“Where are you from?”
The question, asked like a slap, broke Mae abruptly out of her reverie.
Mae, to be clear, was as white as a white person in Oregon could be, but her brain still rankled at the concept of the question.
“Where am Ifrom?”
Another aggrieved sigh.
“Where do you live? Currently.”
Mae inhaled, a premonition of what this condescending, arousing voice would think of her answer creeping over her skin.
“Portland. But I?—”
“No.”
And he hung up.
Mae pulled her phone away to frown at it.
Well. Okay. So, fuck that.
She was in the process of dialing again when a low chuckle rang out behind her.
Mae turned. A butch-looking white woman stood on the street, leaning against the wooden railing of the ramp that accompanied the porch.
“That Dell McCleary?”
The woman lifted her chin toward Mae’s phone. Which Mae stared back down at, blood still simmering.
“Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I think so. Yes.”
“Didn’t go so well, I reckon.”
Mae considered what her comfort level with this woman should be. She looked to be in her forties or fifties, likely just a bit older than Mae. Her hair was short and silvery gray, mouth curved in a smirk that Mae suspected was semi-permanent. She wore a corduroy jacket over a Henley, jeans and worn boots.
Meeting butch-looking older white women like this in small towns was always a gamble, in Mae’s experience. Either they were gay as hell or had no idea they looked gay as hell and, disappointingly, actually believed drag queens reading to children signaled the downfall of the world.
“It did not,” Mae answered.
The maybe-very-gay, maybe-very-not woman ambled around the ramp to walk onto the porch. She leaned her back against the rail next to Mae, folded her arms across her chest.
“Dell can be a cranky son of a gun. Real stingy about who he sells to. Particularly with commercial properties.”
Ah. So Dell wasn’t only the owner of this building, then; he dealt in real estate. Somehow, this only made Mae even more irritated. A goddamnprofessionalhad hung up on her.
“To be fair to him, though,” the woman continued, “I think some folks have put him through the wringer, so he’s cautious. Just wants what’s best for this town. What would you do with it?”
“A bookstore,” Mae answered again. And then, deciding again to go for it, see where she ranked withthistownsperson: “And a queer community center.”
“Huh.”
In their reflections, Mae watched the woman raise an eyebrow.
But then she turned toward Mae. And the smirk grew into what Mae ascertained to be a full-blown butch smile.
“That’s a hell of an idea,” she said.
