Kevin Sampsell - Portland Noir

How long has it been? Seven years? I couldn’t tell if she’d been crying or if it was just the rain on her pale face, but her mascara trailed down her cheeks like mud. She’d never worn makeup when we were together. Soft butch. I opened my mouth to speak, but I felt something hot in my throat.

Mustang cocked her head to the side, tried to give me a meaningful look, but it was like she was staring through me, at something on the other side. “I need a place to stay. Just tonight.” Her whisper was gravel and whiskey. She moved closer, gripped my arm. Even through my hoodie, her short fingernails felt like little claws in my skin.

I thought about Spider asleep inside. He was prone to silent jealous rages when it came to ex-lovers-and he didn’t much like unexpected guests. Anyway, I hoped he’d slept through my midnight escape. “Did you already knock on my door?” I asked Mustang.

She shook her head, narrowed her eyes. Her thin lips quivered a little. “C’mon, Ruby. We’re family, aren’t we? Even after all these years?”

I remembered that accusatory pout. I sighed, already defeated, and I wished I’d had another drink back at Dots. “Let me go inside first; give me ten minutes, then knock, all right?”

When I heard her at the door a few minutes later, I pretended to be awakened from deep sleep, I pretended to be groggy, I crawled out of bed real slow, but my charade was all for the night. Spider snored like an emphysemic sailor after a night at port.

As I led Mustang through the dark of the living room, floor boards creaking, she breathed hard. I pointed her down to the guest bed in the half-finished basement. “It’s all yours, babe.”

She squeezed my hand, whispered, “Thank you.” I felt that tightening across my chest again, shook it off.

Spider got up at the crack of dawn, a perverse rod of morning energy even on Sundays. He took his cold shower, headed off to work in his new Prius, none the wiser. Or so I thought.

I lay in bed, just looking at the ceiling. I wondered, fleetingly, if Mustang’s appearance in the night had been a dream.

When she staggered upstairs a few hours later, I was making coffee in my pajamas. I offered her a hot cup.

She still looked bedraggled. “It’s fuckin’ cold in your basement,” she mumbled. “Where’s Spider?”

“Are you gonna tell me what all the drama’s about?”

She sipped her Stumptown brew, took a crumpled pack of American Spirit yellows from her hoodie pocket, lit one up. She held the pack in my direction. How long has it been since I’ve had a cigarette? I remembered the hot pulse of the nicotine patches I wore for a year. But what the hell? I reached out.

Mustang looked down at her scuffed Converse. “I need to talk to Spider,” she said.

“Spider?” The round of the cigarette felt strangely familiar in my mouth.

Mustang offered me a flame.

I leaned in, inhaled.

Her big brown eyes brimmed with tears again as she dragged on her cigarette. The smoke she exhaled looked musty and brown. “I need a lawyer, Ruby. I might be in pretty big trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Spider was a weed lawyer. And somehow I couldn’t quite picture it-Mustang in trouble for weed? Booze had always been our drug of choice. The smoke from my cigarette burned my throat. I pretended not to feel light-headed. “You been running pot?” I raised an eyebrow. It had been itching since I’d gotten it repierced.

Mustang gave me that accusatory pout again. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She hunched her shoulders a little. “A lawyer’s a lawyer. You can get Spider to help me. We’re family , Ruby. Aren’t we?”

It grated on my last nerve that she kept saying that- family . But she didn’t want to talk to Spider. He’s a weed lawyer. And I knew he’d never take her on-not even for weed. My cell phone beeped from the counter. A text message from Spider: get that bitch out of my basement by the time i get home. I flashed Mustang the screen, shrugged. “Sorry, babe, you better go.”

“Ruby-” she pleaded with me now.

I kept smoking, silent.

“I’ll go,” she finally said, shaking her head like she had any right to be disappointed in me . “But meet me later? When does Spider get home, anyway? Why’s he working on a Sunday?”

He worked every day. “No telling when he’ll be back,” I admitted. “Probably not before 8.”

“Meet me at that Italian place kitty-corner from Clinton Theater at 6,” Mustang said, straightening her back and running her fingers through her hair, gathering some of her arrogance. “I’ll explain.”

I frowned, crushed my cigarette on a plate. Maybe I still had a soft spot for her-or maybe I was just bored-but even as I told her I wasn’t sure about my plans for the evening, I knew I’d meet her.

I headed down to the basement to change the sheets on the guest bed. I vacuumed the carpet remnant that covered the cement floor. I spent the rest of the morning and a tip of the afternoon doing laundry, sweeping the linoleum of the kitchen, mopping it, washing dishes. When the house was clean, I scanned the fridge for dinner prospects. Spider liked to have his food ready when he got home-whether it was 7 or midnight. I usually made a lentil loaf or a tofu-spinach lasagna-something I could reheat. I tossed a salad and left it undressed.

Early afternoon and I was already tired. I slipped an old movie into the DVD player, eased into the couch. This was how days passed now. Ever since Spider made partner at the weed firm and I decided to quit my job at the New Season’s cheese counter to focus on my artwork, I’d fallen into this dull routine. See, I couldn’t paint until the house was clean. It just didn’t feel right. But once I’d spent the morning cleaning, I hardly had the energy to mix paints or stretch canvases. By the time my movie ended, it was getting dusky outside. I clicked the remote. Sports and travel shows, mostly. Sunday-afternoon network TV.

No art today? Spider would say when he got home. He always kind of smirked when he said that.

No. Not today, I’d sigh.

And then he’d check out his dinner and nod approvingly.

When we first met, Spider seemed so dark and complicated. I’d been an out lesbian since Hosford Middle School, but Spider wooed me with shots of brandy and a penchant for poker; that long, lanky body that signaled both strength and vulnerability to me. He wore high heels on our second date. I liked the way he wasn’t afraid of his feminine side. But the truth, it turned out, was that Spider just needed someone to control.

It had even dawned on me recently that maybe Spider didn’t much mind that I wasn’t doing my art. For all I knew, he’d set this whole scene up on purpose. He had control issues. Ask anyone. Now he had me right where he wanted. Like a fly in a web. I wasn’t making two dimes of my own money-I couldn’t leave if I’d wanted to. I mean, sure, a girl can always leave a place, but it’s different when you’re broke and you’re not twenty anymore. It’s different when you’ve made this big deal to everyone about true love and then about quitting cheese for art. It’s not like he was abusing me.

“No art today?” Spider had asked me one night when he got home, particularly late.

I’d been nursing a pricey bottle of vodka. “Fuck you, Spider,” is all I said.

He just shook his head-that same self-satisfied smirk. “Anger is the enemy of art,” he clucked. And then we just sat down to our lentil loaf and side salad.

I clicked off the television now, threw on some makeup, grabbed my Queen Bee bag, headed up to Clinton Street.

Marie Claire poured me a glass of Chianti.