Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [17]
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 Café, 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 Café. 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