Chapter 12
The surprising thing wasn’t that Varen still sent her a check via courier mail on Sunday afternoon – because of course a rich woman could make that happen. No, what shocked Nala was the phone call she received late in the morning.
She has never called me before. She stared at her number lighting up the tiny screen on her cell phone. What does she want? Ever since she woke up with a clear head Saturday morning, Nala dreaded talking to the woman who fucked her in the corner of a club.
“Nala,” she said. “I’m glad I got a hold of you. We need to talk.”
Spare me. She sat in the living room, which reeked of Patrick’s leftover pot fest the night before. Or maybe it was that morning. “Not sure I have anything to say to you, ma’am.”
“Are you mad at me?” Was that a tinge of worry in her voice? Did Mistress know she messed up? “Tell me the truth. We need to clear the air right now.”
Nala snorted into the phone. “Mad? Nah, but I feel like you owe me an explanation about what happened.”
“I don’t know what to say other than, I, well…”
“Never mind. What do you want?”
Varen held back a breath. “I was calling to apologize about what happened. I feel like I owe you a few explanations.”
“Uh-huh.” Nala stretched out across the pot-infested couch and stared at the popcorn ceiling. “Go on, then. Give me your explanations.”
“I’d rather not discuss it on the phone. I was wondering if you had free time today?”
Nala turned over, burying her face into the back of the couch. “I don’t work today if that’s what you mean.”
“Great. Got any plans?”
Calm down. A woman of her means had some friends, surely. Even the most antisocial tech-nerd CEO in the world had to have friends. Whether or not they were any good friends was another matter. “No plans, unless you count sleeping on this couch and trying to enjoy my day off for what it is.”
“But you don’t have any concrete plans.”
“Varen Lake, are you asking me out on a date?”
She said it flippantly, imagining her sitting in her bare office with an unchallenged look on her face. “Is that what you want?” she asked. “For me to take you out on a date?”
Did she want that? Ha, no. She couldn’t imagine her and Varen on a real date if their lives depended on the charade.
Bad enough they were faking it for an audience already.
“I don’t know if the word ‘date’ is what I want, but I would like something more than a rendezvous in your car and dinner in some squared-away hole in the wall. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the food was great there, but it takes more than that to impress me. You wanna impress me, right?”
Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. Lots of people lost interest, let alone interest in impressing others after they had done the deed.
“Let’s go for an outing. Look, the sky has cleared! We could actually do something in this rainy-ass city.”
Varen made some strange noise on the other end of the line. “Fine. As long as we have a frank discussion somewhere in there.”
“Yeah, whatever. When are you picking me up?”
Something tapped on the window behind her.
Nala pushed herself up on the couch, craning her head around to see a shadowy figure dancing behind the curtains. No way. What a creeper. Nala dragged herself off the cushion and went to the window, pulling aside the curtain and staring Varen right in the Portland pale face.
“You stalking me?” she said into the phone.
“You could say I was in the area.”
Nala didn’t have much more time to think. She grabbed her wallet out of her room, made sure she had her keys, and locked the front door behind her. It wasn’t as cold, but she huddled within her hoodie, afraid she would feel as exposed around this woman as she had on Friday.
Varen’s car was parked in its usual spot in front of the walkway.
Nala beat Varen to it, waiting for her to unlock the door before flinging it open and hopping in.
Still smells like the weirdo. Speaking of weirdos, here she came now, rounding the front of her car and getting in on the driver’s side door.
“You’re… casual, today,” Nala said. She stared at dark wash jeans and the black, plain hoodie covering Varen’s torso.
The only reason Nala recognized her was because of the strong scent coming her way.
Do other women smell that stuff? Nala couldn’t be the only woman around who was aroused by that scent.
Why do I care? Not like she’s my real girlfriend.
“It’s Sunday.” Varen strapped herself in and started the low purr of the motor. “Not many opportunities to wear a suit on Sunday.”
“Only if we’re going to someone’s sex club.”
“Uh-huh.” Varen placed her hands on the wheel but did not step on the gas. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“Hm? Thought you had a place in mind.”
“Not really.”
Nala slumped in her seat. She twirled some of her hair around her finger, tugging against her scalp.
I wonder what it feels like to have my hair pulled…
Where did that come from? One moment she was thinking about food and fun, and the next she was back in that sex club, feeling Varen within her while she imagined her hair pulled against her head.
“Pull my hair, asshole!” she would cry, and by the cosmos, Varen would.
The woman sitting next to her did not look like a woman who would go around pulling hair during sex.
She looked like Average Jane trying to get from the supermarket to the post office before heading home.
Not so sexy. Now, if Varen were in her work clothes or, better yet, her Aviary attire?
Hello, lady. Nala was too comfortable around that Varen.
This woman looked like she could be her cousin coming to pick her up from the mall.
“Take me to your favorite place in Portland.”
“Huh?”
Nala patted her arm and gestured to the steering wheel. “Take me to your favorite place opened on a Sunday. I’m sure a woman like you has her haunts she likes to go to. Pick a place we can chill and talk.”
“My favorite place in Portland…” Her mouth twisted as if to say, “You think such a place exists?”
Nala would like to see her try to say that.
Even she had her favorite place. It was a park at the end of the street, but it had a great view of Downtown.
“I’ve never had someone ask me about that before.”
“Well, let’s go.”
“Sure. Let’s.”
It was Nala’s first time seeing the car pull away in broad daylight.
From this vantage, she experienced the undersides of all the trees lining the street.
A camera crew wandered up and down the sidewalk, perhaps looking for another scene in Grimm, or one of those other TV shows they filmed in the city.
Been late to work more than once because they shut down a street to film.
Nala looked away, catching Varen’s profile as her head emerged from her hoodie.
Long dark hair glistened in what, sweat?
Rain? The woman was so tragically casual that it was hard to tell.
You’d never guess she was rich looking at her.
Nala had to be careful. Hanging around women dressed like this made her drop her guard.
They crossed the nearest bridge into Downtown – then kept going.
Soon they were entering the hills that would either take them to the suburbs or some of the swankier homes in the area.
Is she taking me to her place? Nala had to wonder how a woman like Varen lived.
She didn’t seem like the type to keep a mansion in the high hills.
Nah, more like a penthouse apartment. A smaller one.
Something easy to keep clean, even with the help of a maid.
“Oh, I see.” Nala chuckled as the car veered toward the rose gardens. Seemed like a poor time of year to view them, but who knew what Varen kept up her sleeve? “You like roses?”
They drove past. “Not really. Why? Do you? Should we go back?”
“No.” Nala remained focused on the road before them. “Where are we going?”
“Here.” The car made an abrupt left into a small parking lot at the bottom of a hill. A shuttle waited to take a new crop of tourists up to the top, where the world-famous Japanese gardens lurked in a small corner of Portland. “Hope you don’t mind I picked something outdoorsy.”
“Mind? My people were made to be hardy in the out of doors.”
They exited the car, Nala’s arms stretching above her head. “Your people?” Varen asked. The car doors locked with a soft click.
She lowered her arms. “Them stocky Russians. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“I may have thought it, but with a name like Nazarov, there isn’t much room to guess. You’re either from that part of the world or in denial.”
They walked a couple feet away from one another as they forewent the shuttle and trekked up the hill.
Petite streams of water coursed down pavement, circling potholes, and emptying into natural ditches full of dead leaves and dirt.
“Do you know where your family is from?”
Nala had met tons of people who had no idea where their ancestors came from.
It was such a strange concept to her. Being “Russian” was such a huge part of her identity growing up, even if her parents did their best to quash it so they could assimilate into American culture.
Especially back then. The Berlin Wall had fallen before she was born, but even Nala still saw traces of the Iron Curtain drawn between her old communities and their all-around American neighbors. TV shows did not help.
“I think they’re from Germany and Britain. Boring stuff.”
“You think?”
“I really don’t know. Maybe Dutch. My family has been here for hundreds of years. My mother joked that her grandfather came over on the Mayflower.”
“My parents came from around Moscow in the ‘80s. Mam still has a bit of an accent.”
Varen asked the same thing every person ever asked her. “Do you speak Russian?”
“Speak it? Nah. I understand some of it, though, if it’s my mom’s dialect. She spoke it at home a lot, especially after my father died and she didn’t care anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why? Wouldn’t it be better for me to be exposed to it? You know what a lot of those first-generation parents say. They regret holding their culture back from their kids because they were afraid they would be bullied or have trouble getting work. My parents were that way.
I think they would have regretted it.”
Nala snorted. “My sister taught herself a lot of Russian, anyway. Minored in it in undergrad.”