Brian didn’t look up from his beer. “He was Puerto Rican,” he pointed out.
“Besides, cocaine isn’t supposed to … He was?”
“Yep.”
“I had a Puerto Rican roommate once. I got her through the Ethnic Studies Program at college.”
He sipped his Oly, poker-faced. “She work out?”
“It was really educational.”
“Good.”
“Her name was Cecilia.”
“Nice name.”
“Cecilia Lopez.”
“Mmm. I sent off for a spider monkey once when I was eleven or twelve.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t …”
“Those things in the back of comic books. Darling Pet Monkey. Fits in a Teacup …”
“But what does that …?”
“Her name was Cecilia too.”
“Oh.”
“She was dead when I got her. All packed up in her little crate. It nearly killed me.”
“How awful! Was … whose fault was it?”
“Nobody’s, really.”
She nodded solemnly.
“It was . . . suicide!”
She blinked at him morosely.
“Drugs,” he explained. “And she was so young.”
She reached out to lay her hand on his, but he rose abruptly and slapped some money on the bar.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m too depressed to fuck tonight.”
The Superman Building was a towering Deco apartment house at the corner of Green and Leavenworth. Brian loved it because it reminded him of the Daily Planet building in the old television series.
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound …
He also loved it because it afforded him a kind of power that sometimes bordered on the erotic.
Tonight, as he shucked his Levi’s and rugby shirt, he noted that there were still six or eight lights burning in the Superman Building.
He lifted his binoculars and studied the sixth floor for several minutes, concentrating on a large corner apartment. A dumpy-looking woman with short hair and a red sweater moved sluggishly from room to room, plumping pillows.
At midnight?
A lover arriving? Not likely. An early departure in the morning? Maybe, but what guest could be that important? It was probably a simple case of boredom. Boredom or nervousness … or insanity.
Bored himself, he shifted his gaze to the—what?—eighth floor? There, against a well-lighted window, a thin, balding man was lifting his foot slowly to meet his outstretched arm.
The movement seemed too expressive for exercise, too erratic for dance. Some sort of martial art, maybe … or maybe the whole goddamn building was full of loonies.
If he wasn’t careful, he’d start making up names for these people. Like Jimmy Stewart did in Rear Window.
A light came on.
He raised the binoculars again and zeroed in on an eleventh-floor room that was suffused with a dim, rosy light. Seconds later, a woman appeared.
She stood near the window in a long gown of some sort, a dark form against the fleshy warmth of her room. She was motionless for a moment, then her hands went down to her waist and up again suddenly to her face.
She was wearing binoculars.
And she was looking at Brian.
The House
AT DAWN THE DESERT AROUND WINNEMUCCA WAS gray and jagged-looking, as if built from shattered concrete, fragments perhaps of a pre-Columbian freeway.
Or so it seemed to Mona from the window of the battered Ford Ranchero that bore her swiftly and unceremoniously from the bus station to a place called the Blue Moon Lodge.
“Well, that’s her,” bellowed Mother Mucca, nodding through the windshield to the one-story stucco building squatting in the distance.
“Nice,” said Mona.
“Yep,” said Mother Mucca.
“You had it long?”
“Sixty years long enough for ya?”
Mona whistled.
The octogenarian emitted a gravelly chuckle. “Mother Mucca is an old motherfucker!”
Before Mona could muster a comment about the Young at Heart, the Ranchero swung abruptly into a dusty parking lot adjacent to the brothel. Mother Mucca leaned on the horn.
“Now where the hell is Bobbi?”
An aluminum door banged open, revealing a nervous-looking blonde woman in her mid-twenties. She was wearing cut-off Levi’s and a pink Qiana blouse knotted at the waist. Hobbling slightly, she ran out to meet the car.
“Welcome back,” she beamed.
“What the hell happened to your feet?”
“Nothin’.”
Mother Mucca climbed out of the Ranchero, scowling like a cigar store Indian. “Nothin’, huh?”
“Mother Mucca, I didn’t let him—”
“Now, you listen to me, dolly! If you turn one more trick with that crazy-ass Elko shitkicker, I’ll boot your ass outa here so fast you’ll wish you never … You ain’t broke nothin’, have ya?”
Bobbi shook her head.
“Fetch the bags, then. This here’s Judy.” She jerked her head toward Mona. “Judy’s gonna stay and work the phones for a few days.”
The two young women nodded to each other.
“Give her Tanya’s room,” said Mother Mucca, mellowing a little now. “But take out the swing first.”
Their first stop was the kitchen, where Mother Mucca swilled half a quart of milk and toasted Pop-Tarts for the two of them.
“She’s a sweet little thing, ain’t she?”
“Who?”
“Bobbi.”
“Oh … yes. She seems very nice.”
“Fucked up, though. Loco as they come. You gotta watch her like a mother hen. Hell, when I found that dolly she’d sunk plumb to the bottom. She couldn’t go no lower.”
Mona shook her head sympathetically. “Heavy drugs?”
“Nope. Worse. Key punch operator.”
Mona’s room looked out on the desert, the last of a series of rooms opening, motel-style, on a common sidewalk.
Her furnishings consisted of a bed (neither waternor brass), a green vinyl butterfly chair, a Formica-topped night stand, and an Eisenhower-era vanity displaying, among other things, an Autograph Hound (Tanya’s?), a plastic fern and an Avon cologne bottle shaped like a stagecoach.
Mona was face down on the bed—wondering whether a week in a whorehouse would seriously screw up your karma—when Bobbi entered the room.
“Knock, knock,” she said sweetly.
Mona rolled over, rubbing her eyes. “Oh … hi.”
“I brought you some towels.”
“Thanks.”
“You settled in now?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Bobbi.”
She smiled. “Sure, Judy.”
Mona returned the smile, feeling an odd sense of communication with this simple creature.
“You’ll like Mother Mucca,” said Bobbi softly. “She talks real mean, but she’s not that way at all. She loves us all like daughters.”
“I guess she never had any of her own, huh?”
“No. No daughters. She had a son once.”
“What happened to him?”
“He ran away, they say. When he was a teen-ager. A long time ago.”
Land Ho!
BREAKFAST ON THE PACIFIC PRINCESS, THE ALOHA DECK dining room was humming with sun-flushed passengers, eager for their first glimpse of Puerto Vallarta. Mary Ann made her entrance without Michael, who was still showering.
“Well,” boomed Arnold Littlefield, dousing his scrambled eggs with ketchup, “the hubby stood you up, huh?”
Arnold and his wife, Melba, shared a table with Mary Ann and Michael. The Littlefields were fortyish and always wore matching clothes. Today, in deference to their destination, they were sporting identical Mexican flour sack outfits. They were from Dublin. Dublin, California.
“He always takes longer than I do,” said Mary Ann breezily, as she sat down. It was easier, by far, to pass off Mich
ael as her husband than to explain what Michael called “our bizarre but weird relationship.”
“Right on,” said Melba, with a mouthful of bacon. “Men are much fussier than girls.”
Mary Ann nodded, grateful that Michael wasn’t around to comment on that one.
She ordered a huge breakfast, then remembered Burke Andrew and canceled the waffles. She was downing her orange juice when Michael appeared, looking spirited and squeaky clean.
He was wearing Adidas, Levi’s and a white T-shirt emblazoned with a can of Crisco.
“Apologies, apologies.” He grinned, nodding toward the Littlefields as he sat down.
“No sweat,” said Arnold. “You better keep an eye on the little lady, though.” He winked at Mary Ann. “She’s too pretty to be let out without a leash.”
“Arnold!” That was Melba.
“Well, Mike knows that. Don’t you, Mike?”
“Can’t let her out of my sight for a minute.”
Melba elbowed her husband. “You don’t ever say that about me, Arnold!”
“Well, these kids are younger than us and you remember how it was when … Say, Mike, how long you been with Crisco?”
“What?” Michael had been cruising a waiter at the next table.
“Your shirt. You affiliated with Crisco?”
Mary Ann thought of crawling into her oatmeal.
“Yeah,” Michael answered soberly. “I’ve been … in Crisco—oh, I don’t know—four, five years.”
“Sales?”
“No. Public relations.”
“Mouse …”
Michael winked at Arnold. “The little woman doesn’t like me to talk business at the table.”
“Right on,” said Melba, siding with Mary Ann. “Arnold talks about aluminum honeycomb until he’s blue in the face. And it’s so boring!”
“It may be boring to you, Melba, but it’s not boring to some people, not if that’s the way they choose to make their living! You don’t think Crisco is boring, do you, Mike?”
“Hell, no,” said Michael assertively.
From the Promenade Deck, the white sands and palm trees of Puerto Vallarta seemed almost within reach. Mary Ann leaned against the rail and watched the taxi drivers and serape salesmen who had already begun to swarm across the landing.
“Where shall we go, Mouse?”
“I don’t know. Down the beach, I guess.”
“We don’t have any Mexican money.”
“The purser said they’ll take … Hang on. Here he comes!”
“Who?”
“The mysterious but hunky Mr. Andrews.”
Mary Ann wheeled around to see the strawberry blond striding down the deck toward her. “It’s Andrew,” she corrected Michael quickly. “No s.”
Michael shrugged. “His s looks fine to me.”
Mary Ann missed the joke; Burke Andrew was beaming at her. “I’ve been looking for you two,” he said.
Both of us? thought Mary Ann.
Baby Talk
EVEN THREE SCOTCHES AT THE UNIVERSITY CLUB couldn’t take Beauchamp’s mind off the letter he carried in the breast pocket of his Brioni.
“Well,” said Peter Cipriani, joining the young executive on the terrace, “so life isn’t a cabaret, old chum?”
Beauchamp scowled. “Not even half the time.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
“You could be me, mon petit. You could be doomed to dinner tonight at Langston’s house.”
Beauchamp glanced at him ruefully over the rim of his glass. “What’s on the menu tonight? Antique pheasant?”
“Worse—oh, worse!”
“Victorian venison?”
Peter shook his head soberly. “The rumor—God help us—is Edwardian elk! Heaven knows how long that creature’s been in his freezer. Miss Langston hasn’t felled an elk since the late sixties!”
What a pisser, thought Beauchamp bitterly as he rode the elevator to his Telegraph Hill penthouse. Other people’s problems were laughable next to his.
DeDe was in the library, curled up on the camel-back sofa with a copy of Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love. Her free hand was partially submerged in a cloisonné bowl full of M & M’s. Beauchamp glared at her from the doorway.
“Behold! The Total Woman!”
“I’ve had a long day, Beauchamp.”
He dropped his attaché case and headed for the bar. “I’ll bet you have.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
He kept his back to her as he filled a shot glass with J & B. “It must be murder finding a super jumbo bag of M & M’s. You drive all the way to Woolworth’s?”
“Very funny.”
“If fat amuses you, go right ahead and yuck.”
“May I remind you I’m carrying two babies!”
“I know,” he said, downing his Scotch. “Plain and Peanut.”
Dinner that evening was cold quiche and salad. They ate in glacial silence, avoiding each other’s eyes, waiting petulantly for the moment they both knew would come.
“We have to talk,” Beauchamp said finally.
“About what?”
“You know goddamn well about what!”
“Beauchamp … I’m tired of talking about it. I don’t blame you for being upset. I really don’t. But I’m having these babies and I can’t take this … harassment anymore.” She looked him squarely in the eyes. “I’ve thought about this a long time. I’ve decided to move to Mother’s.”
“Brilliant. Just brilliant.”
“I don’t know whether it’s brilliant or not, but at least I’ll be—”
“Look, goddammit! You’ve got some explaining to do. You’re not running home to Mommy until I get a few answers.” He fumbled in his pocket for the letter, thrusting it into her hands. “This charming anonymous missive came to me at the office today!”
DeDe’s hands shook as she removed a sheet of notebook paper from the envelope. The message, printed in yellow with a felt-tip pen, consisted of eight words:
WHY DON’T YOU NAME THEM YIN AND YANG?
“Now,” said Beauchamp ominously, “will you please tell me what the hell that means?”
DeDe stared at the horrible note for several seconds, stalling for time, commanding herself to stay calm. The cycle, she realized, was complete. From her best friend Binky, to Carson Callas the gossip columnist, to the city at large, the ignominious truth had spread: She was bearing the children of a Telegraph Hill grocery boy!
She laid the letter on the table, face down. “That’s disgusting,” she said quietly.
“Answer the question, DeDe.”
“Beauchamp, please …”
He was poised like a cobra.
“Oh, fuck it, Beauchamp! The babies’ father is Chinese!”
The Landlady’s Lesson
WHEN HE HAD FINISHED HIS SHIFT AT PERRY’S, Brian went straight home to Barbary Lane. Mrs. Madrigal was perched on a stepladder in the hallway, replacing a light bulb. Up there, in her sixty-watt aura, she shone like a B-movie madonna about to descend on an unsuspecting French village.
“Welcome to Manderley,” she mugged. “I’m Mrs. Danvers. I’m sure you’ll be very happy here.”
Brian laughed. “Feeling gothic tonight?”
“My dear! Aren’t you? This place is a veritable tomb, what with Mary Ann and Michael in Mexico and Mona God knows where—and you out there terrorizing half of the female population.”
“I was working.”
“Mmm. It is work, isn’t it?”
He bridled at her teasing, but let it go. She had cast him as the aging Don Juan of her Barbary Lane family, and the label seemed as apt as any at this point. “Well,” he sighed, “I guess I’d better go confront my kitchen sink. It’s beginning to grow penicillin, I think.”
“Brian?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you care to smoke a quick joint with an old lady?” Her huge blue eyes blinked at him unembarrassedly.
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“Sure,” he smiled. “I’ll bring the joint, if you bring the old lady.”
Her apartment seemed fussier than ever, as if the doilies and tassels had taken to breeding in their unguarded moments. Still flanking the archway to the dining room were the two marble statues that had fascinated Brian on his very first visit to the landlady’s home: a boy with a thorn in his foot and a woman with a water jug.
Mrs. Madrigal sat on the ancient velvet sofa, curling her feet up under her kimono in a movement that seemed surprisingly girlish. She took a short toke off the joint and handed it to her tenant. “So who is she, dear?”
“Who?”
“The creature who’s driving my carefree boy to utter distraction.”
Brian held the smoke in his lungs for as long as possible. “I think you’ve got the wrong carefree boy.”
“Have I?”
Her eyes were on him again, offering refuge.
“Mrs. Madrigal, it’s late and I don’t feel like playing games.” His abruptness embarrassed him, so he laughed and added: “Of course, if you know any … creatures, I could use another notch or two in my gun!”
“Brian, Brian … that isn’t you, dear.”
He snapped at her. “Would you just lay off with the—”
“I worry about you, dear. Hell, I know I’m a nosy old biddy, but look, I’ve got nothing better to do. I mean, if you ever want somebody just to talk to …” She leaned forward slightly and smiled like a stoned Mona Lisa. “May I give you some unsolicited advice?”
He nodded, feeling more uncomfortable by the second.
“The next time you meet a girl—someone that you really like—pretend that you’re a war hero and that all your basic plumbing got shot off in the war.”
Brian grinned incredulously. “What?”
“I’m perfectly serious, dear. Don’t tell a soul—especially her, for heaven’s sake—but pretend to yourself that this dreadful thing has happened and the only way you can communicate your feelings is through your eyes, your heart.”
“And what if she wants to go home with me?”
“You can’t, dear. You’ve lost your wee-wee, remember? All you can do is smile bravely and invite her to dinner the next night—or maybe a nice walk in the park. She’ll accept, too. I promise she will.”