Something True

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “No one,” Laura said. “I’m just walking.”

  From where she stood in the lounge she could see Tate clearly, but she guessed Tate could not spot her through the maze of booths, mirrored columns, and keno machines in the bar.

  “You okay?” Craig asked, his concern still tinged with lechery. He might as well have tacked on hot little lady to everything he said.

  Laura glared at him. “Of course.”

  She took a sip of the whiskey. Thirty yards away, Tate leaned against the wall, watching the elevator. Five minutes passed and then ten. Craig and Dayton had turned their attention to a boxing match on the TV. Just go, Laura thought, her heart squeezing into a fist inside her chest. She had been wrong to visit Out Coffee that evening, wrong to accept Tate’s invitation. It was too late, too intimate. And Craig and Dayton were right there, despising her, looking for any reason to discredit her with their superiors at Clark-Vester.

  “What are you looking at?” Craig asked.

  “Hey, isn’t that that dyke from the City Ridge Commercial Plaza?” Dayton added.

  Blessedly, Tate turned away from them at exactly that moment. Laura watched her back as she walked over to the front desk. Behind the counter, the pretty twentysomething who worked the swing shift beamed, tossed her blond curls from side to side, and then frowned with mock sincerity. Laura guessed that the girl was explaining the hotel privacy policy. Did Tate have a room number? No? She was very sorry. She could not give out room numbers.

  Laura saw Tate glance up at the ceiling as if taking a guess at which of the three hundred rooms Laura occupied. Then she stepped away from the counter with an apologetic shake of her head. She was not the type to badger the hotel staff or push the issue after the clerk had said no.

  Good-bye, Tate, Laura thought.

  Then, as she watched, the girl called after Tate and Tate turned back around. The girl slid a piece of paper across the counter. Tate held up her hand in protest, but the girl cocked her head and said something else. Tate nodded, smiled, took the paper, and headed for the door. And Laura wondered why the girl had broken the hotel policy for her. Did she know? Could she feel Laura’s longing from across the room? Was it just an intuition? A sign? An angel?

  Laura took a sip of whiskey. Then her thoughts stopped short. She knew that coquettish turn of the head. She recognized Tate’s flattered refusal and then her polite acceptance. She saw Tate slide the paper into an inner pocket of her leather jacket. The acrid whiskey hit the back of her windpipe and she choked, waving away Craig’s “Easy now, boss.”

  Back home in Alabama, a woman like Tate would have been unfathomably plain. In her full leather gear, with her head shaved, and her brow furrowed, she looked like a heroine from a sci-fi movie, some kind of post-apocalyptic ninja. Without thinking it all the way through, Laura had assumed that Tate’s beauty was a secret only she knew. But suddenly it was clear. In this topsy-turvy city where people grew lawns on their roofs and vegetables in their lawns, Tate Grafton was gorgeous.

  That girl—that insipid twenty-year-old—had not given her Laura’s room number, she had given Tate her own number. And Tate had said no, but she had pocketed the number. And why not? That girl had not called her across town only to stand her up. That girl had not made love to her and then fled. That girl was not trying to buy the coffee shop where she made her living.

  The jealousy that washed over Laura felt like a physical illness, as though her body temperature had risen and her blood pressure had dropped. She felt her cheeks flush and her mouth go dry.

  “I’ve got to go.” She pushed the whiskey away.

  Tate was almost a block away when Laura emerged from the hotel.

  “Tate,” she called out.

  Tate turned.

  She ran toward Tate, coming up short a few inches away from her. Breathless. Too close.

  “I’m sorry. I got hung up with work,” she lied. “I got away as fast as I could.” She reached out and touched the heavy leather of Tate’s jacket, her fingertips over Tate’s heart. “Am I too late?”

  Chapter 16

  At Vita’s urging, Tate had put on her chaps and her leather jacket. On the ride across town, Tate had wondered why she had taken fashion advice from a woman who wore only animal print. Still the outfit seemed to have the right effect on Laura, who hurried to greet her and then stood so close Tate could smell her citrus-blossom perfume.

  Laura raised her eyes and met Tate’s. She held a suit jacket draped over one arm, and she wore the kind of garment Vita had names for—bustier, camisole, slip—but which were as mysterious to Tate as the women who wore them. It revealed Laura’s arms, her long neck, the swell of her breasts as she breathed. It showcased the sharp, nervous flutter of her pulse in her long neck. And then Tate realized she had looked for too long. Laura had asked her a question, and she had almost forgotten to answer.

  “Where are we going?” Laura asked again.

  “You almost missed it,” Tate said, touching Laura’s elbow and guiding her toward the crosswalk. “Down the block. There is something I want to show you.”

  This had also been Vita’s idea, which made Tate nervous. Taking dating advice from Vita was like taking it from a spider that ate their lover post-coitus. But it was too late to change her mind. Now she could only hope.

  “Just around the corner,” she said.

  Tate led Laura down Naito Parkway. To their right, Waterfront Park was dark. Beyond that, the river reflected Portland’s skyline and the Hawthorne Bridge to the north, the Marquam Bridge to the south. A few homeless men stirred in the depths of the park, their cigarette tips glowing. Tate felt Laura edge closer to her.

  A few blocks down, Tate had scoped out a park bench on the sidewalk.

  “Let’s sit here.”

  Across the street two police officers passed a cup of coffee back and forth. There was no traffic on the road.

  Tate put her hand on Laura’s knee and was surprised when Laura did not flinch.

  “Listen,” Tate said.

  The night was warm and still and the sounds of the city carried. A truck beeped as it backed up. A door rattled. A dog barked. Someone yelled, “Hold that door.” Then they heard a distant cheer, a kind of traveling hoot, a great collective cry of glee as though a hundred people had all opened their mailboxes simultaneously to find that they had won the sweepstakes.

  Laura squinted down the wide road.

  “Is it a parade?” she asked.

  “Kind of.”

  “A road race?”

  “A bike race.”

  “At midnight?”

  “It’s always at midnight.”

  “Why would you have a bike race at midnight?”

  The hooting grew louder. Now they could hear the whoops of the bikers along with the cheers of passersby. The bikers drew closer, their feet whirling together, their backs arched.

  “They’re naked!” Laura covered her mouth.

  The bikers had reached them now. The first was a gray-haired man so lean every striation of muscle showed on his legs. Then there were two young men in neon-green sneakers and glowing green bracelets and nothing else. Then it was all bodies: fat, round bodies and skinny bicycler bodies. Men with their parts flapping over their seats. Women with flowers in their loose hair and big pendulous breasts. Old, gray bodies. Lithe, young bodies. One man with cerebral palsy on a motor-assisted bike. There was even a man on a skateboard being pulled by a black Lab. And everyone was cheering and waving.

  Laura’s eyes were wide above the hand that she had clamped to her mouth. Then she dropped her hand and added her cheer to the rest, and Tate added hers. And as the race passed, and all they saw were a myriad of pale Oregonian rumps in the moonlight, they sat back and laughed.

  “The cops are just standing there,” Laura said when she caught her breath. “Aren’t they going to arrest them?”

  “No. It’s Portland.”

  After the race, they sat for a while, talking easily. Tate filled
Laura in on the drama at Out Coffee. Laura described an officious boss who kept track of her every move by credit card receipt. Finally, Laura said, “I suppose I should get back.”

  They stood and strolled toward the hotel. It seemed to Tate that Laura took a very long time walking the few blocks back. Still, the moment of parting was drawing near. Her bike was parked across from the hotel, and there was no reason to follow Laura across the street without an invitation.

  “You know…” Tate paused in front of her Harley.

  Laura stopped too.

  “You really haven’t seen Portland until you’ve been over the bridges on a bike.”

  “I’ve never been on a motorcycle.”

  “I have an extra helmet.”

  Laura hesitated. “I wouldn’t know what I was doing.”

  “I’ve been riding these roads since I was eighteen. All you have to do is hold on.”

  Laura glanced in the direction of the bicycles as though summoning up some vicarious courage.

  Say yes, Tate thought.

  “Okay,” Laura said.

  Tate’s heart soared.

  She slipped her leather jacket on Laura’s shoulders and a helmet over her head, stroking her hair into place between Laura’s face and the thick foam cushioning of the helmet. They were so close.

  “It’s this easy,” Tate said. “All you have to do is climb on behind me. Put your feet here.”

  It was awkward riding the first blocks with Laura. She teetered on the back of the seat and held Tate’s waist the way she would shake a stranger’s hand. But every time Tate accelerated she clutched the hem of Tate’s T-shirt. Every time they turned, Laura would lean away from the turn. Finally, Tate pulled over.

  For a second, Laura thought Tate was going to ask her to get off.

  “It’s not working, is it?” she asked. “I know. I told you, I’ve never done this before.”

  Tate flipped up her visor and looked over her shoulder.

  “Just relax.”

  Tate reached behind her and touched Laura’s leg.

  “Slide forward,” she said. “You have to touch me. Put your arms here.” She drew Laura’s arms around her waist. “Can you feel my body?”

  Laura nodded. She could feel Tate’s back against her chest, Tate’s hard, flat stomach beneath her hands.

  “Now when I move, you move with me,” Tate said. “Can you feel it?” Tate said so softly Laura was not sure she had heard.

  All she knew was a second later, Tate squeezed some lever and the motorcycle roared to life. She could feel its vibrations through her whole body, and she became exquisitely aware of the spread of her legs, of Tate’s ass between her thighs, of the slope of the seat drawing their bodies together. But as they set off over the Broadway Bridge, she forgot even that longing. She felt only the speed, the rush of lights, the roar of the engine, and the height of the bridges—each one higher than the next until the city sat so far below them, she felt like they were about to lift off into the sky.

  Chapter 17

  When 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 th
an 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.