Something True (17 page)

“I know,” Laura said. “When I left that morning, I wanted you so much. I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel.” Her lips rested in the soft hair above Tate's sex. “May I?”

Some vague inhibition in the back of Tate's mind told her she should say no. She wanted it too much. Her body was too eager. She was supposed to be in control. But any rules or inhibitions she could remember slipped away as Laura kissed the inside of her thigh.

“Here,” Laura said. She kissed closer to Tate's sex. “Or here?”

“Yes,” Tate breathed.

Laura's first kiss was so light Tate could barely feel it, but it was at exactly the right spot, directly on her clit.

“Is that right?” Laura asked.

Tate's hips rose to meet Laura's lips.

“Or like this?”

Laura flicked the opening of Tate's sex with the tip of her tongue.

“Or this?”

Tate felt Laura's tongue moving around her clit in a slow, hot circle.

At that moment, there was nothing Laura could have done that would not have turned Tate on, but the blend of Laura's ardor with her shy questioning—“Is this all right?” “Is that too hard?”—was excruciating. Tate had never been a vocal lover, but finally she begged Laura, “Right there,” she gasped. “Harder.”

Laura kissed her again, then plunged her tongue inside Tate's body and then up along the side of her clit and over and around it. It was better than any sex Tate had ever had before, as though her body had suddenly opened itself to pleasure. She wanted to tell Laura how good it felt. Every muscle in her body was singing. And even as her hips lifted and her whole body strained against Laura's kiss, she was not thinking about orgasm. She was just feeling the wild, incredible pleasure and, even better than Laura's lips sucking her clit, pulling her toward orgasm, even better than that, she felt loved. When she did come the orgasm shook her whole body.

Laura cupped Tate's sex with one hand, pressed her hand there as Tate rode out the last tremors of the orgasm. Then she held Tate.

“Are you okay?” Laura asked.

Since Tate could not put into words how she felt, she showed Laura with her lips and her tongue, and when Laura came Tate thought she heard in Laura's cry the same pleasure she had felt. Then they slept through the night and late into the morning, deep in the sunshine of each other's arms.

Tate woke to the realization that Laura was leaving Portland and the further realization that, if she were a truly good person, she would wake Laura. Laura seemed like the type to take early-morning flights, and it was already ten a.m. As it was, Tate lay motionless, barely breathing. Perhaps Laura would sleep through her flight. Perhaps there would not be another flight that day. Perhaps the next day, aliens would arrive on earth and destroy all flying vessels. Maybe Laura would be grounded forever, and they would grow their own food in the community garden, and weave baskets, and knit sweaters, and live in harmony with nature.
And then die of strep throat
, Tate thought. No. There was no fantasy world in which Laura stayed happily in Portland.

Tate glanced over at her sleeping lover. Laura looked like an angel, her hair fanned out across the pillow in a golden halo.

Don't go
, Tate thought helplessly, even as Laura's cell phone chimed from the bedside table. Laura opened her eyes and consulted her phone, apparently able to go from dead sleep to smartphone calendar in one ring of her alarm.

“My flight is in two hours and twenty minutes.”

She stood in a quick, fluid motion, the sheets spilling off her. Tate admired the curve of her waist, the dimples above her tailbone. She was heavier than her tailored suits belied, plump even. Tate liked what she saw even more than she had admired the slim line of Laura's clothes. But there was no way to tell her that. Not now. And if not now, not ever.

Laura dressed like someone in a locker room, turning away from Tate and curving in on herself as she donned her bra, her dress, and some contraption that looked like underwear but squeezed Laura to half her real size. Tate did not even remember removing that much clothing the night before. It was like Laura had carried a secret morning-after outfit. In a moment, she was fully clothed, complete with a perfectly crisp, white blazer she produced from some mysterious recess of her purse. The businesswoman reasserted, reaffirmed, and ready to go. From the same purse, she pulled out a comb and began smoothing the tangles from her hair.

“You aren't coming back to Portland, are you?” Tate said. It wasn't really a question.

Laura paused in her brushing and looked down at Tate, who had risen on one elbow, the sheets spilling off her body.

“On the 18th, a rep from my company will come out to close the sale. It will probably be my boss, Brenda. She'll call another meeting with Out Coffee. If you have the financials and the money, you'll give it to her then. She'll probably say yes if you have cash in hand, but if she hesitates show her the books, like I said. Show her you're profitable.”

Tate felt suddenly self-conscious and pulled the sheet around her shoulder.

“If she says yes,” Laura continued, “you'll sign the new lease. I'd like to be there for that, but I don't know.”

“I don't know if we're going to be able to raise the money. I don't know if Maggie will go along with any of it.”

Laura coiled her hair into a French twist and pinned it at the back of her head.

“I hope you can,” she said quietly.

Three nights
, Tate thought.
Is that all?
There wasn't even room in their brief relationship for Tate to cry,
How could you do this to me?

“I don't owe you anything,” Laura said. Not an accusation, just a statement of fact.

I am a fool
, Tate thought.

“I have work,” Laura said.

“I know.”

Tate wanted to drop down on her knees and say,
Please stay. Please stay.
But what did she have to offer? A tiny apartment and barely enough money to keep her lights on? A few friends? A good party? And in that moment, everything that she had not done came reeling back to her: the degree she never finished, the scholarship she turned down, the life she could have had. She could have been a professor or an engineer living in a Victorian in the northwest hills, with her own garden, a nice car, and a purebred dog. Maybe then, Laura would have stayed. At least then Tate could have asked.

“I don't have any other option.” Laura pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I have to go.”

“I know.”

“I'm going to be late. I don't even know where the airport is from here, and the TSA in Portland takes forever. No one reads the instructions. How hard is it to take your shoes off before you get to the scanner?”

There was nothing to do now, Tate realized. Laura was gone already.

“I can take you to the airport,” she said. “It's fifteen minutes from here. You've got all the time in the world.”

It was only fifteen minutes, but Tate had imagined a last ride together, Laura on the bike behind her, the wind blowing their words away. She imagined stopping at the terminal, giving Laura a kiss in front of all the travelers, then roaring off into her own grief. But, of course, Laura had the rental car, and luggage that she had packed in the trunk the night before. Tate ended up riding beside her in silence. When they got to the rent-a-car kiosk, Laura asked, “How are you going to get home?” in a way that suggested she did not understand why Tate had come with her in the first place.

Tate knew she could not kiss her. Vita's party had been a magical exception. In the world of Hertz rent-a-car agents and business travelers, Laura kept an arm's length between them.

“The TriMet stops at the airport. I'll take that back,” Tate said.

“Hop in,” the rental car agent said, gesturing to a large, gray van idling in the fire lane. “I'll drive you up to the terminal.”

Tate sat first, and Laura sat on the opposite side of the van, staring ahead, motionless. When the van dropped them off at the terminal, Tate followed Laura as far as she could and still, ostensibly, be walking toward the train.

“What airline are you taking?” she asked.

“United.”

They were almost there. The line was short. Tate knew she had about forty seconds in which to preserve her dignity. Hug Laura, or at least touch her arm. Say,
Thank you.
Say,
Call me if you're going to be in town again.
Then stride off. Vita would have a plan, something about leaving them wanting more. Something about getting the last word in. But Tate's window of cool detachment closed with her on the wrong side. At Laura's side. Tagging along like a spaniel.

At the front of the United line, Laura punched her flight number into the computer kiosk, then moved to the next open attendant without looking at Tate.

“Palm Springs. One way,” the man behind the counter confirmed. “One bag.”

He asked the usual questions about strangers with packages, flammable liquids, hazardous weapons.

“Who says yes?” Laura asked, curtly. “Who says, ‘Yes, I picked up a bomb from this guy in the parking garage'?”

“Ma'am, you're not supposed to joke about it,” the clerk said. “Has your luggage been in your full control since you left home? Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“And has anyone asked you to carry…”

“Of course not.”

“Have a nice flight then.”

Tate expected Laura to say something sharp, but Laura paused, then asked, “Are there still seats on that plane?”

“Two left, yes,” the clerk said.

Laura turned to Tate for the first time since they had entered the terminal.

“Come with me.”

T
ate saw Laura's house long before they reached it. From the flats of Palm Springs, it had looked like a circular, gray pagoda perched on a cliff above town. She had noted it, half expecting Laura to look up, and say,
And there is the house of John Travolta.
Or George Bush's cousin or Martha Stewart's aunt. But Laura had said nothing, and Tate dismissed its distant wealth, until, after a steep, winding road, they pulled into a driveway, and Tate realized they were there.

The sun was even brighter on the hilltop. Tate stepped instinctively into the shadow of the house, shielding her eyes as she tried to look up at the eaves.

“This is your house?”

“It's my family's house,” Laura said, pressing a sequence of numbers into a lockbox disguised behind a sconce.

“It's the one we saw from the road.”

Tate had never been in a house that one could see from a distance. Tate's dwellings were visible from across the street…if you were paying attention.

“I guess so,” Laura said.

Tate paused in the doorway, awestruck. If she had tried to imagine a house so wealthy it could afford its own promontory, she would have pictured something garish or at least something bland: a faux French chateau or a ranch house on steroids. But the room Tate stepped into was as beautiful as the desert rock it rose from. Beyond the foyer spread a step-down living room four times the size of her apartment, its panoramic window revealing 180 degrees of valley glowing in the sunlight. The floor was stone tile. The furniture was upholstered in a palette of beige, and in one corner of the room rested a pile of what appeared to be boulders but were, in fact, pillows fashioned to look like giant river rocks. On one wall an enormous abstract swirled rose and gold, perfectly echoing the colors in the landscape below.

“It's beautiful,” Tate said.

“Thank you.” Laura smiled. “I decorated it. Take a look around.”

When Tate came back from her exploration, Laura had changed into a new suit. She stood in the kitchen, a marble and brushed-steel extension of the living room, typing on her laptop with one hand and checking off items on a spreadsheet with the other. She looked up.

“Did you like it?”

“When do you have time to decorate?”

Laura held her place on the spreadsheet with a manicured finger.

“Years ago. My family used to come here for vacation.” The smile she gave Tate seemed to be half pride, half embarrassment. “No one ever comes here anymore, but I'm glad you could see it.”

For a moment, they stood looking at each other. Tate took in Laura's suit. The skirt was shorter, the cut more feminine. She had changed into higher heels, curled the locks of hair that framed her face, and put on an opal necklace on a heavy, gold rope. She was lovely, but as Tate regarded her, she thought,
It's drag.

I see you
, she thought.

Laura looked away.

“I have to go to work,” she said.

That night Laura returned late, laden with bags from which she drew boxes of steaming food.

“I didn't know what you'd want, so I got something from each of my favorite restaurants.” She unloaded her sacks. “I've already eaten. I had to. Our buyer owns the least interesting steak house in town.”

She pulled off her heels and tossed them under the kitchen table with a disregard that Tate had not managed for anything in the house. It had taken Tate half an hour to work up the courage to sit on the sofa and another hour before she took one of the books off the shelf in the library.

“How was your day?” Laura asked.

Tate pulled her into an embrace.

“I missed you,” she said, surprised by her own candor.

“I missed you too.” Laura relaxed into her arms.

“And after about an hour, I worked up the courage to sit on your furniture.”

Laura drew back to give her a quizzical look.

“It's not that stuffy, is it?”

“It's not stuffy at all. It's just beautiful. You own your own cliff. I've never been anywhere like this.”

“I don't own it. My family owns it, or some conglomerate. Someone who needs a tax credit owns it. I don't know anymore. Someone knows,” she said, leaning her head on Tate's shoulder.

“How can you not know who owns your house?”

“My family is very rich.” She pronounced each word carefully, as if reciting an embarrassing truth. “When you are that rich, you have people to keep track of things like that.”

“Things like mansions?”

“And endowments. Companies.”

Tate closed her eyes and kissed Laura's forehead.
This will never work
, she thought.

“I don't own anything,” she said. “By now Vita's probably stolen my bike. What's left after that isn't even worth a renter's insurance policy.”

Laura was silent for a minute, and Tate wondered if she had broken some unspoken code of the wealthy, a promise not to admit there was anyone living beneath the mansion. But when Laura spoke, she said, “You have things that are worth more than this house.” She leaned up and kissed Tate again. “After dinner, I want to show you something.”

Tate was almost too happy to eat, and the few bites she placed in her mouth were so satisfying she wondered how she had ever needed more than a morsel to sustain her. When she was done, Laura led her into one of the bedrooms, where she tossed Tate a cashmere sweater from the closet, as though cashmere sweaters were something one kept in supply for guests, like Dixie cups and washcloths.

“It gets cold,” she said.

Laura herself changed into a pair of jeans, a tweed blazer, and riding boots.

Then they headed out into the night.

“Where are we going?” Tate asked.

“My favorite place. You know I love this house, but I love it because it's
here
, in the desert. I want you to see the desert for yourself.” Laura reached for Tate's hand and led her away from the circular driveway into the desert. Tate kept looking back. The house seemed to grow larger, not smaller, as they moved away, perhaps because it took a hundred meters before Tate could see the building in its entirety. The first story seemed to rise, organically, from the rock beneath it. Then there was a sloping roof and a smaller story with a lower ceiling, and then, on top of that, a kind of observatory that was all windows.

“That's a bedroom,” Laura said. “We'll sleep there tonight. It's gorgeous in the morning.” She squeezed Tate's hand. “Watch your step.”

They walked for another ten minutes, Laura maneuvering easily through the rocks and sage, Tate watching the ground beneath her boots. Finally, Laura stopped.

“Here,” she said.

Beneath their feet was a large, flat stone, worn clear of dirt, as though they stood on the bones of the earth.

“Sit,” Laura said, lowering herself onto the rock.

Tate sat down beside her, draping her arm around Laura's shoulders.

“I used to come here with my brother. I haven't been back in almost ten years,” Laura mused. She touched the rock with the flat of her hand.

Tate copied her gesture. The air was cool, but the rock held the heat of the day. Below them, Tate could see the lights of Palm Springs, casting an orange glow, but not enough to hide the stars overhead. Laura leaned against her.

“We used to have fun,” Laura said, “even during the first couple of campaigns. We were still shocked that it was us. It felt like this adventure that we knew would end. I remember my brother and I used to sit here and drink my father's whiskey and talk about how crazy it was that people actually trusted
our
dad to run the country.” Laura gave a sharp laugh that sounded like crystal breaking.

Even sitting on a rock in the desert, Laura's posture was upright.

“My mother was the first one to seriously think my father might be in politics for the rest of his life. She raised my little sister, Natalie, to think of us as a political family. Then one day it was the family business, and we were all politicians. The perfect Enfield family.”

Tate massaged Laura's neck.

“I told my brother how I felt about girls once,” Laura said. “We were drinking, but I remember. I was still in high school. He was home on a vacation from college. I felt so close to him, so I told him. He hugged me, and he told me he thought it must be hard. Then he told me to be careful. He knew what was coming. He saw it. He said, ‘When you get a little older, you'll see there are some things you can't do and still win.' Now he won't even admit that we came up here to drink underage.”

“How scandalous,” Tate said gently.

“That's what public office does to you. It makes your whole life into one snapshot. If there is anything that doesn't fit, it has to be erased. It doesn't even matter if it happened when you were a kid or a hundred years ago or if it happened to your cousin's ex-boyfriend. Life becomes this big ledger, and everything counts against you.”

Laura looked up quickly, and she didn't say it. But Tate read the words in Laura's eyes:
You count against me.

In the distance a night bird let out a single, mournful call. Beyond that, somewhere in the canyon, a coyote warbled to its mates, and they answered in unison. Laura did not move.

“Of course, they're all
tremendously
happy, and they have nothing to hide,” she said. “That's the party line. The only thing that will make them happier is having me back in Alabama so the whole family can campaign together.”

“But you're not going, are you?”

“Of course I am.”

“Why?”

“What political family doesn't have a skeleton in the closet?” Laura's smile was flirtatious and sad at the same time.

“That's not a reason.”

“I love them,” Laura said, staring into the distance as if reading a distant teleprompter. “You chose your family. You picked the people you care about. Not everyone gets to do that.”

Tate wanted to say
Yes, pick me
, but she hesitated. It was true, she had picked Vita. Maggie had picked her. Lill had picked Maggie. Krystal had shown up like a baby floating down the river in a bulrush basket, but they had fished her in, tethered her to the shore, made her their own. They were all bound together by love and choice and commitments they had made both consciously and unconsciously. It was better than the family Laura described. It was certainly better than Debby-Lynn and Jared and Tommy Spaeth. Still, like so many wholesome things—vegan food, rebuilt laptops, organic lettuce—the reality paled compared to the ideal.

“What are you thinking?” Laura asked.

“I don't know what to do about Maggie.” It was a relief to finally say it. “She's old. She can't work at a coffee shop forever. She doesn't have a lot of other skills. She doesn't have any savings or a partner. She has a hundred people who love her and would put her up for a month, but that's not the same thing. And I don't make enough money to support her even if I did take over the shop.”

Tate lay back on the warm stone. Laura lay beside her and took her hand.

“Has it ever occurred to you that she's not your responsibility?” Laura asked.

Tate stared up at the stars.

“How can she not be?”

“Soon she'll get Social Security and Medicare, and there are rental subsidies available for elders. She could sell her house.”

“It would kill her to sell, plus she wouldn't get anything. I don't even understand her mortgages. She's paid on that house for twenty years, but she says she doesn't have any equity.”

“She probably got a third or fourth mortgage.”

“Shit.” Tate closed her eyes. There was so much she needed to do, so many things she had to figure out, and she did not want to be anywhere but there on the warm rock, beside Laura.

“I can help you,” Laura said. “We could look at her paperwork together and figure out the best plan of action. It sounds like she's not always been that responsible.” She spoke tentatively. “That's not your fault.”

Tate said nothing, waiting for her thoughts to pass on to other topics, but they didn't, and finally she said, “She took me in when no one else would.” Tate sat up. “And because of that her partner left her, and because of that her business went south, and because of that she probably can't raise the money to win over your board and convince them to let her stay. And all of that has something to do with the fact that I was sixteen, and no one in the world loved me—except for Vita—and Maggie didn't even know me, and she just took me in.”

Tate's voice cracked, but she wasn't sure if the tears were for Maggie's generosity or for the enormity of her own debt. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, hoping Laura had not noticed, but Laura had already sat up and wrapped her arms around her.

“How is it not my fault?” Tate asked, pressing her face against Laura's neck. “If I go follow some crazy dream that doesn't involve her, I'm selling out everything.”

“You're not,” Laura whispered.

“But she is my responsibility.”

“No, Tate. She isn't. She just isn't.”

When they returned, Laura led Tate up to the room on the very top of the house. Standing inside it was like standing on the top of the world. They were surrounded on all sides by windows and skylights; their privacy was the vast expanse of cliff and sky that separated them from the next living person.

Laura slipped her hands under Tate's shirt and lifted it over her head.

“I want to see you naked. I want to taste you.”

The eager hush in her voice aroused Tate almost as much as her touch. She let Laura strip her of her clothing, watched as Laura cast her own clothes aside. At first Laura's movements were clumsy with haste. Her kiss was rough, her breathing labored. But after Laura had come once, riding her sex against Tate's thigh, she grew languid and her movements slowed.