More Tales of the City

by Armistead Maupin

  Jon grinned. “Maybe they snort coke at the PU Club.”

  “That’s what Burke thinks it means,” said Mary Ann.

  Michael demurred. “They just snort, period, at the PU Club.”

  “Wait!” exclaimed Jon. “What about the cable cars?”

  “What about them?” asked Mary Ann.

  “The cable car lines. They cross at California and Powell, just a block away from the PU Club!”

  Mary Ann and Michael yelped in unison. “That’s brilliant,” blurted Michael. “That’s positively brilliant!” Mary Ann beamed in agreement. “That must be it.”

  Jon bowed grandly. “Now all we have to do is figure out what any of this has to do with a florist from St. Sebastian’s Hospital, right?”

  Mary Ann nodded, deep in thought. “And what any of this has to do with transubstantiation.”

  Michael did a double take. “Come again, ma’am?”

  “Have you got a dictionary?”

  “On the shelf by the door,” said Michael. “Next to The Persian Boy.”

  Mary Ann found the dictionary and began to thumb through it. “I went down to the AP today. Where Burke used to work. A man there told me he ran into Burke about five months ago, and he said Burke told him he was working on … Here it is. Transubstantiation.” She handed the book to Jon.

  The doctor read aloud. “ ‘The changing of one substance into another.’ ”

  “Read the second definition,” said Mary Ann.

  “‘In the mass of the Roman Catholic Church, the conversion of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, only the external appearance of bread and wine remaining.’ So what does that have to do with Burke?”

  “This guy at the AP says he was working on a really bizarre story connected with transubstantiation.”

  Michael frowned quizzically. “Have you tried this out on Burke yet?”

  Mary Ann shook her head soberly. “I think he’s beginning to resent my curiosity, Mouse. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m trying to be discreet about all this, until I’ve got something solid to go on.”

  “Do you know what I think?” said Jon.

  “What?” asked Mary Ann.

  “I think you’ve got too many clues.”

  Mary Ann sighed. “I think you’re right.”

  Betty

  THE FIRST THING MONA NOTICED ABOUT BETTY RAMSEY was her clothes. She was decked out in kelly green and white, the recognizable racing colors of women realtors everywhere.

  And Mona’s clothing was the first thing Betty noticed.

  “Where did you get that frock? Goodwill?”

  Mona’s smile was smug. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Well, it’s grossly unflattering.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The hippie thing is over, Mona. The pendulum is swinging.”

  Mona ignored her, heading for the window.

  “What are you doing?” asked Betty.

  “Checking out your view.” She turned and smiled at her mother. “The first thing every San Franciscan does when visiting somebody else’s apartment.” She parted the curtains and gazed down upon the nighttime splendor of the city. “Mmm. Very nice. Whose place is this, anyway?”

  Betty began dropping ice cubes into a glass. “Susan Patterson’s. Someone I knew years ago in Carmel. She’s in Switzerland for the spring.”

  Mona surveyed the room. “It looks like you’ve been here since last spring.” The floor was cluttered with Gump’s boxes and shopping bags from Saks; Betty’s yoga mat and an assortment of French body creams were visible through the bedroom door.

  Betty held up a gin bottle. “This or bourbon?”

  “Neither, thanks.”

  “I don’t have any Perrier.”

  “That’s fine. I took a Quaalude a little while ago.”

  “For God’s sake!”

  Mona sat down on the sofa. “Would you rather I’d taken one of your Valiums?”

  “A doctor prescribed those.”

  “Don’t they always.”

  “You shouldn’t have to rely on … Mona, let’s not argue. We haven’t seen each other for a long time, darling. The least we can do is—”

  “Why are you here, Betty?”

  Betty didn’t answer immediately. She finished fixing her gin-and-tonic, then joined her daughter on the sofa. “Why do you think?”

  Mona locked eyes with her mother. “I don’t think it has a damned thing to do with me.”

  “That’s not fair, Mona.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Betty looked down at her drink. “You know about Andy, don’t you?”

  Mona made her face into a mask. “I know that he left you. That’s old news.”

  “Don’t play games, Mona. I know he’s your landlord. I know about the sex change, and I know that you know about it.”

  Mona held firm. “I repeat. Why are you here?”

  “Because I have a bloody right to be! He deserted me, Mona! He left me with a child to support! He walked out of my life without leaving so much as a note, and now he thinks he can waltz right back and lay claim to the child he never even—”

  “I am not a child and nobody’s laid claim to me, Betty. I didn’t even know that he—that she was my father until two weeks ago.”

  Betty glared at her in disgust. “And now you’re living with him!”

  “Her.”

  “Did he tell you—oh, pardon me, she—did she, by any chance, tell you what she did with the private detective I hired?”

  “The what?”

  “Mona, darling, this is so much more complicated than you could ever—”

  “Just tell me what you’re talking about.”

  Betty held her daughter’s hand. “Last summer, when you sent me that photograph of your landlady, I saw the similarities immediately, so I hired a private detective to help me find out if it was true.”

  Mona stared in amazement.

  “And,” continued Betty, “he never reported back.”

  “What?”

  “I never heard another word from him. He was living in your house, Mona. At 28 Barbary Lane.”

  “Mr. Williams? That guy on the roof?”

  Betty nodded, holding tight to Mona’s hand. “We stayed in touch by telephone. He called me at least once a week. He said he thought Andy had become … Anna Madrigal, and he told me that Anna Madrigal was an anagram for something. Then he just disappeared.” She let go of Mona’s hand and took a sip of her drink. “Did you know him, Mona?”

  Stunned, Mona shook her head. “Not at all. He was … weird.”

  “I know. He was the best I could round up on short notice. The point is, what happened to him?”

  Mona took a sip of Betty’s gin. “We wondered that too.”

  “We?”

  “Everybody. Including Mrs. Madrigal. She even called the police about it.”

  “I want to see her, Mona. Will you arrange it?”

  A look of wretched resignation came over Mona’s face. “You’ll do it anyway,” she sighed.

  “You’re right,” said Betty. “I will.”

  The Rose Incarnate

  IN KEEPING WITH HER NEW STRATEGY, MARY ANN SAID nothing to Burke about the Pacific Union Club. Or about her transubstantiation findings. She kept quiet all through breakfast and all through a leisurely morning walk across Russian Hill.

  Finally, at noon, she excused herself.

  “Jon’s at his office,” she explained. “I promised him I’d keep Mouse company for a while.”

  When she entered Michael’s apartment, the invalid was pacing the room in his wheelchair, his eyes flickering with excitement. “You know what?” he said without preliminaries. “We didn’t even consider the red rose business in our discussion last night.”

  “I got the feeling you guys were OD’ing.”

  Michael smiled. “Not me, Babycakes. I’m hooked. Look, it all comes back to the man with the transplant, doesn�
��t it?”

  “Maybe. Burke only thinks that the transplant man recognized him.”

  “Assuming he did, then what do we have?”

  “He could be a member of the PU Club, I guess.”

  Michael shook his head. “I suggested that to Jon. He says the PU Club would never admit a hospital florist. Maybe Burke worked as a waiter or something at the PU Club.”

  “It’s hard to picture,” said Mary Ann.

  “OK, then maybe we’re on the wrong track altogether. You know, the Mountain of the Flood could mean just Nob Hill in general.”

  “So what else is there?”

  “Plenty. The Mark, the Huntington, the Fairmont.”

  “Great. A hotel cult.”

  Michael grinned. “You’re stuck in that cult rut, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” groaned Mary Ann. “Sometimes I feel like I made the whole thing up.”

  Michael laughed. “It’s possible. I was looking through some of my old high school lit books this morning—you know, Silas Marner and The Great Gatsby and all that—and I just about cracked up because I had written ‘symbolism’ in the margin on every other page. Christ! In The Great Gatsby I had underlined the word ‘yellow’ every time it appeared.”

  “God!” smiled Mary Ann. “I remember those awful papers, but I don’t get it, Mouse. What does that have to do with all this?”

  “Well, maybe we’re looking for too much symbolism. Everything doesn’t have to mean something.”

  “Yeah, but it sure would be nice if something did.”

  “What about that transub … whatchamacallit?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, for starters, is Burke Catholic?”

  Mary Ann shook her head. “Episcopalian.”

  “That’s close.”

  “It is?”

  Michael nodded. “The High Church ones are more Catholic than the Catholics. Believe me, I know. I used to have a boyfriend who was a High Church Episcopal seminarian. He practically shaved in holy water. I’m sure he believed that the bread and wine turn into the body and blood of Christ.”

  Mary Ann shuddered a little. “Is that what they believe? Literally?”

  “Literally. You saw the definition, Babycakes.”

  “I know, but that’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?”

  Michael shrugged. “Christians are the only people on earth who kneel before an instrument of torture. If Christ had been martyred in this century, I guess we’d all be wearing little electric chairs around our necks.”

  Mary Ann was shocked. “Mouse, that’s sacrilegious!”

  “No it’s not. It’s just an observation about the nature of—” Suddenly, Michael’s hands clamped onto the arms of his wheelchair, his face screwed into an expression of intense concentration. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Mouse, for heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?”

  “The Sacred Rock! The goddamn Sacred Rock! It’s Grace Cathedral, it’s gotta be Grace Cathedral!”

  “Grace Cathedral?”

  “What else? Right next door to the PU Club, Mary Ann! On the Mountain of the Flood at the Meeting of the Lines! And guess what the Rose Incarnate is?”

  “What?”

  “The biggest rose in the whole friggin’ city! The rose window at Grace Cathedral!”

  Labor of Love

  D’OROTHEA WILSON PAUSED BRIEFLY IN THE LOBBY OF St. Sebastian’s Hospital to study an antique portrait of the institution’s namesake.

  The holy man was tied to a tree, wearing only a loincloth and a beatific smile. His bloodied body was prickly with arrows. Half a dozen of them, at least.

  D’orothea made a face that attracted the attention of a passing nurse. “I know,” winced the nurse. “Isn’t it awful?”

  “Why do they even hang it? In a hospital, for God’s sake!”

  The nurse smiled wearily. “The board fights over it every year. I think it came with a big endowment or something. Nobody wants to offend the old bat who donated it. They’ve moved it two or three times. This is the least conspicuous it’s ever been.”

  “Someone should come in here some night with a can of spray paint,” suggested D’orothea.

  “Right on!” said the nurse.

  After checking at the desk on the location of DeDe’s room, D’orothea made a quick stop at the hospital florist, where she picked up a dozen roses. Then she hurried to the second floor to see her friend.

  “You can’t stay long,” grinned DeDe. “They just chased my mother out.”

  “I won’t.” D’orothea set the roses on the bedside table, then leaned over and kissed DeDe on the cheek. “You look fabulous, hon.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for the roses.”

  “How’s the tum-tum?”

  DeDe rolled her eyes. “Thumpety-thump. Thumpety-thump.”

  “You mean …?”

  “The pains are fifteen minutes apart.”

  “Holy shit! When you called, you sounded so casual about it. I thought … Oh, hon, aren’t you excited?”

  DeDe smiled thinly. “Sure.”

  “Course you are! Hey, you haven’t even told me about names.”

  “Names?”

  “For the babies. You picked ‘em yet?”

  DeDe smoothed the bedsheet over her mountainous belly. “Oh, Edgar, I guess, if one is a boy. After my father. And if one is a girl, I’ll name her Anna.”

  “That’s pretty. Any particular reason?”

  “Daddy asked me to. Just before he died.”

  “A family name, huh?”

  DeDe shook her head. “Not that I know of. Daddy just said he liked the name.” She fidgeted with the sheet again, looking away. It took D’orothea a moment to realize that she was crying.

  “Hon? Hey, hon. What’s the trouble?”

  “I’m so frightened, D’or.”

  D’orothea sat on the edge of the bed and stroked DeDe’s hair gently. “Why?” she asked.

  “I feel like I’m going to be punished or something.”

  “Punished? What for?”

  DeDe’s face was shiny with tears. She reached for a Kleenex, blew her nose, then dropped the tissue on the bedside table. Finally, she looked up at D’orothea and sighed. “The twins are gonna be Chinese, D’or.”

  D’orothea stared at her expressionlessly. Then she said, “Big fucking deal.”

  A smile fought its way through the desolation in DeDe’s face. “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Fine,” said D’or. “Then I’ll say it again. Biiiiig fucking deal!”

  DeDe laughed at last. “Oh, D’or, thank you!”

  “Don’t mention it. Eurasians are always gorgeous, by the way.”

  “They are, aren’t they?”

  “Does Big Mama know?”

  DeDe winced, then shook her head.

  “Thought so,” said D’or.“That’s what you’re bawling about, isn’t it?”

  “In part, I guess.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “I don’t know. D’or … none of my friends have even called.”

  “Well, your luck is changing, hon.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I’m the first of your new friends, DeDe. And we’re not that easy to get rid of.” She leaned over and kissed DeDe again. “’Cept when you’re dropping babies. Then I get squeamish as hell. I’ll be here, though. Right outside the door.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”

  “Thanks, D’or.”

  “Do you want me to tell your mother about the babies, by the way?”

  “No. I’ll do it. I love you, D’or.”

  “Ditto, kiddo.”

  Back to Nantucket?

  BURKE, OF COURSE, WAS THE HARDEST ONE TO CONVINCE.

  “It’s just plain goofball, Mary Ann. Why would a cathedral make anybody have amnesia. You seem to forget I get violently ill whenever I—”

  “You threw up at Beaucha
mp’s funeral, didn’t you? That was a church.”

  Burke gestured impatiently. “That was the rose, for God’s sake.”

  “But don’t you see? Maybe it isn’t the image of the rose that nauseates you. Maybe it’s just the word, the association with the rose window.”

  Looking bleaker than ever, he sat down on the edge of his bed. “It isn’t a window I see in my dream. It’s a red rose. Not a pink one or a yellow one—a red one, Mary Ann.” He peered up at her through eyes that had changed from vibrant gray to dull pewter. “I think it’s time for me to go home.”

  Her first thought was that they were already in his apartment. Then his meaning struck her like a bundle of briars across the face. “Burke, you don’t mean that!”

  The kindness of his tone was devastating. “Yes, I do,” he said softly. “I have to put this behind me, Mary Ann.”

  “But, Burke …” She sat next to him and slipped her arm across his hunched shoulders. “You’ll never put it behind until you find the cause of your amnesia. You can’t go on being terrified forever.”

  “I’m not terrified.”

  She squeezed his shoulder gently. “I know, but what about the roses?”

  “I can handle that. I just have to … I have to start getting on with life.”

  “What will you do back East?”

  “My father’s offered me a position in his publishing firm.”

  She looked at him soulfully. “Couldn’t you do something like that here?”

  He smiled, stroking her hair. “I will miss you. I should have said that first thing.”

  She felt tears welling in her eyes. “Dammit,” she said quietly. “I’m so pissed at myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I shouldn’t have pushed it. I shouldn’t have freaked you out.”

  His face turned the color of an American Beauty. “You didn’t freak me out, Mary Ann!”

  She looked at him in silence, reading the anguish in his face. Then she stood up and walked across the room. If this was it, if they had passed the point of no return, she had nothing to lose by telling the whole truth.

  She turned to face him. “Burke, the man with the transplant sings in the choir at Grace Cathedral.”