The lawyer did not come by the next day or the day after. Marydale tried not to notice. She’d told herself it was fine to have a crush. A crush was fun. She imagined a shiver of electricity passing between them when she refilled the lawyer’s coffee. Just thinking about it made the twelve-hour shifts go faster. But when the lawyer didn’t come in after Marydale offered her a room to rent, the disappointment Marydale felt made her chest ache.
She paused in her round of coffee top-offs and extra napkins to lean on the counter where Aldean was eating a piece of Frank’s lemon chiffon pie. Across the street, the Almost Home Motel sat motionless.
“So. That lawyer,” Aldean said between bites.
Marydale felt her cheeks flush like a teenage girl caught fawning over a photo of the high school quarterback. The lawyer would never look up at her and whisper I’ve been waiting for you, Marydale, the way she did in Marydale’s daydreams. The lawyer probably didn’t remember her name, and even if she did…a girl couldn’t have those dreams in Tristess. Marydale had learned that lesson the hard way.
“You gonna tap that?” Aldean asked.
Marydale tried for an easy smile. “Aldean!” She slapped his wrist.
He set his fork down. “I’m giving you first dibs.”
“You said she looked like a repressed librarian.”
“Yeah, but that’s not a bad thing, and she’s from the city. She can’t be that repressed. We’re not going to have to do it with the lights out and her mother’s doll collection up on the dresser.”
“Jaylen from the Burnville Walmart?”
“She was hot, but then she told me all their names, and they were just looking at me. I had to turn the lights out.”
“You’re such a dog.” Marydale slouched lower on the counter.
“Excuse me!” It was sixteen-year-old Tippany in her hand-embroidered apron. “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” It was probably some sort of resolve Tippany had made with her friends at the Tristess High Values Club. She was going to stand up to wrongdoers. “A job is a privilege, not a right.”
“Sorry,” Marydale said slowly. “I was just looking for the Moguls. It’s a biker gang.”
Tippany hadn’t role-played this part of the conversation. “The Woodrows want a new bottle of ketchup,” she said, talking loudly, as though volume could return the conversation to its proper track.
“They’re supposed to be coming through town before sunset,” Marydale added casually. “They’re looking for virgins. I wish I wasn't closing tonight. Although technically, I don’t count, even though I gave up my, ah, virgin chalice to a girl.” She blew a little kiss toward Tippany. “But you’re just their type. Isn’t that right, Aldean?”
Aldean looked up at Tippany, and the girl fidgeted with the flounce of her apron. She might have sewn abstinence pledge bracelets for all her friends, but there were few straight women whose wombs didn’t flutter at the sight of Aldean Dean.
“God’s own truth,” Aldean said.
Tippany hurried way.
“You’re terrible,” Aldean said.
Marydale leaned her elbows on the counter. “Ronald Holten offered her a place to rent.”
“The lawyer. I know. At the Holten House,” Aldean concurred. Of course he had heard. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your place is nicer.”
“No. It’s not. I know she wasn’t going to rent a room from me, but she doesn’t know Ronald Holten. She’s going to think he’s just a nice guy with country hospitality or some shit.”
“Don’t do that.” Aldean pointed a warning fork at her.
“Do what?”
“Get all protective. Get attached.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Marydale picked up a cloth from behind the counter and started polishing. “I don’t even know her.”
Still, she watched the glowing windows of the Almost Home Motel as she put the last of the chairs up on the tables. She wasn’t attached. She wasn’t even optimistic. According to the conditions of her parole, she wasn’t allowed to date. Hell, she wasn’t allowed to drive across the county line to Burnville. But as she went to put the locking pin in the door, she stopped. A figure emerged from the side of the Almost Home, and Marydale recognized the lawyer’s stride, confident and purposeful, her head bowed slightly, like a businesswoman walking though rain. And Marydale knew Kristen wasn’t coming to see her. She was coming for an order of pie or chicken fries or one of the stale candy bars they kept under the glass counter by the register, and yet Marydale’s heart beat faster. She tried to fix her hair, but she could feel her unruly curls exploding in the humid air. She stepped outside, still trying to tuck strands back into their alligator clip.
“I’m so sorry. We were just closing up,” she said when the lawyer reached her. “But I could get you a piece of pie to go.”
“No. I…wanted to talk to you about that room for rent.” The lawyer’s brow creased over the frames of her glasses.
Marydale swallowed and shoved her hands in her jeans pockets, pretending she didn’t know what was coming next. The lawyer would say it had been an inappropriate offer. I’m the DA…I talked to your PO…
“It’s got a great view of the mountains,” Marydale offered. “And if you got a burro or two, we could put them up in the barn.” Marydale waited for the lawyer to tell her it was no joking matter. Marydale ought to know she wasn’t a free woman. Just because she was out of prison didn’t mean she could make decisions like everybody else; she’d given up that right.
“What the hell is a burro?” the lawyer asked.
“A small donkey…for packing.”
“Packing my used gun?”
It took Marydale a moment to make sense of the comment, and then she felt a warm glow light her chest. The lawyer had remembered their banter in the diner. She had noticed.
From down the street a man’s voice called out, “We don’t need you ’round here. You need to go back where you came from.”
For a second, adrenaline seized Marydale’s body. She remembered a woman from the penitentiary, Grace-Louise her name was, but everyone called her Gulu. She saw her striding down the block, her prison-issue jeans slung low around her hips, the sharpened end of a ballpoint pen pinging against the bars. She’ll cut a new boot like you just ’cause you’re scared, Marydale’s cellmate had whispered, stepping back against the far wall of their cell. You better learn to fight. Now Marydale took a deep breath. You’re out, she told herself. You’re out. You’re out.
Anyway, it was just a pair of young ranch hands stumbling home from the Lariat Lounge, probably drinking with fake IDs.
“He doesn’t mean you,” Marydale said quietly. In a louder, more cheerful voice, she added, “You boys get on home.”
“But I could fuck you,” the other man yelled.
“That’s no way to talk to a lady,” Marydale said.
“She’s not gonna fuck you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
The pair staggered in their direction.
Marydale whistled. From the bed of her pickup in the parking lot, Lilith appeared like a flash of motion in headlights. A second later, she had skidded to a stop at Marydale’s feet.
“What the…” the men exclaimed.
“Walk away,” Marydale said. “We’re having a conversation here.”
“Cops’ll shoot your dog,” the first man yelled.
“You ain’t supposed to have a dog like that!” his friend added.
Lilith revealed a row of sharp white teeth wedged into pink gums.
“That won’t mean much when your face is in her belly.”
The men staggered back.
When they were a safe distance away, the lawyer laughed nervously. “I’d like to have you on my side in a bar fight.”
“You call me anytime,” Marydale said.
They both hesitated for a moment.
“Are you off work?” the lawyer asked.
“Basically.”
She adjusted her glasses. “I’m Kristen.” She held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced.”
“You don’t have to be introduced in Tristess. Especially you. You’re the most interesting woman in town.”
“I’ve never been the most interesting anything,” Kristen said dryly.
Marydale twirled a length of hair around her finger and tucked it behind her ear. Aldean would say, Girls want a little chase. Make ’em think you’re not interested. But the girls in Tristess weren’t interested. That was the problem.
The men had paused at the end of the block to pee or to argue.
“You want to walk?” Kristen asked, gesturing in the other direction.
Marydale said “yes” too quickly.
“About the room,” Kristen began as they set off.
“I’m sorry about that,” Marydale said. “I know I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Ah, shit,” Kristen said. “Did I just do that that thing where someone makes an offer like ‘come by anytime,’ but you’re not actually supposed to come by, and you do, and it’s awkward?”
“No. I meant it!” Marydale said. “I’m just surprised. You’re the DA and all. Come by anytime.”
Kristen laughed. Marydale recited the address, and Kristen typed it into her phone. Marydale expected Kristen to turn back toward the motel, but she didn’t, and the cool breeze at their back seemed to carry them forward.
“What’s it like living in a town where everyone knows everyone?” Kristen asked.
And before Marydale knew, they were talking, and Kristen’s casual questions reminded her of Aldean. There was no hidden meaning behind her small talk.
“Do you like working at the diner?” Kristen asked, not Frank’s a good man to give you this chance, ain’t he?
“It’s all right,” Marydale said. “I hear a lot of gossip.”
“What’s the best thing you’ve heard?” Kristen asked.
Marydale paused. People in town didn’t talk about the best gossip. Only one really interesting thing had ever happened in Tristess, and Marydale knew that story too well, even if people in town didn’t tell it out of deference to her poor, dear mother.
“You’ve heard of a Landrace?” Marydale asked.
“You mean like a 5K, like a run?”
Marydale smiled. “It’s a kind of swine. I heard Mrs. Woodrow say”—she added a little twang to her voice—”that she heard from Ella at the bank that last year at the county fair when Lu-Anne Stewart’s boy, Kent, showed his Landrace and won the blue ribbon for heaviest year-old, it wasn’t a true Landrace.” She paused, lowing her voice with mock seriousness. “The National Swine Registry won’t record a Landrace with less than six functional teats on each side of the underline, and Mrs. Woodrow said Ella saw an inverted teat on the back left side.”
Kristen stopped, her smile cocked at an incredulous angle. “That’s a thing?”
“Ella thinks Lu-Anne paid off the judge.”
“With what?”
Marydale imitated Mrs. Woodrow’s shocked whisper. “I can’t say, but she has the harlot’s mark on her.”
Kristen chuckled. “Sounds like Portland law: who slept with whose paralegal, which big firm is stealing which clients. No one tells me anything here.” She shook her head.
“You’re new,” Marydale said. “They’ll warm up to you.”
The sidewalk narrowed, and Marydale fell into step behind Kristen. Kristen did look like a librarian with her tortoiseshell glasses and her gray suit fitted a bit too tightly around her ass. She probably hated the way her jacket flared up in back and strained a little at the seams, but Marydale didn’t mind.
Marydale wanted to take her hand. No, it was more than a want. It was that familiar feeling that there was another life, another world where another Marydale was walking hand in hand with a woman like Kristen. If she could just close her eyes or run fast enough or sprinkle gold dust…but that was what Aldean was always warning her about.
“This guy Ronald Holten offered me a house to rent for free,” Kristen said. “Do you know anything about him? I just got this feeling…I’m not used to taking anything for free.”
Kristen stared up at a streetlight. In profile, she looked like one of the Greek statues in Holten State Penitentiary’s Encyclopedia of Western Culture, plain but in a way that made other women look cheap.
“The Holtens always want something,” Marydale said. “There are people in town who won’t like you for turning down Ronald Holten. Things would be easier for you if you said yes, but…I’d say no.”
They had arrived at the little grass octagon that served as the town “square.” In the center, a wooden gazebo housed the Pioneer Poison Well.
“Easier how?” Kristen asked.
“Just easier.”
“That’s cryptic.”
“He owns everything. He likes it that way.”
They stepped into the darkness of the gazebo. The well was a concrete barrel with metal bars across the top and a plaque documenting the forty-seven pioneers poisoned by the water. Marydale leaned over, feeling, as she always did, that if she had anything precious, it would slip off her like a necklace and plunge into the blackness.
“That’s a depressing fucking monument,” Kristen said.
Marydale laughed in surprise. “No shit. Everybody loves the Poison Well. Tristess has a day. People dress up. I say it was just bad, fucking luck. A bunch of pioneers got this far, probably killed how many Indians, and then died from drinking the water.”
Kristen leaned over, too, the crowns of their heads almost touching.
“What do you get if you throw a coin in? Bad karma?”
“Must be,” Marydale said. “I’ve thrown a lot of coins in.”