Something True Read online

  “Would you like to play a game of pool?” Tate said, to get out from under Vita’s grin and to give herself a moment to think.

  She was not the kind of woman who picked up girls at the bar. Vita picked up girls. Vita had picked up so many women she remembered them by taglines like “The Groaner” or “Wooly Bicycle Legs.” She often told Tate that Tate could do the same, if she would only “put out some effort.” According to Vita, half the girls at the Mirage were in love with Tate. But Tate did not believe her, nor did she want an assortment of half-remembered encounters.

  But she wanted this woman.

  They moved toward the side of the bar where two pool tables stood on a raised platform under low-hanging lights.

  “Are you any good?” she asked.

  “I’m all right,” Tate said.

  The woman rolled her pool cue on the table to see if it was true.

  “None of them are straight,” Tate said.

  “I suppose not.” The woman glanced toward the door. “Not here.”

  Tate laughed.

  “You break then,” the woman said.

  Tate cracked the balls apart, sinking two solids and following with a third.

  “So, if you won’t tell me your name,” Tate began. “Or where you live or what you do, what are we going to talk about?”

  “We could talk about you.”

  The woman sank a high ball but missed her next shot. Her hand was unsteady, and she looked around the bar more than she looked at the table. She looked at Tate more than she looked around the bar—but only out of the corner of her eye.

  “I already know where you work,” she said, casting that glance at Tate and then looking down. “And I know that, prior to right now, you’ve had bad taste in women. So…what’s your name? How long have you worked at the coffee shop?”

  Tate took another shot and sank a ball.

  “No,” she said slowly. “I’ll tell you what you tell me.”

  “Okay.” The woman leaned over the pool table and her hair draped in a curtain over one side of her face. She took her shot but missed. “I learned to play pool in college with three girls who I thought would be my friends for life. We played at a sports bar called the Gator Club. And I don’t know any of them now. They could be dead. They could be professional pool sharks.” She leaned against the wall and surveyed the table. “How about you?”

  “I learned to play here the summer I turned twenty-one,” Tate said. She sank another ball and shot a smile in the woman’s direction. “The table is off. It slopes. It’s not fair, you being from out of town and all. I should give you a handicap.”

  “Tell me how it slopes and give me two out of three.”

  Tate had never been the kind of person who made bets or the kind of person who sidled up to beautiful women, looked down at them lustfully, and said things like, What will you give me when I win?

  But apparently that was the kind of woman she was. Tonight. In the summer.

  “What will you give me if I win?”

  The woman did not step away. Or laugh. She rested one hand on Tate’s chest, right over Tate’s racing heart.

  “I’ll answer one question,” she said. “About anything. I’ll tell you one true thing. And if I win—it’s that corner, right?—I want you to take me someplace.”

  “Where?”

  “Someplace special. You’ve been playing pool here since you were twenty-one. You must know someplace no one goes. Someplace I wouldn’t see otherwise. Something I’ll remember.”

  “Okay.”

  They played in silence, standing closer than necessary, touching more than necessary. The woman seemed to relax, and her game got better. Tate won the first game but only just barely. The woman won the second, masterfully compensating for the uneven table. Tate was in line to win the third game but scratched on the eight ball. The woman laughed a sweet, musical laugh tinged with victory.

  “Take me somewhere,” the woman said.

  At the bar, Vita pointed and mouthed, You rock. At a table near the door, Abigail leaned against Duke’s leather vest and scowled. But Tate did not see them. She slipped her hand through the woman’s arm and stepped out into the moonlight.

  Chapter 2

  Do you mind a walk?” Tate asked as they stood outside the Mirage in the glare of a streetlight.

  “I came for a walk,” the woman said.

  They headed up Division toward the hills that cradled the city.

  “It’s an interesting question,” Tate said after a few blocks.

  “What is?”

  “What can you know about someone if you don’t know the details, the stuff on their tax return?”

  The woman squeezed her hand, but did not answer.

  “For example, you could tell me how you feel about dogs,” Tate said, “if you fight with your lovers and how clean you keep your home, how you feel about money, and what you like to eat. That would probably give me a better picture of whether or not we would be compatible than your job.”

  Tate paused, embarrassed. Compatible implied a future. This was a mistake Vita’s lovers made. Tate had heard Vita complain about it many times. “We made out at a Portland Timbers game,” Vita would say, raising her hands in frustration. “Someone poured beer on us. What part of that says ‘’til death do us part’?”

  But the woman just said, “I suppose.”

  She gazed up at the moon, tripping on the uneven sidewalk. Tate steadied her, one hand touching the woman’s belly just for a second. She felt the soft flesh and beneath that the hard muscle of the woman’s stomach. She thought she heard the woman take a quick breath. Then Tate pulled away shyly.

  “Not that there’s much on my tax return,” Tate added.

  “No dependents?” the woman asked.

  “Not even a dog.”

  “Want one?”

  “I live in an apartment. If I didn’t, I’d have a Rottweiler. I had one as a kid. I loved that dog, but I had to give it up when…” Tate stopped herself. “Of course, if I got one, I’d have to get a rescue. My boss, Maggie, she’s like a mother to me, to half of Portland really. She used to do dog rescue. With all the dogs that get put down, it would break her heart if I bought some fancy pedigree. So I’d probably get one that ate my couch.”

  The woman laughed.

  “You’d pick a dog to make your boss happy?”

  “Yeah.” Tate shrugged. With all the hard facts off-limits, it was strangely easy to be honest about the rest. “I’d do anything to make her happy.”

  “I shouldn’t laugh,” the woman added, her voice going cold. “I do everything to make my bosses happy.”

  “And your job is…?”

  Tate was just teasing. She did not expect the woman to tell her. But the woman looked at her with such apprehension.

  “No. Don’t tell me,” Tate said.

  After a moment, the woman said, “I like dogs, but I travel too much to have one. I live in a hotel room.”

  “And is it tidy?”

  “Never.”

  “And to eat?”

  “Sushi.”

  “And your lovers?”

  “They’re like the dogs.”

  “They eat your couch?” Tate teased.

  “I’m not home enough to have one.”

  Tate indicated a change of direction, and they turned off the gritty flank of Division, with its barred windows and peeling auto repair signs, and onto a tree-lined side street.

  “And you?” the woman asked. “Tell me about your life.”

  “That’s not the game we’re playing, is it?”

  “All right.” The woman leaned into her. “Tell me more about Portland.”

  And Tate told her about the markets and the coffee shops, the secret tunnels that ran beneath the city streets, the Chinese garden, the pirate-themed vegan strip club and the mausoleum that housed fifty thousand of Portland’s deceased in a giant apartment complex. She told her how the high-rises looked in the rain: as though they had
risen from the Willamette River, blue and green and gray. She told her how Portlanders loved to play—dodgeball, kickball, roller derby, disc golf, women’s rugby, men’s volleyball—and how sometimes a horde of people would dress up like zombies and go barhopping.

  The farther they walked the larger the houses grew, the greener the lots, and the stronger the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine.

  “What do people do where you’re from?” Tate asked.

  “Pilates.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course,” the woman said.

  “Like it?”

  “I hate it. It’s a bunch of hypercompetitive alpha females all trying to out-tone each other.”

  “Alpha females.” Tate laughed.

  “It doesn’t work either. I mean they’re fit, but they’re not sexy.”

  They passed under the shadow of a particularly leafy maple. The woman slowed, raised up on tiptoes, and delivered another quick kiss to Tate’s cheek.

  “You are,” the woman said.

  Eventually, they arrived at the Mount Tabor Community Garden. The garden was built on a steep hill. Gardeners followed the network of steps Tate and her team of amateur engineers had fashioned out of railroad ties and hay bales. It had been cultivated for years and many plots had stayed in the same hands for decades. There were fruit trees that stood twenty feet tall, blueberry hedges that stretched for a quarter of an acre, and a hundred varieties of tomato. But in the darkness it was just shadows and the smell of compost and warm earth.

  “Are we allowed to be here?” the woman asked.

  “Sure.”

  “But what about the people who own it?”

  “Nobody owns it,” Tate said.

  The woman cocked her head. “Someone owns everything.”

  “Not this.”

  Tate pushed open the sagging wooden gate that kept nothing out. She caught the smell of the woman’s hair mixing with the smell of the garden as they walked.

  “Did you love that woman at the bar?” the woman asked.

  Tate stopped. “I thought we weren’t asking personal questions.”

  “We aren’t asking tax-form questions. Who, what, when, where, and how much money did you make? Those are the opposite of personal.”

  “Okay. Yes. I loved her very much,” Tate said, offering the woman a hand as they clambered up onto a tall hay bale.

  “Have you loved every person you’ve dated?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course.” The woman paused beside a tree that Tate could tell, by smell, was a plum tree. She put her hand against Tate’s cheek. “That’s precious.”

  Tate drew her hand away and kissed it. Somewhere a plum released its grip on the branch and fell. Tate led the woman over another hay bale and down a long row of tomato plants.

  “My friend Vita says I’m hopeless.” She pulled a cherry tomato off a vine and held it out. “It’s a Golden Globe.”

  The woman put the tomato to her mouth cautiously.

  “And how did she leave you?” the woman asked after a few more steps.

  “The cellist? She cheated on me.”

  “With that woman?”

  “Duke? No.” Tate sighed. “With an oboist.”

  She had only seen the woman once. In a rehearsal. Puffing out the space between her upper lip and her nose as she tooted a long, low note on the ridiculously narrow instrument. Then, as if dissatisfied with the sound, she had turned her instrument upside down and emptied out a pool of spit. It seemed, to Tate, like something that should be done in the privacy of a bathroom.

  “I can’t imagine,” the woman said. “You’re lovely.”

  Lovely. Tate felt herself blush.

  “Come. This is what I want to show you,” she said.

  They had reached the top of the garden and, with it, Tate’s plot. There, at the peak, stood a dark hump, like a yurt at the top of the hill. Tate led them around it to the opening, and they stepped through.

  “It’s a kiwi tree. I planted it nine years ago.”

  There was a low bench in the center of the leafy enclave, and Tate dusted it off so they could sit. Through an opening carved out of the hanging leaves, they could see the whole city spread out below. Through its midst ran the river, crisscrossed by bridges. On the other side, the city towers glittered, and behind them, the northwest hills looked like an elfin forest. Tate put her arm around the woman’s shoulders.

  “Have you ever been in love?” Tate asked.

  “I was married once, but I didn’t love him.” The woman leaned against Tate’s shoulder. “Did you know married people live longer? They are healthier and richer. All the studies show it. And they don’t have to be particularly happy to get the benefits of marriage. That’s what I was thinking about at the altar.” She gave a short, sad laugh. “I was thinking marriage would lower my blood pressure. I was thinking it would ensure a comfortable retirement, and I was telling myself that in 1840 that was enough. Why not now?”

  Tate touched the woman’s neck.

  “In 1840 people died of strep throat,” she pointed out.

  “I never told anyone that.” The woman gazed out over the city. “You are the only person in the world who knows what I was thinking when I said ‘I do.’”

  “So why did you marry him?”

  “I always knew I was gay,” the woman said.

  “Not the usual reason to marry a man.”

  “It was all so inconvenient. If I wanted to get ahead, if I wanted the job, the life, all that tax-return stuff.” The woman leaned her elbows on her knees and rested her chin on her folded hands. “Gay just didn’t fit into the picture.”

  The woman was even prettier worried, Tate thought. It wasn’t fair. Worry brought out Tate’s nose. She was not sure how it happened, but it did. And it pulled her eyebrows together in a Frida-Kahlo-ish way that had almost worked for Frida and did not work for Tate at all. But that was just a passing thought. Mostly, Tate wanted to pull the woman into her arms and kiss away her grief.

  “And now?” she asked.

  “Now is what I’m looking for. Just this moment and nothing else.”

  The woman stood up as if she were about to leave, but when Tate stood to follow her she took a step toward Tate and stopped, frozen.

  “Now?” Tate asked.

  The woman nodded.

  Tate cupped her face. The woman’s eyes were very wide. Her face was pale. Her expression was close to fear but closer to desire. Very gently, Tate pressed her lips to the woman’s. The woman returned her kiss with a shyness that surprised Tate. Not since she was a teenager had a girl kissed her with such tentative uncertainty. But it was sweet, and they kissed like that for a long time, and slowly the woman relaxed. Her hands slid beneath Tate’s T-shirt. Her hips pressed against Tate’s body. Her breath quickened.

  Tate felt as if all the dull longing of the past months had suddenly wound itself into a tight, hot knot below her belt. She held the woman close, resisting the urge to press herself against the woman’s thigh, and then giving in, and then resisting again, until the woman said, “Come here.”

  The woman took a step back, positioning her back against the trunk of the kiwi tree, and then pulling Tate to her. She sighed as their bodies connected.

  “Fuck,” the woman whispered. Her eyes flew open.

  “Are you okay?” Tate’s voice was rough.

  Suddenly, the woman clutched Tate’s ass in her hands and moved her hips in a circle that pressed against every part of Tate’s aching body. Again and again. Each rotation soothing the ache and making it more acute. Tate braced one arm against the tree. Her legs felt weak.

  “Oh, God,” the woman said again. “It’s so much better.”

  Tate’s body felt liquid. One more rotation of the woman’s hips, and she knew she would come. A remote part of her brain thought she shouldn’t. She didn’t do things like this. With strangers. In public gardens. But her thoughts were no match for the warmth that was spreading through her b
ody, and the woman seemed ready for the same climax.

  “I didn’t know. I…” the woman said. Then she stopped suddenly, releasing her grip on Tate’s hips. “I hear something.”

  Voices rang out, far off in the garden.

  Someone called, “Wait up.”

  And another voice chimed in, “We’re over here.”

  A moment later they saw flashlight beams far off in the garden. The woman stared at them, transfixed. Her eyes were wide and dark and startled.

  “We have to get out of here,” she said.

  Tate could barely stand for wanting the woman so much, and for a moment, she was certain the woman was about to flee. The disappointment she felt was a physical pain. Her breath came in a quick, deep gasp.

  Then the woman touched her chest, fleetingly, like a forbidden lover.

  “Please say you live nearby,” she said. “Take me home.”

  Tate led the woman into the foyer of her apartment building. Pawel and Rose, the old Hungarian couple, had their front door open although it was after midnight. A talk show blared on the television. Tate glanced in the direction of the sound and motioned for the woman to be quiet.

  They’ll want to talk, she mouthed.

  Once upstairs and inside her studio apartment, Tate turned on a small, fringed lamp. It was a present from Krystal. Tate would never have bought anything with so many tassels, something so purple, but the light it cast was perfect.

  “Let me put on some music.”

  Tate opened her laptop and selected a playlist.

  When she turned, prepared to offer the woman a drink, the woman was unbuttoning the last button of her shirt. As Tate watched, she let it slide to the floor. Then the woman caught Tate’s gaze and held it as she unclasped her bra and let it drop, revealing a body as beautiful and lush as summer itself. She was somehow bigger unclothed, curvier. Her hips seemed wider and her breasts heavier. Her stance was commanding, yet Tate read a question in the woman’s eyes as she pushed a strand of her long blond hair behind her ear. Tate had a sudden intuition: She thinks I might say no.

  “You are very lovely,” Tate said.