Portland Noir

Henry Lewis was within a few hundred meters of us, somewhere, maybe a kilometer or so at most. He too could be on his porch this night, drinking a beer and thinking of nothing.

The backdoor banged open, then slammed shut. I couldn’t hear Josh anymore. I didn’t know where he was. The dining room was almost all dark now. My hands began to shake. I couldn’t stop them.

WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE BY ARIEL GORE

Clinton

The kids lined the wall outside the Clinton Street Theater in the sepia-lit mist, waiting to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The girls with their big purple hair and skimpy dresses; the boys in tight black bodices or boxy leather jackets. Cold November night. They clutched their rolled-up newspapers and cups of rice, hid water guns in their pockets. I squinted at them through the drizzle-a time warp to the ’90s, to the ’80s, to the ’70s. Bygone eras. I ducked into the dim red of Dots Cafe, slipped into a soft gold booth. The waitress had a tattoo of a hamburger on her shoulder. She nodded at me. “The usual?”

I winked up at her. Absolute martini. And spicy fries with tofu sauce.

As she walked away from me, I tried to recall when it was that I’d gone from being a housewife who’d occasionally sneak out for a midnight drink to a regular with a “usual.” I glanced around the joint. Marie Claire, the sexy Midwesterner who ran the Italian restaurant on the corner, sipped a Rumba with one of her young dishwashers. Wilhelm, the frumpy commercial landlord from down on Powell Boulevard, sat alone, adjusted his Coke-bottle glasses as he studied the menu. Nameless hipsters huddled at their smoky tables, too cool with their bleached fashion mullets and pegged pants. I once read in Nylon magazine that you can’t get away with retro fashion if you’re old enough to have worn it the first time. Puts me out of the running for skinny jeans and dangling earrings, I guess. I looked down at my boot-cut cords, fingered the oversized holes in my lobes. For all appearances, a washed-up ’90s girl. I’d recently signed up for NiftyWebFlicks, so I averted my eyes when the bearded guy from Clinton Street Video walked in. He sauntered up to the bar to drown his sorrows. A bygone business, video rental.

I got up to use the bathroom. No Ladies and Gents at Dots Cafe. Just It, Doesn’t, and Matter. I walked into Matter. The tan and white tiles on the walls gave me a weird sense of vertigo. On my way back to my booth, I passed Wilhelm. He muttered something unintelligible, adjusted those ridiculous glasses.

A couple of drinks and a pile of spicy fries later, I was back outside, feeling too sober for the cold. Some nights after drinks at Dots, I ambled down to my secret spot on the river, sat there watching the flow of things. But that night I headed home. Little fliers picturing some missing woman were stapled to the telephone poles that marked my path. Catherine Smith, in bold letters. Grown people were always going missing in this town. A fire glowed from inside an old Victorian, the smell of smoke in the damp night. I zigzagged home through the rain, cut across the rail yard south of Powell, my shoulders hunched. I held my hood tight over my head; a feeble attempt to stay dry. As I rounded the last corner, a shadowy figure flickered into my field of vision. She was so thin, I didn’t recognize her at first, but she said my name in a whisper loud and urgent: “Ruby-”

I was startled, took a minute to take her in. She looked like a wet Chihuahua after a flood, that cute little buzz cut I remembered all grown out now. Still, I’d have known her face anywhere. “Mustang?” I felt my chest tighten. She’d been a lover of mine back before I married Spider, but she ran off to Chicago amid a whirlwind of rumors. “My God, Mustang. What are you doing here?”

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