Significant Others (30 page)
The bedside phone rang.
“Yell-o,” she piped in her best receptionese.
“Wren,” said the caller, “iss me.”
“Booter?”
“Yeah, iss me.”
If he wasn’t shitfaced, he sure sounded like it. “Where are you, Booter?”
“Uh … Guerneville.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m … I’m O.K.”
“You could have called, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t you call?”
“I couldn’t…. Was in a canoe.”
“What?” She heard a woman mutter something in the background. “Booter … who’s with you?”
A pause and then: “Nobody.”
“Oh, right.” Now she was boiling mad.
“Iss juss somebody who—”
“You have one helluva lot of nerve, Booter.” She turned to Brian and said: “He’s ripped to the tits and he’s got some woman with him.”
“No,” said Booter.
“What do you mean, no? I can hear her.”
“Iss not like that.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow, Booter. That check better be good.”
“Iss good.”
She could hear the woman cackling in the background. “I’m hanging up, Booter.”
“Gobblesshew,” he said.
“Right,” she said, and slammed the receiver down.
She fumed in silence. Then Brian said: “I’m sorry you worried so much.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she said. “Well … still.”
“Fuck him,” she said. “I should’ve charged him the full ten thousand.”
She went to sleep angry and woke up that way, rising before Brian to finish her packing. He made french toast for them both, then took out her last bag of garbage. When the limousine arrived at nine forty-five, they were waiting for it on the back steps. The driver was a new one (not, thank God, the one she had slept with), and he was openly curious as to why he’d been treated to a night at the Sonoma Mission Inn.
She let him wonder, determined to put the fiasco behind her.
They drove in silence to Cazadero, where Michael and Thack swapped places with Brian amidst coos of approval for the limousine. She gave Brian a quick hug at the door of his little cabin. “Call me,” she whispered.
“O.K.,” he answered.
She waved goodbye to him from the back window of the limo, but wasn’t sure he had seen her.
Back in the city, at Michael’s insistence, she told the driver to climb Russian Hill on its steepest slope. This turned out to be a street called Jones, a near-sheer cliff of a street which taxed the limo to the fullest and had them all whooping like idiots.
“Is this legal?” she gasped, clapping her hand to her chest.
Michael laughed. “It’s even better going down.”
“You’re twisted,” she said.
“I’ve never done this in a limo,” he said.
She snorted. “There are better things to do.”
“I’ll bet,” said Thack.
“Christ,” she gasped. “Is that a stop sign up ahead?” She leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Don’t stop, O.K.? My system can’t take it.”
Another laugh from Michael. “Can it take a speeding Muni bus?”
The driver stopped where he was supposed to stop, then turned right and kept climbing, though far less precipitously this time. Taking another right, he inched his way down another nauseating drop-off. The bay lay beneath them in the distance, ridiculously blue.
“All right,” she said, turning to Michael. “Enough with the Space Mountain.”
“This is it,” he said, wide-eyed. “Really.”
“This is really what?” She was pressing her fingertips against the back of the front seat, as if this would prevent her from tumbling forward, out the window, down the hill and into the bay.
“Where I live,” he replied. “That stairway beneath us. The wooden one.”
“Sure.”
“It is!” he said, beaming proudly. “You can park on the right there,” he told the driver. “The rest is on foot.” He turned back to her and added: “That big high-rise above us is where Brian lives.”
“I can’t look up,” she muttered. “Or down. I’ll blow lunch.”
The driver parked on the right, using the emergency brake. Michael and Thack hastily assembled their stuff. Then Thack began collecting empty juice bottles in a paper bag. “Leave it,” she told him. “That’s part of the fun.”
“He’s compulsive,” said Michael.
Thack gave them both a hooded glance and continued to gather trash.
“Just what you need,” Wren told Michael.
This minimal shot at matchmaking seemed to embarrass Michael, so she thrust her hand into his and added: “It’s been great.”
“Same here,” he said. “I can’t believe I met you.”
“Brian has my number,” she said, wondering if he’d guess the reason.
Michael nodded.
“Take care of him,” she said.
“I will,” he replied, without meeting her eyes.
She turned and took Thack’s hand. “Give my love to Charleston.”
“O.K.,” said Thack. “Thanks for the joyride.” He climbed out and waited on the curb.
Michael regarded her for a moment, then gave her a quick peck on the cheek and bounded out of the limo. She watched as he and Thack crossed the street and began to ascend the ramshackle wooden stairway he had indicated. In the dry grass next to its base stood an off-kilter street sign bearing the word
BARBARY.
“Is that safe?” she hollered, when they reached the first landing.
He cupped his hands and yelled back at her: “What the hell is?”
She was still smiling when he vanished into the dusty trees at the top of the stairs.
Her driver turned and said: “The airport, Miss Douglas?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Time to go home.”
W
HEN THEY REACHED THE COURTYARD AT NUMBER
28, Michael found Mrs. Madrigal watering her parched garden. The rigors of the heat wave had forced her into an old gingham sundress, which seemed far too Miss Marpleish for her particular brand of rawboned grace.
“How was it?” she called, as they came through the lych-gate.
“Terrific,” said Thack.
She shut off the spray, dropped the hose, and tended to the stray wisps at her temples. “It’s been dreadful here, absolutely murderous. In the eighties every day.”
“You’re spoiled,” said Thack.
She gave him a surprisingly coquettish glance and patted her hair again. “Nevertheless,” she said.
“The garden looks gorgeous,” Michael told her.
“It’s getting there. Did Brian come back with you?” There was a purposeful glint in her eye which belied her breezy delivery.
“No,” said Michael. “We bummed a ride with somebody else. He came home in my car.”
“I see,” said the landlady.
“Why?”
“Oh … well … Mary Ann asked.”
Michael wondered how much Mrs. Madrigal knew. “He should be home soon,” he said as blandly as possible.
She fixed her huge Wedgwood eyes on him. “He hasn’t called her,” she said. “He’s been very naughty.”
He made a helpless gesture. “What can I tell you?”
She looked at him a moment longer, then swooped down to pick up her gardening gloves. When she was upright again, she turned her attention to Thack. “Michael’s showing you the sights, is he?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Thack.
“Do you like it here?”
“Very much.”
“I’m so glad. How much longer will we have the pleasure of your company?”
“Well,” said Thack, “till tonight, I guess. My flight’s tonight.”
This was news to Michael, but he didn’t look at Thack for fear of betraying his emotions. Mrs. Madrigal, he imagined, already saw the distress in his face, sensed the enormity of the cloud settling over him.
Up in his bedroom, after they had both showered and changed into clean sweats, Michael said: “What time is your flight?”
“Six-fifteen,” Thack replied.
Michael went to the window and looked out. “I thought it was tomorrow, for some reason.” His eyes fixed vacantly on Alcatraz, the cause of this pain, the scene of the crime. “I had sort of pictured us sleeping here.”
Thack hesitated, then said: “It’s a nice thought.”
“But?” he asked, pushing the issue in spite of his better instincts.
Thack came up behind him, enfolding him in his arms. “They’re expecting me at Middleton Plantation bright and early Tuesday morning.”
“What for?” asked Michael, alienated by such an exotic excuse.
“To make a speech,” said Thack, “to some Yankee preservationists.”
“What about?” asked Michael.
Thack kissed him on the ear. “Funding, mostly. Boring stuff.” He rocked Michael back and forth. “Sooner or later, real life comes crashing back in, doesn’t it?”
This was much too glib, Michael felt, a ready-made coda to a shipboard romance. He lived here, didn’t he? This was his ship. What hadn’t been real-life about it?
“C’mon,” said Thack, leading him to the bed. “Let’s cuddle.”
As they lay there, Thack’s back against Michael’s chest, Michael said: “I hate this. It seems like a Sunday afternoon.”
“It
is
Sunday afternoon,” said Thack.
“I know, but … I mean, like when you were a kid, when you knew that Monday was coming, and the clock was ticking away. Saturdays were perfect, because there was Sunday, which was sort of a buffer. But Sundays just got worse and worse.”
Thack took Michael’s hand and kissed it. “Hang on to the moment,” he said.
To hell with that, thought Michael. “You know,” he said quietly, “you’re much more of a Californian than I’ll ever be.”
The late sun, slashing through the Levolors, turned them into prisoners again, striped by shadows. Michael slept for a while, waking when the stripes were gone. Thack was still asleep.
The clock said four forty-seven. For a six-fifteen flight, they should leave the house no later than five-thirty. If they overslept—and who was to say they couldn’t?—the next flight might not be until God-knows-when….
His deviousness under pressure was truly amazing. To repent for it, he slipped his hand around Thack’s bicep and squeezed gently. Thack woke up smiling. How could he look so happy? For that matter, how could he sleep so soundly when the time—no, their time—was slipping away?
“You should pack,” said Michael.
“Already am,” said Thack.
Michael rubbed his eyes. “I’ll drive you, of course.”
“ ’Fraid not.”
“What?”
“Not unless Brian’s back.”
“Damn. You’re right. Well … he must be.” He grabbed the bedside phone and dialed The Summit. After three rings, Mary Ann answered with a glacial hello.
“It’s Michael,” he said. “Is Brian back yet?”
“I thought he was with you.”
“No … I mean, he was, but we came home in separate cars.”
“Why did you do that?”
“No special reason,” he said, wary of mentioning Wren. “We met a friend there, and Brian said he’d enjoy being on his own.”
“How long have you been home?” she asked.
“A few hours. Maybe he took the ocean road home.”
“Yeah,” she said distantly. “Maybe. I have no way of knowing. You saw him last.”
This was clearly an attempt to assign guilt, and Michael would have none of it. “He said he was coming home,” he countered tartly. “I’m calling because I need the car for an airport run. Just ask him to call me, O.K.? When he gets in.”
She was silent for a while, then said: “Are you mad at me, Mouse?”
The nickname was as old as their friendship. She was using it, he realized, to signal her earnestness.
“No … I’m not.”
“You sound furious. What have I done?”
“Nothing.”
“I looked for you after the show the other day. You just took off.”
“Sorry,” he said, “if it looked that way. I had work to do, that’s all.”
“You said you wanted to meet Wren Douglas.” A certain wounded tremolo, perfected in Cleveland, had come back into her voice. Michael hadn’t heard it for a while, but it never failed to work on him.
“I didn’t much care for her,” he lied. “I changed my mind about meeting her after I saw the show.”
“Oh.”
“She wasn’t that great,” he added, somehow feeling traitorous to two women at the same time. “It had nothing to do with you, I promise.”
“O.K. I just wondered.”
“We’ll talk later, all right? My friend’ll miss his flight if I don’t call a cab.”
“I love you, Mouse.”
“Same here, Babycakes. Bye-bye.”
He hung up, racked with guilt, then called Veterans and ordered a cab for the foot of the Barbary steps. “We should go,” he told Thack afterwards. “It won’t take them long.”
Thack’s luggage in hand, they navigated the wobbly ballast stones along the lane. “I could go with you,” Michael said suddenly.
Thack looked confused.
“To the airport,” Michael added.
“Oh … well, you’d just have to pay the fare coming back.”
Michael didn’t argue with him. He pictured himself alone in that cab, and it seemed even worse than this.
“Besides,” said Thack, “I like the idea of saying goodbye at the steps. I like the symmetry of it, a clean break.”
It sounded like carpentry to Michael, precise and a little cold-blooded.
“Oh,” Thack added. “Tell Mrs. Madrigal I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Aren’t they tearing down the steps tomorrow?”
“Oh, yeah.” He hadn’t thought about that for days. “I’ll tell her.”
Reaching the steps, Thack set his suitcase down. Michael did the same with the carry-on. Thack said: “It’s been really great. Some great memories.”
“Same here,” said Michael.
Sadistically early, the cab appeared on the street beneath them. Thack waved authoritatively, then put his arms around Michael. “Gimme a kiss. We’ll make him squirm.”
“I don’t think so,” said Michael, seeing who the driver was. “Hello, Teddy,” he hollered down.
“Hello, Michael,” came the melodious reply.
“He’s a friend of mine,” he explained. “He must’ve recognized the address.”
“Oh.”
“He’s a lord.”
“Of what?”
“Of England,” said Michael. “Lord Roughton. He married this lesbian friend of mine. Get him to tell you about it.”
“All right,” said Thack, smiling. “I’ll do that.” He kissed Michael lightly on the mouth. Twice. “Stay well,” he said softly.
“I plan to,” said Michael.
