More Tales of the City

by Armistead Maupin

  Brian took a long drag on the joint. “So how long …?” He exhaled in midsentence, making sure he maintained an expression of amused tolerance. “How long am I supposed to keep pretending?”

  “As long as possible. Until she asks you.”

  “Asks me what?”

  “If you were wounded in the war, of course!”

  “And what do I tell her?”

  “The truth, dear. That everything’s intact. It’ll be a lovely surprise for her.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and smiled at her.

  “And,” she said, raising her forefinger, “you’ll have a nice surprise too.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll know the poor dear, Brian. And you might even like her by then.”

  Minutes later, as he stood in the window of his little house on the roof, he marveled at how well Mrs. Madrigal could read him, how swiftly she had detected “the creature who’s driving my carefree boy to utter distraction.”

  Did it show on his face now? Did his pupils dilate from the sheer, loin-twitching force of the fantasy? What set of the jaw or tic of the eye betrayed the passion that had begun to consume him?

  At two minutes before midnight he lifted his binoculars to his face and focused on the eleventh floor of the Superman Building.

  She appeared, as he prayed she would, on the hour. And he heard himself whimper when their binoculars locked in mid-air.

  Bobbi

  EXHAUSTED BY THE DRUGS AND THE LONG BUS RIDE, Mona crashed after breakfast at the Blue Moon Lodge. The broiling midday sun had already forced her to kick off the covers when Bobbi knocked on the door of her cinder-block cubicle.

  “Knock, knock,” she said.

  Mona groaned silently. How long would she be able to endure the puppy love of this sugar-coated tart?

  “Hi Judy. Mother Mucca asked me to show you how the phones work.”

  Arrggh. The phones. This was a job, wasn’t it? She was paying her way on this acidless trip. Dragging herself into a semi-upright position, she leaned against the headboard and rubbed her eyes. “Three minutes, O.K.?”

  She staggered into the tiny bathroom and splashed water on her face. It would only be for a week, she reassured herself, and prostitution was legal in Nevada. Besides, if she ever decided to take up copywriting again, this gig would look stunning on a résumé.

  Two large metal hooks in the ceiling caught her eye as she left the bathroom.

  “What’s that for?” she asked Bobbi.

  “What?”

  “Those hooks.”

  “Oh. This used to be Tanya’s room.”

  Gotcha. Thanks a helluva lot. “Tanya did something with hooks?”

  Bobbi giggled, as if Mona were a new kid on the block who didn’t know the first thing about hopscotch. “That’s where she hung the swing.”

  Should I ask about that? thought Mona. Yes. I’m a receptionist in a whorehouse. I should know about swings. “The swing was part of … her routine?”

  Bobbi nodded. “Water sports. She was real famous for it.”

  “You mean …? I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, silly,” chirped Bobbi. “She tinkled on them from up there. While she was swinging, see?”

  “I think I saw her on The Gong Show once.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. What happened to her, anyway?”

  “Tanya? She switched to a house in Elko.”

  “Was that good?”

  Bobbi shrugged. “For her, I guess. Mother Mucca was plenty pissed. But Tanya’ll be back, probably. There aren’t that many good houses in these parts. Elko, Winnemucca, Wells … that’s about it.”

  Mona suppressed a smirk. This dippy child who said tinkled when she meant pissed and pissed when she meant angry could still distinguish between a respectable and an unrespectable whorehouse. “Where are the crummy ones?” Mona asked.

  Bobbi pursed her lips thoughtfully, obviously delighted with her role as the Duncan Hines of whorehouses. “Oh … Mina, I guess, and Eureka and Battle Mountain. Battle Mountain is definitely the pits. When a girl hits that circuit … well, she might as well hang it up.”

  Bobbi’s income, Mona learned, was about three hundred dollars a week. That was after Mother Mucca had taken her cut and Bobbi had paid her room and board.

  All of the girls at the Blue Moon Lodge were required to work three weeks straight before taking a week off. The state saw to it that they were issued a work permit, fingerprinted, photographed and examined by a doctor prior to setting up shop—or swings.

  The most profitable season, according to Bobbi, was summer, when transcontinental traffic on Interstate 80 was heavier, and a period between mid-September and mid-October, when deer hunters invaded the area.

  In accordance with the Municipal Code of Winnemucca, the girls of the Blue Moon Lodge took turns in exercising their privilege to go into town for shopping, movies and medical attention.

  There was also a law that forbade a woman from working in a Winnemucca brothel if a member of her family resided in the county.

  “C’mon,” bubbled Bobbi, as soon as Mona pulled herself together. “I wanna show you something neat.”

  Mona braced herself for the abomination. A rubber room, perhaps? A mirrored ceiling? A sex-crazed donkey? A crotch-less Naugahyde wet suit by Frederick’s of Hollywood?

  Bobbie led the way out of the cubicle into the sunshine. The warm desert air made Mona acutely aware of the original purpose of her escape from San Francisco. Communion with Nature. Harmony with the Elements.

  But no … oh, no. That was not Buddha’s Design.

  Buddha, for some goddamn reason, wanted her to have a room with hooks in the ceiling.

  Their destination was Bobbi’s cubicle, a space identical to Mona’s, three doors closer to the main building. Bobby swung open the door with a flourish.

  “Over there,” she exclaimed, “on the shelf above the bed.”

  Mona’s jaw went slack.

  “Dolls of All Nations,” said Bobbi. “I’ve been collecting since I was twelve.”

  “They’re … very nice,” said Mona.

  The child-whore beamed proudly. “Their faces are really all the same, but … well, I guess you can’t have everything.”

  “No.”

  “You can touch ‘em if you want.”

  Mona went to the shelf and pretended to examine one of the dolls. “Very pretty,” she said quietly.

  “You picked my favorite. Norway.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think girls in Norway really have dresses like …? Is something the matter, Judy?”

  “No, I … I was just distracted for a minute.”

  Moments later, Mona excused herself and returned to her own cubicle, where she locked herself in the bathroom and cried for a while.

  Angel dust did that to her sometimes.

  Day of the Iguana

  UNDERNEATH A THATCHED UMBRELLA AT THE POSADA Vallarta, the unlikely threesome sipped Coco Locos and gazed out at the bluest of oceans.

  “This is nice,” said Burke, stretching his arms above his head. “I’m glad you two let me join you. I don’t exactly … relate to most of the people on the ship.”

  Michael grinned over the top of his coconut. “You don’t get off on blue rinse?”

  “Blue what?”

  “Old ladies,” translated Mary Ann.

  “Oh.” He laughed warmly, looking first at Mary Ann, then at Michael. “I guess I’m a little out of it, huh?”

  Mary Ann shook her head. “Mouse talks in code, Burke. Half the time, I don’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about.”

  “How long have you two … known each other?”

  Michael glanced at Mary Ann. “How long ago was the Safeway? Nine months? A year?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “We met in a grocery store,” explained Michael. “Mary Ann was trying to pick up my boyfriend.”

  Burke blinked. “You …?”
>
  “Gay as a goose,” said Michael. He stood up, smiling, adjusting his blue satin Rocky shorts. “I’m gonna take a hike. I’ll give you two exactly an hour to get it on.”

  Mary Ann turned and watched Michael sprint recklessly to the surf. Her smile to Burke was amused and apologetic. “I can’t do anything with him,” she said.

  “Apparently,” laughed Burke.

  She laughed with him. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “He seems very nice, actually.”

  “He is. I love him a lot.”

  “But he’s not your …?”

  She shook her head, then giggled. “He says he thinks of himself as my pimp service.” Her smile faded when she saw Burke’s expression. “Did that sound gross?”

  “Not at all. I just … well, I’ve never met anybody like you two.”

  Mary Ann pored over his face for a moment, assessing the firm jaw and the full mouth and the baffling naïveté of those wide-spaced gray eyes. Was anybody that innocent anymore?

  “Where are you from, Burke?”

  He looked back at her for a moment, then traced the rim of his coconut with his forefinger. “All over, really.”

  “Oh. Well, then, most recently?”

  “Uh … San Francisco.”

  “Great! So am I! Where do you live?”

  “Actually, I’m from Nantucket. I mean, my parents live there now, and I’m staying with them. I used to live in San Francisco for a while, but I don’t anymore.”

  “Where did you stay when you were—”

  He pushed his chair back abruptly. “Would you like a swim or something? I feel like we should use that hour.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  They strolled up the beach in the direction of town, stopping occasionally to romp in the surf or gasp at the billowing parasails soaring through a cloudless sky. Burke took it all in with unembarrassed wonder, as gleefully open as a child catching his first glimpse of the sea.

  He was gentle, Mary Ann observed, gentle in a primitive, manly sort of way. And manly without being macho. It was impossible to imagine him hustling Kelly Girls at Thomas Lord’s. When a peddler appeared, draped in a hideous necklace of stuffed iguanas, Burke reached immediately for his wallet.

  “Which one do you want?”

  “Ick! You’re not serious?”

  “One of those shirts, then? With the embroidery?”

  “Burke … you don’t have to buy me anything.”

  He wrinkled his brow solemnly. “How will you remember me if you don’t have an iguana?”

  Smiling, she laid her hand on his back at the spot where a patch of golden hair peeped over the top of his swim trunks.

  “I’ll remember,” she said. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  Desperate Straights

  WHEN DEDE HALCYON DAY WAS TEN YEARS OLD, her parents sent her to camp at Huntington Lake. For six excruciating weeks, she hurt as only a fat child can hurt when forced to paddle canoes, stitch wallets and sing songs to the tune of “O Tannenbaum.”

  The end came as a merciful release, an escape from the tyranny of children into the comfortable, protective sanctuary of Halcyon Hill.

  She felt something of that now, something of that ancient longing for home, as she packed her Gucci luggage and prepared herself mentally for Hillsborough.

  She wanted Beauchamp behind her.

  She wanted him to be like poison oak and short-sheeted beds and pretty preteens who made jokes about Kotex.

  She wanted him gone.

  But Beauchamp persisted:

  “This isn’t doing a goddamn bit of good, you know!”

  She ignored him, continuing to pack.

  “O.K. So you run home to Mommy. Then what? What the hell do you think people are gonna say when those babies are born?”

  “I don’t care what they say.”

  “How very au courant of you!”

  DeDe’s voice remained calm. “I want them, Beauchamp.”

  “Do you think their father wants them? What the fuck’s he gonna do, anyway? Strap ‘em on the back of his delivery bike?”

  “Leave him out of this.”

  “Oh, heavens, yes! For Christ’s sake don’t offend his delicate Asian sensibilities. All he ever did was take an innocent ethnic poke at my—”

  “Shut up, Beauchamp!”

  He was snarling now. “Why don’t you just drop the Pearl Buck routine, Miss Tightass! You couldn’t give a flying fuck about those babies and you know it!”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Half your friends have had abortions, DeDe.”

  “Not in the sixth month.”

  “It’s a simple salt injection. It’s no more complicated than—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  He mimicked her tone. “‘I don’t want to talk about this anymore.’ Shit! Do you even give a rat’s ass about all the humiliation you’re going to put me through? Do you give a good goddamn about Halcyon Communications—your own father’s business?” His voice lowered dramatically, becoming almost plaintive. “Jesus, DeDe, we’re up for the PU Club this year.”

  “You, Beauchamp. Not me.”

  “It’s the same goddamn thing.”

  Looking up from her suitcase, she mustered a faint smile. “Not anymore it isn’t,” she said.

  He glared at her murderously for several seconds, then slammed the bedroom door and stormed out of the house.

  Hunched over his desk at Halcyon Communications, Beauchamp spent the rest of that Saturday afternoon immersed in the new campaign for Tidy-Teen Tampettes. The work allowed his thoughts to solidify, so that by six o’clock he had settled on another approach to his problem.

  He phoned a number in West Portal.

  “Yeah?” growled a voice at the other end. Its fuzziness, Beauchamp knew from experience, was not caused by postnasal drip.

  “Bruno?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “It’s Beauchamp Day.”

  “Oh. Yeah. More snow already?”

  “No. Well, maybe that too. I’ve got kind of a special request this time.”

  “I got some Purple Haze now. And some dynamite Black Beauties.”

  “No. This is different. Remember that friend of yours who … settles differences?”

  Silence.

  “It’s not what you think. Nothing heavy. I just need … well, it’s kind of special … I mean, a special situation.”

  “It’ll cost ya.”

  “I know. When can we talk?”

  “Tonight? Eight o’clock?”

  “Where?”

  “Uh … the Doggie Diner. On Van Ness.”

  “Right. The Doggie Diner on Van Ness at eight o’clock.”

  “No snow, huh?”

  “No, Bruno. Not tonight.”

  Lady Eleven

  AGAINST HIS BETTER INSTINCTS, BRIAN HAWKINS made up a name for the woman in the Superman Building.

  Lady Eleven.

  This wasn’t some sort of sicko fantasy trip, he told himself. She was there, like Everest, a nightly reality as fixed and inevitable as the clang of the cable cars or the toot of the foghorns on the bay. It seemed only natural to give her a name.

  She would appear, invariably, on the stroke (could a digital clock strike?) of midnight, assuming her stance against the dim pinkish glow of her bedroom. After that she would scarcely move, except to raise and lower her binoculars and to make an unceremonious exit less than twenty minutes later.

  She would never acknowledge Brian’s presence, nor would she shift her gaze from the window of his little rooftop house. Viewed with the naked eye, she was nothing more than a dark blemish against the distant rectangle of light. With the field glasses, however, it was possible to discern her features.

  A long, full-lipped face framed by hair that was … dark brown? The color was impossible to determine, but Brian settled on auburn.

  Her hair fell lower than her shoulders a
nd appeared to be tied in the back. Her robe was light-colored and undramatic, terry cloth maybe, and it revealed little about the rest of her body.

  There was something about Lady Eleven’s look that suggested she had just stepped from a shower.

  Brian always wondered if her hair was wet and smelled of Herbal Essence.

  This was the sixth night.

  When Brian returned from Perry’s, he couldn’t help but remind himself again how radically his behavior patterns had changed. It was eleven o’clock, for Christ’s sake, and he was home!

  Furthermore, he found that he was showering after work now. Tonight he spent even longer than usual in the bathroom, primping like a college freshman about to immerse himself in a sorority mixer.

  After brushing his teeth and shaving (shaving?), he slipped into his terry cloth bathrobe and sat in an easy chair by the south window with a dogeared copy of Oui.

  Only seven minutes to go.

  The sky around the little rooftop house was alive with Wagnerian tumult. Hoky white clouds, phony as angel’s hair props, drifted past the ghostly monolith of the Superman Building. At 11:56 a light appeared on the eleventh floor.

  The light.

  Brian dropped the magazine and moved to the window. He picked up the binoculars and focused on the lair of Lady Eleven. She wasn’t in sight yet; there was no movement in her bedroom.

  Nor was she in sight at midnight.

  She had stood him up.

  Brian remained at the window, numbed by disappointment and betrayal, like a child who had been awakened suddenly from a summer dream about Christmas morning. Then, gradually, his face began to burn with rage as he leaned there immobile against the cold windowpane (a window he had Windexed just that morning) and cursed the secret siren who had made him shave at midnight.

  It would always be like this, wouldn’t it? The ones you wanted could sense it with cunning, primeval precision. Your lust, not its fulfillment, was all these women required. And as soon as they felt it, as soon as they experienced the first acrid waft of your musk in their nostrils, they were gone from your life forever.

  But then—sweet Jesus!—she appeared.

  Poised and majestic as a figurehead on the great white clipper ship of the Superman Building, Lady Eleven materialized in her window and lifted her binoculars to her face. Brian matched her pose.