“Some. Plenty, actually. I’m not sure you’ll believe it.”
“Like what?”
“When I get home, Babycakes.”
“You’re no fun,” she pouted.
Outfoxed
GOOD FRIDAY CAME, GRAY AND DRIZZLY. MICHAEL stood on a platform at Paddington Station, mesmerized by the soot-streaked silver trains as they thundered into the great glass cavern. The depot was swarming with haggard Londoners, all intent upon an Easter somewhere else.
He checked the time. Eleven fifty-six. The train for Oxford would leave in seventeen minutes. He set his suitcase down and perused the other passengers queuing at Platform 4, Wilfred was plainly not among them.
They had agreed to meet al eleven-thirty, just to be safe, so the kid was almost half an hour overdue. If they missed this train, Michael realized, they would miss their connecting train in Oxford. He chided himself for trusting the kid to run off on his “last-minute errand,” whatever it was.
He wouldn’t get in a snit about it. He hauled his suitcase to the newsstand and lost himself in the screaming headlines of the tabloids. One said; RANDY ANDY’S ROYAL DIP. It featured a disappointing telephoto shot of Prince Andrew in a bathing suit. Another pictured the prince’s porn star girlfriend and said: KOO D’ETAT.
He bought an apple and checked the time again. Ten minutes till departure. What the hell was going on? Had Wilfred changed his mind? Or misunderstood his instructions? What if Wilfred’s father had come home?
The last thought was too creepy to pursue. He returned to the platform and saw that the train had arrived, so he paced alongside it, growing antsier by the second. It better be serious, he told himself, but not too serious. He couldn’t leave without knowing what had happened. He would just have to cancel the trip.
He approached a conductor. “Excuse me. I’m trying to get to Moreton-in-Marsh.”
“Right you are. This is the one. Change at Oxford.”
“I know, but if I miss this train …?”
“Then you’ll miss Moreton-in-Marsh, sir. Till tomorrow, that is.”
“Shit.”
“Expecting someone, are you?”
“Yeah. I was. Thanks.” He skulked away, supremely disappointed, then stopped in his tracks as he caught sight of Wilfred’s bronze-brown ringlets bobbing through the crowd. “There you are.”
The kid’s expression was appropriately sheepish. “Sorry, mate.” He was wearing jeans and a bright yellow sleeveless sweater with a matching bow tie. He carried a canvas satchel under one arm and a large cardboard box under the other.
Michael ditched his lecture and grinned at him. “We’re not immigrating, you know.”
Without answering, Wilfred boarded the train and strode through the carriages until he found one that was sparsely populated. “How’s this?” he asked.
“Fine.”
The kid took the seat by the window and stowed the satchel beneath him. He kept the cardboard box in his lap. “It took longer than I thought,” he said.
“For what?”
A cryptic smile. Then Wilfred tapped the side of the box.
Michael looked down at it. It was wrapped in masking tape, and there were four or five little holes in the top. The light dawned. “Jesus, Wilfred … if that’s what I …”
“Keep it down, mate.”
“They’ll throw us off.”
“No they won’t.”
“It’s gotta be … against the law or something.”
The kid shrugged. “You’re good with cops.”
Michael stared at him incredulously, then looked down again. “Are you sure he can’t get out of there?”
The kid nodded.
“But couldn’t he bite his way …?”
“He doesn’t want to, mate. He’s stoned.”
“What?”
“I put a bit of hash in his meat.”
The train lurched into motion just as a conductor entered the carriage. Wilfred leaned forward, folding his arms across the top of the box. Then he remembered his ticket, retrieved it from his jeans, and handed it to Michael. Hastily, he hunched over the box again.
The conductor loomed above them. “Where to, gents?”
“Moreton-in-Marsh,” answered Michael, handing him the tickets.
“Lovely village, that. Heart of England.”
“Yes. So we hear.” His smile was forced and must have looked it. “We’re going near there, actually. Easley-on-Hill,”
The conductor’s eyes darted to Wilfred, then fixed on Michael again. “Easter holiday, eh?”
“Right.” Another insipid smile.
“Have a good one, then.”
“Thanks,” they replied in unison.
The conductor shambled to the next carriage.
Michael focused on Wilfred again. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Not a bit.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
The kid shrugged. “Just turn him loose.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Gloucestershire. Anywhere.”
“Great,” muttered Michael. “Born Free.”
“What?” The kid’s nose wrinkled.
“A movie. Before your time. Stop making me fee! old. Look, what happens if ol’ Bingo here …?”
“Dingo.”
“Dingo. What happens if his dope wears off before we make it to the wilds?”
Wilfred gave him a brief, impatient glance. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about that now, is there?”
He had no answer for that.
“Just settle back, mate. Look … look out there. There’s our green and pleasant land. You’re on holiday, remember?”
Michael bugged his eyes at the kid, then sank back in the seat. He flopped his head toward the window as an endless caravan of suburban back gardens flickered past in the rain. They gave way eventually to grimy Art Deco factories, random junkyards, mock-Tudor gas stations squatting grimly beneath flannel-gray skies.
“It’s clearing up,” said Wilfred.
Michael blinked at him, then looked out the window again. “When does it start getting quaint?”
The kid snorted. “You Americans and your bleedin’ quaint,” He paused a moment before asking: “Where will we stay in Gloucestershire?”
“Oh … I guess a bed-and-breakfast place. We’ll have to play it by ear.” Somehow, he liked the idea of that very much. He looked at Wilfred and smiled. “Got any ideas?”
The kid shook his head. “Never been there.”
“We may have to rent a car. It all depends on what that address means.”
“Right.”
“What about your father?” Michael asked.
“What about him?”
“Well … if he doesn’t come back, what will you do?” Wilfred tossed it off with a brittle laugh. “Same as before, mate.”
The landscape grew greener, more undulating. The train stopped at four or five little gingerbread stations before they reached Oxford, where they disembarked and waited for the train to Moreton-in-Marsh. They had coffee and sweet rolls in the station snack bar while a noisy downpour brutalized the neatly tended flowerbed adjacent to the platform.
On the next leg of the journey, they sat in silence for a long time as the train rumbled across the rain-blurred countryside. Dingo had begun to stir slightly, but not enough to attract attention. Wilfred cooed to him occasionally and stuffed pieces of ham sandwich into the air holes. The fox made grateful gulping sounds.
“What did your lover do?” the kid asked eventually.
Michael looked up from a guidebook on the Cotswolds. “For a living, you mean?”
Wilfred nodded.
“He was a doctor. On an ocean liner.” He smiled faintly. “He was a gynecologist when I met him.”
“Really?”
Michael nodded. “I’ve heard all the jokes.”
The kid smiled. “How long was he your lover?”
“That’s hard to say. I knew him for about seven years.??
?
“He didn’t live with you?”
“Sonic of the time. Not in the beginning, then we did, then we broke up. When we finally got back together, he had the job on the ship, so he wasn’t at home part of the time. That’s when we were happiest, I think. For ten days or three weeks or whatever, I would save up things to tell him when he got home.”
“What sort of things?”
“You know … dumb stuff. Items in the paper, things we both liked … or disagreed on. I hate Barbra Streisand but he loved her, so I became responsible for any Barbra trivia he might have missed when he was on the high seas. It was a terrible curse, but I did it.” He smiled. “I still do it.”
“Did you date other blokes when he was away?”
“Oh, sure. So did he. We didn’t sleep together anymore.”
“Why not?”
Michael shrugged. “The sex wore off. We were too much like brothers. It felt … incestuous.”
The kid frowned. “That’s too bad.”
“I don’t know. I think it freed us to love each other. We didn’t ask so much of each other anymore. We just got closer and closer. We had great sex with other people and great companionship with each other. It wasn’t what I had planned on, but it seemed to work better than anything else.”
Wilfred’s brow furrowed. “But … that’s not really a lover.”
“Oh, I know. And we made damn sure our boyfriends knew that, too. We’d say: ‘Jon’s just a friend…. Michael’s just my roommate…. We used to be lovers, but now we’re just friends.’ If you’ve ever been the third party in a situation like that, you know that the difference doesn’t mean diddlyshit. Those guys are married … and they’re always the last to know.”
“But you knew,” said Wilfred.
Michael nodded. “Toward the end. Yeah.”
“Then … that’s better than nothing.”
Michael smiled at him. “That’s better than everything.”
“Does your family know you’re bent?”
“Sure,” said Michael. “Jon and I went to visit them in Florida a few months before he got sick.” He grinned at the memory. “They liked him a lot—I knew they would—but God knows what they were envisioning between the two of us. That’s funny, isn’t it? They didn’t have a damn thing to worry about. I spent five years getting them used to the idea of me sleeping with men … only to bring them one I didn’t sleep with anymore.”
“Where did you meet him?” asked Wilfred.
“At a roller rink. We collided.”
“Really?”
“I got a nosebleed. He was so fucking gallant I couldn’t believe it.” He gazed out the window at two mouse-gray villages crouching in a green vale. “We went home to my place. Mona brought us breakfast in bed the next morning.”
“You mean … the one at Harrods.”
“Right. We were roommates at the time.” Several ragged scraps of blue had appeared above the distant hills. He felt a perverse little surge of optimism. “I hope you get to meet her. She’s not really … what was it you called her?”
“A twitzy-twee bitch?”
“Yeah. She’s not like that. She’s just a good, basic dyke.”
Wilfred looked skeptical.
“You’ll see,” said Michael. “I hope you will, anyway.”
When they arrived in Moreton-in-Marsh, the Stationmaster directed them to the village center, a former Roman road called Fosse Way. It was lined with buildings made of grayish-orange Cotswold limestone, tourist facilities mostly—china shops, map stores, tearooms. The one at the end, closest to the town hall, was a pub called the Black Bear. They found two empty seats in the corner of the smoky room.
“See a barmaid?” asked Michael.
“I think Doll is it.”
“Who?”
“Behind the bar, mate. The one with the eyeliner.”
“How do you know her name?”
Wilfred smiled smugly and pointed to a sign above the bar: YOUR PROPRIETORS—DOLL AND FRED. “Any more questions?”
“Yeah. What about … our little friend?” He pointed to Dingo’s box.
“Right. In a bit. How ‘bout a cider?”
“Perfect.”
While Wilfred was at the bar, Michael combed the titles on the jukebox and found Duran Duran and the Boystown Gang, San Francisco’s own gay-themed rock group. The global village was shrinking by the second. He returned to his seat and took refuge in a reverie about ancient inns and craggy wayfarers and Something Queer Afoot.
“Success.” Wilfred beamed, setting the ciders down.
“How so?”
“I asked ol’ Doll about Roughton in Easley-on-Hill.”
“And?”
“Well … Roughton is Lord Roughton, for one thing.”
Michael whistled.
“For another, the house is very grand … one of the grandest in the Cotswolds.”
Michael thought for a moment. “We can’t just walk up and ring the doorbell, I guess.”
The kid grinned mysteriously. “Not exactly.”
“Wilfred … don’t be coy.”
“I’m not. There’s a tour.”
“You mean … of the house?”
Wilfred nodded. “Takes us right there.”
“Then we could …”
“I’ve booked us on it. Tomorrow morning.” It was almost too good to be true. Michael shook his head in amazement.
“Was that wrong?” asked Wilfred.
“Are you kidding? It’s perfect. Did she say if there’s a place to stay?”
“Upstairs. They have rooms. The bus leaves here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Ten pounds for the two of us. That’s the tour, rather. The room is another eight pounds.”
Michael rose, feeling for his wallet. “I’d better …”
“It’s done, male.”
“Now, Wilfred …”
“You can pay for dinner. Sit down. Drink your cider.”
Michael obeyed, acknowledging the kid’s coup by lifting his mug.
Wilfred returned his salute, but remained deadpan. “I’m going to make someone a lovely husband.”
The skies had cleared completely by dusk. They walked to the edge of the village until they found a meadow bordered by a dense thicket of beech trees. Wilfred set Dingo’s box down with ceremonious dignity and untaped one end.
The fox emerged, looking slightly dazed, and stood perfectly still observing his captor.
“Go on,” said Wilfred. “Get out of here.”
The fox scampered several feet, wobbling somewhat. Then he stopped again.
“He doesn’t want to go,” said the kid.
“Yes he does. It’s just new to him.”
Dingo waited a moment longer, considered his options again, and bounded toward the shadowy freedom of the trees.
The Rock Widow Awaits
BRIAN WAS SURE THE WEEKEND WOULD BE FATTENING, so he made a point of running two extra miles on Saturday morning. On the way home, he stopped by the Russian Hill fire station and picked up one of the red-and-silver “Tot Finder” stickers he had seen in windows all over North Beach.
The sticker was designed to show firemen which window to break in order to rescue your child. There was a fireman on it, stalwart beyond belief, and he was holding a little girl in his arms.
Corny, maybe, but practical.
And not nearly so corny as the bumper slicker that Chip Hardesty had slapped on his Saab: HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR CHILD TODAY? That one drove him crazy every time he passed Hardesty’s house.
When he reached the courtyard, Mrs. Madrigal was scrubbing the mossy slime off the steps leading to the house. “It’s getting so slippery,” she explained, looking up. “I was afraid someone might have a nasty spill.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said.
She stood up, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ve got to worry about something. It’s so quiet around here. Doesn’t anyone have any problems?”
He grinned at her. ??
?If you’re really pressed, I’m sure we could cook up a disaster or two.”
“That’s quite all right.” She eyed the “Tot Kinder” decal. “What have we here?”
“Oh.” He could already feel his face burning. “It’s just … kind of a joke, really.”
“Look at you,” she teased, recognizing his embarrassment. “What’s the matter? Did I catch you counting chickens?”
There was nothing he could do but laugh. “Do you have to ask?”
“No,” she answered, fussing with her hair. “You’re quite right. Well …” She put on a chipper face as she changed the subject. “You’ll be up bright and early in the morning.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant.
“For the sunrise service,” she added.
“Oh … no, that’s Mary Ann. I’m going to Hillsborough for the weekend.”
“Ah.” Despite her tone of voice, she still looked vaguely confused.
He began to wonder if he’d gotten his wires crossed. “You mean … she told you I was going?”
“No … no.”
“Then how did you …?”
“Well, Simon mentioned the service, actually … and I just assumed that the three of you …” She tapped her forehead and looked annoyed with herself. “Don’t mind the old lady. She’s getting senile. What’s happening in Hillsborough?”
“Uh … what?” He lost his train of thought for a moment, then recovered it. “Oh … a house party. Theresa Cross. Remember her? From the Cadillac?”
“Very well.” Her expression said it all.
“You don’t approve?”
“Well … I don’t really know her.”
“I’m going for the pool, really.”
The landlady ducked her eyes.
“I’m a big boy, you know.”
“Oh, my dear … I know.” She gave him a playful look, then signaled the end of their conversation by searching for her scrub brush.
When he reached the apartment, he could hear Mary Ann inside, so he stuffed the “Tot Finder” into the pocket of his Canterbury shorts. He didn’t want her to regard it as a pressure tactic. Her moods were too variable these days.
“Don’t get near me,” she said, seeing his coating of sweat.
He pretended to be hurt. “I thought you liked me pitted out.”
“At certain moments, my love. This isn’t one of them. Shouldn’t you be packing?”