Kristen woke before Marydale and tiptoed into the kitchen. It was seven thirty. The high-rises in her window were turning from gray to blue. She called work.
“I’m not going to be in today.”
The law school intern assigned to the receptionist’s desk sounded worried. “Mr. Falcon’s here. He wants to talk to you about DataBlast.”
“I’m sure he does,” Kristen said.
“And Donna wants to know if you’ve invited the partners from Steward-Gore to the corporate law banquet. Last year they didn’t go, and Donna wants to make sure they get a personal invitation from the Falcon Law Group. She said to catch you as soon as you came in.”
The banquet. The class action against DataBlast. The partnership that Donna was negotiating for her, perhaps because they were friends, perhaps because Donna needed another ally in the firm.
Above the city, the sun had broken through the clouds, illuminating a single golden shaft of rain. Kristen had bought the condo for the view—the green city, the glass high-rises, the pink Bancorp tower rising up and up above it all—but she had never noticed how beautiful it was or how the photographs of the Firesteed Summit reflected on the glass, as though she were living in a valley that was both the city and the mountains.
“Good morning,” Marydale said behind her.
To the receptionist Kristen said, “I’ve got to go.”
Kristen turned. Marydale was naked. Kristen’s whole body sang, She’s here. She wrapped her arms around Marydale’s waist.
“I called out from work today,” Kristen said. “I know you’ve probably got stuff to do, but…”
“I’ll text Aldean again,” Marydale said.
Later, walking Meatball on the street below, it seemed to Kristen that the sidewalks felt new. The air was sweet. The bare branches of the trees were a miracle. She returned with coffees and pastries from a little bakery she had never visited although it was only blocks from her building. And they ate and talked and made love again.
Afterward, as they relaxed in bed, their hands drifting over each other’s bodies, Kristen said, “I want to know everything about you.”
Marydale stretched her arms over her head, lifting her large breasts, flexing the muscles in her shoulders.
“Like what?” she asked, with a smile that said she knew just how beautiful she was.
“Anything. What happened to Lilith? What’s it like living on a houseboat. Tell me about all these awful women you’ve dated. How did you get to Portland?”
“Lilith died,” Marydale said wistfully. “She was old, so it was okay. And the women I dated…they aren’t even worth mentioning.”
Kristen snuggled closer, and Marydale rested her cheek on top of Kristen’s head.
“I’m still on parole,” Marydale said. “You need to know that. I can’t live the same way you do.”
“How long are you on supervision?” Kristen asked.
“Right around the time I…of my conviction…some legislators wanted to get tough on crime, so they passed a lifetime provision.”
“You’re on parole for life? No matter what? That doesn’t make sense.”
“They changed the law a few years later. It was too expensive, and it didn’t really make a difference, but they don’t change your sentence when the law changes. You get stuck with whatever was on the books when you offended, but you know that.”
“How did you get to Portland?”
“Aldean moved out to Portland about the same time you left Tristess.”
Kristen wished she could see Marydale’s face. She took Marydale’s hand and held it to her chest instead.
“It was hard,” Marydale went on. “My parole officer at the time wouldn’t let me date women or associate with gays or lesbians. I couldn’t leave Tristess County. I started violating my conditions, crossing over the county line just to do it. I made it all the way down to Nevada once. I don’t know if I was going to run away, or if I just wanted to prove they couldn’t control who I was. I got sanctioned so many times. I lost my house. I couldn’t pay the taxes. I had to put most of my stuff in storage in Tristess. I think they sold it all at auction one time when I got locked up. Finally my parole officer, Cody, quit his job. My new PO…she’s good. She cares about people. There was no way I could move to Portland with that many sanctions on my record, but eventually she just let me go anyway.”
“And when you got here?” Kristen asked.
“Aldean was waiting for me. Good thing, too. He’s great at running a business, but he makes shitty whiskey. He gets all manly about it, and it comes out tasting like somebody’s leather shoe.” Marydale grew serious again. “I can’t give you the kind of life someone else could. I can’t take you to Ireland. I can’t leave the state. I can’t even go across the river to Vancouver for dinner.”
Kristen stroked Marydale’s arm, examining the swirls of her tattoo.
“I think it was malpractice.” Kristen sat up so she could look at Marydale. “You should never have been convicted. We could look into it.” It had been years since she practiced criminal law. “I wonder if we could get your parole changed to probation. We might be able to void the original sentence.”
“Post-conviction relief?”
“I’ll have to check the statute of limitations, but if we won a post-conviction relief hearing, you wouldn’t just be off parole; they’d erase your record. It would be like getting an innocent verdict. It’s a long shot, but you deserve it.”
“I can’t,” Marydale said. “My PO bent the rules for me. If someone finds out where I am, they could send me back to prison. At the very least, they'd send me back to Tristess, and I'd have to stay.” She rolled over onto her back. “I know you don’t have to live like that.”
Kristen put her arms around Marydale, pulling her close, burying her face in the vanilla scent of Marydale’s hair.
“Baby,” Kristen whispered. “It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care if we don’t go to Ireland or Vancouver.” She drew back so that she could look into Marydale’s eyes. “My life stopped when I left Tristess.”
She remembered a commercial that she had seen shortly after she returned to Portland. She had been staying up until three or four every morning, staring at the television. Every few commercial breaks, a genderless cartoon character trudged across the screen while a voice-over asked, Have you lost interest in things that previously made you happy?
“I ran three marathons and I don’t know how many half marathons,” Kristen said. “For a while I was running every road race I could find. I bought the condo. I went out in the evening like it mattered, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t happy.”
That night Marydale invited Kristen back to the Tristess and lifted the trapdoor in the sofa-bench. Kristen eased her way down the short ladder. The room glowed in the light of the pink salt lamp.
“You can’t really convince a girl you brought her down here to play board games,” Marydale said, draping herself across the bed.
Kristen remembered a fantasy she’d had as a teenager, going to school in the day and working the night shift to pay the bills her mother left unopened on the kitchen table.
“When I was a teenager,” Kristen began. “I used to pretend I had this imaginary place I could go. It was a hidden park or a secret room in our apartment, someplace only I knew about. When I went in, time stopped for everyone but me, and I could just…be. That’s silly, isn’t it?”
She lay down next to Marydale and looked up at the low ceiling.
“What did you want to do in your secret room?” Marydale asked.
“Sleep mostly or do my homework or read. I didn’t have time for anything. I was always working or looking after Sierra.”
Marydale rolled over onto her side and looked at her. “That’s a shame. Every kid should have time.”
“Your boat reminds me of that room,” Kristen said. “It’s like a secret world down here. I didn’t even know people lived on the river.” Marydale traced the curve of Kristen’s jaw.
“You can come here whenever you like.”
Kristen nestled closer. “You can come to my place whenever you like, too. I’d like to give you a key, if that wouldn’t feel weird to you.”
Kristen had been afraid Marydale would demure. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready. But Marydale said only, “I’d like that.”
When they made love, Kristen felt her body shrink to a single point of pleasure and concentration, like a first star. And even as she felt herself distilled into that intensity, the room expanded, spreading out over the water, over the city, above the rain into the night sky.
When they were sated, Kristen and Marydale resumed their conversation and talked until the dawn light turned the tiny porthole window gray. At work the next morning, at the ubiquitous partners’ meeting, Donna Li’s voice washed over Kristen like so much traffic noise. Donna had to ask her three times whether Kristen had invited the Steward-Gore partners to the corporate law banquet.
“That’s the Saturday before DataBlast,” Falcon interjected. “You can’t bother her with that.”
“It’s one phone call. Kristen, did you call them or not?” Donna asked.
“What?” Kristen said dreamily. “No. I didn’t call them.”
Meanwhile, north of town, in the distillery, Marydale pulled a ladleful of mash from the fermentation tank, swirled it in her mouth, and spit it into one of the drains in the concrete floor. She couldn’t tell if it was ready. Everything tasted good. The stale Little Debbie Snack Cake she had bought at the mini-mart south of Diablo’s tasted as fine as any organic raisin brioche from the Pearl Bakery. Even the smells of the city wafting around the little convenience store—diesel and tar and damp cigarette butts—smelled right, because the whole world was right.
Aldean ambled up to Marydale where she stood pondering the fermentation. He clapped a cheerful hand on her shoulder.
“Haven’t see you in around…oh…forty-eight hours.” He took the ladle from her and tasted the tank. “Not ready yet, is it?”
Marydale looked down to hide her smile.
“Look at you.” Aldean chuckled.
“I know you’re going to tell me to be careful. Hit it and quit it, right?”
Marydale looked up at the tanks and the industrial halogen lights suspended from bars across the ceiling.
“Fuck careful,” Aldean said. “You’re in love.”