In the midst of this appreciation Harry scampered onto the deck, causing the birds to ascend in a whirling flurry of green.
“Well, good morning,” said Michael as he scratched the poodle’s rump.
Thack knelt and joined him, studying Michael’s face before he spoke. “Don’t be mad at me,” he said.
“I’m not mad.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Go back to bed,” said Michael. “It’s too early for you.”
“Nah,” said Thack. “I’m up now. I’ll make us breakfast.”
It was oat bran, Sweeney style, black with raisins. They ate it at the kitchen table, while Harry watched them.
“Well, how was it?” asked Thack.
“Fine. They were nice. She’s really an extraordinary-looking woman.”
“I’m sure.”
This could have been snide, but Michael decided that it wasn’t.
Thack poked at his cereal for a while, then asked: “Did he drop any hairpins?”
“What do you mean?”
“C’mon. You know what that means.”
“I know, but…in this case…”
Thack sighed impatiently. “Did he just assume that everyone knew he was gay, or did he spend the whole evening playing breeder?”
“It wasn’t really one way or the other.”
“Did you tell him you were gay?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Thack, it didn’t come up. Besides, I’m your basic generic homo. Who needs to be told?”
“He does. He needs to be surrounded by fags and told what a fucking hypocrite he is.”
“I thought we were done with this,” said Michael. “Is there more milk?”
“In the refrigerator.”
Michael brought the carton to the table and splashed milk on his cereal.
“The thing is,” said Thack, “he was famous for being gay.”
“Not to me he wasn’t.”
“Oh, c’mon. I heard about it down in Charleston. Everybody in New York knew about him. He fucked every porn star in town.”
“So?”
“So now he’s out selling wedding rings and singing the praises of heterosexual love.”
“It’s his profession, sweetie.”
“O.K., but it doesn’t say shit about his character.”
Michael was beginning to get irked again. “You don’t know him,” he said. “Maybe he really loves her.”
“Right. And maybe she’s got a dick.”
“Thack…people get married for all sorts of reasons.”
“Sure. Money and image, to name two.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “He’s got much more money than she does.”
“And he plans to keep it too. Can’t have America knowing he’s a pervert.”
“They’re doing an AIDS benefit in L.A.,” Michael reminded him.
“Uh-huh. Welded at the hip, no doubt. A nice liberal married couple helping out the poor sick gay boys. Only you can be damn sure they won’t be mentioning the G-word.”
“Why are we arguing?” Michael asked. “You know I agree with you. Basically.”
“Why’d you go, then?”
“Look, it was question of not busting up the party. Mary Ann obviously wanted to go.”
“No, that’s a cop-out. You wanted to go too. This shit matters to you.”
“O.K.,” said Michael. “Maybe it does.”
Thack sulked for a moment. “Well, at least you admit it.”
“Admit what? That I was curious? Big deal. Thack, I can’t go through life being some sort of Hare Krishna for homos. I just can’t. I’d rather find out what I have in common with people and go from there.”
“Fine. But what you have in common with Russell Rand you could never talk about in public. Not if you wanted to be his friend.”
“Who said I wanted to be his friend?”
After a long, brooding silence, Thack said: “She should never have bullied us into going. She invited us to her house for dinner, and then she just let Burke take over. It was fucking rude.”
“I agree with you,” Michael said calmly. “It could have been handled better.”
This seemed to placate him. Eventually, Thack began to smile.
“What is it?” asked Michael.
“She told Brian that Burke has a little dick.”
“Brian told you that? When?”
“Yesterday at lunch.”
“It’s not true,” said Michael.
Thack gave him a sly look. “How would you know?”
“We double-dated to the mud baths in Calistoga. Him and Mary Ann and me and Jon. They have a girls’ side and a boys’ side, so we ended up in…you know, adjoining vats.” He shrugged. “It was kind of glopped with mud, but it looked fine to me.”
“Figures,” said Thack.
“What do you mean?”
“Brian thinks she said that to make him feel better.”
“About what?” asked Michael.
Thack shrugged. “Them still having a thing going.”
“Burke and Mary Ann? Please.”
“Well, you saw them last night.”
“Saw what?”
“Those looks she kept giving Burke.” Thack looked peevish. “She kept catching his eye all night long. Didn’t you see it?”
“No.”
“Well, something’s going on.”
“So why were we invited to witness it? That makes a helluva lot of sense.”
“Maybe she wants your blessing,” said Thack. “She usually does.”
“Oh, right. Why are you so down on her all the time? Does she always have to have an ulterior motive?”
“No, but…”
“Just save it, O.K.? I’m sick of arguing with you!”
This flare-up came so suddenly that Thack frowned. “What brought this on?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s not you. I had a bad dream.”
“About what?”
“Oh, it’s stupid. You and I went to Greece, looking for Mrs. Madrigal.”
Thack smiled. “What’s so bad about that?”
“Well…she was hiding from us. She was afraid we were gonna take her back. She had this little lean-to sort of thing on a cliff…with lots of her stuff from home. When we finally found her, she invited us in for sherry, and I told her how much we missed her, and she said: ‘Life is change, dear.’ It was really horrible.”
Thack reached across the table and stroked Michael’s hand. “You’re just feeling guilty about not calling her.”
“I know.”
“Do you have a number for her?”
“No.”
“Well, maybe…”
“I just have the creepiest feeling about this trip. There’s no real reason for it…I just do.” Michael knew how neurotic this sounded, but there was no point in denying his dread. Its roots apparently reached far deeper than that ridiculous dream.
Thack observed him for a moment. “You know,” he said gently, “you didn’t betray her when you moved out.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
“Well” if you wanna get technical, I didn’t give her that much notice. I lived there for ten years…”
“O.K., here we go.”
“That’s not it, though. It really isn’t.”
Thack gave him a dubious look.
“She wanted this to happen,” he said. “She wanted me to fall in love. For Christ’s sake, how can you betray your landlady?”
“Exactly.” Thack smiled victoriously and took another bite of his oat bran.
The call came when Michael was rescuing an English muffin from the jaws of their recently acquired antique Deco toaster. Mary Ann’s voice was subdued enough to suggest that Brian was still in bed. “Is this too early?” she asked without announcing herself.
“Not at all,” he told her.
Thack cast a curious glance at him.
“We lov
ed having you last night,” she said.
“Thanks. It was fun. We really enjoyed ourselves.”
His lover rolled his eyes.
“Aren’t the Rands nice?”
“Very.” He was keeping it cryptic now to avoid further commentary from Thack.
“Look, I wondered what you were doing tomorrow. I thought we could go down the Marina Green or something, take one of our walks.”
One of our walks. As if they did this all the time. As if they’d never stopped taking them.
“I could pick you up,” she added.
He hesitated only because Thack had reserved Saturday for building his pink triangle trellis. “God,” he said, “I’ve got so many chores…”
“I could have you back by early afternoon. Please, Mouse, I really need to talk to you.”
He marveled at the potency of an old nickname. “O.K. Fine. What time?”
“Ten o’clock?”
“Great. Shall I bring anything?”
“Just your sweet self,” she said. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
When he hung up, Thack said: “Mary Ann?”
He nodded. “We’re getting together tomorrow morning. The two of us.”
Thack said “Fine” and left it at that, but Michael knew what he was thinking.
He was thinking the same thing himself.
Lesbian Sauce
TAKING HER USUAL, SHORTCUT THROUGH THE CHURCHYARD, Mona Ramsey headed into the high street of Molivos, where a pack of German tourists had already set forth on a predinner prowl through the gift shops. The street, which was barely wide enough for a car, was roofed at this point by a mat of ancient wisteria, so that to enter it was to find herself in a tunnel—cool, dim, and cobbled—descending to the village center.
The tailor shop lay near the upper end of the tunnel, across from a pharmacy where a dough-faced old lady made proud display of condoms with names like Dolly, Squirrel, and Kamikaze. Dick-worship, Mona had found, was as rampant in Lesbos as it was everywhere else in Greece. You couldn’t buy a pack of breath mints at the local newsstand without running into a shelf or two of those plaster-pricked Pans.
The patriarchy was out in full force when she entered the tailor shop. The proprietor, who also functioned as vice-mayor of the village, was gabbing away to half a dozen of his male constituents. Seeing her, he rose behind his antique sewing machine and gave a little birdlike bob. His cronies receded noticeably, realizing she was a customer.
Hoping it would speak for itself, she held up the skirt that Anna had torn on her hike to Eftalou. Two days earlier, upon greeting the baker on her morning raisin bread run, Mona had made a stab at “kalimera,” but it had come out sounding a lot like “kalamari.” This had provoked gales of laughter from the other customers, who must have thought she had come to the wrong store. Who else but a stupid tourist would ask for squid at a bakery?
“Ahhh,” said the tailor, recognizing the skirt. “Kiria Madrigal.”
Thank God for that. Another fan of Anna’ Just…you know…” She held up the tear, laid her palm across it like a patch, and looked up at him hopefully.
“Yes, yes,” said the tailor, nodding. The other men nodded with him, reassuring her. He understands, they seemed to be saying. Now let us get back to our gossip.
She headed out into the high street, glad to be rid of this daughterly duty. An army truck came rattling up the viny tunnel, probably bound for the bakery, so she retreated into a gift shop to let it pass. The island was bristling with soldiers—the dreaded Turks being only six miles away—but the troops were too fuzzy-cheeked and funky to invoke her antimilitarist indignation.
She had been in the shop only a moment or two when she noticed a pair of English girls—one heavy, one slim—both with the same sculpted black-and-blond haircut. They were bent over a calendar called Aphrodite 89, obviously ogling the nudes. When the heavy one realized she was being watched, she tittered idiotically and pressed her fingers to her lips.
Mona reassured them with a worldly smile. “Not bad, eh?”
The skinny one made a fanning motion, pretending to cool herself off.
The three of them laughed together, reveling in this shared lechery. Mona couldn’t help but notice how good it felt to be a dyke among dykes again. There weren’t nearly enough of them in Gloucestershire.
The Mermaid was on the water, down where the esplanade became a sort of cobbled off-ramp to the little harbor. When she arrived, there were already three or four people staking claim to tables along the wall. On the wall itself, almost at eye level with the diners, stood a phalanx of alley cats, oblivious to the sunset, waiting for leftovers.
She tested a couple of tables and chose the less wobbly, then did the same with chairs. The sky was a ludicrous peach color, so she turned her chair to face it while it did its number. She wondered if the gushy couple next to her would burst into applause when it was over.
Costa, the proprietor, swept past her table with a bottle of retsina. “Your lovely mother,” he said. “Where is she?”
“She’s coming,” Mona told him, trying not to sound crabby about answering this question for the fourth time today. “She’s meeting me here.”
Costa set the retsina down at the next table, then swung past her again on his way to the kitchen. “We have very good swordfish tonight.”
“Great. You’re onto me.” She watched as he continued his progress into the restaurant, nodding to his customers like a priest dispensing absolution. Then he seized a sheet of fresh plastic and returned to her table, whipping it into place with a flourish. As custom seemed to demand, she helped him tuck the edges under the elastic band.
“Well,” he said, giving the tablecloth a final whack, “you got some sun today.
“Did I?” She poked doubtfully at her forearm. “Think I should try for one big freckle?”
“It looks good,” he insisted.
“Right.”
“Would you like wine now?”
“No, thanks. I’ll wait till she gets here.”
“Very good,” said Costa, and he was gone.
Out on the water, a blue-and-green fishing boat was putt-putting back to the harbor. In this orange explosion of evening it looked oddly triumphant, like something about to be hoisted into a mother ship. She wondered if its captain felt heroic, knowing that all eyes were upon him. Or did he just feel tired, ready for his dinner and a good night’s sleep?
She looked up the esplanade, to see a pair of strollers stopped at the wall: the mousy little straight couple from Manchester who had bored her so thoroughly two nights before at Melinda’s. Next to them, but farther along, stood the sixtyish German dykes she had already dubbed Liz and Iris, after a similar pair she knew at home.
Two by fucking two. The whole damn town was paired off.
Where in the name of Sappho did the single girls go?
The sign in Costa’s window said: TRY MY LESBIAN SAUCE ON FISH/LOBSTER. She had laughed at that on their first night in town, pointing it out to Anna, and they had both been charmed by its naïveté. Naïveté, hell. Costa had served plenty of lowercase lesbians—plenty of city people in general—who must have registered amusement over the years. Certainly he had wised up by now, leaving it there only to get a rise out of tourists on the esplanade.
Like, for instance, those babes with the two-tone haircuts. They had stopped in front of the restaurant, lured by that absurd sign, to smirk the way they had smirked in the gift shop. The little one tried to take a picture of it, but her black-hosieried friend glanced at the nearby diners and shook her head disapprovingly.
Go ahead, girl, thought Mona. Don’t be such a wimp.
“Ah…Mona?”
Startled by this voice, she turned to confront the handsome old codger who had shown Anna the sights this week, while Mona held down her post in a high-street taverna, watching the lovesick librarians go by. “Stratos,” she said.
Short and dapper, he was wearing a blue sharkskin suit and sme
lling faintly of some piny aftershave. In the sunset his oversized white mustache had turned to pink cotton candy. “May I join you?” he asked.
“Of course.” She waved toward a seat.
“I thought perhaps…” He lowered his compact frame into the flimsy little chair. “I hoped we could dine together tonight. You and your mother and I. But perhaps she has made plans already.”
“No. Not really. I mean…she’s joining me here any moment.”
“Oh, yes?”
“You’re welcome to join us.”
“But perhaps your mother may…”
“I’m sure it’s no problem, Straws.”
He looked pleased. “Then I insist that you both be my guests.”
“Whatever.”
“Good, good.” He clamped his leathery little hands on his knees. “We must have wine, then. Retsina, yes? Or do you still think it tastes like mouthwash?”
She smiled at him. “I can handle it.”
He flagged down the twelve-year-old who was busing tables and placed his order in Greek, patting the boy’s shoulder when he was through. “So,” he said, turning back to Mona, “have you been enjoying Molivos?”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, avoiding a direct answer. “Bored shitless” might lose something in the translation.
He murmured in agreement, then gazed out to sea with an air of doggy wistfulness. “The season is over,” he said. “The people are leaving. The shops are closing. You can feel a difference in the streets already.”
“Fine by me. The sooner that disco closes, the better.”
He seemed to know what she meant, giving her a look that was almost sorrowful. “It is a great shame,” he said.
“It gets louder and louder after midnight. And it’s no good closing your shutters, because it just gets hot and stuffy, and you can still hear the damn thing, anyway.”
He nodded gravely. “Many people feel the way you do.”
“Why doesn’t somebody do something, then? Pass a noise ordinance or something.”
“There is such an ordinance,” said Stratos. He seemed on the verge of explaining this, when the busboy arrived with the retsina and three glasses. The old man dismissed him, then filled two of the glasses. “There is such an ordinance, but the police have refused to enforce it.”