fall back in bed and back asleep before spotting Laura. But then, the apartment was considerably smaller than the smallest swimming pool Laura had ever bought, and her breathing sounded monstrously loud.

The toilet flushed. Tate washed her hands. The light stayed on. Tate was awake. In a second she was going to step from the bathroom, perhaps to sit quietly in her apartment and take stock of the life Laura Enfield had ruined. Only she would not have a chance to sit alone with a bottle of plum sake—or whatever Portlanders drank when they were depressed—because Laura was still in her kitchen.

“I'm sorry,” Laura said as Tate emerged from the bathroom.

Tate jumped, dropping the crutches.

“You're here,” she said. She limped over to her bed, where she sat down with a perplexed look. “You're still here.”

At least it wasn't,
Why are you still here?

“I was worried about you.” It sounded lame.

Laura searched Tate's face in the blue darkness, but she looked only curious and slightly disapproving.
She doesn't need me
, Laura thought.

“You've been here the whole time.” Tate hesitated. “Watching me sleep?”

Laura knew it didn't look good.

“I just…I needed to talk to you.”

“Now?” Tate picked up a fold of the blanket and examined the stitching.

“I didn't want to leave, and I didn't want to wake you.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Tate did not look up.

“I know you didn't post those videos.”

“I didn't,” Tate concurred. “They were from Krystal's phone.” She pulled at a thread in the blanket. “But I swear I'd never seen them before they showed up online.”

“I know you didn't post them because I did.”

Tate looked up. Laura hoped she would smile. She wanted to see Tate's face come to life with that wide, honest smile that was so much more precious because it was rare.

Instead, Tate said, “You can't do this to me.” It was a fact, not a request.

“I posted them.” Laura heard the desperation in her own voice. “I tagged them. It was me.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Tate frowned. “I don't…I
can't
care. You made it really clear that you couldn't live this kind of life, that you can't be out, and I can't be your dirty secret.”

“But that's why I did it. I don't want you to be a secret. Please listen to me,” Laura pleaded. “The thing is, I asked Krystal to take them and send them to me, but not for that. I was just so happy that night. I was happy with you. I realized I'd never be that happy again, and I wanted proof. I didn't want it to disappear. You. Me. That night. The dancing. This city. Then my family showed up, and I panicked. I should have taken your hand and introduced you as my lover…my love. I saw you walking away. We were in the middle of planning the next press conference in the living room, and I just threw it out there. ‘I'm here with a woman.'”

The story poured out. She wasn't sure if it made any sense.

“They were pissed, and I went looking for you, but I couldn't find you. I saw that you had booked your return flight, and I was going to fly to Portland that afternoon and say I was sorry. Then my father had a heart attack. That's what my brother told me. He told me that he'd talked to my dad, told him I'd come out, and that my father had had a heart attack right there. I flew back to Alabama. I thought it was my fault.”

“No one drops dead of a heart attack because they find out their daughter is gay,” Tate said.

“Maybe in Alabama they do, but that's the thing. He hadn't. I was sitting in the hospital cafeteria. Alone. I was trying to figure out how it was that I had to choose between killing him and loving you. I was thinking about everything I was giving up. Then I ran into this guy I went to college with. He's a resident at the hospital. We were talking about my father, and he just let it slip, because he thought I knew. My dad didn't have a heart attack. He went in for a routine coronary angiogram. It's outpatient, but my dad asked the hospital to hold him for a few days, and they did because he's Stan Enfield.”

Tate said nothing.

“It was all a scam. They wanted me to think I'd given him a heart attack. When I called them on it, they just laughed. They thought it was clever. They thought I'd be happy that they'd helped me see the light. It was just one more PR gambit, and they really thought they could just slap me on the back, and we'd keep on going. Business as usual. So I posted the videos, and I tagged myself in them, and I called the newspapers in Alabama, and I told them.”

A video
. It had felt like such a grand gesture at the time. Now, in the face of Tate's silence, it was nothing.

“I realized there was nothing I wanted more than you. There was no place I wanted to be except here.”

“You don't have the right.” Tate's voice was cold and quiet. She stared at the blanket in her lap, pulling angrily on the threads. “You didn't have the right to pick me up at the Mirage when you
knew
what you were going to do. You let me take you home, you let me love you…”

Laura's heart lifted at the words.
Love you…

“And all that time you thought you could just play both sides.” Tate's voice cracked. “We could be lovers for a week, while you were here, because it didn't count. Because I don't count. Because you could go back to your real life. But you put me out of work. You closed down a place that was home for me.”

Tate shivered but did not look up.

I'll buy you another coffee shop
, Laura wanted to say.
And a house, and a pension for Maggie. I'll take you to the hospital, always and forever. I will pay anything to make this right.

The thread Tate had pulled from the blanket had begun a cascade of unraveling. It wasn't a blanket, Laura thought. It was an afghan. It was
knit
. Tate wrapped the yarn around her hand. She would probably reuse it. She would reknit it, maybe into a sweater or a handbag. It had probably been a handbag, and now it was an afghan, and then it would be a sweater. With stripes. Tate would wear it under her motorcycle jacket in the winter on her way to some ridiculously noble job. You could not buy that kind of integrity. It was so ludicrous and impossible and beautiful, and Laura's heart simply broke as she watched Tate sit there in silence pulling the blanket to yarn.

“You asked me to go,” Laura said finally. “I'm sorry. I had no right to stay here.” The space between them seemed to expand. Laura scanned the room, looking for some place to rest her eyes. Her hands were tight on the edge of the table. “Do you want me to go?”

She held her breath.

Tate touched the side of her face where the bruise was fading.

“I am so sorry, Tate.”

Laura moved from the table and knelt on the floor beside Tate's bed because there was nothing she could do but kneel.

“I am so very, very sorry. I thought I could prove how much I loved you—because I love you so much—but it all went wrong. As soon as Clark-Vester found out about the videos, they wanted to put as much distance as they could between me and you and the whole scandal. They couldn't support Stan Enfield and own a building with ‘Out in Portland' emblazoned in rainbow letters on the side.”

“It is a little garish,” Tate said.

“I had no idea they had evicted Out in Portland until I went there to find you. You were gone. I swear I decided I was going to drink myself into a stupor at that bar you like. I was just going to sit there until…I don't know. Then Abigail, with those freckles, told me you'd probably gone on some crazy mission to save Krystal from her father because you thought she had posted the videos. I thought, I've done it again. I lost you your job. I got Out in Portland evicted. And then I found out you were chasing after some murderer in the forest, and it was all my fault. Thank God Eddyville is the size of a postage stamp. Everyone knew who you were and where you'd gone, so I went after you.”

Laura thought she saw the slightest intimation of a smile at the corner of Tate's mouth.

“That was rather spectacular,” Tate said. “That SUV is a tank.”

“I didn't know where I was going. I figured I should rent the best. At least the biggest.”

“Thanks.”

“You're the best lover and the only real friend I have in the whole world,” Laura said.

Tate drew back and looked at Laura.

“You wrecked my life,” she said. But Laura could tell she was trying not to smile. “You're worse than Krystal. I'm surprised you haven't set something on fire.”

Tentatively, Laura rose and sat beside Tate. She put her arm around Tate's shoulder, then withdrew it quickly, afraid to hurt her and certain Tate would shrug off her embrace. But Tate did not pull away, only drew in a breath.

“Do you still want me to go?”

Tate lay back on the pillows.

“I never wanted you to go.”

Laura felt like she would break in half, torn by so much passion and tenderness. She wanted to devour Tate, and she wanted to hold her as lightly as a butterfly in a gilded cage. She wanted to rip Tate's clothes from her body, mount her so forcefully the futon collapsed into the sum of its wooden parts, and she wanted to enshrine every object in the apartment, a testament to Tate's life. To her goodness.

Instead Laura unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt. She glanced at Tate.

“May I?” she asked.

Tate nodded.

Slowly Laura removed her shirt and her bra, her heels and her nylons. She did not even feel embarrassed as she dropped her skirt to reveal the flesh-colored infrastructure of her spandex body shaper.

“What are you wearing?” Tate asked. Her voice was gently teasing.

Laura laughed and leaned over and kissed Tate.

“This is something you should never know about,” she said and wriggled out of the tight garment.

“That's better.” Tate's eyes lingered on her body. “That's beautiful.”

When she was naked, Laura slid into bed beside Tate and lifted Tate's shirt over her head. Tears welled up in her eyes when she saw the bruises along Tate's side.

“I don't want to hurt you,” she whispered.

“Then don't.”

Laura knew Tate was not talking about the bruises. She ran her hand along the curve of Tate's hip, so lightly she barely felt her skin. Outside, the first hint of dawn was turning the black sky navy.

“What time is it anyway?” Tate asked, glancing at the bedside alarm clock.

“Almost five,” Laura said. She kissed Tate on the forehead. “Sleep. I'll be here in the morning.”

Every morning.

Gently, Laura pulled Tate to her, nestling Tate's head on her chest, stroking Tate's short hair. Slowly, she felt Tate relax into the rhythmic touch.

“Sleep,” Laura whispered. “I won't go anywhere.”

Lying with Tate cocooned in her arms the night before, Laura had disavowed all earthly goods. She was ready to live in a studio apartment and eat brown rice and bike her compost to the community garden. But daylight came, and with it realism. People only changed so much in a lifetime, let alone a night, and she was not going to live in an apartment the size of a subway car.

She lay on her side, watching Tate, who was watching her with a look of concern. That was what poverty did to people, Laura thought. It made them worry. And that was why this life—the tiny apartment, the missing health insurance, the day-to-day labor—was simply not going to work for her.