Chapter 3: Part 3

Lucia shouldered her way through the door, smiling and brandishing her offerings.  “Good morning, Officer Li.”

 

Officer Li looked up from his screen at the department’s front desk, and smiled.  “Miss Alvarez.  Is it Tuesday already?”

 

“I’ve got your caramel latte, a few other mixed coffees that sounded good, and a mixed dozen.  Aaaaaand…”  She set those on the counter, and, with a flourish, pulled a manilla folder out from under her arm.  “Results.”

 

He took the cup from the holder first, with a tiny little smirk, and then the folder.  “I’ll get this faxed right over.  You know you don’t need to bring this kinda spread every time, though, right?”

 

Lucia made a face that was somewhere between a smile and a wince, and scratched at the back of her head.  “Off the top of your head, how much do you think it would cost to replace all four tires on a… say… ‘08 Crown Vic, because they got holes in the sidewalls?  Like, the kinda holes a little pocket knife makes?”  She licked her lips and added, “I’m… asking for a friend.”

 

Officer Li threw back his head and laughed.  “Maybe next time, a couple bagels?”

 

“You got it, Officer,” she shot back, giving him her sloppiest salute as she backed out through the door; she’d almost given him the finger guns, but that seemed in poor taste.

 

She perambulated along the sidewalk, with the collar of her jacket pulled up to protect her from the slight chill, and sat down on a bench.  It was cold as hell under her, and a little wet, but that wasn’t a dealbreaker.  Living in Portland meant dealing with a little water.  She pulled out her phone and was scrolling through the contact list when she was interrupted by a call.

 

“Does this one make eight months?”

 

“Yeah, Dad,” she said, smiling and staring down at the concrete.  “Eight months clean.”

 

“I’m really proud of you, Mija!  That’s some really good momentum.”

 

Lucia nodded, lips spread in a tight smile.  “Thanks.”

 

“I did the transfer this morning as soon as I woke up.”

 

“Dad,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “you should’ve waited.  We agreed.”

 

“I know,” he said, voice trailing off a little.  “I’m, you know… I’d love to say it was because I trust you, and that’s definitely part of it, but I think it’s really just that I don’t know what to do with myself now that I’ve got all this time on my hands.”

 

Lucia made a little noise in her throat.

 

“I jump out of bed these days, run around and take care of everything I can think of, and before I know it I’ve cleared my whole day before seven fifteen.”

 

She barked, shook her head, and chuckled under her breath.  “That sounds awful.”

 

“Your mother is going to smother me with a pillow any day now.  Yesterday she told me she was going to un-retire me and send me back to work because I was going along behind her when she was cleaning the kitchen!”

 

“Oh, Dad, you do not mess with Mom’s kitchen.”  They both laughed for a few seconds before she added, “Hey, so I think next week, you can maybe just send, like, two hundred?”

 

“Are things picking up?”

 

“Still no gigs.  I think I’m still on a lot of people’s shitlists, which, you know…”  Lucia stared off into the distance and sighed.  “...it’s not great, but I picked up a whole bunch of students at the shop.”

 

“Oh, really?”

 

“Yeah.  The other guy they had teaching tried to use the old ‘here let me sit behind you and show you how to hold your hands’ trick, and the girl he was groping shouted at him.  Bill, the, uh—”

 

“The owner,” her father supplied.

 

“Right.  Yeah.  He was, like, just down the hall doing some inventory.  Fired JC on the spot, and then came upstairs to where I was and offered me all of his students.”

 

“Is she pressing charges?”

 

“Well, he went out in handcuffs, so I think so, but I’m gonna be doing a little bit of damage control when I see her on Saturday.  I agreed to make a special trip out to her parents house so she feels more comfortable.  Hopefully she keeps going with it and, you know, doesn’t blame the whole shop just because JC is scum.  I’ll make that trip for as long as I have to if it gets the right kind of word of mouth, you know?”

 

“And doing lessons pays better?”

 

“It’s definitely steadier.  I get a little bit of commission when I sell equipment, and that’s maybe more, but I’m not great at all that, like… upselling to the custom models, and ‘oh you’re gonna want the gold cables to get a rich, warm tone.’ I’m no good at that kinda nonsense, you know?  I can’t bullshit people like that when they don’t know any better.”

 

“Well, you don’t have to take less.   I’m happy to keep sending you three fifty like we talked about for as long as you keep making progress like you’ve been doing.  Take the raise and the money.  Get a little buffer built up.  Enough to make a down payment on something, assuming that’s what you want.  Not trying to tell you your business.”

 

“I promise,” she said.  “I’m doing okay.  I’m keeping my costs really low.  If I could line up some session work, that’d probably put me over the top.  If I do, though, I’ll keep sending you guys the… the test results.  I promise, I… Every week.  Just like we agreed.”

 

There was mostly silence on the other end, broken by a sharp sniff, after which her father made a sound like a long sigh and cleared his throat.  “Myrna and Lina were over the other night for dinner, and Myrna showed us how to bring up the Youtube on that new TV I was telling you about?”

 

Lucia laughed, and said, “Okay.  It’s just ‘Youtube’, but okay.”

 

“She pulled up one of your concerts for us.”

 

“Oh,” she said, her stomach going into a free fall for a moment.  “Wait, Myrna did?”

 

“Yeah.  She wanted to show it to us.”

 

“My sister, Myrna?”

 

“For Lina, your mom, and me, that was the first time we’d seen you play in, I mean, I don’t know how many years.  That Battle of the Bands when you were in ninth grade?”

 

“Which band did you watch on Youtube?  Insanity Hall?”

 

“Yeah.  I think the show was called Bumbleshoot or something?”

 

“It’s Bumbershoot,” she corrected, gently.  “Yeah, we played that festival a few times.”

 

“It was strange, because it almost sounded like some stuff my uncle Eugenio would listen to way back when.  He’d get excited about all these AM stations coming down from Texas.  He called it honky tonk, maybe?”

 

“Yeah, maybe,” Lucia said, shrugging.  Insanity Hall could be described as honky tonk if you squinted at it.

 

“I tried to remember who he liked, but it’s been a while.  Eugenio died forty years ago.  Does Ray Fink sound right?”

 

“No,” she said, slowly.

 

“Fink Ray, maybe?”

 

“Oh my god!  Link Wray? Yeah!”

 

“Almost had it!” he said, laughing.  “Yeah, he and your Abuela were real close.  He would have liked you.”

 

“You’ve never really talked about Uncle Eugenio before.”

 

There was a moment of silence on the other end.  “He got shot in a liquor store.  Family lore was that he was robbing the place, but he might’ve just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 

“Ah,” Lucia said.  “Yeah.”  Every living member of her family that she knew about worked in law enforcement, excepting those who had retired and herself.  There were a few family members, like her great uncle Eugenio, whom nobody wanted to talk about.  Getting her dad to admit they were even related was huge, so, not wanting to push her luck, she switched topics and said, “So, did you like the show?”

 

“I don’t think I really got it,” he said, voice trailing off at the high end of his register, “but it was really something to watch you play.  I think it was from 2014?  You looked really happy up there… and that bassist!  That’s Vivian?  The one you always talked about?”

 

“Yeah,” she said, sadly.  “That’s her.”

 

“The camera mostly stayed on the singer guy, but I was watching you whenever you were lined up behind him, or whenever Vivian was bouncing around in the background?  Have you two had a chance to talk yet?”

 

Every fiber of her body urged her to lie.  Just say yes.  Pretend you did.  The fantasy will be sweet.  Tell him about walking arm-in-arm with her through the park.  He’ll buy it.  He won’t know.  You don’t need to admit anything, and you can just tell him later that it didn’t work out.  For him, all the way down in LA, it’s real if you say it is.

 

“No,” she said, eventually, through gritted teeth.  “I don’t… I don’t think she wants to see me.”

 

“I kinda figured that might be the case.  You were real excited before you left, and then… nothin’.”

 

“I think about her a lot.”

 

“It always sounded like she was really important to you.  You guys definitely had some chemistry on stage.”

 

“Yeah,” she said, laughing morbidly.  “We did.”

 

He said, “Well, if she doesn’t want to find it in her heart to forgive, then that’s her loss.”

 

“Dad, you don’t need to—”

 

“I know, I know.”

 

Lucia wiped at her eye, leaned away from her phone to sniff, and said, “I should probably get going.  The, uh, bus’ll be here in a minute.”  Her voice sounded awful.  He had to know she was crying.

 

“Okay, Mija.  Talk to you next week.”

 

“Love you, Dad.”

 

She leaned back, rubbed furiously at her eyes, and, against her better judgment, pulled up the concert footage on her phone while she waited.  It had been raining that day, and the crowd was drunk.  Kevin had been in rare form, and her playing as sharp and crisp as she’d ever done, but all she could see, as she stared down at her phone, was the girl with the black hair and the quasi-catholic school uniform giving the camera a bevy of righteous middle fingers.

***

 

She didn’t have much hope of getting past the door unnoticed.  The bar was empty at eleven in the morning, and there was nothing else to distract from the sound of the bell at the door.  Helen didn’t look directly at Lucia, but Lucia knew she’d been spotted by the way Helen very specifically didn’t look at her.  Lucia slouched her way to the bar, climbed onto a stool, and waited patiently.

 

“What’ll ya have?” she asked, without looking over.

 

“Ginger ale.”

 

Helen was already pouring it, and set it down in front of her without making eye contact.

 

“I… I didn’t,” Lucia said, in a tone of voice that was really trying hard to be defiant.  Like, really, really hard.

 

Helen shot her a quick look, very flat, before nodding.

 

The silence stretched out, becoming thin and brittle.  “I’m sorry,” Lucia said, “okay?  I…” before trailing off into silence.

 

“Look,” Helen said.  “I get it.  I remember fast walking away from Evan like I was trying to exit a burning building in an orderly fashion, when he’d just been trying to talk to me.”

 

“You did?”

 

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The redhead nodded.  “What I can’t condone,” she said, gravely, “is that you didn’t pay for your drink.”

 

Lucia made a sound that, while still being dignified, still came pretty close to a guffaw.

 

“I’m trying to run a business here,” Helen said, smirking, and behind her parted bangs lurked an eyebrow looking for an excuse to unleash.

 

“Capitalist,” Lucia hissed, injecting as much venom into the word as its zoning permits allowed for.  This earned her a hearty laugh in response, and it felt like a weight slipped from her shoulders.

 

“A lefty, huh,” Helen shot back, jaw slack with faux-wonder.

 

“I’m an anarcho-communist, thank you very much.”

 

“Either way,” she said, pulling a tall glass from a rack to polish with a towel on her hip, “I’m glad you came back.”

 

“Me too,” Lucia said, and as she took a sip of her ginger ale, staring over the rim, her eyes connected with Helen’s in a way that said, in both directions, I’m really glad.

 

Thirty minutes later, Lucia flopped onto her back, gasping for air.  She brought a hand to her forehead, to brush back the hairs back from her eyes, and found her brow dotted with perspiration.  It was probably not all her own sweat.  “Holy fuck,” she panted.  “Holy fuck.  Holy fuck.”

 

Helen laid down alongside her, on her side, with her arm propping up her head in a way that showed off her arms.  Helen had unripped biceps, but much like the rest of her there was a kind of thickness to her upper arms that Lucia was completely enthralled by.  There was so much to grab, and squeeze, and hold, and she’d had plenty of opportunities to do all of those things while Helen was sitting on her face.

 

If she had to pick a favorite part, and Lucia was fond of ranking things, it was Helen’s thighs that she was most fond of (followed by the parts just above her thighs).  At one point, while underneath her, Helen had gotten leverage—in a way Lucia hadn’t really understood—and squeezed, and Lucia had experienced a sensation unlike any other.  The strain had been a little scary, which was in turn ridiculously hot.  She’d been completely in Helen’s control, her life in another woman’s hands, and at no point did it occur to her to stop licking even as her head was being crushed just a little bit.

 

Helen had a way about her that was direct and delightful: refreshingly unsubtle.  Vivian had been like that, at the end.  It had been, perhaps, the best part of their brief but impactful relationship.

 

As she lay there, panting, Helen drew invisible shapes on her skin.  Infinity symbols.  Triangles.  A heart.  Helen said, “I really like your sleeves, by the way.”

 

Lucia’s eyes fluttered open, and she blushed.  She liked the way Helen’s eyes were roaming over her body.  It made her feel… wanted.  Valuable.

 

It occurred to her, briefly, that ‘valuable’ was a strange word for her brain to have supplied there, or a strange way of putting it, but the tickling sensation of Helen’s index finger running circles around her nipple reduced her ability to think deep thoughts to approximately nil.  She blushed, but kept command of her faculties and resisted the urge to bring her arms up and cover herself.  She must have flinched, though, because Helen’s smile got a lot wider and a lot…

...meaner?  Hungrier?

 

“So where was I?”

 

Lucia’s chest tightened.  Painfully.

 

“Evan was the one who drove me to my first—”

 

“Could you… not?” Lucia whimpered.  The expression on Helen’s face made her wince.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry, I just…”

 

Helen pulled her hand back, and suddenly Lucia really wished she wasn’t laying on top of the sheets.  She would have loved to cover herself up right then.

 

“I can’t handle listening to how much you miss someone who isn’t around, because that’s…”

 

The redhead exhaled slowly through pursed lips, and nodded.  “Okay.”

 

“No,” Lucia said, pushing herself up onto her side and facing Helen.  “Listen.  I appreciate what you’re doing.  I just… I came here tonight to try and forget someone.”

 

Helen smirked.  “Did it work?”

 

“For a little while,” Lucia said, smiling sadly.

 

“Okay.  Well.”  Helen twisted, and for just a moment while she thought she pushed her tongue out through her lips.

 

Lucia stared unabashedly.  It was a tongue for kissing.  Sure, it might have served Helen well enough when she was swallowing or tasting, but as far as Lucia was concerned it was for kissing.

 

“Wanna hear something I’ve never told anyone?”

 

“Yeah,” Lucia whispered.  She’d never wanted anything more in her whole life.

 

“I miss my balls.”

 

Every time it felt like Lucia was about to stop laughing, Helen would giggle a little and that would set her off again.  It was a good two minutes before she caught her breath.  As she lay there on her back, worrying a little bit in the back of her mind that she’d had the wrong reaction, Helen sat up and put her bra back on, and again Lucia was struck by it.  The woman had incredible lingerie.  It had extra bands across the front that seemed to serve no purpose, but they followed the contour of the redhead’s skin and mapped the shape of her breasts in a way that appealed to Lucia’s animal brain.  Helen had very soft skin, and it was hard not to think about that when it was being shaped so dramatically.

 

“I wouldn’t trade my tits to get ‘em back,” Helen said, with a smirk, “but… yeah.  I liked them.”

 

“Is that the only thing you miss?”

 

“Oh yeah,” Helen said, nodding enthusiastically as she pulled up her matching panties.  They were a hipster cut, giving definition to her hips and waist while leaving the bottoms of her rounded cheeks exposed:  beautifully suited for her frame.  “Yeah, I don’t know how it is for the rest of my trans sisters, but I couldn’t wait to get bottom surgery.  No regrets whatsoever, and I’d do it over again in a heartbeat, but yeah.  I liked my balls.”  She shrugged, and giggled a little.

 

Lucia rolled onto her front, elbows digging into the bed while her palms supported her chin, as she watched Helen walk across the apartment toward the bathroom.  That she left the door open behind her said something.  Maybe about confidence, maybe about comfort level.  Maybe about a desire for bathroom sex.

 

“When did you know?” Lucia asked.  “Is it okay if I ask that?”  She reached down over the edge of the bed and hooked her fingers into the hem of the balled up shirt Helen had discarded, pulling it out to get a better look at it.  It was a black t-shirt, which was about all that Lucia had noticed earlier.  What she had missed, though, just above the heart, was a pink skull with a bob haircut, and a little bow sitting on top just off center.

 

She had never put on a piece of clothing so fast in all her life.

 

“Hard to say when I first started thinking about it,” Helen called, voice carrying across the open space.  “Maybe fifteen?”  The redhead re-emerged from the bathroom a few seconds later, and quirked her head.  “That’s my shirt.”

 

Lucia shrugged, wearing nothing else, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed.  Helen narrowed her eyes as she walked, her smile becoming very cold and calculated, and that look made Lucia shiver something fierce.

 

“When did you know you were gay?”

 

Lucia licked her lips to buy time, and looked down.  “I don’t know how to answer that.”

 

“That wasn’t supposed to be a hard one,” the redhead said, as she collected her jeans and moved to sit down.

 

“This is going to sound stupid, but for a long time, for me, sex wasn’t about that.”

 

“Not about who you’re with?”

 

“No,” Lucia said, shaking her head.  “I…”  She dug her thumb into her temple, worrying at a phantom knot, and added, “I don’t always feel like I’ve had a lot of control in my life.  Sometimes, sex is just a thing that happens, and maybe not always something I choose for myself?  Not sure if that makes sense.”

 

This time, it was both of Helen’s eyebrows that moved, and Lucia was unmade by their expressiveness.

 

She shrugged, and was reminded all over again that she was wearing another woman’s shirt.  It felt scandalous in all the best possible ways, and that was much easier for her to process than her complicated sexual history.  Helen finished pulling up her jeans, with only her bra on above that, and Lucia stared at her unabashedly.

 

“You know,” Helen said, “I really expected you to take the back door and disappear yesterday.  I was shocked when you didn’t.” It was a really nice bra, but Helen caught her staring and turned away.  She looked back over her shoulder as she headed toward her closet, and said, “I really had you pegged as a one time thing.”

 

“If we’d met a few months ago,” Lucia said, “yeah.  That was kinda my thing.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“It was suggested to me,” she said, planting her hands behind her on the bed and leaning back slightly, “that I was substituting one addictive behavior for another.  For a while there, I was averaging… I don’t know, four to six partners a week?  Never the same one twice?  Just… empty pleasure seeking behavior.”

 

Helen reappeared from the closet, shimmying into a V neck blouse with short ruffled sleeves, and looking completely unperturbed.  It occurred to Lucia that she was surprised that the other woman was so nonplussed.  It then further occurred to her that she had probably, unconsciously, offered that slightly exaggerated number to try and scare Helen off.  That it hadn’t worked said something.

 

Instead, Helen said, “Not anymore though?”

 

She shrugged and shook her head.  “No.  It’s one thing when you have a bad habit that you don’t really acknowledge, but, you know, with NA, and the steps, that’s not the kind of thing you can just ignore once it’s been brought to your attention.  Not if you’re really trying, anyway... and I am.”

 

“Now you just have random sex sometimes.”

 

“Hey,” Lucia said, “you hit on me!  I quit coke, not being awesome.”

 

All Lucia could manage was a mild smirk.  It was a good, pithy joke, but it wasn’t one she really believed.  Her self-image was fragile.  Before, with drugs, Lucia hadn’t ever really needed to believe in herself.  She could chug attitude, snort confidence, and shoot up swagger.  She was still stubborn as a mule, but it came out more as perseverance than anything else.

 

But Helen hadn't laughed either.  She was nodding thoughtfully, and said, "It can dull the pain."

 

Then she remembered that, yes, it had been Helen that initiated, and no, she hadn't flinched at Lucia maybe bringing someone different home every night.  That made her heart hurt a little for the redhead.

 

Once Helen was dressed she felt a kind of pressure to be not naked, like she was holding Helen up, and so Lucia shoved her own top into her purse and threw on her jeans.

 

When she was pulling on her boot, Helen said, “What are you doing on Thursday?”

 

She did some quick math in her head, counting out which nights she’d be in a meeting.  Instead of answering, though, Lucia said, “Are you asking me out on a date?”

 

Helen didn’t take the bait, which Lucia respected the hell out of.  She said, “I do derby on Thursdays.  You should come check it out.”

 

Lucia watched her shamelessly as Helen started toward the door.  “Will you be wearing, like, some cute short shorts?”

 

The bartender laughed, which was a wonderful sound, and shook her ass back and forth a little.  “Only one way to find out.”

 

After giving Helen a twenty second head start, Lucia came downstairs.  Karl, the other bartender, was leaning casually against the bar.  The room was nearly empty.

 

“Second time this week,” Karl said, giving her a direct look.

 

Helen’s voice came from the back, in the kitchen, shouting “Karl!”

 

Karl looked unperturbed, and stared at Lucia with a flat expression.  It seemed, to Lucia, that flat was probably his mode.  “Hey, I know that shirt.”

 

Lucia said, “Karl, what do you know about wealth extraction?”

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

 

“If this place turns even a penny of profit because of your labor, she’s robbing you.  That’s payroll theft.”

 

“Skipping straight to dirty talk, huh?” Karl shrugged, disaffectedly.  “You’re definitely her type.”

 

“Lucia, just go!”

 

“Yeah,” he said, with all the enthusiasm of an exhausted sloth, “get outta here, punk.”

 

“Wage slave,” she shot back.

 

On her way out the door, she heard Karl lean his head into the kitchen and say “Okay, you need to put a ring on that.”

“You’re fired, Karl!”

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