An hour later, the jury came back with a guilty verdict.
“I hope you’re happy, Law School,” Grady said as he swept past her, the brim of his hat almost hitting her as he exited.
Kristen was glad to see Marydale’s truck in the driveway when she got home, but inside, the house was quiet. Marydale’s bedroom door was closed. Kristen dropped her briefcase in the hall and searched the kitchen for the ever-present bottle of whiskey. She only realized she was slamming cupboards when Marydale appeared in the doorway wearing a red camisole and matching silk shorts and rubbing her eyes.
“Are you asleep already?” Kristen asked.
Marydale yawned. “I got up at four to help with prep.”
It was a cheap negligee set, the kind sold at the Burnville Walmart. From where Kristen stood, she could see the lace edging unraveling and the fabric straining around Marydale’s breasts. The fabric was so thin she could see the slight texture of Marydale’s areola. And then she realized she was staring. She tried to look away, but not looking at Marydale in lingerie—cheap or otherwise—was like not looking at the Firesteed Mountains at sunset. Even staring at the floor, Kristen could feel Marydale’s beauty lighting up the room.
“Is everything okay?” Marydale asked, and Kristen didn’t know if Marydale was asking about the banging cupboards or the flush that Kristen could feel spreading down her neck.
Kristen raised her eyes, following the curve of Marydale’s hip, her breast, and her shoulder half hidden by her hair.
“I…I had a weird day in court,” she mumbled.
Marydale blinked a couple of times. “I’m sorry. You want to talk about it?”
An hour later, they were sitting at the kitchen table. Kristen hadn’t forgotten Marydale’s nightwear, but she had acclimated to it, and she had also recounted the details of the Ortega case. Marydale had asked a dozen questions about court procedure and terminology and listened to the answers, nodding.
When Kristen finished, Marydale said, “It’s not your fault.” She sounded as defeated as Kristen had felt leaving court that afternoon.
“I didn’t want to win,” Kristen said. “I wanted the court process to arrive at the right decision. Mrs. Peterson couldn’t pick Mr. Ortega out of a lineup, and he was sitting right in front of her, and she claimed to have seen him from half a mile away, at twilight, while he was riding a bike. It could have been anyone. Are people still that racist? He’s Mexican so he must be a thief?”
“It could be that,” Marydale said. “Or it could be the Holten boys.”
“They weren’t even part of the case.”
“But everyone knows who’s on the jury. Was it Judge Spencer?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not going to let the Holten boys go down.” Marydale stared at the tabletop, tracing flecks of metallic gold in the old Formica. “The law’s always going to side with the Holtens. Always.”
“But this isn’t the Wild West. The Holtens don’t own people. They don’t lynch people.”
“They got here first,” Marydale said. “After the Indians. There was a big fight between the farmers and the ranchers, and eventually the ranchers won. The Holtens have a big family, and they stick together. That’s the thing. They don’t all have money, but if something happens to one of them…”
“Then what?”
“Ronald Holten owns land that surrounds a lot of the BLM range. If he doesn’t grant an easement, people can’t graze their herd. And he’s loaned people money. Some people even say he’s got connections in the military. Someone’s son enlists, Ronald can make sure he stays safe or gets sent out to the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan. I don’t believe that part, but other people do. That’s all that matters. Everyone owes the Holtens something.”
“Do you?”
“My mom sold him a lot of our land when she got sick. He paid a fair price. He didn’t have to. And I owe them other things, too, but not the kind of things you can pay back.”
Marydale sounded sad.
“That doesn’t mean Mr. Ortega should be convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll tell Douglas Grady to appeal. He already knows that. Maybe move to have the appeal heard in a different county. Mr. Ortega won’t get more than probation, but it’s still on his record.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the evening light filling the windows like amber.
“There’s a place I like to go when I want to think,” Marydale said. “Would you like me to show you? It’s a little drive from here.”
Kristen nodded. “Sure.”
“I’ll change,” Marydale said. “Get a sweater. It’ll be colder than you think.”
When Kristen came back downstairs, Marydale was wearing jeans and a sheepskin coat. She had produced two old blankets, striped red, green, and orange.
“Knockoff Pendleton wool,” she said as she tucked them under one arm.
A few minutes later, they were bumping along a gravel road that seemed to go up forever. Lilith rode between them, her tongue lolling cheerfully.
“People say it’s God’s country,” Marydale said, draping her arm over Lilith’s back. “You believe it out here.”
It was growing dark by the time they neared what Kristen guessed to be the top of the Firesteed Mountains. Kristen could tell they were high up, but all she could see was a field of small boulders and the cell phone towers silhouetted against the sky.
“Okay,” Marydale said. “We’re almost here. Close your eyes. Keep them closed. Promise?”
Kristen closed her eyes.
The truck bumped over a few more potholes. Kristen could feel Marydale turn it in a full circle until they were pointing back in the direction they came.
“Keep your eyes closed,” Marydale said.
Kristen heard the truck door open and Marydale get out, followed by Lilith, who let out an enthusiastic bark. A moment later, Marydale opened Kristen’s door and touched her arm, guiding Kristen’s hand to the side of the truck. Kristen felt rust on the paint. The air outside the truck was cold and absolutely scentless. But Kristen could smell Marydale’s vanilla perfume—not the sweet vanilla reinvented by the Bath & Body Works, but the rich, sharp scent of real vanilla beans.
“Okay,” Marydale said when Kristen was touching the edge of the truck’s gate. “Open your eyes.”
Kristen opened her eyes and took a step back. Before them, a rocky gorge plunged downward, so wide and so deep, it made nonsense of the nearby rocks. Beyond the gorge, the land stretched out in the fading light, flat and squared like a quilt or the view from an airplane. Marydale touched Kristen’s arm tentatively and then withdrew her hand. Kristen shifted her weight so their hips were touching. She looked up at Marydale, wanting to say, It’s okay, but saying nothing instead.
“That’s Nevada,” Marydale said, gazing out at the land beneath them. “I like to come up here. Whatever I’m worried about, it seems small. Out there, there’s a billion people living their lives. You know?”
Lilith circled their feet. Kristen shivered.
“Yeah.”
Marydale had parked a safe distance from the edge, but the gorge was so deep, Kristen felt it tugging at her, and she gripped the side of the truck.
“I got a blanket for you,” Marydale said. “Come on.”
Marydale let down the tailgate and stepped into the bed of the truck in one graceful move. She held out her hand, and Kristen clambered up, noting the warm strength of Marydale’s hand and the slight roughness of her palm. In one corner of the truck, Marydale had secured an insulated dog house, like a giant cooler. Beside this, she unstrapped two low-slung stadium chairs. Kristen sat, and Marydale draped both blankets around Kristen’s shoulders. Then she sat next to her.
“Tell me about being a rodeo queen,” Kristen asked.
“I never liked the events. Roping. Bronc riding. Most of the rodeos are all right. People care. But the animals still get cut up pretty bad.
The Holtens were all calf ropers.” Marydale stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was oddly hollow. “You go through a lot of calves that way.”
“Go through?”
“It’s not the ones in the rodeo that get hurt as much as the ones they use to practice. But I did love being a rodeo queen. I grew up with it. My mother was only seventeen when she had me, so she was still doing rodeos when I was seven or eight.” Her voice grew dreamy. “She had this beautiful Andalusian named Trumpet. I remember one year, she was the rodeo queen, and I came in fourth at the Pint Sized. We rode into the ring together on Trumpet.”
Lilith made a sweep of the area, then leaped into the back of the truck and disappeared into her kennel.
“How old were you when you lost your parents?” Kristen asked quietly.
“My dad was my freshman year in high school. Heart attack. My mom just found him out by the north acreage.”
“Were you close?”
“He taught me a lot. The judges liked that. A rodeo queen who really knows the ranch. My mom died two years later. Cancer. My dad was older than my mom. People said it was a shame she got married so young and he was so much older. But then everyone says she died of grief, too.”
In the far distance, Kristen saw a speck of headlights traveling across Nevada, then realized it was an airplane.
“That must have been hard,” Kristen said.
Other people’s heartbreaks had always made her uncomfortable. In law school she had briefly dated an associate attorney who cried after sex, and his phlegmy confessions left her feeling both coldhearted and deeply in need of a shower. But she wanted to touch Marydale, to hold her. And it felt natural and strange at the same time.
“You can be pretty or you can be lucky.” Marydale blew into her hands.
“How did you survive?” Kristen asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t.” Marydale shook her head. “I miss them every day, but when you grow up ranching you know. You see things die. Animals. You hear about accidents. You know what’s coming…in a way.”
Kristen reached out and covered Marydale’s hands with hers. Marydale’s skin was cold.
“You’re freezing,” Kristen said.
“I’m fine.”
Kristen hesitated. The moment felt like a flame lit on a slender match, burning quickly away. They would get back in the truck. They would go home and take a few sips of whiskey and go back to their respective beds. Or… Kristen hesitated. Then she pulled the blankets off her shoulders and spread them out so they covered her and Marydale together. Kristen glanced at Marydale. She looked even more beautiful in the new moonlight, and her beauty suddenly made her seem vulnerable. Kristen wondered how many people had looked at Marydale and seen only her extravagant hair.
“You’re amazing,” Kristen said, and leaned in and touched her lips to Marydale’s for just a second, then pulled back. “Sorry.”
Marydale drew in a breath. In the back of Kristen’s mind, a voice cautioned, You can’t do this to her. This is her real life. Some part of her pretended to listen. Driving back home, Kristen told Marydale about the philosophy student with his VHS movies. She meant it as a warning. I’m not going to fall for a woman, not for real, not for good. But the story came out all wrong. She couldn’t make her case. The facts didn’t support the findings.
Back at the house, they bumped into each other in the hallway. Kristen thought Marydale would kiss her, but she didn’t. They climbed the stairs to their matching bedrooms.
Kristen said, “I guess I should get some sleep.”
Marydale nodded.
In bed, the sheets tangled around Kristen’s legs. The sense of anticipation that had felt sweet and intimate under the blanket in the back of Marydale’s truck felt empty. The match had burned away, and neither of them had made a move, and that was the right choice, Kristen thought. They were roommates, and Marydale was a lesbian and Kristen hadn’t even thought about women until now, and maybe that was just because all the men in Tristess chewed tobacco and were missing teeth (and so was Marydale, but she wore it well, like the stylish rip in her rhinestone jeans).
Finally, Kristen saw light appear around the edge of her doorframe as Marydale turned on the bathroom light. Kristen heard the toilet, then the faucet and the clink of a toothbrush in a cup. She listened, and she did not move. She thought of the undergraduate theater professor who had sometimes taught in the auditorium next to the room where Kristen had taught legal writing. She had often heard him beseeching his students to be the tiger. Be. The. Tiger! She had never been the tiger. She wasn’t going to stay in Tristess and marry a cowgirl. She wasn’t going to grow a fauxhawk or go vegan or buy a motorcycle or whatever incarnation lesbianism took out here. To open the bedroom door now wouldn’t be right, and it wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t be the kind of thing diligent, responsible Kristen Brock did, and she rose as if in a dream.
Marydale stood in the hallway.
“I can’t sleep,” Kristen said.
“I can get you a whiskey.”
Marydale wore only a long T-shirt, and her thighs were thick and muscular, like the legs of some beautiful creature used for portage but meant to run.
“No,” Kristen said. “That’s not what I want.” Marydale hesitated for a moment, looking back and forth between their two bedroom doors. Kristen nodded. Marydale took her hand.
Marydale’s bedroom rested in moonlight. The bed lay in disarray, the covers almost on the floor.
“Kristen,” Marydale whispered.
Then Marydale bent down and kissed her, her hair falling around Kristen’s face. Kristen caressed Marydale’s back, not quite daring to slip beneath the fabric of her T-shirt. Questions jumbled among the sensations in Kristen’s body, disjointed and urgent. What would happen next? Should they stop? Would they kiss and fall asleep like chaste schoolgirls? What if Marydale touched her and Kristen felt nothing? Even as Kristen formed the question, the thought that the night might end without some kind of release made her clutch Marydale’s back and pull away from her kiss at the same time.
“What is it?” Marydale asked.
“I’ve never done this with a woman.”
Kristen kept her arms around Marydale’s waist and examined her in the dim light. It didn’t make any sense. The world was full of women, and Kristen had felt as much attraction to them as she would to a patch of crocuses or a shapely tree, but Marydale was different.
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” Marydale touched Kristen’s cheek, and while her expression didn’t change, Kristen though she saw a veil of sadness lower over Marydale’s eyes. “I really want to do this with you. But if you’re not ready…”
“It’s not that,” Kristen said quickly. “You’re just…” You don’t know how lovely you are, Kristen thought. She pulled Marydale’s hips closer to her own, feeling Marydale’s warmth and a deeper, more urgent warmth in her own body. “I don’t know how to do this with a woman.”
Before she could glimpse the sadness in Marydale’s eyes again, Kristen leaned forward and kissed the skin at the base of Marydale’s neck, tasting a light salt of sweat. Then she bit down very gently, just grazing the edge of her teeth along Marydale’s shoulder. Marydale moaned, and the sound sent a frisson of desire through Kristen’s body. “I want to,” Kristen whispered.
Marydale kissed her again, then guided her to the bed, sweeping away the tangle of sheets.
“Lie down,” she said.
Kristen lay down, looking up at Marydale, who lifted her shirt over her head, revealing the full, naked length of her body, her large breasts tipped with tiny nipples, the apex of her thighs covered in curls of blond hair.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Marydale said.
Kristen was still in her long-sleeved cotton nightgown with the little tulips printed on it. Marydale slid into bed beside her, kissing her, first tentatively, then with more force. Kristen felt her body squirm to meet Marydale’s, their breasts press
ed together through the thin fabric of her gown.
“Can I take this off you?” Marydale asked.
Kristen nodded, and Marydale tried to lift the fabric over Kristen’s head, but Kristen was lying down and the nightgown tangled beneath her, and she had to squirm awkwardly out of the garment. And it didn’t matter.
A moment later, Kristen felt the silken strength of Marydale’s body as Marydale straddled her. Then Marydale slid down until their bodies were pressed together, readjusting her position so her thigh rested between Kristen’s legs. Kristen felt Marydale’s skin against her whole body. Then Marydale kissed her, her tongue matching the circular movement of her hips.
In the back of her mind, Kristen thought, This is what men feel. This awe. This softness. The generosity of Marydale’s body, her breasts, her belly, the smoothness of her skin. Their legs intertwined, the skin of Marydale’s thigh pressing into her.
Marydale groaned. Kristen rocked upward and Marydale pressed down, grinding her thigh into Kristen’s sex, soft and hard at the same time. In the back of her mind Kristen wondered how it could be sex with no penis to secure the transaction. What made it more than adolescent humping? But even as the thought flitted across her consciousness, Marydale’s body touched all the places the philosophy major and the crying attorney had only inadvertently grazed. Instead of the little glimpses of pleasure caught at the upswing of a man’s thrust, Kristen felt her whole sex massaged by Marydale’s thigh, the pleasure growing fuller and fuller, Marydale’s skin never leaving hers. Everything felt luscious. Suddenly Kristen felt a strange, foolish urgency overtake her. She never talked during sex, never cried out her needs or her intentions, but the sensation was so complete and so surprising.
“I’m going to come,” she gasped.
Marydale circled her hips. Kristen felt her own hips drive up against Marydale, her muscles contracting, her clit aching for just a little bit more contact, a deeper pressure, a faster…She cried out as the orgasm seized her.
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