Significant Others

“Would you like … a nightcap or something?”

  “No, thanks,” said Thack. “It’s late.”

  Good answer, thought Michael.

  Wren turned to Brian and said: “Give the man his keys.”

  “Oh.” Brian fumbled in his pocket and handed the keys to Michael. Even in the dark he looked embarrassed.

  “The driver’s coming at ten,” Wren told Michael. “We’ll swing by sometime after that.”

  “Fine,” said Michael. He gave Brian an awkward little salute and climbed into the VW with Thack.

  “Well, well,” said Thack as they drove off down the hill.

  One with Nature

  A PECULIAR THING HAPPENED TO BOOTER AS HE LANGUISHED there in the darkness, a virtual prisoner of Mabel’s Winnebago: He found that he liked it. It was soothing, somehow, to be stranded this way, so thoroughly a victim of chance and circumstance that all decisions were moot, all responsibilities void.

  Only twice during his forty-minute wait did a car whiz past on the narrow road, and the woods were seductively silent, except for owls and an occasional murmur from the leaves.

  Briefly, but with startling drama, a raccoon had mounted a branch outside the window and studied him dispassionately through the glass. Booter had remained still, confronting the little bandit creature-to-creature, holding his breath like a child playing hide-and-seek.

  When the raccoon padded away, curiosity sated, Booter made an appreciative sound in the back of his throat. An outsider might have mistaken it for a giggle.

  One with Nature, he thought, tilting the bottle again. That was the expression, wasn’t it?

  Presently Mabel came loping through the broken branches. He couldn’t help thinking of one of those amiable, rumpled bears out of Uncle Remus.

  “Half an hour,” she said, climbing into the RV. “The tow truck’s comin’ from Guerneville.” Wheezing a little, she caught her breath, then reached into her shirt pocket. “They only had Butterfingers,” she said, handing him a candy bar.

  He thought of the chocolate Edgar had given him, remembered the curious expectant light in his eyes. What did the boy want from him?

  “I said no, thanks,” he told Mabel.

  “Well, I don’t listen to what men say.” She prodded him with the Butterfinger, like a new father proffering a cigar. “Take it, Roger.”

  He accepted.

  “What are you grinnin’ about?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, eat your damn candy, then.”

  He peeled back the yolk-yellow wrapper. “We had these when I was a boy.”

  “Yeah,” she said, working on her own wrapper. “Same here.”

  “They were bigger.” He looked at the dark bar, then bit off a chunk.

  She did the same. “How old are you?” she asked, crunching away.

  “Seventy-one,” he replied.

  As if to match his fearlessness, she said: “I’m sixty-seven.”

  He nodded and hoisted his Butterfinger in a sort of salute.

  “I don’t look sixty-seven,” she added.

  “No,” he agreed, “you don’t.”

  In another gulp, she finished off the candy, wadding the wrapper. “So tell me about this camp of yours.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged. “What do you do?”

  He thought for a moment. “I made a speech a few days ago.”

  “Yeah? What on?”

  “Well … the Strategic Defense Initiative.”

  She nodded with judicial dignity. “Good thing.”

  “Well, I certainly did my best to—”

  “Damn good thing. If the Russians don’t beat us to it.”

  “Well,” he said, “there’s certainly a danger of that.”

  “You can’t trust them bastards.”

  “No, you can’t. You’re right.”

  They both fell silent. Mabel drummed her stubby red fingers on the dashboard. The night sounds grew louder, making talk seem alien.

  “You wanna get out and stretch?” she asked eventually.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “You miss him?” He nodded.

  She heaved a noisy sigh and looked out the window for a moment. Then she said: “I got another bottle in back.”

  He turned and smiled at her. “Get it.”

  Pajamas Without Feet

  BACK AT THE CABIN, MICHAEL LAY ON THE SOFA BED, his head against Thack’s chest. “What a night,” he said.

  “A-men, brother.” Thack toyed idly with Michael’s earlobe, like someone working dough. “Don’t you feel a little guilty?”

  “For what?” asked Michael with mild amazement. “Crashing the Grove?”

  “No. Being an accomplice to adultery.”

  Michael hesitated. “I don’t think that’s adultery.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  “I think it’s more like … company.”

  “C’mon.”

  “I’m pretty sure of it,” said Michael.

  “You don’t think they’re up there banging each other’s eyes out?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a rotten judge of lust.”

  “Maybe.”

  Michael lay there for a while, listening to the thump of Thack’s heart. Outside, there were froggy choruses in the high grass along the creek. Someone in the pink trailer was playing Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways.”

  “I love that song,” said Michael.

  “Yeah.”

  They listened for a while, Thack humming along shamelessly.

  “You’re a corny guy,” said Michael. He almost said “romantic,” but the word struck him as dangerous.

  “Well,” said Thack. “We seem to get music every time we do this.”

  Michael chuckled. “That’s true.”

  Thack traced Michael’s shoulder with his finger, then laid his warm palm to rest on Michael’s back.

  “I’m corny too,” said Michael. “It’s not a bad thing.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I mean … not if it’s balanced. If both people are corny … then it’s O.K.”

  Silence.

  “You wanna know something funny?” asked Michael.

  “What?”

  “When I first met you, I tried to picture how you’d look in a jockstrap.”

  Thack smiled.

  “Now,” said Michael, “I wanna see you in pajamas.”

  “Pajamas?”

  “Yeah. Flannel ones. Baby blue.”

  “Not the kind with feet in them?”

  Michael laughed. “No. Just … the regular.”

  Thack stroked Michael’s hair. “Maybe next time, huh?”

  “Yeah, maybe so.” He ran his hand across Thack’s flat stomach. “When do you think that might be?”

  “I dunno,” said Thack. “Hard to say. Do you get back East much?”

  “No, not really.”

  “I’d like to come back,” said Thack.

  “Would you?”

  “Sure.”

  “We could work on this a little more.”

  “This?” asked Thack.

  “Us,” said Michael.

  Thack said nothing, stroking Michael’s hair.

  Michael was pretty sure he had gone too far.

  A Woman Scorned

  UP AT THE LODGE, WREN ATTENDED TO BRIAN, WHO lay with his head against her chest.

  “Will you call me?” she asked.

  “When?”

  “Oh … when the moon comes over the mountain. When the swallows come back to Capistrano.” She gave his cheek a gentle whack. “When do you think, dummy?”

  “O.K.” he said.

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just yes or no will do.”

  “O.K.”

  “If you don’t,” she sa
id, “I’ll call your house and embarrass the shit out of you.”

  He smiled.

  Her fingers explored his springy chestnut curls. “You were sweet to let the boys take the limo.”

  “It’s no big deal,” he said. “What’s gonna happen to your car?”

  She began to fret again. “Well, Booter said to leave it here.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve done what I can do,” she said. “I’m not his wife.”

  “Right.”

  Why the hell was she still issuing disclaimers? “I’ll call his house when I get to Chicago. Somebody’ll know something by then.” She heaved a mother’s sigh before adding glumly: “I hate being a whore. There are too many responsibilities.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” he said.

  She smiled and slid her fingers through the swirly hair of his chest. “Thanks for the indignation, but I’m not ashamed of it. I wanted the experience, and I wanted the money. And Booter got his money’s worth.”

  The bedside phone rang.

  “Yell-o,” she piped in her best receptionese.

  “Wren,” said the caller, “iss me.”

  “Booter?”

  “Yeah, iss me.”

  If he wasn’t shitfaced, he sure sounded like it. “Where are you, Booter?”

  “Uh … Guerneville.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m … I’m O.K.”

  “You could have called, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t you call?”

  “I couldn’t…. Was in a canoe.”

  “What?” She heard a woman mutter something in the background. “Booter … who’s with you?”

  A pause and then: “Nobody.”

  “Oh, right.” Now she was boiling mad.

  “Iss juss somebody who—”

  “You have one helluva lot of nerve, Booter.” She turned to Brian and said: “He’s ripped to the tits and he’s got some woman with him.”

  “No,” said Booter.

  “What do you mean, no? I can hear her.”

  “Iss not like that.”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, Booter. That check better be good.”

  “Iss good.”

  She could hear the woman cackling in the background. “I’m hanging up, Booter.”

  “Gobblesshew,” he said.

  “Right,” she said, and slammed the receiver down.

  She fumed in silence. Then Brian said: “I’m sorry you worried so much.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” she said. “Well … still.”

  “Fuck him,” she said. “I should’ve charged him the full ten thousand.”

  She went to sleep angry and woke up that way, rising before Brian to finish her packing. He made french toast for them both, then took out her last bag of garbage. When the limousine arrived at nine forty-five, they were waiting for it on the back steps. The driver was a new one (not, thank God, the one she had slept with), and he was openly curious as to why he’d been treated to a night at the Sonoma Mission Inn.

  She let him wonder, determined to put the fiasco behind her.

  They drove in silence to Cazadero, where Michael and Thack swapped places with Brian amidst coos of approval for the limousine. She gave Brian a quick hug at the door of his little cabin. “Call me,” she whispered.

  “O.K.,” he answered.

  She waved goodbye to him from the back window of the limo, but wasn’t sure he had seen her.

  Back in the city, at Michael’s insistence, she told the driver to climb Russian Hill on its steepest slope. This turned out to be a street called Jones, a near-sheer cliff of a street which taxed the limo to the fullest and had them all whooping like idiots.

  “Is this legal?” she gasped, clapping her hand to her chest.

  Michael laughed. “It’s even better going down.”

  “You’re twisted,” she said.

  “I’ve never done this in a limo,” he said.

  She snorted. “There are better things to do.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Thack.

  “Christ,” she gasped. “Is that a stop sign up ahead?” She leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Don’t stop, O.K.? My system can’t take it.”

  Another laugh from Michael. “Can it take a speeding Muni bus?”

  The driver stopped where he was supposed to stop, then turned right and kept climbing, though far less precipitously this time. Taking another right, he inched his way down another nauseating drop-off. The bay lay beneath them in the distance, ridiculously blue.

  “All right,” she said, turning to Michael. “Enough with the Space Mountain.”

  “This is it,” he said, wide-eyed. “Really.”

  “This is really what?” She was pressing her fingertips against the back of the front seat, as if this would prevent her from tumbling forward, out the window, down the hill and into the bay.

  “Where I live,” he replied. “That stairway beneath us. The wooden one.”

  “Sure.”

  “It is!” he said, beaming proudly. “You can park on the right there,” he told the driver. “The rest is on foot.” He turned back to her and added: “That big high-rise above us is where Brian lives.”

  “I can’t look up,” she muttered. “Or down. I’ll blow lunch.”

  The driver parked on the right, using the emergency brake. Michael and Thack hastily assembled their stuff. Then Thack began collecting empty juice bottles in a paper bag. “Leave it,” she told him. “That’s part of the fun.”

  “He’s compulsive,” said Michael.

  Thack gave them both a hooded glance and continued to gather trash.

  “Just what you need,” Wren told Michael.

  This minimal shot at matchmaking seemed to embarrass Michael, so she thrust her hand into his and added: “It’s been great.”

  “Same here,” he said. “I can’t believe I met you.”

  “Brian has my number,” she said, wondering if he’d guess the reason.

  Michael nodded.

  “Take care of him,” she said.

  “I will,” he replied, without meeting her eyes.

  She turned and took Thack’s hand. “Give my love to Charleston.”

  “O.K.,” said Thack. “Thanks for the joyride.” He climbed out and waited on the curb.

  Michael regarded her for a moment, then gave her a quick peck on the cheek and bounded out of the limo. She watched as he and Thack crossed the street and began to ascend the ramshackle wooden stairway he had indicated. In the dry grass next to its base stood an off-kilter street sign bearing the word BARBARY.

  “Is that safe?” she hollered, when they reached the first landing.

  He cupped his hands and yelled back at her: “What the hell is?”

  She was still smiling when he vanished into the dusty trees at the top of the stairs.

  Her driver turned and said: “The airport, Miss Douglas?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “Time to go home.”

  Prisoner of Love

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE COURTYARD AT NUMBER 28, Michael found Mrs. Madrigal watering her parched garden. The rigors of the heat wave had forced her into an old gingham sundress, which seemed far too Miss Marpleish for her particular brand of rawboned grace.

  “How was it?” she called, as they came through the lych-gate.

  “Terrific,” said Thack.

  She shut off the spray, dropped the hose, and tended to the stray wisps at her temples. “It’s been dreadful here, absolutely murderous. In the eighties every day.”

  “You’re spoiled,” said Thack.

  She gave him a surprisingly coquettish glance and patted her hair again. “Nevertheless,” she said.

  “The garden looks gorgeous,” Michael told her.

  “It’s getting there. Did Brian come back with you?” There was a purposeful glint in her eye which belied her breezy delivery.

  “No,” said Michael. “We bummed a ride with somebody else. He came home in my car.” br />
  “I see,” said the landlady.

  “Why?”

  “Oh … well … Mary Ann asked.”

  Michael wondered how much Mrs. Madrigal knew. “He should be home soon,” he said as blandly as possible.

  She fixed her huge Wedgwood eyes on him. “He hasn’t called her,” she said. “He’s been very naughty.”

  He made a helpless gesture. “What can I tell you?”

  She looked at him a moment longer, then swooped down to pick up her gardening gloves. When she was upright again, she turned her attention to Thack. “Michael’s showing you the sights, is he?”

  “Oh, yes,” answered Thack.

  “Do you like it here?”

  “Very much.”

  “I’m so glad. How much longer will we have the pleasure of your company?”

  “Well,” said Thack, “till tonight, I guess. My flight’s tonight.”

  This was news to Michael, but he didn’t look at Thack for fear of betraying his emotions. Mrs. Madrigal, he imagined, already saw the distress in his face, sensed the enormity of the cloud settling over him.

  Up in his bedroom, after they had both showered and changed into clean sweats, Michael said: “What time is your flight?”

  “Six-fifteen,” Thack replied.

  Michael went to the window and looked out. “I thought it was tomorrow, for some reason.” His eyes fixed vacantly on Alcatraz, the cause of this pain, the scene of the crime. “I had sort of pictured us sleeping here.”

  Thack hesitated, then said: “It’s a nice thought.”

  “But?” he asked, pushing the issue in spite of his better instincts.

  Thack came up behind him, enfolding him in his arms. “They’re expecting me at Middleton Plantation bright and early Tuesday morning.”

  “What for?” asked Michael, alienated by such an exotic excuse.

  “To make a speech,” said Thack, “to some Yankee preservationists.”

  “What about?” asked Michael.

  Thack kissed him on the ear. “Funding, mostly. Boring stuff.” He rocked Michael back and forth. “Sooner or later, real life comes crashing back in, doesn’t it?”

  This was much too glib, Michael felt, a ready-made coda to a shipboard romance. He lived here, didn’t he? This was his ship. What hadn’t been real-life about it?

  “C’mon,” said Thack, leading him to the bed. “Let’s cuddle.”

  As they lay there, Thack’s back against Michael’s chest, Michael said: “I hate this. It seems like a Sunday afternoon.”