“Even you?”
“Of course not!”
“But, surely, if he really cares about you, Prue … if he wants to be part of your life, then he should be willing to meet you on some … middle ground.”
“We’ve already talked about that. There is no middle ground.”
“Ah, but I think there is! Something that will appeal to his love of nature and to your sense of propriety. For God’s sake, girl … are you happy?”
A long silence, and then: “No.”
“No,” repeated Father Paddy. “You are not. And why are you not happy? Because you’re in love with that creature, and you want to be with him night and day.” The cleric paused dramatically, then lowered his voice for emphasis. “I’m going to give you that, darling. I’m going to give you exactly what you want.”
Prue sighed audibly. “If you won’t tell me what it is, how in the world can I …”
“All right, all right …”
So he told her.
Countdown
THE LINE FOR RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK WAS SO HOPELESSLY serpentine that Mary Ann and Brian decided to forego their movie plans and watch television together at home.
“I like this better, anyway,” said Mary Ann, lifting her McChicken sandwich from its styrofoam coffin. “I haven’t had a good TV-and-junk-food pig-out in ages.”
Brian swallowed a mouthful of Big Mac, then mopped up with the back of his hand. “It fits the budget, anyway.” He cast an impish glance at Mary Ann. “But you don’t have to worry about that now, do you?”
Mary Ann frowned. “Why do you keep riding me about that?”
Brian shrugged. “Why do you have to be so secretive about it? Who am I gonna tell, huh? Some gin-soaked old society dame puts you on her payroll, and you run around acting like I need a National Security Clearance just to talk to you.”
“C’mon, Brian. You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.”
“Gimme a hint, then, and I’ll shut up.”
Mary Ann hesitated. “If I tell you …”
Brian beamed triumphantly.
“If I tell you, Brian, you’ve got to promise me it won’t go any further than this. I mean it, Brian. This is deadly serious.”
Brian made a poker face and held up his hand. “My solemn oath. A lovers’ pact.”
“I haven’t even told Michael.”
Brian bowed. “I’m deeply honored.”
“DeDe Day is back in town,” said Mary Ann.
“Wait a minute …”
Mary Ann nodded. “Mrs. Halcyon’s daughter. The one who disappeared from Guyana.”
Brian whistled. “Holy shit.”
“She’s been living in Cuba for the past two-and-a-half years.”
“What about … whatshername … Mona’s old girlfriend?”
“D’orothea. They were living together … along with the twins that DeDe had by the delivery boy at Jiffy’s. D’orothea’s still in Cuba. DeDe’s hiding out in Hillsborough now. Her mother hired me to handle the press when DeDe breaks the story.”
Brian’s brow furrowed. “When she breaks it? You went to Hillsborough weeks ago. Why hasn’t she broken it already? What’s she hiding out for?”
“That’s the part I’m fuzzy on. She claims she wants to talk to some Temple members about something. She won’t tell me what it is yet.”
Brian smiled sardonically. “She’s probably looking for a good publisher. Half of those Jonestown people are writing books.”
Mary Ann shook her head. “It’s much more serious than that. Besides, I’m writing the book when the time comes.”
“Good.”
“I just don’t know what I’ll be writing.”
“Not so good.”
“You’re telling me! Something big is missing, Brian … something she lives with night and day. I can almost feel it in the room with us when we’re talking.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Mary Ann shivered suddenly. “God, it gives me the creeps. I agreed to keep quiet about everything until next week. Then I’m free to negotiate with the station. She’s promised to fill me in as soon as she finds out … whatever she’s trying to find out.”
“It sounds like she’s afraid of recriminations.”
“I’ve thought of that,” said Mary Ann, “but it doesn’t really make any sense. If the other survivors are working the talk show circuit, as you pointed out, what has DeDe got to be afraid of?”
“She could be just plain wacko.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mary Ann. “She’s a pretty solid person.”
“That airhead debutante …?”
“She’s changed a lot, Brian. I guess the children did it. She lives for them now. She may be a little paranoid about their safety, but that seems perfectly normal after what she’s been through.”
“I think you’re the one who should be paranoid,” said Brian.
“Why?”
“What’s to stop another reporter from stumbling on this one before you break it?”
Mary Ann winced. “I know, but she’s being as careful as possible. She hides in the guest wing whenever visitors come. And she doesn’t leave the house that much.”
“Just to visit Temple members, huh?”
She saw his point all too well.
They were in bed watching Tom Snyder when the phone rang.
Mary Ann answered it. “Hello.”
“Mary Ann … it’s DeDe.” Her voice sounded small and terrified. Mary Ann glanced at the digital clock on the dresser. It said 1:23.
“Hi,” said Mary Ann. “Are you O.K.?” She assumed that DeDe was having those bad dreams again.
“I need to see you,” said DeDe.
“Sure. Of course. When?”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Could we make it the afternoon? Brian and I had planned on …”
“Please.” The word reverberated like a scream in a tomb. It was all Mary Ann needed to hear.
“Where?” she asked.
“Here. Halcyon Hill. I don’t want to leave the house.”
“DeDe, what on earth has …?”
“Just come, O.K.? Bring your tape recorder. We can eat breakfast here. I’m really sorry about this. I’ll explain everything in the morning.”
When Mary Ann set the receiver down, Brian smiled at her sweetly. “Scratch the roller-skating, huh?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said.
“What’s up?”
“I wish I knew,” said Mary Ann.
Nothing to Lose
IT TOOK PRUE GIROUX EXACTLY TWELVE HOURS TO SUCCUMB completely to the wild romanticism of Father Paddy’s scheme. The following morning she hurried out to the park and made her own pitch, snuggled cozily in Luke’s arms.
He gazed at the ceiling in stony silence.
“Well?” asked Prue.
“You would do that?” he said finally.
“I would if I thought it would bring us closer together.”
“Is that what you think?”
“It might.”
Another long silence.
“Besides, if it doesn’t work out, what harm has been done? We’ve got nothing to lose, Luke.”
“I hate the bourgeoisie,” he replied sternly. “I’ve spent most of my life subverting it … or running from it.”
The columnist bristled. “Am I the bourgeoisie? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Unlike a lot of good things, you’re best when taken out of context.”
“But … this would be out of context. Just us, if that’s the way we want it. Two weeks that belong to us, Luke.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? Aren’t you the one who said to forget about forever?”
She had him there. He smiled at her in concession, then shook his head slowly. “Prue, I have no clothes for that sort of thing, none of the …”
“I can take care of that.”
r />
“I don’t want your charity.”
“It’s a loan, then. It all reverts to me after two weeks. For God’s sake, you’re not selling your soul, Luke.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Look,” she snapped, “you keep telling me that I’d be ashamed to be seen with you. Well then … prove it, if you can!”
“Prue …”
“The truth is … you’re ashamed to be seen with me. You’re such a snob, Luke. You’re the biggest snob I ever met!”
“If it helps you to think that, then go ahead.”
“What have you got to lose, Luke?”
He rolled away from her.
“Do you remember what you said that first night? You said you would love me unconditionally, at my pleasure … as little or as much as I wanted. Well … this is what I want. Do this for me, Luke.”
“I meant here,” he said quietly, speaking to the wall.
But she knew she had won.
DeDe’s Tale
MARY ANN TURNED ON THE SONY. “I’M AFRAID I’M a little muddled. I’m not exactly sure where to begin.”
“It isn’t your fault,” said DeDe. “I haven’t let you play with a full deck.” The flesh around her eyes was so dark, Mary Ann observed, that she could have been recovering from a nose job. What on earth had happened?
“Where are the children?” asked Mary Ann.
“Upstairs with Mother and Emma. I don’t want them here while this is happening. Any of them.”
“I see.”
“Frankly, I don’t know what you think of me at this point. I suppose you have every reason to regard me as a certified nut case.”
“No way.”
DeDe smiled feebly. “Well, it doesn’t get better, I can promise you. I suppose you already know that Jim Jones wasn’t a healthy man?”
“To put it mildly.”
“I mean physically, as well. He had diabetes and hypertension. One of the women who slept with him told me he was supposed to have seventeen hundred calories a day, but he was hooked on soda pop and sweet rolls. He also had a chronic coughing condition.”
“I’ve read about that,” said Mary Ann.
“He coughed all the time. A lot of Temple members thought he was just taking on their diseases.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, he cured people, you know. Or he went through the motions, anyway. A lot of people looked on him as a healer. He would hold healing sessions where he’d pray for somebody who had, say, cancer … and he’d leave the room and come back a few minutes later with a handful of chicken gizzards which he said was the cancer.”
“You mean …”
“He had yanked the cancer right out of their body.”
“They believed that?”
“Some of them did. Others humored him, because they approved of his goals.”
“Like a lot of people here.”
“Yes. And a lot of those poor souls believed that he took on their disease as soon as he cured them of it. It was his way of going to Calvary. His illness was all the more pitiful—we were told—because it was really our illness, and he was bearing it for us.”
“How awful.”
DeDe shrugged. “You have no idea how noble it made him look at the time.”
“You weren’t buying it, were you?”
“The point is,” said DeDe, almost irritably, “the man was sick. Anybody could see that. It’s easy to look back now and see that a lot of it may have been psychosomatic or something … but it looked pretty damn real at the time. So did the arthritis. The swelling in his wrists and hands was quite noticeable. I was shocked the first time I saw it. I came into the nursery one day and found him with the twins …”
“There was a nursery?”
DeDe thought for a moment. “The Cuffy Memorial Baby Nursery, to be precise.”
“Cuffy,” repeated Mary Ann. “That’s sort of sweet, actually.”
“He was a black liberation leader in Guyana.”
“Right.”
“At any rate, Dad was … Jones was standing there in the nursery, holding little Edgar, singing something to him … with those huge swollen hands. It was pathetic and horrible all at the same time. I should’ve felt complete revulsion, I guess, but all I could feel was an odd sort of pity … and panic, of course. I moved closer to hear what he was singing, but it wasn’t his usual revolutionary anthem; it was ‘Bye Baby Bunting.’ ”
Mary Ann almost said “Aww,” but caught herself in the nick of time. “There must have been something decent about him or you wouldn’t have stayed so long. You didn’t even plan your escape, did you, until you heard about the cyanide?”
DeDe nodded. “Partly because of his illness, I guess. It made him seem less threatening, more vulnerable. And partly because I was … used to things. It was a shitty little world, but at least I knew how it worked. You know what I mean?”
Mary Ann nodded, flashing instantly on Halcyon Communications.
“The truth is,” DeDe continued, “I was an idiot. I actually cried when he called us together and announced that he had cancer.”
“When was that?”
“August, I guess. Early August. Later in the month, a doctor named Goodlett came in from San Francisco. He examined Jones and said he couldn’t find any cancer. He said it was probably some sort of fungus eating at his lungs. Anyway, he tried to get Jones to leave the jungle for proper tests to diagnose his illness, but Jones was terrified of leaving Jonestown even for a day. Charles Garry made special arrangements for him to have a medical examination in Georgetown—without getting arrested, that is—but Jones was afraid of a rebellion in his absence.”
“So he was still thinking clearly.”
“Always,” said DeDe, “when it came to keeping control. Of course, later that summer the addiction started. Quaaludes mixed with cognac, Elavil, Placidyl … Valium, Nembutal, you name it. Marceline saw him falling apart before her very eyes and realized that something had to be done.”
“Who was Marceline?”
“His wife.”
“Right,” said Mary Ann hastily, feeling stupider by the minute. “I’d almost forgotten he was married.”
Chums
BRIAN AND MICHAEL SPENT SATURDAY MORNING roller-skating in Golden Gate Park—a precarious undertaking at best, despite the sleek, professional-looking skates Mrs. Madrigal had given them the previous Christmas.
“You’ve been practicing,” Brian shouted accusingly as they wobbled past the de Young Museum. “That’s against the rules, you know?”
“Says who?”
“Mary Ann said you went skating on Tuesday. With your cop friend.”
“That was indoors. That doesn’t count.”
“Where’d you go?”
“The rink in El Sobrante. It’s loaded with Farrah Fawcett minors, blow-dried for days….”
“Girls?”
“You wish. Twinkies. It’s an amazing sight. I should take you and Mary Ann sometime. We can take the bus.”
“There’s a special bus?”
Michael nodded. “It makes the rounds of half-a-dozen gay bars, then drops everybody off at the rink. It’s a lot of fun. You get to make out on the bus on the way home.”
Brian smiled nostalgically. “I remember that.”
“So do I. Only I never did it in high school. I never did it at all until last Tuesday. I remember, though … all those kids listening to Bread and making out in the dark in the back of the bus on the way home from out-of-town ball games.”
Brian held out his hand to stop Michael at the intersection. “Watch it,” he said. “Don’t get lost in your memories. This place is lethal on weekends.”
“Think of that, though. I was thirty-one before I ever kissed anybody on public transportation. I consider it a major milestone.”
“It was more than that,” teased Brian. “Some people never get around to kissing a cop, much less doing it on a bus. It was the cop, wasn’t it?”
r /> Michael feigned indignation. “Of course!”
“Hey … what does a breeder know?”
Michael grinned. “Where did you learn that word?”
The light changed. They proceeded with graceless caution across the pebbly asphalt. “One of the guys at Perry’s,” replied Brian. “He said that’s what the faggots call us.”
“Not this faggot,” said Michael.
“I know.” Brian turned to look at him, almost losing his balance.
Michael grabbed his arm. “Easy … easy….”
“Anyway,” said Brian, regaining his composure, “it’s not even applicable to me. I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve never bred so much as a goldfish.”
When they reached the other side, Michael aimed for a bench and sat down. Brian collapsed beside him, expelling air noisily.
“Do you want to?” asked Michael.
“What?”
“Have children.”
Brian shrugged. “Sure. But Mary Ann doesn’t. Not right now, anyway. She’s got a career going.” He smiled benignly. “In case you haven’t noticed.”
Michael began unlacing his skates. “Where is she today, anyway?”
“Having lunch. On the peninsula.”
“What on earth for?”
“Just … business.”
They sat together in silence for several minutes, watching the passing scene in their bare feet. Finally, Michael said: “I think you two should get married.”
“You do, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Not in so many words,” replied Michael.
Brian grinned. “Neither have I.”
“Why not?”
Brian reached down and yanked up a handful of grass. “Oh … because I think I know what the answer would be … and I don’t need to hear that right now. Besides, there are lots of advantages to living alone.”
“Name one.”
Brian thought for a moment. “You can pee in the sink.”
Michael laughed. “You do that, too, huh?” Suddenly, he clamped his hand on Brian’s leg and exclaimed: “Well, get a load of that, would you?”