Babycakes (8 page)

“No they don’t. They use the pill, or they get vasectomies or something.”

While Douglas and Paul continued with this halfhearted quarrel, Michael signaled Ned, to indicate he was leaving. He slipped under the flap and made a beeline for his tent, avoiding even the slightest glance at the rise where Roger and Gary were encamped. He was almost there when a voice called out to him.

“Is that you, Michael?” It was Gary.

“Uh-huh.”

“Come on over,” said Roger.

He picked his way through the darkness until he found the path leading up to the rise. Only the moon lit the faces of the lovers, snuggled together under a zipped-open sleeping bag. “See”—grinned Roger—“we didn’t run off to fuck.”

“It must be the mushrooms,” said Gary. “We’ve been telling ghost stories. It’s really nice up here. Why don’t you get your sleeping bag and join us?”

He looked back at the dark dome of his two-man tent, sitting empty under the stars. “I think I’ll take you up on that,” he said.

They fell asleep, the three of them, after Gary had told the one about the man with the hook.

Michael dreamed he was once again on the ridge above the campsite, only this time it was Jon who knelt beside him. “Look,” Jon whispered, “look who’s down there.” Mona emerged from one of the tents, so tiny she was almost unrecognizable. Michael waved and waved, but she never saw him, never stopped once as she walked into the desert and disappeared.

Mona Revisited

S
EATTLE HAD ONCE STRUCK MONA AS AN IDEAL RETIREMENT
spot for old hippies. Its weather was moderate, if wet, its political climate was libertarian, and a surprisingly large number of its citizens still looked upon macrame with a kindly eye. In the time it had taken Jane Fonda to get around to exhibiting her body again, almost nothing had changed in Seattle.

Almost
nothing. The lesbians who had baked nine-grain bread in the sixties and seventies now earned their livings at copy centers across the city. Mona was one of those lesbians, though she was every bit as puzzled as the next woman by this bizarre reshuffling of career goals. “Maybe,” she told a friend once, in a moment of rare playfulness, “it’s to prove we can reproduce without the intervention of a man.”

Mona lived on Queen Anne Hill in a seven-story brick apartment house the color of dried blood. She worked four blocks away at the Kwik-Kopy copy center, a high-technocracy in varying shades of gray. Neither place did very much for her soul, but when was the last time she had worried about
that?

“Cheer up, Mo. It can’t be as bad as that.” It was Serra, her co-worker at the neighboring copier. Serra, the perky young punk.

“Oh, yeah?”

Serra looked down at the huge manuscript she was collating. “It can’t be as bad as this.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“ ‘A Time for Wimmin,’ ” answered Serra.

She made a face. “How is it spelled?”

“How do you think?” said Serra. “Maybe we should call the
Guinness Book.
If my hunch is right, this could be the longest dyke potboiler in the history of the world.”

“Any sex?”

“Not so far,” said Serra, “but a helluva lot of nurturing.”

“Yawn.”

“Really,” said Serra. “What have you got there?”

“Much worse,” she replied. “That queen from the Ritz Café is having a thirtieth-birthday party.”

“An invitation?”

“A Xerox collage, no less. Featuring a lovely photo of his dick and some old stills from
I Love Lucy.
He’s made me do it over twice.”

“Of course,” said Serra.

“The dick is loo orange and Lucy’s hair is too green. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Who gives a shit, huh? Is this art or what?”

Serra laughed, but her face registered concern. “You need a day off, Mo.”

She looked down at her work again. “I need a lobotomy.”

“No, Mo. I mean it.” Serra left her machine and moved to Mona’s side. “You’re pushing too hard. Ease up on yourself. Holly can spare you for a day or two.”

“Maybe so,” she retorted. “But Dr. Sheldon can’t.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Barry R. Sheldon,” she explained. “A periodontist on Capitol Hill who’s on the verge of repossessing my gums.” She offered Serra a helpless smile. “As we speak, young lady.”

Serra’s sympathy seemed mixed with embarrassment. “Oh … well, if you need a loan or something …”

“That’s nice.” She squeezed Serra’s hand. “It’s a little more serious than that.”

“Oh.”

“I could use a little more overtime, as a matter of fact.”

“I just thought … I thought you could use a change.”

“You got that right,” said Mona. “Your machine is jamming.”

“Shit,” muttered Serra, sprinting back to her post.

When noon came, Serra insisted on treating Mona to lunch at the Ritz Café, a perfect backdrop for Serra’s squeaky-clean Kristy McNichol bob. They both ordered Pernod Stingers, and Serra raised hers in an earnest toast to Mona’s recovery.

“Things will get better,” she said flatly. “I really believe that.”

“That’s because you’re twenty-three,” Mona replied.

“Are things so different at thirty-seven?”

“Thirty-eight,” said Mona. “And they’re not a bit different. Just harder to take.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Serra.

Mona made a face at her. “Tell me that again in fifteen years. It’s O.K. to Xerox dicks when you’re twenty-three. It’s not O.K. at thirty-eight. Trust me. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

For a moment, Serra seemed lost in thought.

“What is it?” asked Mona.

“Nothing. Nothing yet.”

“Now wait a minute …”

“It’s just an idea.”

“C’mon,” said Mona. “Out with it.”

“I can’t. Not until I see if it’s possible.” She took a sip of her drink, then set it down suddenly. “Oh, God!”

“What?”
asked Mona.

“Guess who our waiter is?”

The waiter recognized Mona instantly, “Oh, hi! The invitations look fabulous!”

She gave him a thin smile. “I’m glad you like them.”

After lunch, they received a rush order for five hundred fliers announcing a “British Brunch” in honor of the
Britannia’s
recent arrival in Seattle. Mona glowered at the layout—Queen Elizabeth saying, “I just love a good banger”— then looked up and glowered at the customer.

“Would somebody please tell me why every homo in Seattle is so obsessed with this woman?”

The customer drew back as if he’d been slapped. “What are you? The editorial board?”

She glanced impatiently at the clock. “I suppose you want this today?”

The man let his irritation show. She really didn’t blame him; she had always been detached enough to know when she was being a bitch. “Look,” he said, “tomorrow will be just fine. And I’ve had a bad day too … so slack off, will you?”

“Maybe I can help?” It was Serra, intervening as sweetly as possible.

Mona felt herself reddening. “It’s no problem. I’ll just fill out the …”

“Go home, Mo.” Serra squeezed her forearm gently.

“I can manage.”

“Are you sure?” She felt like a real ogre.

“You deserve it,” said Serra. “Go on. Scoot.”

So Mona got the hell out, stopping briefly on the way home to write a bad check for tuna fish and detergent at the S & M Market. Once upon a time—three years ago, to be exact—she had gotten a big laugh out of the S & M Market. She had promised herself she would take Mouse there if he ever came to Seattle.

But Mouse had never come, and the irony inherent in the name of her corner grocery had faded like her California tan. They had drifted apart gradually, and she wasn’t sure whose fault that was. Now the thought of a reunion was embarrassing at best, terrifying at worst.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering if Mouse was doing O.K., if he had found someone to hug him occasionally, if he would still call her Babycakes the next time they met. She had thought of phoning him three or four times, while on Perco-dan from her periodontist, but she didn’t want his sympathy for her dud of a life.

When she reached her apartment, her neighbor Mrs. Guttenberg accosted her in the lobby. “Oh, thank God, Mona! Thank God!” The old lady was a wreck.

“What is it?” asked Mona.

“It’s old Pete, poor thing. He’s in the alley out back.”

“You mean he’s …?”

“Some fool kid ran over him. I couldn’t find a soul to help me, Mona. I’ve got a blanket over him, but I don’t think … The poor old thing … he never deserved this.”

Mona rushed into the alley, where the dog lay immobile in a light drizzle. Only his head stuck out from under the blanket. A rheumy eye looked up at Mona and blinked. She knelt and laid her hand carefully against his graying muzzle. He made a faint noise in the hack of his throat.

She looked up at Mrs. Guttenberg. “He doesn’t belong to anyone, does he?”

The old lady shook her head, fingertips pressed to her throat. “All of us feed him. He’s lived here for ten years at least … twelve, Mona … he’s got to be put out of his misery.”

Mona nodded.

“Could you drive him to the SPCA? It’s just a few blocks.”

“I don’t have a car, Mrs. Guttenberg.”

“You could push him.”

Mona stood up. “Push him?”

“In that shopping cart I take to the S & M.”

So that was what they did. Using the blanket to hoist him, Mona laid Pete in Mrs. Guttenberg’s shopping cart and pushed him six blocks to the SPCA. An attendant there told her there was no hope for the dog. “It won’t take long,” he said. “Do you want to take him back with you?”

Mona shook her head. “He isn’t mine. I don’t know where I’d … no … no, thank you.”

“There’s a surrender fee of ten dollars.”

A surrender fee. Of all the things they could have called it.

“Fine,” she said, feeling the tears start to rise.

Five minutes later, when the deed was done, she wrote another bad check and pushed the empty cart home in the rain. Mrs. Guttenberg met her at the door, babbling her gratitude as she fumbled in her change purse for “something for your trouble.”

“That’s O.K.,” she said, trudging toward the elevator.

During her slow, clanking ascent, she thought suddenly of the maxim Mouse had called Mona’s Law:
You can have a hot lover, a hot job and a hot apartment, but you can’t have all three at the same time.

She and Mouse had laughed about this a lot, never dreaming that one day, two out of three would be regarded as something akin to a miracle.

The lover part didn’t bother her much anymore. By living alone she could maintain certain illusions about people that helped her to like them more—-sometimes even to love them more. Or was that just her rationale for being such a crummy roommate?

The apartment part went straight to the pit of her stomach when she reached the fourth floor and opened the door of the drab little chamber she bad learned to call home. There was something profoundly tragic—no, not tragic, just pathetic—about a thirty-eight-year-old woman who still built bookshelves out of bricks and planks.

She was on the verge of reevaluating the job part, when the telephone rang.

“Yeah?’’

“May I speak to Mona Ramsey, please?” It was a woman’s voice, unrecognizable.

“Uh … I’m not sure she’s here. Who’s calling, please?”

“Dr. Sheldon’s bookkeeper.”

Mona tried to sound breezy. “I see. May I take your number?”

“She’s not there, then?”

“ ‘Fraid not.” Less breeze this time, more authority. This bill hound wasn’t giving up without a fight.

“I tried to reach her at her place of business, and they said she had gone home sick today. This
is
her residence, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but … Miss Ramsey has left for a while.”

“I thought she was sick.”

“No,” Mona answered. “In mourning.”

“Oh …”

“Her best friend died this afternoon.” That sounded a little too conventional, so she added: “He was executed.”

“My God.”

“She took it kinda hard,” she said, getting into it. “She was a witness.”

This was almost overkill, but it worked like a charm. The caller audibly gulped for air. “Well … I guess … I’ll call her when … Just say I called, will you?”