As it happened, there was a light burning at the unnumbered house on Tandy Street. It wasn’t in the front window but somewhere in the back of the house. Shawna couldn’t see the window itself, since the space between the houses was so narrow, but something was illuminating the blind wall of the neighboring house.
It was much harder to park there at night, so she had to comb the neighborhood for a while to find a space. As she was walking back toward the house, it occurred to her that she had never confirmed that the unnumbered house was, in fact, 437 Tandy Street. It was too late for quibbling, though. If her cryptic note about a dead woman had landed in the wrong hands, at least she’d have a chance to explain herself.
Remembering the broken doorbell, she rapped on the door three times.
A dog—that dog from the last time—began to bark from somewhere in the back of the house. It was silenced very quickly by a gruff male voice yelling, “Quiet!”
Moments later, the door opened. A large, stoop-shouldered old man stood there glowering at her, holding the little dog under one arm. He was wearing the red Snuggie she had seen through the window. It gave him an absurdly ecclesiastical look.
“I’m sorry to bother you at night,” she said. “I’m the person who left the note last week.”
He just gaped at her, swaying. She realized he was drunk.
“You’re Sheila?”
“Shawna.”
He beckoned her in with a wave of his ecclesiastical arm. This was too much for him to handle at once, so he lost his balance and had to steady himself against the door. When both the dog and the Snuggie escaped to the floor, Shawna was relieved to see that the old man was wearing something underneath: a short-sleeved white shirt and worn-shiny trousers. He was eightyish, she figured, but probably had not been handsome at any age. When she tried to pair him mentally with the stunning Alexandra, the most charitable she could be was Beauty and the Beast.
“Sorry I didn’t call,” he said, closing the door. “I’ve had some sorting-out to do.” He was slurring his words, so it sounded more like “shorting out,” which Shawna thought was a good description of his emotional state. She could practically hear the sparks.
“I understand,” she said.
“I can’t ask you to sit down. I have to go somewhere. There’s something I have to do.”
“That’s okay . . . really.”
“How did you know Alexandra?”
“I didn’t, exactly. I brought her to the hospital once. I visited a few times. I just felt a sort of connection with her. She seemed like a good person.” Why give him the gory details? she thought. He was suffering enough already. “She was your wife, right?”
He nodded dolefully. “Once upon a time.”
“Before the drugs took over.” Shawna spoke these words softly, almost reverently, not as a question but simply to finish his thought.
“Did she say anything about me?” he asked.
He looked so pitiful and ruined that Shawna couldn’t bring herself to say no. “She saved a letter you wrote her. A love letter. She must’ve loved you very much. You can have it, if you like. Well . . . you wrote it, but still . . . it means something.” She was glad Otto wasn’t here to watch her scrambling so shamelessly for her happy ending. “I have several of her things, in fact. Photos, mostly, but you’re welcome to them.”
“That would be nice,” he said.
He looked so grateful that she was emboldened to go all the way. “I also have her cremains.”
“Her what?”
“Her ashes. She was cremated.”
“Oh.”
“It’s up to you, of course. There might be someplace you’d like to scatter them.”
He seemed to think about that for a moment. “Where are they?”
“In the car.”
“Get them, please.”
She all but sprinted there and back.
He took the ashes from her on his doorstep, holding them close to his chest as if they might somehow escape from him.
“I’m so glad I found you,” she told him.
He went back into the house without a word.
Chapter 32
Back Before Bedtime
“It gets dark so early,” Mary Ann was saying, apropos of nothing. She was hugging her knees in the window seat in Michael’s living room, gazing out at the cottage in the garden. The sky above Twin Peaks was almost drained of its magenta stain.
“I hate winter,” Michael announced, slouching in a nearby armchair. “Fucking Daylight Savings. Ben always gets home after dark.”
“Why doesn’t he just leave early? He’s his own boss, right?”
“Yeah, but . . . the traffic in the Mission is god-awful at rush hour, so it’s better just to miss it altogether and sleep in later in the morning.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
“He’ll be home soon,” Michael added. “He makes a point of it when he has a play date.”
She turned and looked at him. “A what?”
“A play date. Some hot daddy he met at the Y.”
It took her a while to catch his drift, and then she couldn’t think of anything to say except: “How do you do that?”
“How do I do what?”
“Not be jealous.”
“Who says I’m not?”
“Then why do you agree to it?”
He shrugged. “It’s something we agreed on years ago. I think of it as the price of admission.”
She frowned. “You make him sound like a ride at the fair.”
“Well . . .” He was trying to look devilish.
“Seriously, Mouse. Why?”
“Because men know how men are. I know how I was at Ben’s age. You know, too, actually. You were there.”
She appreciated this nod to their wicked youth, but she still wasn’t buying it. “But if two people are in love with each other, if they marry each other, for heaven’s sake . . .”
“ . . . then they know enough not to make fucking the deal breaker. They know there’s something much more important.”
She wondered if this declaration was a not-so-oblique reference to her situation with Bob. “But there have to be rules, Mouse. There just do.”
“We have rules. Full disclosure, for one thing. And we’re in bed with each other at the end of the day. Our commitment is for life, and we save our hearts for each other. That way we can have play and permanency. If monogamy becomes more important than fidelity, you’re bound to get hurt. It’s all the lying that clobbers you, not the sex.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Ever tried watching it on Skype?”
He cringed. “That must’ve been awful.”
“And, you know, Mouse, it wouldn’t have been an improvement if he’d told me in advance that he’d be fucking Calliope that afternoon.”
“Maybe . . . but just having to keep something secret can drive a huge wedge between you. And in the end that just makes it easier to fall in love with someone else.”
“Okay, fine. Thanks for the input. Let’s talk about something else.”
He seemed to realize how badly he’d stepped in it. “I don’t mean it’s necessarily right for you, sweetie. It’s not even right for lots of gay men. I just had to decide on what was important and trust in that. Otherwise love turns into a stupid Maury Povich show, where it’s all about lie detectors in the end. I’d rather we had the freedom to play occasionally and concentrate on having the deeper stuff. You know?”
“And he gives you the freedom too?”
“Of course.” He grinned. “Not that I exercise it all that often.”
“Why not?”
“I’m old . . . in case you haven’t noticed.”
“You’re not old,” she said, scolding him with a glance. “You’re my age.”
BEN CAME HOME NOT LONG after that. Perversely, Mary Ann found herself studying his gap-toothed face for telltale signs of extracurricular pleasure. It was the same old Ben, though, wholesome as cornflakes as he burst thr
ough the door with that loopy dog, kissing Michael before dropping a small paper bag on the coffee table.
“You guys feel like going out for dinner?” he asked. “Some place in the neighborhood, maybe?”
“Sure,” said Michael, plastering on a smile for his husband. She was almost certain he wasn’t as blasé about this homecoming as he pretended to be.
“Sushi?” asked Ben, looking at both of them.
“Great,” said Michael. “Sounds good.” He glanced down at the bag on the coffee table. “What’s that, then?”
“Just some baby tangerines.”
“Yum,” said Mary Ann.
Michael looked puzzled. “All by themselves?”
“They were a present.”
“Really?” Michael widened his eyes noticeably. “For whom?”
“For us,” Ben said evenly, looking directly at Michael.
“From . . . ?”
“My buddy at the gym. He bought too many at the farmers’ market and thought we might like some.”
“That was thoughtful of him,” said Michael.
Ben wriggled free of Michael’s penetrating gaze and turned back to Mary Ann. “Are you good with sushi? There’s a new Italian place we could try.”
“You know what,” she said pleasantly, already feeling the suffocating tension in the air, “you guys just go ahead. I’ll curl up here with a book and some Yoplait.”
“You can’t do that,” said Ben.
“Yes, I can. I’d like to, actually.” This was the truth, since she didn’t want to get caught in their emotional crossfire tonight, however civilly it might be played out. Besides, she loved the idea of having the whole house to herself, knowing the guys would be back before bedtime. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll have company.”
She meant Roman, of course, who was already sprawled out next to her in the window seat, as if in anticipation of their evening alone together.
ONCE THE GUYS WERE GONE, she accepted their long-standing offer to use their shower. Compared to the fiberglass cubicle in the cottage, this was a luxuriously roomy space, and the rain showerhead was the size of a Frisbee. Standing beneath a tropical downpour, she used their extension mirror to examine her incisions. She was starting to think of those four little cat scratches as a sort of Map to the Stars’ Homes. (“This is where Lucille Ball used to live . . . and over there is the former home of Ava Gardner.”)
Her surgery had been like a clever burglary, where the house had been left so tidy you could barely notice that someone had broken in. That had certainly been a bonus, but, more than anything, she was grateful to her uterus for being such a pilferable item, such a sturdy, yet disposable, little carrying-case for cancer. She visualized the bad stuff being taken somewhere far away, somewhere she would never have to go again.
Something soft and fleshy brushed against her knee and made her jump. It was Roman, or rather Roman’s tongue, a sensation she was learning to recognize. He had walked into the shower as if he owned the place, which he pretty much did, as far as she could tell. Michael and Ben had been giving him shampoos in here.
“Go on,” she said, giggling. “That’s very nice of you, but I don’t need your help.”
The dog just gaped at her as if he needed convincing.
“Go, Roman . . . go find your monster.”
His monster was a hard-sided felt cyclops that he was encouraged to mangle in lieu of destroying the sofa cushions. Its white polyester innards were strewn all over the house. He had been through several monsters in the course of Mary Ann’s stay.
The dog wagged his tail excitedly and left on his quest. She showered for another five minutes, dried off with one of their thirsty white towels and slipped into clean flannel pajamas. She had told the guys she would curl up with a book, but that had just been a figure of speech. She wondered how many people who said that actually did it, or if they ended up, as she had, back around the campfire of the Web, telling tales to strangers.
But she felt curled up, at least. It was so cozy there on her bed in the cottage, with her laptop at her fingertips and Roman’s fleecy body radiating warmth against her leg. Facebook lifted her spirits even more, since there were seven new people soliciting her friendship, two of whom she actually remembered. One was a realtor named Shelley, whom she’d met on a Pilates retreat at Canyon Ranch; the other was someone she had known during her pre-Bob party-planning days in Manhattan. She told both of them about her surgery, calling herself a cancer survivor for the very first time. It felt remarkably good.
She had four private messages tonight. Three of them were just people thanking her for the add. The other was from Fogbound One, the faceless Facebooker who had spooked her by having known Norman Neal Williams all those years ago.
The message said: “Did you like the T-shirt?”
It made no sense to her. The only T-shirt that came to mind was the “Middle of Nowhere” T-shirt from Pinyon City that the guys had left on her doorstep the night before her surgery. She had never even thanked them for it, and, for that matter, didn’t recall having seen it since her return from St. Sebastian’s. That wasn’t especially remarkable, of course, since Ben had a way of tidying things up.
She wondered if Fogbound One had come to her by way of Ben’s Pinyon City network. Maybe someone he and Michael knew up there had seen them buy the T-shirt. Or Ben or Michael had mentioned it to someone who was using it now to presume an intimacy with her. It was annoying, at any rate, since the vagueness of the message was clearly meant to force a reply from her. She wasn’t taking the bait. Fogbound One was one of those losers who glutted her news feed with reams of their favorite poems and quotations but had nothing much to say themselves. Besides, if this person had really been friends with Norman, why on earth would she want to share anything with them?
This was a no-brainer.
She went to her Friends list, scrolled down to Fogbound One and clicked on the x that would defriend this faceless nuisance forever.
THE NOISE ON THE ROOF didn’t surprise her—or Roman, for that matter. They were both used to the sound of raccoons crossing the compound on their nightly descent to the gourmet garbage cans of the Castro. They were huge creatures, sometimes four or five of them, so they sounded like sled dogs on the roof. Their chatter was a peculiar clicking noise. Mary Ann remembered that sound from her youth on Russian Hill, but these days it evoked the scaly green aliens in that Mel Gibson crop-circle movie.
Roman had a similar reaction to them, barking furiously at the first indication of their presence. She had learned to make sure all the doors were closed, not because the raccoons would barge in, but because Roman would chase after them. That would not be a pleasant scenario, she’d been warned. Years ago, Michael had owned a poodle whose eyes had, reportedly, gone completely red after a strangling—a strangling—by raccoons. These little bastards had hands, and were capable of ganging up on even the largest dogs.
The door to the cottage was already closed, so she held on to Roman’s collar and spoke to him as soothingly as possible.
“That’s okay, little boy. It’s just those old meanies.”
The dog continued to growl under his breath until the clattering on the roof had stopped and the clicking sound had passed into the neighboring garden.
“See?” she cooed. “All gone.”
Roman seized this golden opportunity to solicit love, sprawling on his back in an invitational pose. She rubbed his belly gently for several minutes, until both of them were almost hypnotized into a place of peace.
Then, without warning, the dog righted himself and began wagging his tail gleefully. He went to the door and tapped it once with his paw, asking to be let out. He was making the silly crooning noise he reserved for people he knew.
By now she had heard the crunch of gravel in the garden path, so she assumed that the guys were home. She got out of bed and opened the door. “Go on,” she told the dog. “Go give your daddies a kiss.”
But the person who had promp
ted the dog’s ecstasy was neither Michael nor Ben but a hunched-over old man in a long black coat. He was holding the handle of a white plastic shopping bag. “Here ya go, Roman,” the old man said gruffly, using his free hand to pull something from his pocket. The dog gobbled down the treat and sat waiting for another, as if the two of them had performed this ritual a hundred times before.
“Excuse me,” said Mary Ann, remaining in the doorway of the cottage. “If you’re looking for Michael and Ben, they’re out at dinner.”
The old man said nothing. He was outside the range of the porch light, so it was difficult to read his expression. When he finally stumbled forward, he reached into his pocket again, pulled out a small black handgun and pointed it at her.
“We have to talk,” he said.
Chapter 33
Those Damn Tangerines
“Just level with me,” said Michael. “The tangerines were for you.”
They were eating at the Thai place next to the Edge. They both liked this place, but they could never remember the name of it, so they always called it “the Thai place next to the Edge.” Ben had thought they might drop by the Edge afterward, have a few beers together, but the prospects of that were looking pretty dim right now.
“The tangerines were for both of us,” he replied calmly.
“What? ‘Thanks for the sex. Here’s some tangerines for you and your husband.’ ”
“That was the gist of it, yeah.”
“So you told him you were married?”
“Of course. I brought it up. I referred to my partner. I always do.”
“But he’s single himself?”
“Seems to be. He’s got some kid in Brazil that he’s hot for, but I don’t think he’s here all that much.”
“You understand my concern here, don’t you? Produce is kind of personal.”
“Personal?”
“You know what I mean. Domestic. It feels like courtship.”