CHAPTER FOUR
Petra topped off thedraw on a Fat Tire tap, giving herself a mental high five for the perfect head on that pint before she set the glass in front of Katie and said, “You are completely full of shit.”
Katie shaped her face into a caricature of righteous offense and said, “It’s the truth! Gimme a Bible and I’ll swear on it.”
“You’re a Buddhist, Kate. Not sure swearing on a Bible is binding for a Buddhist.”
Dre came up behind Petra and leaned over her shoulder to say, “Shit to your eyeballs, Katrina. To youreyeballs.”
“I am telling you. I ate out Melissa Etheridge backstage at Lilith. Chicago, summer 1997.”
Katie was about twenty years older than both Petra and Dre and was one of the older people among Gertrude’s regulars and thus a sort of community elder. But she was like one of those weird ‘pull my finger’ uncles, who had a million stories, none of which could be entirely trusted. In this case, the part about Katie being at Lilith Fair in 1997 was probably factual. The Melissa Etheridge part? Please.
“Dre’s right,” Bex, another regular, chimed in. “Shit to your eyeballs and a fuckin’ cliché to boot. Etheridge and Lilith Fair? Is that a page out of the Official Nineties Lesbian Handbook or something?”
Katie looked over her shoulder. “Fuck off, pup.”
With their patented smirk, Dre put their elbows on the bar and got right up close to Katie’s face. “I want proof.”
“Proof? You think I, what, saved a couple pubes we can test DNA on?”
“You, a nobody, get up close and personal with Melissa fucking Etheridge, you’re gonna at least get an autograph, right?”
“I’m classier than that,” Katie asserted—and everybody close enough to hear it laughed. Dre laughed loud and performatively.
“Right. Sure you are,” Dre jeered.
Seeing that the conversation was leaving the friendly shit-giving zone and heading into hurt-feelings territory, at least for Katie, Petra said, “Well, I just wish Lilith was still around. That had to have been amazing. A whole music festival just for women.”
“It was pretty great,” Katie said, giving Petra a grateful smile.
“Who else did you see there?” asked a woman who wasn’t a regular but was sitting at the bar and had been listening.
Katie glanced her way and then looked up at the ceiling, as if her memories were sketched there. “Let’s see ...”
As Katie started in on a long story, Petra glanced to the far end of the bar and saw Maude tip her mug to her lips like she was draining the last of it. Maude was another elder, maybe the eldest, and the absolute opposite of Katie. Katie was big and loud and had a tall tale for every occasion. Her high-and-tight hair was always dyed purple or blue, and she always dressed exactly the same way: stiff, dark jeans, cuffed; classic black Docs, polished; and a white button shirt, starched. She had one-inch hematite gauges in her ears and black-and-grey ink from her fingers to her jawline. She drank hard, got louder as she got drunker, usually found someone to bring home and wandered off to her house around the corner after the lights came up at Gertrude’s.
Come to think of it, she was ... not a cliché, but ... call it an archetype. So was Maude, in fact. A totally different archetype. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas would probably have loved them both.
Maude was skinny and quiet and hardly talked at all, but she heard everything. She had long, thick, iron-grey hair she wore either loose or in two braids, and she dressed like a down-on-her-luck librarian, in shapeless, ankle-length dresses and long cardigans. And Dansko clogs. She didn’t drink alcohol at all but was perched on that same stool every evening Gertrude’s was open, sipping tea and reading a book. And also listening to every conversation in earshot.
Petra had a little crush on her. Not a sexual thing. Just sort of ... a fascination. Maude had this amazing face, not remotely beautiful in the traditional sense, but absolutely stunning in its character and the suggestion of a full life lived. And these brilliant old, wise blue eyes. Petra would love to spend some real time with the woman and find out what was going on beneath those still waters. But Maude was like a ghost, manifesting only long enough to sit on that stool, drink tea, read, and listen, and then disappearing into the dark.
On her way to see if Maude wanted a refill, Petra stopped at the sound system stack and tapped around on the touchscreen until she called up Etheridge’sYes I Amalbum and started the title track. Might as well lean into the cliché. It was a bit of a jarring segue from Billie Eilish, but there were only three couples dancing, and they weren’t dancing like they cared about the music.
The entire bar started singing along at Melissa’s first word. Maude looked up from her book and smiled.
“Can I get you some more hot water, Maude? Maybe a fresh teabag?”
“No thank you, dear. I think it’s time to be going. This is a very interesting book. Have you read it?” She closed the book and turned the cover so Petra could read it:The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin.
“No, I haven’t. I don’t really like science fiction. But I’ve heard it’s excellent.”
“It is. And I’m not sure calling it science fiction does it justice—not that science fiction can’t be great. I enjoy all kinds of books. There’s greatness in every genre. But it’s not ...sufficientto label this book like that.”
That was a lot of words at once from Maude. “You must really like it.”