Impersonal Attractions (13 page)

She had nice legs, pretty ankles. She turned to see who
was calling her. Behind her a woman waved. “Marcia, Marcia.”

Her glance crossed his. She smiled. Pretty, strong, white teeth. Hints of a full bosom billowed beneath a loose pink blouse. A gold six-pointed star twinkled in the hollow of her throat.

Marcia. He said the name to himself. Rolled it around in his mouth.

She was it.

She didn’t wait for the bus, but walked a half-block to her old orange and gray Volkswagen van. An ancient sticker that read BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
was peeling across the rear window. It was easy to follow the slow-moving vehicle south across town, Masonic to Clayton, along the tops of the hills, intersecting Market, into the Castro area. She parked the van in front of a pink and purple Victorian, and scrambled up the steps with her arms full. She never saw him behind her.

In the next few days he would follow Marcia to the laundry, the art supply store, her studio on Arkansas Street. Her thoughts were filled with a new sculpture she was doing for a group show.

His thoughts were filled with her.

TWENTY

Like most of her students, Annie usually dressed for class in casual slacks or jeans, a sweater, and a comfortable old blazer. But tonight, this last class before Halloween, the
quintessential San Francisco holiday, she was putting on her Halloween costume. Annie was going to class as Dolly Parton.

She had borrowed the basic components from Sam, who had worn them to a party the year before: a bubbly, bouffant platinum wig and a 40DD bra. Annie provided her own polyester pillow stuffing, heavy makeup, gold hoop earrings, and too tight jeans. The southern accent she already had.

As she walked down the hall to her classroom, the overhead lamps casting highlights in her silvery hair, a transformation began. She felt herself getting into it: a giggle in her throat, a new wiggle in her walk, a proud, chest-out arch in her back.

She had planned to be just a couple of minutes late for a dramatic entrance. When she opened the classroom door and sauntered in there were looks of shock, surprise, leers of admiration, but no recognition in the eyes of her students. She had pulled it off.

“Howdy. How’ya doing this evening?” she drawled.

“Fine.” “Okay,” a couple of students answered.

“Ms. Tannenbaum couldn’t be with ya’ll tonight, so she asked me to fill in for her.” She sat on the edge of the desk.

“Awwwwwright,” cheered Cornell.

“Why you must be Cornell.” She batted her false eyelashes at him. “Ms. Tannenbaum warned me about you.”

A few students in the front of the room began to titter. Eve Gold nudged the woman next to her. “Ms. Parton, we’re delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“Mrs. Gold, that’s not Dolly Parton. She just looks like her,” corrected Cornell.

“That’s right,” Eve flashed back, “and who do you think she is, if you’re so smart, young man?”

Laughter erupted in the room and Annie could see the light dawning on Cornell’s handsome brown face.

“Holy shit, Ms. Tannenbaum, is that you in there?”

The class broke up.

Annie waggled over to his desk and leaned down. “Why sure, sugar, who’d you think it was?”

Eventually the class was able to settle down to the business at hand, which this week was the reading of their horror stories, written in honor of the season. Mayhem, gore, ghosts, dismembered bodies marched up and down the creaky stairs of their minds. There were some real beauts.

It was all in good fun until Annie called on Eddie Simms, the student who usually slept through class. He smirked as he read his story, the first assignment he had ever completed. Annie wished he hadn’t. His wasn’t just a horror story; it was a loathsome journey into a country she never wanted to visit.

“That is
sick,
man,” Cornell finally said in the silence that followed.

“Yuk,” Gladys Chiu agreed, and they moved on to old Mr. Garfield’s whimsical tale about a little boy who was afraid of his image in the mirror when his back was turned.

After class there was some close-up inspection of Annie’s costume and talk of what everyone was going to wear on the big night. Cornell volunteered that he was going as either Colonel Sanders or a chicken.

*

At home Annie pulled Agatha up into the driveway of her building’s large communal garage. As she got out to unlock and pull up the heavy door, a couple walking their dog across the street whistled. She was startled; San Franciscans are usually a bit more reserved. Then she remembered her costume and waved at them.

She flipped the light switch at the door, got back into Agatha, and drove to her parking space toward the back of the garage. Her high-heeled steps echoed on the concrete floor. This walk made her especially nervous since neighbors told her a tenant had once been raped here.

The safest procedure was to drive the car through, stop just inside, pull the exterior door down, and lock it. But no one ever did. It was too much trouble.

So too was making sure the connecting door to the lobby was locked from the garage side.

But the security of that door was problematic. If both the lobby door and the exterior garage doors were locked, the building was secure, but you could be locked in a box with an intruder. The alternative was to make the building more vulnerable to a burglar, who could open any glass-paned apartment door in the building with a glass cutter.

Was it better to roll down a mountain with one’s seat belt tightly fastened after a picnic and a bottle of wine, or to take one’s chances in jumping? Annie could never decide.

She kept meaning to speak to Tony, the super, about it.

*

Across the hall, Angie was practicing “Für Elise” on her piano. She was getting a lot better. In front of her door was a note from Angie inviting her over for a piece of chocolate cake.

Frank and Angie were the best neighbors she’d ever had, with the exception of Tom Albano long ago. Sometimes, when Frank was out, she and Angie would leave their doors open and traipse back and forth in their nightgowns with their respective phones pulled near the doors as they drank coffee and chatted.

A little blonde brick from the Bronx, Angie had a kind of solid common sense that Angie had come to lean on. A bonus was her mother’s spaghetti gravy, calamari, and other Italian recipes that had given Annie a whole new way of looking at North Beach Italian restaurants and had even resulted in a couple of articles.

Frank was another kind of joy, a horse of a different color. Whereas Angie barely cleared five feet with a chrysanthemum burst of blonde hair and energy, Frank loomed up at 6′ 5″ and was a slow-talking, slow-moving black man from Tennessee. He was enthusiastic about computer programming, which he did for a living, the basketball he played in his spare time, both reading and writing poetry, and Angie. He was most often a quiet man, though he loved to laugh and, even more, to tickle Angie.

There was a time when he goosed her so loudly in the bathroom ventilated by an airshaft that conducted sound up and down the six stories that a note had suddenly appeared in the elevator exhorting Frank’s lady to hold down her early morning passion or to keep her business to herself.

Frank’s response concerned itself with those who ain’t getting any. Both signs were decorated with graffiti and neighbors’ votes of confidence for a day or two and then disappeared, the tempest fading away.

In addition to being the building’s tallest tenant, Frank was also its only black. Several times, little old ladies had visibly jumped at opening the elevator door to find Frank’s lanky dark form standing there. He always smiled.

Annie rang their buzzer. “Okay,” yelled Angie, “I’m coming.

“Oh, my God,” she shrieked when she saw Annie’s Dolly Parton drag.

Frank sat down on the carpet and rolled with laughter.

Then they got down to the serious business of stuffing half a dark chocolate cake with chocolate filling and whipped cream down their faces.

They were licking their fingers when Annie’s downstairs buzzer rang. It was Sam, on her way home from work.

“Great!” said Frank. They liked Sam, but didn’t see her very often.

Angie got another plate and fork, and began to make a fresh pot of coffee.

Sam was looking beautiful in a gray wool suit and purple silk blouse.

Settled at the kitchen table, she twitted Annie. “Do you think this is proper schoolmarm behavior?” she asked Frank.

“Well, I sure never had any teachers who looked like that in Memphis,” he drawled. “If I had, I’d probably have gone to school more often.”

Angie poured coffee all around and asked Sam, “You’re working on the Mt. Diablo story, aren’t you? Didn’t I see your by-line?”

“Yes. Thanks for noticing it. Boy, it’s really a killer.” They all groaned.

“Sorry. This guy Murphy who killed his parents has got me going. Very spooky. Very cool, very brilliant, and so controlled. But with enough screws loose to make a tool kit.”

“So is he the one who killed all the hikers?”

“Doesn’t look like it. No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, shit,” said Angie.

“I know. No closer than they were a month ago.”

The conversation moved on to something much more pleasant, Angie and Frank’s upcoming wedding. With her relatives and his, it was going to require the skills of a UN protocol chief, but Angie was determined it was going to go smoothly.

“We’ll just keep shoveling food and booze down them,” she said. “They won’t even notice what’s happening. After that, the baby will be easy.”

“Baby!” Annie cried.

“No, no, not yet. First the wedding. But soon.” She grinned. “Frank can’t wait to see what an Afro-Italian named Spike is going to look like.”

“And if it’s a girl?” asked Sam.

“No difference,” Frank said, serious-faced. “And she still has to play basketball.”

“Get out of here.” Angie slapped at him.

Then they all kissed good night, and Sam and Annie went across the hall.

“The man in the Porsche called again.” Sam couldn’t wait to share her news.

“He said he didn’t show up that time at the Square because he was too shy. He felt unworthy. Seems as though I’m a shining star he should worship from a distance. Tomorrow he’s going to send me a token of his affection.”

“Did you tell him to buzz off?”

“I told him he was making me very uncomfortable and that I didn’t want him to carry on like this. I swear, I think he was breathing heavy at the discouragement.”

“The next thing you know, he’ll send you a whip from that freak shop, Hard-On Leather.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” She paused. “I wonder what it’s going to be?”

“Don’t ask me, dearie. You’re the one with the weird taste in playmates.”

“Ha! Who’s talking? David the Deviant isn’t exactly Laurence Olivier.”

“And how do you know what Olivier’s
really
like?”

“I bet he never took Vivien Leigh to dinner at the Doggie Diner.”

Annie poked at her.

The ringing phone interrupted their play.

“If it’s David, tell him the ferry leaves for Alcatraz in ten minutes.”

“Very funny.”

It was Slim. In a semi-stupor. He wanted to have a drink soon. Annie was evasive.

“Why didn’t you just tell him to buzz off?”

“Because my mother raised me to be a southern lady.”

Sam guffawed. “If you think about that a minute, you’ll get the joke.”

*

Before turning out her bedside light Annie made a list of what she had to do the next day, the day before Halloween: Talk with Quan about taking Quynh trick or treating. Costume consultation with Quynh. Finish the piece on southwestern food. Stop by for a drink with David. Answer her parents’ letter. Pick up cleaning. Call Lola Davis about lunch soon.

TWENTY-ONE

As she pulled on her favorite orchid sweats and rolled up her blue exercise mat, Annie remembered what Sam’s very active, silver-haired Aunt Catherine had said to her recently.

“You know, dear, I watch other women in my exercise class, and what fascinates me is the expression on their faces. Their eyes are all glazed, their gazes turned inward, totally absorbed with their bodies. I’m reminded of the eyes of dogs I’ve seen copulating.”

She and Sam had exploded with laughter, but the thought kept coming to mind. Is that what she looked like?

And, if so, is that the same way she looked when she did have sex? Totally absorbed with her body? That pretty
much described how she felt with David. There certainly wasn’t much else happening between them.

She was headed toward him now.

“Why don’t you drop by for a drink, Annie?”

Or a “pop.”

Or a “bite.”

It all meant the same thing. Their bodies were going to spend an hour, or two, or sometimes even three together, and then one of them was going to get dressed and go home.