Babycakes (3 page)

He worried about that sometimes. He wondered if he qualified as a full-fledged TV junkie, a chronic escapist who needed the tube to fill a void he was no longer capable of filling himself. When Mary Ann wasn’t home, he could almost always be found in his video aerie, lost in the soothing ether of the Quasar.

“Brian, dear?”

Mrs. Madrigal’s voice startled him, since her footsteps on the stairway had been drowned out by Supertramp singing “It’s Raining Again” on MTV. “Oh, hi,” he said, turning to grin at her. She was wearing a pale green kimono and her hair hovered above her angular face like random wisps of smoke.

Pursing her lips, she studied the television, where a man in his underwear was threading his way through a forest of open umbrellas. “How very appropriate,” she said.

“Really,” he replied.

“I was looking for Mary Ann,” the landlady explained.

It was a simple statement of fact, but it made him feel even more extraneous. “You’ll have to wait in line,” he said, turning back to the set.

Mrs. Madrigal said nothing.

He was instantly sorry for his pettiness. “She’s got a hot date with the Queen,” he added.

“Oh … another one, eh?”

“Yeah.”

She glided across the room and sat down next to him on the sofa. “Shouldn’t we be watching her channel?” Her huge Wedgwood eyes forgave him for his irritation.

He shook his head. “She won’t be on for another five minutes.”

“I see.” She let her gaze wander out the window until it fixed on the intermittent blink of the beacon on Alcatraz. He had seen her do that so many times, as if it were a point of reference, the source of her energy. Turning back to him, she shook his knee playfully. “It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Being a media widower.”

He came up with a smile for her. “It isn’t that. I’m proud of her.”

“Of course.”

“I had just … counted on being with her tonight. That’s all.”

“I know the feeling,” she said.

This time he was the one who looked out the window. A small pond had formed on a neighboring rooftop and its surface was being pitted by yet another downpour. It wasn’t night yet, but it was definitely dark. “Do you have a joint?” he asked.

She cocked her head and mugged at him—a reaction that said, “Silly question.” ‘Then she foraged in the sleeve of her kimono until she located the familiar tortoiseshell case. He selected a joint, lit it, and offered it back to her. She shook her head, saying, “Hang on to it.”

He did so, without a word, for almost a minute, while Michael Jackson minced down a make-believe street protesting that “the kid is not my son.” It wasn’t all that hard to believe him, Brian decided.

“The thing is,” he said at last, “I was going to talk to her about something.”

“Ah.”

“I was going to buy her dinner at Ciao and take her to
Gandhi
and talk to her about Topic A one more time.”

She was silent, so he glanced at her to see if she knew what he meant. She did. She knew and she was pleased. It made him feel a lot better. If nothing else, he would always have Mrs. Madrigal on his side.

“You can still do that,” she said finally.

“I don’t know …”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean … it scares the hell out of me. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to make her say no one more time. This lime … it might sound like she means it.”

“But if you don’t at least talk to her …”

“Look, what good would it do? When would she find the
time,
for God’s sake? Tonight is so fucking typical, you know. Our private life has to take a back seat to every dumbass little news story that comes down the pike.”

The landlady smiled faintly. “I’m not sure Her Majesty would appreciate that description of her sojourn.”

“O.K. Maybe not tonight. The Queen is excusable….”

“I should think.”

“But she’s done this half a dozen times this month. This is
always
the way it is.”

“Well, her career is terribly …”

“Don’t I show respect for her career? Don’t I? That can be her career, and the baby can be mine. That makes a helluva lot of sense to me!”

His voice must have been more strident than he had intended. She stroked him with her eyes, telling him to calm down. “Dear,” she murmured, “I’m the last person who needs convincing.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m practicing on you.”

“That’s all right.”

“It’s not like we have that much time. She’s thirty-two and I’m thirty-eight.”

“Ancient,” said the landlady.

“It is for making babies. It’s shit-or-get-off-the-pot time.”

Mrs. Madrigal winced, then arranged a fold in her kimono sleeve. “Your metaphors need work, dear. Tell me, when exactly did you last talk to her about this?”

He thought for a moment. “Three months ago, maybe. And six months before that.”

“And?”

“She keeps saying we should wait.”

“For what?”

“You tell me. For her to become an anchor, maybe? That makes a lot of sense. How many pregnant anchors have you seen?”

“There must have been some,”

“She doesn’t want to,” he said. “That’s the bottom line. That’s the truth behind the excuses.”

“You don’t know that,” said the landlady.

“I know her.”

Mrs. Madrigal peered out at the Alcatraz beacon again. “Don’t be too sure about that,” she said.

That threw him. When he looked for clues in her face, her brow seemed to be furrowed in thought. “Has she talked to you?” he asked. “Has she said something about … the baby thing?”

“No,” she answered hastily. “She would never do that.”

He remembered the time and reached for the remote control. At the slightest touch of his finger, Mary Ann’s face appeared on the screen, only slightly larger than life. She was standing in an alleyway behind Trader Vic’s, smiling incongruously in a deep blue sea of cops.

“My goodness,” beamed Mrs. Madrigal. “Doesn’t she look just splendid?”

She looked better than that. A rush of pure affection swept over him. He smiled at the set for a few proud moments, then turned back to his landlady. “Tell me the truth,” he said.

“All right.”

“Does she look like a woman who wants to have a baby?”

Mrs. Madrigal’s forehead wrinkled again. She spent a long time scrutinizing Mary Ann’s face. “Well,” she began, tapping a forefinger against her lips, “that hat is deceptive.”

Volunteer

M
ICHAEL TOLLIVER HAD SPENT RUSH HOUR IN THE
Castro, the time of day when the young men who worked in banks came home to the young men who worked in bars. He watched from a window seat at the Twin Peaks as they spilled from the mouth of the Muni Metro, stopping only long enough to raise the barrels of their collapsible umbrellas and fire at the advancing rain. Their faces had the haggard, disoriented cast of prisoners who had somehow tunneled to freedom.

He polished off his Calistoga and left the bar, then forked out three dollars to a man selling collapsible umbrellas on the corner. He had lost his last one, and the one before that had sprung a spoke, but three dollars was nothing and he embraced the idea of their expendability. There was no point in getting attached to an umbrella.

Deciding on a pizza at the Sausage Factory, he set off down Castro Street past the movie house and the croissant/cookie/card shops. As he crossed Eighteenth Street, a derelict lurched into the intersection and shouted “Go back to Japan” to a stylish black woman driving a Mitsubishi. Michael caught her eye and smiled. She rewarded him with an amiable shrug, a commonplace form of social telepathy which seemed to say: “Looks like we lost another one.” There were days, he realized, when that was all the humanity you could expect—that wry, forgiving glance between survivors.

The Sausage Factory was so warm and cozy that he scuttled his better judgment and ordered half a liter of the house red. What began as a mild flirtation with memory had degenerated into maudlin self-pity by the time the alcohol took hold. Seeking distraction, he studied the funk-littered walls, only to fix upon a faded Pabst Blue Ribbon sign which read:
DON’T JUST SIT THERE—NAG YOUR
HUSBAND
. When the waiter arrived with his pizza, his face was already lacquered with tears.

“Uh … are you O.K., hon?”

Michael mopped up quickly with his napkin and received his dinner. “Sure. I’m fine. This looks great.”

The waiter wouldn’t buy it. He stood there for a moment with his arms folded, then pulled up a chair and sat down across from Michael. “If you’re fine, I’m Joan Collins.”

Michael smiled at him. He couldn’t help thinking of a waitress he had known years ago in Orlando. She, too, had called him “hon” without ever knowing his name. This man had a black leather vest, and keys clipped to his Levi’s, but he reached out to strangers in exactly the same way. “One of those days?” he asked.

“One of those days,” said Michael.

The waiter shook his head slowly. “And here we are on the wrong side of town, while Betty is having dinner at Trader Vic’s.”

Michael skipped a beat. “Bette
Davis?”
The waiter laughed. “I
wish.
Betty the Second, hon. The Queen.”

“Oh.”

“They gave her a fortune cookie …
and she didn’t know what it was.
Can you stand it?”

Michael chuckled. “You don’t by any chance know what the fortune was?”

“Uh …” The waiter wrote in the air with his finger. “

‘You … will … come … into … a … great … deal … of … money.’ ”

“Sure.”

The waiter held his hands up. “Swear to God. Nancy Reagan got the same thing in hers.”

Michael took another sip of his wine. “Where did you get this?” This guy was awfully nice, but his dish seemed suspect.

“On the TV in the kitchen. Mary Ann Singleton has been covering it all night.”

“No kidding?”
Good for her,
he thought,
good for her.
“She’s an old friend of mine.” It would tickle her to know he had bragged about that.

“Well, you tell her she’s all right.” The waiter extended his hand. “I’m Michael, by the way.”

Michael shook his hand. “Same here.”

“Michael?”

“Yep.”

The waiter rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I think that half the fags in the world are named Michael. Where did they ever get this Bruce shit?” He rose suddenly, remembering his professionalism. “Well, you take care, hon. Maybe I’ll see you around. You don’t work in the neighborhood, do you?”

Michael shook his head. “Not usually. I did this afternoon.”

“Where?”

“Across the street. At the switchboard.”

“Yeah? My friend Max worked there for a while. He said it was exhausting.”

“It is,” said Michael.

“This one guy called every other afternoon, while his wife was at her Dancercise class. He usually wanted Max to be … you know … a butch trucker type. Max said it took him
ages
to come, and he said the same thing over and over again. ‘Yeah, that’s right, flop those big balls in my face.’ Now, how the hell you can flop your balls in some guy’s face over the
telephone …”

“Wrong place,” said Michael, feeling a faint smile work its way out.

The waiter blinked at him. “Dial-a-Load?”

Michael shook his head. “The AIDS hotline.”

“Oh.” The waiter’s fingers crept up his chest to his mouth. “Oh, God. I am such a dipshit.”

“No you’re not.”

“There’s this phone sex place upstairs from that new savings and loan, and I thought … God, I’m embarrassed.”

“Don’t be,” said Michael. “I think it’s funny.”

The other Michael’s face registered gratitude, then confusion, then something akin to discomfort. Michael knew what he was wondering. “I don’t have it,” he added. “I’m just a volunteer who answers the phones.”

A long silence followed. When the waiter finally spoke, his voice was much more subdued. “My ex-lover’s lover died of it last month.”

An expression of sympathy seemed somehow inappropriate, so Michael merely nodded.

“It really scares me,” said the waiter. “I’ve given up Folsom Street completely. I only go to sweater bars now.”

Michael would have told him that disease was no respecter of cashmere, but his nerves were too shot for another counseling session. He had already spent five hours talking to people who had been rejected by their lovers, evicted by their landlords, and refused admission to local hospitals. Just for tonight, he wanted to forget.