Tales of the City

by Armistead Maupin

  He made his last entry in the log book, feeling a twinge of remorse for the tortured souls who would call tonight seeking his solace.

  What would Mary Ann tell them?

  And what would she do when she found him?

  The scalpel wasn’t fair, he decided, fingering his worry beads for the last time. There had to be a cleaner way, a method that would lessen the horror for Mary Ann.

  Then he thought of it.

  The News from Home

  BEFORE LEAVING FOR THE CRISIS SWITCHBOARD, MARY Ann stopped by Mona and Michael’s. A red-eyed Michael opened the door. “Hi,” he said quietly. “Welcome to Heartbreak Hotel.”

  “Company?” A stereo was playing in the bedroom.

  “I wish.”

  “Michael … is something the matter?”

  He shook his head, forcing a smile. “Come on in. I want you to hear something.”

  He led her into his bedroom and pointed to a chair. “Sit down and have a good cry. This woman is God’s gift to romantics.” He held up an album cover. Jane Olivor’s First Night.

  Mary Ann propped her head on her hand and listened. The chanteuse was singing “Some Enchanted Evening,” wrenching still more tears from Michael.

  “Every faggot in town adores her,” explained Michael. “It’s real washing-up music.”

  “Washing-up music?”

  “You know. Post-whoopie. You play it afterwards, while he’s lighting a cigarette and … washing up.”

  Mary Ann reddened. “Why not before?”

  “Uh … good question. I guess it’s … a threat before. Afterwards, there’s no danger.”

  “Oh.” She laughed nervously.

  Michael flopped on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “I hope I don’t become cynical.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Do you believe in marriage, Mary Ann?”

  She nodded. “Most of the time.”

  “Me too. I think about it every time I see a new face. I got married four times today on the 41 Union bus.”

  There was embarrassment in Mary Ann’s laugh.

  “I know,” said Michael unaccusingly. “A bunch of fairies in caftans, tripping through Golden Gate Park with drag bridesmaids and quotations from ‘Song of the Loon’ … That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know.”

  “It would be like … friends. Somebody to buy a Christmas tree with.”

  “Sure.” She tried in vain to picture herself choosing a Scotch pine with Norman.

  Mona had been gone all day. Her absence began to gnaw at Michael again as soon as Mary Ann had left. Mona wasn’t much fun these days, but she was at least a distraction.

  She kept him away from Lands End.

  Big deal, he thought, turning off the stereo and skulking into the kitchen. Your whole goddamn life is at Lands End. You belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to you. Your sacred chastity doesn’t mean shit.

  He foraged in the refrigerator for munchies, emerging with a grapefruit half and a flat Tab. Next to the ice tray, a bottle of Locker Room sat in stoic isolation, waiting for the next time.

  He glared murderously at the squat brown bottle and slammed the freezer door. “Freeze your ass off, you little mother!”

  That was when the phone rang.

  “Mikey?”

  “Mama?”

  “How are you, Mikey?”

  “Fine, Mama. There hasn’t been …? Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Oh … fair to middlin’, I guess. Papa and I’ve got a surprise for you, Mikey.”

  His fingertips traced the furrows in his brow. Please God, don’t do this to me. “What, Mama?”

  “Well, you know Papa’s been trying for years to wangle one of those trips with Florida Citrus Mutual….”

  Come on, God! I’ll join the church of my choice! I’ll never lust in my heart again!

  “So guess what happened just this afternoon?”

  “You got the trip.”

  “Uh huh. And guess where?”

  “Fire Island.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Mama. I was being silly. You’re coming to San Francisco, right?”

  “Isn’t it wonderful? We’ve got four whole days to visit, Mikey! And we’ve already got the hotel reservations and everything!”

  The reservations, it turned out, were at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness. October 29 through November 1.

  The horrible significance of those dates didn’t hit Michael until he checked a calendar.

  Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Tolliver were forsaking their orange groves, their Sizzlers and their Shakey’s and their Saturday Evening Posts, to spend four fun-filled days in Everybody’s Favorite City.

  On Halloween weekend.

  Jesus H. Christ.

  A Place for Strays

  ANNA’S BEDROOM HAD BEEN CAREFULLY GROOMED for Edgar’s arrival.

  The linens were fresh, the ferns were misted, and the photograph that usually stayed on the dresser was tucked away in the bottom of the lingerie drawer.

  “No waterbed?” Edgar grinned slyly, surveying the room for the first time.

  “Sorry.” Anna shrugged. “It’s in the shop for repairs. I had a gentleman caller last night and we nearly drowned the cat.”

  “What cat?”

  She threw a pillow at him. “You’re supposed to say, ‘What gentleman caller?’ goddammit!”

  “O.K. What gentleman caller?”

  “I’ve forgotten. There’ve been so many!”

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her for half a minute, then leaned down and kissed her lightly on the eyelids. When he was done, Anna looked up and said, “Fitzgerald.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “That’s from The Great Gatsby … ‘She was the kind of woman who was meant to be kissed upon the eyes.’ Something like that, anyway … Do you want something to drink, or are you already drunk?”

  “Anna!”

  She nudged him in the ribs. “You smell like expensive scotch.”

  “I’ve been to a cocktail party at The Summit.”

  “With Frannie?”

  Edgar nodded.

  “How did you …?”

  “DeDe took her home.”

  “Edgar … surely she notices when you …”

  “She was barely conscious, Anna.”

  Anna rested her hand on his chest and pointed a long, delicate forefinger toward the window.

  “There,” she said, adjusting the pillow under his head. “You want proof?”

  He rolled over to face the window and saw a plump tiger-striped cat inching along the ledge. The animal stopped for a moment, mewed at Anna, then moved on.

  “His name is Boris,” said Anna.

  “You don’t let him in?”

  “He doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Ah … then it doesn’t count.”

  “I love him,” she said flatly. “That counts, doesn’t it?”

  “There’s a theory,” said Anna, handing him a cup of tea as she climbed back into bed, “that we are all Atlanteans.”

  “Who?”

  “Us. San Franciscans.”

  Edgar grinned indulgently, bracing himself for another yarn.

  Anna caught it. “Do you want to hear it … or are you getting stuffy on me?”

  “Go ahead. Tell me a story.”

  “Well … in one of our last incarnations, we were all citizens of Atlantis. All of us. You, me, Frannie, DeDe, Mary

  Ann …”

  “Are you sure she’s out of the building?”

  “She’s gone to her switchboard. Will you relax?”

  “O.K. I’m relaxed.”

  “All right, then. We all lived in this lovely, enlightened kingdom that sank beneath the sea a long time ago. Now we’ve come back to this special peninsula on the edge of the continent … because we know, in a secret corner of our minds, that we must return together to the sea.”

  “The earthquake.”

  Anna nodded. “Don’t
you see? You said the earthquake, not an earthquake. You’re expecting it. We’re all expecting it.”

  “So what does that have to do with Atlantis?”

  “The Transamerica Pyramid, for one thing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t you know what dominated the skyline of Atlantis, Edgar … the thing that loomed over everything?”

  He shook his head.

  “A pyramid! An enormous pyramid with a beacon burning at the top!”

  When Edgar slipped into the lane an hour later, Anna was watching him from the window. She rapped once, but he didn’t hear her.

  Someone else was watching too, concealed in the shrubbery at the edge of the courtyard.

  Norman Neal Williams.

  Hanging Loose

  MARY ANN WAS RUNNING LATE, BUT THE MERCEDES parked at the foot of the Barbary Lane stairway caught her eye. Its personalized plates said franni. She recognized it instantly as Edgar Halcyon’s.

  A small town, she thought. Smaller, in a lot of ways, than Cleveland. She wondered which celebrated Russian Hill hostess was serving cocktails to the Halcyons tonight

  “Off to the body shops?”

  It was Brian Hawkins, striding down Leavenworth with a definite smirk on his face.

  “I’m late for the switchboard,” she said crisply.

  “Oh … the suicide place.”

  She frowned. “That’s only part of it.”

  “What time are you off?”

  “Pretty late.”

  “I see. O.K…. Well, if you feel like it, come on up for a joint afterwards.”

  “I’m usually pretty tired, Brian.”

  He brushed past her, heading up the stairway. “Right. Can’t get much plainer than that, can you?”

  As usual, the J Church streetcar was a zoo.

  Once past the scowl of the conductor, Mary Ann inched through a cloud of Woolworth’s cologne to an empty seat in the back. She sat next to an old woman in a pink cloth coat and a battered brown wig.

  “Warming up.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Seems to be getting warmer.” A talker, thought Mary Ann. It never fails.

  “Yes, ma’am. It does.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Cleveland.”

  “My sister went to Akron once.”

  “Oh … Akron’s very nice.”

  “I was born and raised here. Castro Street. Before all the you-know-whats moved in.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have you found Jesus yet?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Saviour?”

  “Well … I’m … I was raised a Presbyterian.”

  “The Bible says until ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  If there’s a God, thought Mary Ann, He must get his jollies by bringing these people into my life. Fundamentalist crones. Hare Krishna flower peddlers. Scientologists offering “personality tests” on the corner of Powell and Geary.

  When the streetcar stopped at Twenty-fourth Street, Mary Ann wasted no time in heading for the door.

  The old woman reached into the aisle and said “Praise Jesus,” handing her convert a dog-eared pamphlet. Mary Ann accepted it with a blush and a nod of thanks.

  As the streetcar departed, she stood on the corner and read the pamphlet’s boldly emblazoned headline: JIMMY CARTER FOR PRESIDENT.

  The world was changing, she decided. Even to her untrained Midwestern eye, Twenty-fourth Street seemed almost quaintly anachronistic. Men still wore their hair in ponytails here, and women slumped around in vintage granny dresses.

  “Far out” had the sound of “Oh, you kid.”

  So what’s next? she wondered. What will come along to take the place of free clinics and crisis switchboards and alternative newspapers and macrobiotic everything?

  The entrance hall of the Switchboard was dark. A sliver of light from the back room guided her feet to the sound of a ringing phone.

  “I’m here, Vincent. I’m really sorry! I just lost track of the time. I know you must be … No! … Oh, God, Vincent, no! … You didn’t …?”

  His tongue was the worst part, protruding from his mouth like a fat black sausage.

  He was swinging very slowly from the ceiling, his neck a hideous mass of twine and shells and feathers. Laurel’s macramé had finally served a purpose.

  He had died as organically as possible.

  Nightcap

  THE POLICEMAN WHO DROPPED HER OFF AT BARBARY Lane was so young that he had zits. But he was gentle and he seemed to be genuinely worried about her.

  “You sure you’re gonna be O.K.?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” She had come very close to inviting him up for a crème de menthe…. Anything to keep from being alone tonight.

  Bounding up the stairway into the dark lane, she found herself praying that Mona or Michael would be at home. But no one answered their buzzer.

  Upstairs, she fumbled in her purse for her key, then noticed the light spilling under Brian’s door. She reversed her course without a moment’s hesitation.

  He was wearing boxer shorts and a sweatshirt when he opened the door. His face was shiny with sweat.

  “Sit-ups,” he grinned, jerking his head toward his incline board.

  “I’m sorry if I …”

  “It’s O.K.”

  “I … Does that offer for a joint still hold?”

  He listened to her account of the horror with a face almost devoid of expression. When she had finished, he whistled softly. “He was a good friend?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all.”

  “That’s the part that hurts, doesn’t it?”

  “God, Brian, if I had only talked to him a little more …”

  “No. It wouldn’t have done any good.” He shook his head, smiling ruefully. “So we’ve both had a good day.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Not much. A house party at Stinson Beach.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  He took a toke off the joint. “Picture this, O.K.? Five young married couples and me. Well … semi-young. Thirty to thirty-five. Still in Topsiders, mind you, but driving an Audi now and sending a couple of rug rats to the French-American School and swapping notes on their Cuisinarts …”

  “Their what?”

  He handed her the joint. “Next image: a beach full of pink people, the women on one side, chattering about hot tubs and cellulite and the best place for runny Brie … and the guys out by the volleyball net, huffing and puffing in twelve-year-old Madras bermudas their wives have let out at least twice … and all these yellow-haired kids fighting over who gets to play with Big Bird and G.I.Joe …”

  Mary Ann smiled for the first time. “I got it.”

  “So here’s our hero, in the middle of all this … wondering if he can get food stamps if he quits at Perry’s … hoping to hell the Clap Clinic doesn’t call this week….” He stopped, seeing the look on her face. “A joke, Mary Ann … And then this guy runs out of the house with his guitar slung around his neck like some refugee from Hootenanny, only he’s a lawyer, right? … and he drops down in the sand and starts singing ‘I don’t give a damn about a greenback dollar’ … and everybody claps along and sings and jiggles kids in their laps….”

  She nodded, confused by his cynical tone. The whole thing sounded rather sweet to her.

  “Christ! I went back to the house when the singalong started and sat in an empty bedroom and smoked a joint and thanked my fucking lucky stars I wasn’t trapped in that pathetic, middle-class prison!”

  “I see.”

  “This kid … about six years old … walks into the room, right? She asks me why I’m not singing and I say I’m a lousy singer and she says that’s O.K. because she is too.”

  “How cute.”

  “She was all right.”

  “Did she stay there with you?”

  “She asked me to read her a stor
y.”

  “Did you?”

  “For a little while. Hell, I was stoned.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Her old man and I went to George Washington together.”

  “Where?”

  “Law school. He was the one who didn’t give a damn about the greenback dollar.”

  “You were a lawyer?”

  The roach was so short that it burned his fingers. He threw it on the floor and stepped on it. “Oh, yes … only I really didn’t give a damn about the greenback dollar. I was everybody’s favorite freebie.”

  “You didn’t charge?”

  “Not if you were black in Chicago … or a draft resister in Toronto or an Indian in Arizona … or a Chicano in L.A.”

  “But you could’ve …”

  “I hated law. It was the causes I loved … and … well, I ran out of them.” He looked down at his hands dangling between his knees. “?l’ Vincent and I would have gotten on like a house on fire.”

  “Brian …”

  “Go on.”

  “Thanks for listening.”

  “Out. Gotta finish my sit-ups.”

  Words of Comfort

  MR. HALCYON WAS NICER THAN SHE EXPECTED when she asked for the day off.

  “I’m sorry about your friend, Mary Ann.”

  “He wasn’t really a friend exactly….”,

  “Just the same.”

  “I really appreciate it.”

  “It’s not easy living in Atlantis, is it?”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing. Take your time. I can call Kelly Girl.”

  She was more out of it than ever. She sat on her wicker sofa, munching a Pop-Tart and watching the bay. The water was so blue … but was the price too high?

  How many times now had she threatened to go home to Cleveland?

  How many times had the lure of family china and split-level security beckoned her from the slopes of this beautiful volcano?

  Would she ever stop feeling like a colonist on the moon?

  Or would she wake up one morning to find herself a cloth-coated old lady, tottering about Russian Hill in slightly soiled gloves, prolonging her choice of a single lamb chop at Marcel & Henri, telling the butcher or the doorman or the nice young gripman who helped her onto the cable car that any day now, when her social security check came in, when the weather turned, when she found a home for her cat … she was going home to Cleveland?