Significant Others (13 page)
Leaving Edgar at the compound, they set out across the land to get their bearings. They found women laughing around campfires and perched in trees along the river, women playing bridge and chopping wood and drinking beer with other women.
When they reached the central stage, a square dance was in progress. A hundred sun-flushed women, clad only in boots and bandannas, were do-si-doing to the music of a string band. Amused yet riveted by the sight, DeDe turned and caught her lover’s eye.
“Well?” said D’or. “It’s something, huh?”
DeDe nodded. It was something, all right.
A
T 28 BARBARY LANE, MICHAEL WAS PACKING HIS
suitcase when the phone rang.
“Michael?” said the voice on the other end.
“Yeah.”
“It’s Thack Sweeney. The guy you met in solitary.”
“Oh, hi.” Didn’t it figure? Didn’t it just figure he would call now?
“I told you I’d call.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Listen, what’s your schedule like tomorrow?”
Shitfuckpiss, thought Michael. “Well, actually, I’m going to the river with a friend.”
“Oh, yeah? Sounds like fun.” If he was devastated, he didn’t show it.
“What did you have in mind?” asked Michael.
“Oh … nothing much. Just hanging out.”
Hanging out had never sounded so good. “This trip is kind of set,” said Michael. “Otherwise …”
“I understand,” said Thack.
Michael wavered, then asked: “What are you doing tonight?”
Thack laughed. “Lurking outside your door at the local mom-and-pop.”
“Huh?”
“Well, not technically, but pretty close. The grocer says you’re a block or two away. I was walking up Union Street and just decided to call. It’s the wildest coincidence.”
Michael wanted more than coincidence. “You’re at the Searchlight?”
“That’s the one.”
“You … uh … want to come over?”
“Well … you must be packing.”
“No. I mean, I’m finished. Come on over, if you want.”
“How do I get there?”
“Uh … walk over the crest of Union, take a left on Leavenworth. Barbary Lane is on the left, halfway down the hill. There’s a stairway you can see from the street.”
“Got it,” said Thack.
Michael hung up, sat down, smiled uncontrollably, stood up again and did a little jig around the room. Then he finished washing the dishes, gave the bathroom a quick onceover, and plucked the dead blossoms off his potted azalea.
When Thack arrived, ten minutes later, his cheeks had been pinched pink by the fog. “Boy,” he said, coming into the apartment. “You didn’t warn me about those steps.”
“Oh, no,” said Michael. “Did one break?”
Thack nodded. “I bailed out just in time.”
“Where was it?”
“Up near the top … just before you reach the part with the killer stones. Get many lawsuits?”
Michael smiled at him. “The lane dwellers are used to it.”
Thack looked around him, like a dog sniffing out his bedding, then went directly to the window and peered out to the bay. “The lane dwellers, huh? Sounds almost anthropological.”
“Well, it is … kinda.”
“Like an Amazonian tribe or something. Well, there it is, all right.”
“What?”
“The Alcatraz lighthouse. You said you could see it from here.”
“Oh … yeah. That’s it. Look, if you don’t mind making yourself at home, I should go fix that step.”
“Now?”
“It’s kind of … an agreement we all have. There are planks in the basement already cut to fit. It shouldn’t take that long.”
“This I gotta see,” said Thack.
“If you’d rather wait here …”
“No. Go on, lead the way.”
So Michael went to the basement, with Thack on his heels. He took a plank from a stack of ten (marked
SOS—Save Our Steps
by Mrs. Madrigal) and found a hammer and the appropriate nails.
“The steps are in jeopardy,” he explained, as they crossed the courtyard into the pungent darkness of the lane.
“As are the steppers,” said Thack.
“If the city gets another complaint, they’ll tear them down, no questions asked. They’ve already got plans to replace them with reinforced concrete.”
“Can’t have that,” said Thack, a little too deadpan about it.
Michael looked at him, then continued: “We’re buying time right now, trying to get public support.” He gave up the pitch, wary of Thack’s irreverence.
When they reached the steps, the broken one was immediately apparent, white as a dinosaur bone under the Barbary Lane streetlight. Michael pulled the fragments free and removed the rusty nails with his hammer.
Thack squatted next to him. “The support beam is almost as rotten.”
“I know.”
“Hardly seems worth it.”
Michael looked up at him. “I thought you said you were a preservationist.”
Thack shrugged. “Antebellum stuff. These steps don’t have any historical interest.”
Michael lifted the plank into place. “Maybe not to you.”
Thack watched him hammer for a while, then said: “Gimme that.”
“What?”
“Do it right, if you’re gonna do it. Gimme the hammer.”
Michael blinked indignantly.
“You hammer funny,” said Thack.
Michael considered several retorts, then handed him the hammer. “I’m a nurseryman, all right?”
Thack made the nail disappear in three deft strokes. In spite of his mild humiliation, Michael actually enjoyed the moment, his eyes fixed on the set of Thack’s jaw, the corded white flesh of his neck. When he had finished, Thack sat on the mended step and patted the spot next to him. “Try it out,” he said.
Michael took a seat. “I guess this seems kinda dumb to you.”
“What?”
“Caring so much about these steps.”
“I dunno,” said Thack.
“I’ve been here almost ten years, so this place is kind of in my blood.”
“Yeah. I’m that way about Charleston. I’d have a hard time leaving it.”
“Well,” said Michael, “then you understand.”
Thack drummed his fingers against the railing.
“How long will you stay?” asked Michael.
“Oh … four or five more days.”
Michael nodded, mad at himself for capitulating to Brian’s panic. It was high time he started catering to his own needs again. “You know,” he began, “if you’d like to join us at the river …”
“Thanks,” said Thack. “I wouldn’t horn in on your date.”
“Oh,” said Michael. “He’s just an old friend.”
“Oh.”
“He’s straight,” Michael added. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. I mean, I was the one who asked him. It’s no big deal.” He felt a little traitorous saying this, but Brian would just have to deal with it.
“Well,” said Thack. “It does sound like fun.”
“You bet.”
“Three buddies in the boondocks.”
“Right,” said Michael a little uneasily. What sort of compromise was he accepting? “You’ll like Brian, I think. He’s a great guy.”
They stayed there on the steps, bantering jovially under a lemon-drop moon. Half an hour later, having established a late-morning rendezvous, Thack bid Michael a hearty farewell and set off to catch the cable car at Union and Hyde.
Elated but a little confused, Michael called Brian and broke the news to him. He took it well, all things considered.
“No problem, man. It’s your cabin.”
“Well, it’s our trip, though. I didn’t wanna … you know … impose my …” He didn’t finish, since it would have been an outright lie. He had done what he’d wanted to do. Why pretend to be considerate now?
“It’s O.K.,” said Brian. “I just wanna get away. You didn’t tell him about … Geordie and all?”
“No,” said Michael. “Nothing.”
“Good. That’s strictly between us, Michael.”
“I know,” said Michael.
W
REN’S NEST, AS SHE HAD COME TO THINK OF IT,
was an oversized redwood bungalow with porches on three sides and a huge central fireplace built of smooth stones. It was perched on the ridge above Monte Rio, the last house on the road. From her porches she could look down on a squadron of turkey vultures, circling endlessly above the sleepy river.
There was a washer and a dryer, a black-and-white TV set, an assortment of comfy old chairs and couches. The refrigerator had been extravagantly stocked with wines and exotic deli food. The linen closet would have been ample for a family of six.
After several days in this cleansing environment, her end-of-tour tension had all but disappeared. She had lost track of time again, and the sensation was pure bliss. Life was a random pastiche of reading, eating, sleeping, sunning, wandering, and eating some more.
Sometimes, she would drive down to the Cazadero General Store in the white Plymouth Horizon Booter had rented for her use. She would loiter there with a dripping Dove bar, marveling at the time-warpy blend of tourist kitsch, organic grains and tie-dyed T-shirts. Most of all she adored the bulletin board, with its folksy index cards about belly-dance classes and “fixer-uppers” and solar panels for sale.
Her only other foray into the outside world had been to see
Some Like It Hot
at the movie house in Monte Rio. The Rio Theater was an entertainment in itself, a riverside Quonset hut with a Deco facade, noble in its failure to be grand. After the show, a chubby teenager had recognized the world’s most beautiful fat woman and requested an autograph.
Comforted to learn that her fame was still intact, Wren had written “Think Big” on the kid’s popcorn box.
Her agent had been pissed, of course. Not to mention her PR man, to whom fell the sorry task of canceling her Portland and Seattle engagements. Neither one of them believed her cock-and-bull story about this impromptu getaway, and her now-delayed return to Chicago had alternately wounded and enraged her lover, Rolando.
She didn’t give a damn, really. She was more content now than she’d been in ages, and she was being paid handsomely for it. Her bed time with Booter had totaled less than two hours so far, and his requirements had been reasonable and few.
Besides, she liked the old buzzard.
“Where is it?” she asked him when he arrived for his third visit. It was late afternoon and they were standing on the porch.
“Where’s what?”
“You know. This mystical scout camp of yours. Point it out to me.”
He gestured vaguely off to the left. “You can’t really see it from here. It’s a sort of bowl. You can only see it from Bohemian property. That’s the beauty of it.”
She gave him a teasing look. “When you’re plotting world domination.”
He smiled thinly and shook his head.
“Don’t you swim in the river?” she asked.
“Sure. That part down there with the platform. We call it the swimming pool.”
She followed his finger to a gray pier, a row of tented changing rooms. “Those teeny little people … they’re Bohemians?”
He nodded.
“They don’t look very Bohemian from here.”
He chuckled. “And even less so close up.”
She laughed. “And there are no girls allowed?”
“Not during the encampment.”
“I bet I could get in.” This made him flinch a little, so she added: “Not that I would, of course.”
“The gate guards are pretty smart,” he said.
“I’d swim the river,” she said. “I’d wait until it got dark and I’d swim the river naked, with my clothes in a plastic bag. Then I’d—”
“I hope you’re not serious.”
She shook her head, smiling. “I like making you nervous, Boo-Roger.”
His relief was evident. “I don’t know you that well,” he said. “I don’t know when you’re joking.”
“I was right, though, wasn’t I?”
“About what?”
“Getting in. That beach is your weak flank.”
He shrugged. “You’d still be a woman. You couldn’t do much about that. You’d be spotted the first time you showed your face.”
She smiled as cryptically as possible.
“How about a drink?” said Booter.
“You’re on,” said Wren.
She left him there in the dwindling light and went to the kitchen, returning minutes later with a couple of Scotch and waters.
“Thank you,” said Booter.
She clinked her glass against his. “I’m a helluva gal.”
He smiled faintly, then turned his gaze back to the river. “So it’s … back to Chicago after this?”
“Yep.”
“You like it there?”
“I adore it,” she said.
“What about San Francisco?”
“What about it?”
“Did you like it?”
She shrugged. “It was O.K.”
“Just O.K.?”
She laughed. “Good God!”
“What?”
“You’re all alike here.”
“How so?” he asked.
“You demand adoration for the place. You’re not happy until
everybody
swears undying love for every nook and cranny of every precious damn—”
“Whoa, missy.”
“Well, it’s true. Can’t you just worship it on your own? Do I have to sign an affidavit?”
He chuckled. “We’re that bad, are we?”
“You bet your ass you are.”
He swirled the ice in his glass, then took a gulp and set the glass down on the porch railing. “You have a … uh … beau back in Chicago?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“Nice fellow?”
She smiled at him. “Don’t know any other kind.”
He nodded. “Good.” The light in his eyes seemed almost paternal.
“He’s Cuban,” she added, just to catch his response. It showed in the set of his mouth, a brief involuntary twitch of the mustache. “Thought so,” she said, smiling slightly.
“What?”
“You’re a bigot.”
His jaw became rigid.
“It’s O.K.,” she said, wiggling his fleshy old earlobe. “It’s your generation, that’s all. Tell me what your wife is like.”
He was thrown off balance for a moment.
“Do you
like
her?” she asked.
“She’s a fine lady,” he said finally. “She drinks a little too much, but she’s … very nice.”
“I’m glad.”
“That she drinks?”
She made a goofy face at him. “That you like her. That she likes you.”
“Oh, we’re friends,” he said. “Most of the time.”
