5
Lexie hadn’t planned on making the drive out to The Cat Club.
The club was smoky by design, flagrantly bucking Oregon’s anti-smoking laws to provide a safe haven for the addicts. Lexie liked it, feeling that this was what a real urban venue must have felt like once, when smoky clubs were still smoky.
It was a thin crowd. She ordered a can of club soda and grabbed a chair at a table halfway between the bar and the stage. Randy walked on soon after, a single spotlight on the microphone. She wore a plaid shirt, a fedora with a red feather, and a black guitar. She greeted the crowd with a few words and began to strum. Lexie liked being able to observe Randy in this way. Acutely aware she was being watched, she seemed to actively disengage from that reality by focusing nearly all of her attention on the sounds she made. Lexie found herself rocking back and forth in her chair, plucking the soda can’s tab in rhythm with Randy’s downbeats.
Randy was an assertive player, though not aggressive. She hit each string with precision but no preconceptions. It took her a while to lean into the mic and sing.
I hate you for loving me so well. You’ve forced me to reevaluate my imaginary hell …
Lexie nodded with the lyrics and continued to sway in time. Randy’s grin, no matter how wide or shrouded, always looked sly. Something about her narrow jaw and the creases around her eyes made her look as sharp and brash as a coyote. Her voice was raspy but elegant. The mic was old and warm, the amp filling the space with music like heat from a wood furnace.
After the set, Randy walked over and knelt next to Lexie’s chair.
“You came,” Randy said. Her hair was damp with stage-light sweat.
“Yeah,” Lexie shrugged. “I try to say yes to nice invitations.”
“Adventuresome?” Randy asked.
“More like a spiritual practice,” Lexie joked, and Randy nodded in appreciation.
“You came alone?”
“Did you want me to bring people?”
“No, it’s fine. Last week it just looked like you ran with a tight little posse.”
“Oh. I guess. I mean, we’re friends. We’re supposed to be … more I suppose. I guess I don’t really know why they want me around. I’m not sure if I belong.”
“A common problem.” Randy swayed back and forth, her elbows on her knees, squatting in her black leather boots and slacks. She had removed her outer shirt to reveal a white tank top and suspenders. Their black lines cut a shadow along the whiteness of her shirt, a curved band that stretched from her hips across meager breasts to her slim, rounded shoulders. Tattoos began at her jaw, stretched in swirls of black and red lines down her throat and across her chest, and joined up with a colorful chestpiece: a red heart with angel wings, stretching from sternum to shoulder in each direction. Her hat cast her eyes into shadow.
“You want anything?” Randy asked, gesturing to the bar.
“Nah, I’m good.”
Randy left and returned with a non-alcoholic beer a minute later, pulling up a chair beside Lexie.
“Do you have class tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Bad girl,” Randy said with a crooked grin.
“Are you kidding?” Lexie asked.
“I don’t know, am I?”
Lexie shrugged.
“I suppose ‘bad’ doesn’t really describe you.”
“It’s not obvious?”
Randy relaxed into her chair, resting her ankle on her knee, her black leather motorcycle boot catching the dim club lights in its shine. “You’ve got something in you, that much is true.”
“Something?” Lexie squirmed, thinking about Jenna’s encouragement and Renee’s decree. Was her wolf so close to the surface it was detectable even by norms? Whatever piece of her willed away the wolf worked twice as hard to shove it further down.
“A thirst, maybe? For adventure, risk?”
“Thirst?” Lexie mocked.
“I can tell you’re looking for something.”
“Yeah, small talk.”
Randy laughed, keeping her eyes on Lexie. “Fair enough.”
After three seconds of silence Lexie spoke. “Where are you from?”
“Heh,” Randy shrugged and pulled the brim of her hat further over her eyes. “Seattle,” she said. “That’s where I met the, ah—”
“Cocksucker,” Lexie offered.
“Yeah,” Randy smiled. “Her.”
“Gotcha.”
“How about you? You ever get your heart broken?”
Lexie nodded, stretching her jaw against the tightness that threatened any time Archer came up. She opened her mouth as wide as she could and let her tongue hang out. She wiggled it and stretched her lips with a long “Bleh” sound.
“Sorry,” she said, finally. “I’m not being very articulate.”
“And yet you’re saying so much,” Randy laughed.
“I’m still kind of … getting over someone.”
“What’s her name?”
Lexie plumbed her mind for the answer, but her name was no longer a mere denotation of a person in a space. The word “Archer” had come to attach itself not only to that woman, but a myriad of memories and systems that tangled Lexie’s insides, squeezing like ratchet straps across her heart.
“It’s not—” Lexie said.
“It’s cool.”
“Yeah.”
“So then, you chasing this one still?” Randy asked.
Lexie plucked the top of her can. “I’m the one who sent her away.”
“Why?”
“Good question,” Lexie said, bending the can tab back and forth. “I thought it was ambition, but now I think it may have been fear.” At Randy’s incredulous expression, she asked, “Does that make sense?”
“You’re asking the wrong person. I’m kind of a burnout, though I can appreciate ambition in theory.”
“In theory?”
“Sure. I see ambition like I see a really beautiful naked man. I can appreciate the aesthetic and potential, but I’m not going to go chasing it down.”
“You’re pragmatic,” Lexie said.
“Or a burnout,” Randy laughed.
“The kind of girl my mom wouldn’t have let me play with.”
“Nah. Moms love me. I remind them of their wild pasts.”
“Wild woman?” Lexie asked. She was flirting; it was strange.
“That’s me.” Randy said with a tip of her hat. Lexie assessed her and wondered what she meant by wild, now that Lexie understood a whole new definition of that word. Drinking and dancing it was not. Not anymore.
“Oh, sorry,” Lexie said. “I didn’t even ask, do you use female pronouns?”
“Hell yes. I’m all woman,” Randy said. “A dying breed.”
“Women?”
“Butches.”
Lexie snorted.
“True fact. Seventy-five percent of the dykes I used to ride with are now dudes. It’s the end of an era that never even really got to start.”
Lexie fidgeted. She thought of Mitch and his new predilection for masculine pronouns. She thought of mentioning it, then resisted.
Randy left to begin her second set, and Lexie contemplated leaving. It would have been an easy thing to do had the club held more people. Instead, whenever Randy glanced up from her hand on the fretboard, her eyes caught Lexie’s, trapping her in her seat. She squirmed with the attention, but the heat of Randy’s glance held her in place.
After her set, Randy walked Lexie back to her truck.
“How did you know my ex was a ‘she’?” Lexie asked. “Is it obvious?”
“Straight girls tend to be more afraid of me.”
“Really?” Lexie said with a snicker. “And they don’t drive out on a school night to see you, huh?”
“No, ma’am.”
“So I’m either a bad girl or a not-straight one.”
“Either way you win,” Randy said as Lexie hoisted herself into the driver’s seat. Randy stepped forward to fill the space Lexie left behind. “And me too, maybe.”
Lexie smiled. “Maybe.”
On her drive home, humming the refrain of Randy’s song, Lexie told herself that she’d likely never seek Randy out again. In the telling, though, she knew was lying.