“It’s a Camel.”
“That’s okay.”
Lasko struck the match against the concrete, lit the cigarette, and took a long drag, staring into space with shiny black marble eyes. Down the railroad tracks red and green lights were blinking like lost pieces of Christmas.
“How does that poem go, anyway?”
There was only one poem that Andy knew by heart: Tennyson’s “Lotos-Eaters.” He had recited a portion of it in Mrs. Peacock’s English class to a sea of listless faces, unaware that he had caught the fancy of anyone, much less Lasko.
“I don’t know it all,” he said.
“Just do what you know.” The tip of Lasko’s cigarette went bright orange in anticipation.
Andy thought a bit. “Um . . . okay.” He straightened his spine for the recitation. “Eating the lotos day by day, to watch the crisping ripples on the beach, and tender curving lines of creamy spray, to lend our hearts and spirits wholly to the influence of mild-minded melancholy, to muse and brood and live again in memory with those old faces of our infancy.”
He stopped, embarrassed, unsure how much he could remember. Lasko was still gazing ahead, his face wreathed in smoke. His leg was still pressed against Andy’s, warm as a radiator and just as solid. “Have you ever been to a beach?”
Andy said he had never even seen an ocean.
“Me neither. They have beaches in Frisco, but it’s too cold to swim in the ocean, so they all go to this big swimming pool. Indoors with big glass windows and stuffed bears and a penny arcade. They have a big waterwheel up above it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like at a sawmill, you know?” Lasko turned to Andy, his face so close that Andy could feel the breeze of his tobaccoey breath. “Only you jump into it, and it tumbles you round and round and dumps you into the pool, one on top of the other.”
“Wow,” murmured Andy, ostensibly about the mechanism, but mostly at the thought of being tumbled round and round and dumped on top of Lasko. “Really nifty,” he added, impersonating the hale-fellow tone of the Hardy Boys.
“I figured you for the adventurous type,” said Lasko. “Soon as you brought that book to school.” He looked down at the valise, waiting at their feet like a puppy craving attention. “I can pull this off, Andy, but I need a buddy to help me.”
“Pull what off?”
“My escape to Frisco.”
Andy envisioned that rattletrap truck bouncing over the Sierra, dropping hubcaps at every treacherous turn. “That’s a long trip, Lasko. My mama won’t let me drive that far.”
“We ain’t talkin’ to your mama.” He shook Andy’s knee conspiratorially. “Or my mama neither. Besides, you don’t need to drive me. I just need you to help me for one day. Right here in town. Easy as pie. You can be my alibi.”
Those five words, with their presumption of intimacy, seduced Andy so completely that they might have been imprinted on a candy Valentine heart.
“Do you have your own car?” he asked.
“I got more than that,” said Lasko. “I got a dozen cars, and they’re all air-conditioned.”
Andy gaped at him. “The Rexall Train?”
“See?” said Lasko. “Look how smart you are!”
Chapter 10
SNEAKER WAVE
“Wrong Diana,” said Ben as a smile exposed the gap between his teeth.
They were standing on the brink of the continent at the new visitor center next to the Cliff House. Michael had already admired its low profile, the clever way its timber and raw concrete echoed the ruins of the Sutro Baths down below. The swimming pavilion had once been as glassy-eyed and cavernous as a Paris railway station, but a suspicious fire had gutted it in 1966 (over a decade before Michael’s arrival in San Francisco) leaving only this footprint of a temple, a sea-stained Mondrian. Harold and Maude had famously frolicked among these ruins, and Michael himself had often reflected on them, back in the day, when exploring the nearby pagan shrubbery.
This was their Sunday expedition. Couples could get stuck in ruts if they weren’t diligent, so Michael and Ben had resolved to seek out a different venue every week. In recent months that had meant the Point Isabel dog park, the Disney Family Museum in the Presidio, the Kabuki Theater (for movies with margaritas and turkey salad sandwiches), and the Hunky Jesus Contest in Dolores Park (a repeat, admittedly from last year, though there was always something original). Michael had heard raves from the poppers guy at Does Your Father Know about a statue of Diana recently erected at the new visitor center, so he had proposed a visit, never once considering that it might have been Diana the Huntress and not the Princess of Wales who had been depicted. Ben had found the mix-up amusing.
“Why would you even think it was that Diana?”
There was no way out of this but a pokerfaced gag. “Because she is loved by our people.”
“Gay people?”
“Yes,” he replied with exaggerated dignity. “And anyone who might enjoy her company while gazing upon the Pacific.”
The truth was that people barely talked about the sad Spencer girl anymore. She was yesterday’s tabloid, a one-off episode on the History Channel. There was a new princess now, a pretty non-troublesome Disney brunette who seemed to have been special-ordered by the palace for smooth operation. Michael felt old and silly.
Ben, sweetly, let him off the hook with a sudden change of subject. “So why Winnemucca?”
Michael grinned. “That should be the slogan for tourists.”
“And they’re driving there in Brian’s Winnebago?”
“That’s what he said.” Michael turned up the collar of his peacoat against the tiger bite of a blue summer day. “They’re spending the first night in Tahoe. Part of it’s about spending time with Wren. The rest of it—whothefuckknows?”
“Have you ever been to Winnemucca?”
“No, as a matter of fact. Have you?”
“Once. A long time ago. It’s a strip of motels and casinos and fast food places. It can’t come close to whatever Anna remembers.”
“I know,” said Michael. “I’ve Googled it. They still have brothels, but—oh, it’s tragic, you don’t wanna know. It’s not about tourism for Anna, I can tell you that. Brian said she said something about ‘unfinished business.’ ”
“When was she last there?”
“Nineteen thirty-six, as near as I can figure.”
Ben whistled.
“I know,” said Michael. “What could possibly be unfinished? Everybody must be dead. The Blue Moon is long gone.”
“But Mona went there, of course. Back in the seventies.”
It was wonderful to hear Ben speak of Mona as if he had actually known her. Michael’s old roommate at Barbary Lane had died of cancer in the Cotswolds well before Ben entered Michael’s life, but she had already become a substantial deposit in Ben’s memory bank. Michael had heard him regale strangers at parties about Mona at the nude beach, Mona going ballistic at the ad agency, Mona chasing women on the island of Lesbos, as if Ben himself had been witness to those moments. It was one of the joys of being married to him. The line between the past and the present, as Edie Beale once called it, was penetrable when Ben was around to listen.
“She not only went to the whorehouse,” Michael said, giving it the drama it deserved, “she worked as a fucking receptionist. She was the reason Anna saw her mother again. Mona, the last of the big-time hippies, this unregenerate gypsy, was the glue of the three generations. That ended up being her purpose—you know.”
“I do know,” said Ben.
Michael sighed and gazed at the gulls loitering above the ruins, their cries as random and unmelodic as creaky hinges. “You know all my stories now,” he said. “It’s bound to get tedious.”
“I wish I’d known her,” Ben replied, sidestepping the question so adroitly that it offered th
e gentlest imaginable honest answer.
“So we’re all heading to Nevada this week,” said Michael, ticking them off on his fingers. “Us . . . Jake and Amos . . . Brian and Wren . . . Anna. Can you believe that? It’s kinda weird. It’s like Happy Days goes to Hawaii.”
Ben smiled. “Winnemucca’s a far cry from Burning Man.”
Michael mumbled in the affirmative.
“They’re in the same part of the state, but you get to them on completely different highways from different directions. There’s a wilderness between them.” A crazed pearly light in Ben’s eyes suggested nothing so much as a forest ranger who has just been mobilized for a wildfire. He was so ready for all this hardship. “I found the tent,” he said. “It was in the garden house under a piece of plywood. Pretty good shape, looks like. And there’s a big sturdy tarp we can use as a windbreak.”
“That’s good,” Michael said.
“Is Shawna taken care of?”
He felt the tiniest twitch below his right eye. “In what way?”
“You know—tentwise.”
Michael tried to sound nonchalant. “I doubt we’ll see her again once we’re there. She’s bunking in three camps, near as I can make out. And access to a daybed at the Ashram Galactica—whatever that is—god help us all. Has she called you yet?”
“No,” said Ben.
“She’s going to. But don’t tell her I told you, because she wanted to tell you first, but I don’t want you to be put on the spot—and you will be, believe me—because it’s very sweet, it’s just as sweet as it can be, but it’s also very embarrassing and . . . deeply, deeply icky. I just wanted you to be prepared.”
Ben regarded him, slack-mouthed. “What on earth are you—”
“She wants your sperm when we’re at Burning Man.” Michael threw up his hands, relinquishing the concept to the winds. “She wants to get pregnant there. She loves you and admires you and thinks your sperm would be most excellent. She doesn’t expect you to be the father, just the donor. That’s pretty much it, except the spiritual angle, which I’ll leave to her. Oh, yeah, and it’s fine with her if I’m around during the sperm extraction process. In fact, it would be great. Even lovelier.”
Ben made a disbelieving face. “She did not say ‘sperm extraction process.’ ”
“Not in so many words, but . . . c’mon, honey, this has gotta be creeping you out.”
His husband shrugged. “It’s a little . . . too close for comfort, yeah. I’ll give you that. With all of us in the same tent.”
“Not in the same tent! Ugh, no. Is that what you thought? Another tent, for God’s sake. At another camp. With a bicycle ride in between. And her friend Sharon from Zynga. And a big fertility theme party with Tibetan prayer bells and Aimee Mann’s second album while she lies perfectly still for half an hour with legs thrown over her head. Why are we even talking about this?”
“Why you acting so horrified? People do this all the time.”
“You want to do this?”
“I didn’t say that. I just can’t figure why you sound like somebody’s Aunt Gladys.”
“Well, exactly—I am her Aunt Gladys. You hit the nail on the head. I practically became her second father after Mary Ann left, and it just feels weird to me. I can’t help it. It’s too personal or something. It’s almost like . . . incest.”
The word came out like a rattlesnake’s hiss, prompting a short blond woman standing nearby to turn and glare daggers at them.
“It takes way too much explaining,” Michael told her with a shooing motion. “Look at the scenery, please.”
“In the first place,” said Ben, leaning closer and lowering his voice significantly, “it’s not you she’s asking, it’s me—”
“And it’s a lovely compliment, sweetheart, it really is.”
“In the second place, I’ve never known Shawna as anything but an adult. I’m not related to her either. Neither are you, for that matter. Nobody’s related to anybody here. And Shawna is almost thirty years old. Chillax, Michael.”
“Chillax? You don’t say Chillax.”
“I’m saying it now. Because you’re acting like you’re twelve and hormonal.”
If only he knew, thought Michael. Sixty-two was a lot like twelve and hormonal. Teenagers rage against the end of childhood, old people against the end of everything. Instability is a permanent condition that adapts with the times.
“There’s such a thing as emotional incest,” Michael said, in lieu of exposing his petty fears, the hard truth of what he was feeling. To admit that, here and now, would have been humiliating. Not to mention unattractive.
“It’s not incest,” said Ben. “It’s not even close.”
“It’s Soon-Yi incest.”
“Oh, please.” Ben snorted. “Soon-Yi incest.”
“Well—”
“Woody Allen was fucking Soon-Yi. This is a procedure, Michael, nothing more. And again, it’s not you she’s asking, it’s me.” Ben seemed to ponder the ramifications of that. “Did you tell her how you feel about this?”
“Of course not. I told her to talk to you.”
“But she knows. You can’t hide shit. You must’ve hurt her feelings.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all.”
“So why hasn’t she called me?”
“I couldn’t tell you that. I’m trying to stay out of this.”
“Oh, and a great job you’re doing, too.”
It wasn’t like Ben to clock him so snidely. Michael was on the verge of defending himself when he saw the never-disguisable hurt in his husband’s eyes. And he knew instantly that he was not the person who had put it there.
“Oh, listen, honey, the only reason she came to me first was that she and I have known each other for so long—”
“—and you’re the official keeper of my sperm.”
Michael regarded him, hand on hip, incredulous-ghetto-chick style. “Shut up, okay? The only reason she came to me first is that she wanted me to know that she would have asked me first if I hadn’t been HIV-positive.”
Ben took that in for a moment. “Before me, you mean?”
“Well, not before you, but . . . in addition to.”
“You said first. You said she would have asked you first.”
Michael blinked into the wind. “She was being nice, Ben. Trying not to hurt my feelings. She wanted this to be about all of us, and she felt awkward about it. Understandably, if you ask me. She’s already got another guy lined up, and she knows we have no interest in babies, but she wanted to run it past us anyway. Just in case.”
“And she couldn’t have said all that to me?”
“I suppose she could have. But she didn’t. She confided in me the way she always has, and I’ve fucked it up in my usual asshole codependent way.”
Ben gave him a heavy-lidded look that said, No argument here. “She can read you like a book, Michael. She must know how you feel about it, so that’s the end of that. My guess is, she’s hurt and mortified. I’m not expecting a phone call.”
Michael hesitated then asked: “Do you want one?”
“I do now, yes.”
“Really?” Michael drew back like he’d been slapped.
“Yes. So I can at least tell her I was honored to be asked, and I’m not as repelled by the invitation as you seem to be.”
“Fine,” said Michael. “Do you want me to call her?”
“No. Just leave it alone. If she doesn’t call, I’ll talk to her when we’re on the road.”
“Not when we’re all in the car?”
“No. When you’re out taking a leak or something.”
“No problem. Do you feel like breakfast?”
“Louis’?” Ben had cast his eyes at the newly reopened diner on the highway.
“Pancakes,” said Michael. “Pancakes a
nd applewood-smoked bacon.”
And thus the storm appeared to pass.
Ben had cabinetry to finish for a client in Pacific Heights, so after breakfast he dropped Michael at the house and left for his workshop on Norfolk Street. Their Sunday excursion felt truncated to Michael, though not in a perilous way. They were nice to each other during the drive, and they both knew that a check from a client would be useful right now. It made sense for Ben to finish this job before they left for Burning Man. The mortgage on their mountain property in Pinyon City (now on the market at a savagely reduced price) was about to balloon like a hemorrhoid. Foreclosure would soon be upon them without serious groveling to the bank.
Social security would help, eventually, but that was still three years away, and Ben, though legally Michael’s husband in California, would not be eligible for the check after Michael died. Assuming, of course, that social security was even around in three years, that Congress hadn’t gutted the system to bail out a bank. It was easy enough to rail against the 1 percent, but the truth was that Michael and Ben had become their willing handmaidens in these New Hard Times. Their clients had once come from all over—from people like them, artists and office workers—but now only the rich could afford tended gardens and custom furniture. It was the 1 percent or nobody.
There was comfort in knowing that most of their friends were in the same leaky boat. They were counting their blessings, waiting for a sneaker wave that would take them to shore. They had moved to the North Bay or the Excelsior. They had left Whole Foods for Trader Joe’s or Costco. They had rationed out their restaurant meals and curtailed most impulses involving clothes or condiments. Their cars had gone third-world, because they had let go of such vanity, and because it was depressing to send a many-times-dented Prius through a carwash.
Ben and Michael had a few well-off friends: executives at Twitter and Google they had met among the poor at Lazy Bear and Litquake; an artisanal chocolatier who had sold his brand to a conglomerate; a handful of doctors and lawyers; DeDe and D’orothea Halcyon-Wilson, with their bottomless family money; Michael’s old friend Mary Ann Singleton, who had divorced well in the east and come west again to find her bohemianism in Woodside with a reconstituted maiden name. But Ben and Michael saw less of these people now—there was no denying that. Something lurked in the chasm between their incomes, something less about envy or snobbery than deep embarrassment from both directions. It was just easier to stay away.