Something True

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  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.

  Chapter 13

  With 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.

  Chapter 14

  Tate was not surprised to return to Out Coffee and find that Krystal had not locked the front door at ten on the dot. She was surprised to look around and find Krystal and Laura sitting together, Krystal talking quickly and Laura looking like she wanted to bolt.

  “Tate?” Laura raised one hand tentatively.

  Tate hurriedly wiped her hands on her jeans. She felt grimy from the day’s work in the hot coffee shop. Laura looked as cool and pale as the moonlight.

  “Hi.” Tate stopped, wiped her hands again, ran a hand across her hair.

  Laura stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “You didn’t hear,” Krystal said. “After you left, Tate got in a fight.”

  “Oh!” Laura’s concern seemed genuine. For a second, Tate thought she was going to reach out and touch her, but then Laura clasped her hands in front of her.

  “You should have seen her,” Krystal said. “Tate was awesome. Duke came after her and threw her on the car. Then Tate was, like, POW!” Krystal kicked her foot out. “Duke went flying, and then Tate went after her like a quarterback or a linebacker or whatever. She slammed into Duke.” Krystal bumped Tate with her shoulder to illustrate. “Tate was, like, ‘I’m gonna kill you, you motherfucker.’ Duke was crying and begging her to get off. Then the police rolled up with their guns and everything.”

  “Oh, no,” Laura said. “Did you get in trouble?”

  Krystal snorted. “The police weren’t gonna mess with Tate. No way!”

  Tate put an arm around Krystal’s shoulders.

  “Krystal makes me look good.” She squeezed Krystal and ruffled her pink hair. “The police saved my ass. I was about to get the shit beat out of me when the cops showed up.”

  “Are you okay?” Laura pressed. “I…I’m sorry I left.”

  Laura had left; Tate reminded herself. She had told Laura to go, but Laura could have stayed. She had practically run back to her Sebring. And yet, there was something in the way Laura stood now, tentatively leaning forward, while clasping her hands in front of her, staring at Tate intently. If it was not love in her eyes, at least it was awe.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Laura asked again.

  Tate felt Laura’s eyes slide down her neck, down the labrys tattoo, and lower.

  “Of course she’s okay,” Krystal interjected. “She’s probably gonna go find Duke tonight and fuck her up. I mean, people don’t mess with Tate and get away with it.”

  “No!” Laura reached out. This time she touched Tate’s hand.

  Tate was about to say, Good God, no! She’d kill me. Then she reconsidered.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go find her.”

  She gave a casual shrug that she hoped said, I beat up 250-pound drag kings every day. It’s just no big deal for a tough woman like me.

  “Please,” Laura said, still touching her hand. “Don’t.”

  Tate turned Laura’s hand over and stroked the center of her palm.

  “I have to go help Maggie with the inventory,” Krystal said, as if on cue.

  “I guess I could let Duke go if something else came up,” Tate said when Krystal was gone. “What are you doing tonight?”

  Laura drew in a sharp breath.

  “Nothing.”

  Chapter 15

  Back at her hotel, Laura pulled on her body shaper, then jeans, a low-cut blouse, and a dark blazer. She turned in front of the bathroom mirror. The jacket was a perfect fit and the Spanx corset squeezed her curves into a more perfect version of themselves. But that was a problem. What about the awkward moment when Tate released the buttons of Laura’s jeans only to find her body encased in an armature of spandex? It would take a good three minutes to wriggle out of the body shaper, and that was not an image one wanted to share with a new lover. It was like being swallowed by a python, only in reverse.

  Laura stopped. Tate would not be unbuttoning anything. She had promised herself. She could not do that. Not to herself. Not to Tate. This late-night rendezvous was not a business meeting, but it was not a date either. It was…She paused as she searched for the right words…It was a chance to say good-bye and maybe spend a little bit of time together before the end. Now, she thought. That was all she could ask for. She glanced at her watch: eleven th
irty. Tate would be there in a few minutes.

  She slid a credit card into the pocket of her jeans and headed for the elevator. When she arrived in the lobby, she was so busy looking for Tate, she did not immediately hear the familiar voice call out to her.

  “Hey boss, over here. Over here!”

  It was Craig.

  Shit, she swore under her breath.

  Craig and Dayton had taken their usual place at the bar. By the empty beers in front of them, she guessed they had been there for a while.

  “Come join us!” Craig said.

  Laura glanced around. There was no way to pretend she had not heard him. Reluctantly, she walked over.

  “A beer for our boss. No, make that a whiskey,” Craig called to the bartender.

  “Where are you off to?” Craig asked. “You look good.” He was drunk.

  She felt his eyes slide down her neck. She pulled her blazer tighter around her.

  “I’m just going out for a walk.”

  “Lookin’ like that. Dang!” Dayton said, although Laura was pretty sure he didn’t mean it.

  Craig chuckled as though Dayton’s insubordination was a clever joke only he got.

  The whiskey arrived.

  “It’s almost midnight,” Craig said, pushing it toward her. “Lighten up.”

  Laura glanced around. Tate was not in the bar. She was not in the foyer either. Laura prayed she was late, that she had forgotten, that she had been hung up at work. She patted her pocket, looking for her cell phone, but she had left it in the room. She had wanted to be unburdened. Free. Now she saw the lobby doors swing open. She closed her eyes. Please, no, she thought. And Tate stepped into the lobby in full leather chaps, leather jacket, her black motorcycle helmet under one arm. She could not have looked gayer if she had worn a flak jacket with DYKE emblazoned across the front like part of a lesbian SWAT team.

  “You meeting someone?” Craig pressed.