She was thinking of Marydale standing in the kitchen of her farmhouse confessing. I thought he was going to kill me.
“I don’t think it’s hard to be gay in Portland,” Tate said slowly. “But if she’s lived someplace where it was a lot easier to be with a man, she might just be afraid that she’s not good enough for you to, you know, take that risk. At least another lesbian doesn’t have the choice. Another lesbian can’t choose to be with a man if things get rough. Or maybe she’s been burned before.”
“She’s been burned before,” Kristen said, staring at the bar top before her.
“You just have to show her that you’re not the kind of person who runs away,” Tate said with a friendly shrug. “It’ll work out. I know that sounds like such a cliché, but if you’re meant to be together, it’ll work out.”
6
“Where are we going again?” Marydale asked as Aldean opened the passenger door of his pickup and offered her a hand up, despite the fact that her Ford F-150 was actually higher off the ground.
“Your lesbian bartender’s birthday party,” Aldean said.
“Right, right,” Marydale said. “Vita Galliano.”
“If you say so. You put it on our calendar,” Aldean said. “You sponsored her bar at PrideFest. I was going to set up a booth at the Rose City Adult Entertainment Expo that weekend, but no.”
“You were not going to sell top-shelf whiskey to Casa Diablo’s Vegan Strip Club,” she said.
Aldean settled into the driver’s seat and pushed the truck into second gear.
“Nothing says drink more whiskey like a naked girl and some tempeh,” he said.
Marydale wasn’t in the mood. She didn’t want to go to Vita Galliano’s birthday party. She didn’t want to listen to the latest gossip from the Mirage. She didn’t even want to talk about the new pinot noir barrels they’d bought from the Alderglen Winery and whether or not they would lend the same cinnamon character as the French oak they had used before. She wanted to lie on the floor of the Tristess, turn out the lights, and feel the river flowing beneath her.
“You could just call her,” Aldean said, as they turned onto Highway 30.
“I can’t cancel on her. I said we were coming.”
“Not Vita. Kristen.”
“I’m not calling her.”
It was only half true. She hadn’t called Kristen, but she had looked up Kristen’s firm and written the phone number on a slip of paper that had drifted around the kitchen of her houseboat for days. Every time she looked at it, she reminded herself of all the reasons an affair with Kristen would never work out. She knew in her mind, but her dumb, optimistic heart beat, Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
“Well, you’ll have to cheer up if you’re going to sell some whiskey at this party,” Aldean said.
“We’re not selling anything. We’re going to celebrate one of our local purchaser’s birthdays.”
The directions Vita had provided led them into the northwest hills. The roads were narrow and clung to the forested hillside. On the other side, the houses were built on stilts with long driveways like drawbridges over the abyss.
“So this is how the other side lives,” Aldean said. “Didn’t know owning a lesbian bar made so much money.”
“I don’t know how you could live up here and not get vertigo,” Marydale grumbled. “I think it’s Vita’s friends’ house. Tate and Laura. Laura’s big in the green-construction industry. She probably built the place.”
Vertigo or not, the house they arrived at was gorgeous. Inside everything was blond wood and pale furniture. Marydale could see clear through the living room and out the windows on the other side. Far below, the city sparkled with lights. In the living room, a dinner table with a dozen leaves had been decorated with candles and festoons of green garlands.
“Come in, come in!” Vita effused, hugging both of them.
“This place is amazing,” Aldean said.
“Make yourselves at home,” Vita said. “It’s not my place, but that makes it even better. You can spill on the carpet.”
The only carpet Marydale saw was a delicately woven rug hung on the wall above the fireplace.
Marydale handed Vita a bottle of First Anniversary, the first good whiskey Sadfire had produced after Aldean arrived in Portland. Vita invited them into the open kitchen and started mixing an elaborate drink with the whiskey they had just brought.
A moment later, Vita pushed a drink into Marydale’s hand.
“It’s called the Lightning Rod. I invented it for the party. You can put anything in it. Whiskey. Vodka. Gin. Tequila. All of the above.”
Marydale took the drink and managed a friendly smile.
Around them, the other guests looked like a backstage party for an eclectic fashion show. A man in a ball gown talked with animated gestures to a stone-faced woman in coveralls. Two women in schoolgirl jumpers skewered bits of cheese on toothpicks, while a man with a chest-length beard shoveled them into his mouth. Nearby, an old woman in a fountain of lace hugged an Asian boy in a Portland Blazers jersey. On a deck overlooking the city, two women who Marydale guessed to be Tate and Laura, talked to a trio of men in tuxedos.
Marydale wondered if Kristen had a house like this, perhaps in this neighborhood. Her friends would be a different set, all in gray suits, trousers for the men and skirts for the women. They might be having a party right now, drinking sidecars and talking about their respective court cases.
On the deck, the trio of tuxedoed men dispersed. One of them laughed and called out, “Round two. To the Lightning Rod!” And Marydale saw a third woman standing with Tate and Laura, her hair pulled up in a twist, her trim gray suit an elegant contrast to the carnival of outfits around her.
Kristen.
Vita appeared at Marydale’s elbow. Marydale jumped
“I’m a bartender,” Vita whispered. “I know everyone.”
Vita shuttled off to the next cluster of guests. Marydale looked around for Aldean, but he was leaning against the counter, chatting with the women in schoolgirl jumpers.
Aldean, she mouthed.
He shot her a look that said, I’m busy.
To the women he said, “Whiskey’s very sensual. You have to be in your body when you drink whiskey.”
Then Marydale’s eyes met Kristen’s, and although the room was large and crowded with voices, Marydale felt everything go silent and still, as though the mist that sometimes covered the Willamette River at dawn had drifted up the hills and blanketed the party. Only Kristen was visible. Kristen raised one hand, tentatively, not quite a wave. Tate and Laura glanced back at Marydale, spoke something to Kristen, and then disappeared.
And Marydale knew what she should do: make small talk, feel awkward, sit at the opposite end of the table from Kristen at dinner, and go home. The thought made her feel so tired, she knew if she sat down she would fall asleep, like a drunk in the corner of a bar. At the same time, beneath that fatigue, she felt a tense, queer giddiness, like the excitement she had felt when she had broken the conditions of her parole and driven out of the county—just to do it—the feeling that there was no future price that outweighed the exquisite now.
She walked through the crowd and onto the deck. The air outside was cool. Kristen watched her.
“I’m surprised,” Marydale said when she reached Kristen.
Kristen looked down. “I met Vita at the Mirage.”
Marydale took a step closer. She touched Kristen’s arm, and Kristen’s eyes flew upward. And Marydale knew that she could kiss her, that she would kiss her, and maybe heartbreak would follow, but tonight the city lights were sparkling and, despite the orange glow they cast in the sky, there were still so many stars.
“Did you like the Mirage?” Marydale asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you go dancing?”
Kristen offered her a rueful smile. “I’m not a dancer.”
“I don’t know about that,” Marydale said.
Their words felt weightier tha
n small talk.
“I’d be so stiff. I don’t think I even danced in college. I think once I was walking across the quad and some drunk people bumped into me. That’s as close as I got to dancing,” Kristen said. “Do you dance?”
“Not anymore. I did a little Western dancing back home. You can’t be a rodeo queen and not take a turn, but I was pretty bad at it. I always wanted to lead.”
“I bet you were lovely. Did you have a big skirt with ruffles?”
“And four hundred pounds of sequins.”
“Ah,” Kristen said. “Armor.” She glanced at the party inside. “I’m sorry about the other day.”
“You’re sorry that you came to the distillery?”
Kristen pursed her lips in a pensive expression that did not look like an attorney planning her strategy. “You said no,” she said quietly. “And I didn’t listen to you.”
“I don’t think anyone could accuse you of forcing me.” Marydale stepped a little closer. “I’ll run it by my lawyer, but I don’t think it’ll hold up in court.”
“But I came by to talk, to see you.” Kristen reached out as if to touch her hand, then stopped. “I didn’t come there to make you uncomfortable. And I pushed you into something you didn’t want.”
“Well,” Marydale drawled, “I wouldn’t say I didn’t want it. The trick is just to only want those things that are good for us. But Aldean says we’re in the business of temptation. It’s only fair that we be tempted. What did you want to talk about?”
“I—”
Vita poked her head out the porch door. “Come on, you guys. We’re eating.”
“Sit with me,” Kristen said.
Inside, Tate lit the candles and raised a toast to Vita. Vita thanked Tate and Laura for hosting. Toasts were made. Glasses clinked. White china tureens were passed up and down the long table. Aldean kept up a friendly banter about the rain and the estery profile of their latest release. Tate asked about gin distilling. Kristen and Laura talked about zoning laws with impenetrable specificity. And Marydale nodded and laughed and looked up and down the table as the conversation bounced back and forth. But she wasn’t really listening. She was feeling the air between her shoulder and Kristen’s, the distance between her hand on the stem of her wineglass and Kristen’s hand on the tablecloth beside her plate. She was so focused on the millimeters that separated them and on the way Kristen’s knee brushed hers beneath the table that she did not hear Vita calling the guests to order, declaring, “You won’t believe this.” Vita added, “Marydale Rae! Are you listening?”
“What?” Marydale asked.
Vita waved her arms over her plate like a referee. “I have a terribly sad story to tell,” she said enthusiastically.
“Vita, don’t,” Tate said. To Marydale and Kristen she added, “She meddles. Don’t listen to her.”
“Heartbreaking,” Vita said.
“Vita!” Tate scolded, but the table had already fallen silent, all eyes focused on Vita.
“I was at the bar,” Vita began melodramatically. “This woman came in. She talked to Tate for, like, an hour.”
“Hardly,” Tate said.
Vita laughed. “She was there for hours. This poor girl was weeping in her Sadfire whiskey. She was in love.” Vita beamed, managing to look both loving and predatory at the same time. “Oh, she was so in love, but she was bi, or maybe she was straight, but she’d fallen for this one girl, and the heartless lesbian dumped her. Do you know why?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Because she had the stain of man on her.”
One of the men at the table chuckled.
“I don’t mind the stain of man on me,” he said.
“And do you know who this terrible lesbian was?” Vita went on. “This cruel woman who wouldn’t accept her bisexual lover? Who would say no to a girl just because she’d never been with another woman? And she was very pretty, by the way. This girl was very professional, very polished. I wanted to bed her just to mess up her hair.”
Under the table, Kristen touched Marydale’s leg. When Marydale glanced over, Kristen was blushing a red so deep it matched Vita’s lipstick.
Vita leaned over, nearly dragging the sleeve of her velveteen leopard-print blazer in the hollandaise sauce.
“Marydale Rae, you’ll never get your toaster like that!” she declared.
The whole table laughed.
When they quieted down, Aldean asked, “What does a toaster have to do with it?”
There was another round of laughter.
“For flipping a straight girl.” Vita grinned. “We get one every time we get a girl to play for our team. Signing bonus from the Lesbian Nation.”
Kristen leaned over and pressed her forehead to Marydale’s shoulder, hiding her face from the guests at the table.
“Where are you going to put your toaster?” she whispered.
Marydale could hear that she was smiling. She kissed the top of Kristen’s head.
Someone said, “Aw!”
Someone else said, “Oh, it’s her!”
Kristen looked up at Marydale, and Marydale gently placed a kiss on her lips.
“That’s more like it,” Vita exclaimed, and the talk at the table broke into half a dozen smaller conversations, some of the guests discussing toasters and the chance that Marydale might upgrade to a Vitamix, while farther down the table someone described an enormous dildo they had seen at Spartacus Leathers, and another trio of talkers burst into a rendition of “I Kissed a Girl.”
Kristen squeezed Marydale’s hand under the table, and they looked at each other. Then they were both laughing at their own embarrassment and at the ridiculous conversations and at the ease that flowered between them and at the sudden certainty that the air around them had changed. Somewhere the first pale crocus had broken through gas-station bark dust. Somewhere, in the darkness, a leafless cherry tree had turned, miraculously, pink with spring.
7
The party drew to a close around midnight. The first guests left with hugs and prolonged goodbyes. Aldean caught Marydale’s eye from across the table, a question in his cocked eyebrow. Marydale didn’t know what to answer, but Kristen leaned close to her.
“Come home with me,” she whispered.
Marydale couldn’t contain the smile that spread across her face. She nodded to Aldean and then to the door. Aldean rose, tipping an invisible hat to Marydale and Kristen. A half hour later, Marydale was sitting in the leather seat of Kristen’s car as they glided down the wooded hills toward the city. Soon Kristen pulled up in front of the Sentinel Building. The massive apartment complex rose like a monument to 1920, its windows reflecting the city, much closer now than when they stood on the deck of Laura’s house.
“I love this building,” Marydale said.
“You’ve been in?” Kristen asked.
“No. I’ve just seen it from outside.”
“Come on.” Kristen took her hand. “It’s beautiful inside, too.”
Kristen held Marydale’s hand as they rode the bronze-plated elevator in silence. When they neared the top of the building, the elevator chimed. Kristen led Marydale down a carpeted hall warmed by the light of vintage chandeliers. She unlocked the last door, and Marydale looked around the condo. The city lights greeted them again, but Marydale wasn’t looking at the high-rises. A huge photo mural dominated the back wall of the living area, lit by a discreet row of track lights. The photo was the Firesteed Summit at dawn.
Marydale walked over to the mural and touched the surface.
“It’s like a giant sticker,” Kristen said. “You send the photograph to the company, and they print it.”
Up close, the pixilation turned the scene into a pointillist painting.
“The Firesteed Summit,” Marydale said. “Why?”
She looked around at the distressed leather sofa, the red, green, and orange Pendleton throw, and the wooden end table resting on a base of antlers. She touched the blanket and frowned.
“For you.” Kristen’s voice
was raw. “I fucked up, Marydale. I left Tristess, and I wanted to die. I missed you so much. And I don’t know why I didn’t do anything.” Kristen stood in the center of the room, like a single player on a stage. She looked around as though the room was as new to her as it was to Marydale. “I should have told Sierra. She would have told me to follow my heart chakra or something ridiculous like that, but she would have told me to go back for you. I just stayed and missed you, and I looked you up a hundred times, and I didn’t go, and it doesn’t make sense. I hate all those Portland hipsters with their fake glasses and their lumberjack beards, and look at all this.” She waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the antler table. “I got all this stuff because it made me think of you. Even the dog.”
Marydale noticed the dog from the Deerfield Hotel sleeping on a cushion beneath the table, wrapped in a blue and yellow sweater, its round chest rising and falling peacefully.
“I don’t have time for pets,” Kristen said, as though the thought had just occurred to her. “I don’t know what to do with a dog. I had to pawn Meatball off on Sierra for six months to housebreak him.”
“You got a dog because of me?”
“You had Lilith.”
As if sensing his role in the conversation, Meatball raised his head and smacked his wide mouth.
“I had a ninety-pound pit bull,” Marydale said. “You got a French bulldog named Meatball. It’s wearing a sweater.”
She meant it as a joke, but Kristen’s next breath was a tremulous sob. She turned away, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“Is it too late?” Kristen asked.
Marydale hurried to her side and put her arms around Kristen, surprised by how small Kristen felt.
Kristen pressed her face to Marydale’s chest. “How can you trust me?” she asked, her voice muffled. “Why would you take me back after the way I left? I can’t ask that. I don’t have the right to ask that. It doesn’t make sense. I knew. I knew! And I didn’t do anything. What kind of person does that?”
“Knew what?” Marydale asked.
Kristen drew back a little and looked up at her. “That I love you.”
For Good Page 16