Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [19]
I frowned, crushed my cigarette on a plate. Maybe I still had a soft spot for her—or maybe I was just bored—but even as I told her I wasn’t sure about my plans for the evening, I knew I’d meet her.
I headed down to the basement to change the sheets on the guest bed. I vacuumed the carpet remnant that covered the cement floor. I spent the rest of the morning and a tip of the afternoon doing laundry, sweeping the linoleum of the kitchen, mopping it, washing dishes. When the house was clean, I scanned the fridge for dinner prospects. Spider liked to have his food ready when he got home—whether it was 7 or midnight. I usually made a lentil loaf or a tofu-spinach lasagna—something I could reheat. I tossed a salad and left it undressed.
Early afternoon and I was already tired. I slipped an old movie into the DVD player, eased into the couch. This was how days passed now. Ever since Spider made partner at the weed firm and I decided to quit my job at the New Season’s cheese counter to focus on my artwork, I’d fallen into this dull routine. See, I couldn’t paint until the house was clean. It just didn’t feel right. But once I’d spent the morning cleaning, I hardly had the energy to mix paints or stretch canvases. By the time my movie ended, it was getting dusky outside. I clicked the remote. Sports and travel shows, mostly. Sunday-afternoon network TV.
No art today? Spider would say when he got home. He always kind of smirked when he said that.
No. Not today, I’d sigh.
And then he’d check out his dinner and nod approvingly.
When we first met, Spider seemed so dark and complicated. I’d been an out lesbian since Hosford Middle School, but Spider wooed me with shots of brandy and a penchant for poker; that long, lanky body that signaled both strength and vulnerability to me. He wore high heels on our second date. I liked the way he wasn’t afraid of his feminine side. But the truth, it turned out, was that Spider just needed someone to control.
It had even dawned on me recently that maybe Spider didn’t much mind that I wasn’t doing my art. For all I knew, he’d set this whole scene up on purpose. He had control issues. Ask anyone. Now he had me right where he wanted. Like a fly in a web. I wasn’t making two dimes of my own money—I couldn’t leave if I’d wanted to. I mean, sure, a girl can always leave a place, but it’s different when you’re broke and you’re not twenty anymore. It’s different when you’ve made this big deal to everyone about true love and then about quitting cheese for art. It’s not like he was abusing me.
“No art today?” Spider had asked me one night when he got home, particularly late.
I’d been nursing a pricey bottle of vodka. “Fuck you, Spider,” is all I said.
He just shook his head—that same self-satisfied smirk. “Anger is the enemy of art,” he clucked. And then we just sat down to our lentil loaf and side salad.
I clicked off the television now, threw on some makeup, grabbed my Queen Bee bag, headed up to Clinton Street.
Marie Claire poured me a glass of Chianti.
I looked up into her dark eyes. “What happens under the rose?” I asked her softly.
She winked. “Stays under the rose,” she promised me.
“Well, you remember Mustang?”
But Mustang never showed up.
I had my Tuscan bean soup, my penne with pesto. I ordered a Northwest by Southeast pizza to go, downed another glass of Chianti, checked the time on my cell phone, paid my bill.
Outside, it was cold and clear. I wanted a cigarette. I squinted at the flier of the missing girl on the telephone pole on the corner. Catherine Smith. I hadn’t recognized her straight name, but now I saw the face. Birdie. A young artist. Successful in a local kind of a way—First Thursdays and Last Fridays and whatnot. Birdie. It surprised me that anyone paid enough attention to her daily life to make a flier. If you want to know the truth, Mustang cheated on me with Birdie back in the day. But to think of it now didn’t make my chest tighten and ache the way it once did. It was water under the bridge. I nodded slowly at the