Tales of the City 01 - Tales of the City

symmetrically on two plates. One held several dozen stuffed mushrooms. The other, half a dozen joints.
    Mary Ann chose a mushroom and gave the apartment a once-over.
    Two rather gross marble statues flanked the fireplace: a boy with a thorn in his foot and a woman holding a jug. Silk fringes dangled everywhere, from lampshades, coverlets, curtains and valances, even from the archway that led to the hall. The only photograph was a picture of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
    “Well, what do you think of my little bordello?” Mrs. Madrigal was posing dramatically under the archway.
    “It’s … very nice.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s depraved!”
    Mary Ann laughed. “You planned it that way?”
    “Of course. Help yourself to a joint, dear, and don’t bother to pass it around. I loathe that soggy communal business! I mean … if you’re going to be degenerate, you might as well be a lady about it, don’t you think?”
    There were two other guests. One was a fiftyish, red-bearded North Beach poet named Joaquin Schwartz. (“A dear man,” Mrs. Madrigal confided to Mary Ann, “but I wish he’d learn to use capital letters.”) The other was a woman named Laurel who worked at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. She didn’t shave under her arms.
    Joaquin and Laurel spent dinner discussing their favorite years. Joaquin believed in 1957. Laurel felt 1967 was where it was at … or where it had been at.
    “We could have kept it going,” she said. “I mean, it had a life of its own, didn’t it? We shared everything … the acid, the music, the sex, the Avalon, the Family Dog, the Human Be-In. There were fourteen freaks in that flat on Oak Street, fourteen freaks and six sleeping bags. It was fucking beautiful, because it was … was, like, history. We were history. We were the fucking cover of Time magazine, man!”
    Mrs. Madrigal was polite. “What do you think happened, dear?”
    “They killed it. Not the Pigs. The Media.”
    “Killed what?”
    “Nineteen sixty-seven.”
    “I see.”
    “Nixon, Watergate, Patty Fucking Hearst, the Bicentennial. The Media got bored with 1967, so they zapped it. It could have survived for a while. Some of it escaped to Mendocino … but the Media found out about it and killed it all over again. Jesus … I mean, what’s left? There’s not a single fucking place where it’s still 1967!”
    Mrs. Madrigal winked at Mary Ann. “You’re being awfully
    quiet.”
    “I’m not sure I …
    “What’s your favorite year?”
    “I don’t think I have one.”
    “Mine’s 1987,” said Mrs. Madrigal. “I’ll be sixty-five or so … I can collect social security and stash away enough cash to buy a small Greek island.” She twirled a lock of hair around her forefinger and smiled faintly. “Actually, I’d settle for a small Greek.”
    After dinner, on the way to the bathroom, Mary Ann lingered in the landlady’s bedroom. There was a photograph on the dresser in a silver frame.
    A young man, a soldier, standing beside a 1940s car. He was quite handsome, if a little awkward in his uniform.
    “So you see, the old dame does have a past.”
    Mrs. Madrigal was standing in the doorway.
    “Oh … I’m prying, aren’t I?”
    Mrs. Madrigal smiled. “I hope it means we’re friends.”
    “I …” Mary Ann turned back to the photograph, embarrassed. “He’s very good-looking. Is that Mr. Madrigal?”
    The landlady shook her head. “There’s never been a Mr. Madrigal.”
    “I see.”
    “No you don’t. How could you? Madrigal is … an assumed name, as they say in the gangster movies. I cleaned up my act about a dozen years back, and the old name was the first to go.”
    “What was it?”
    “Don’t be naughty. If I’d wanted you to know it, I wouldn’t have changed it.”
    “But …?”
    “Why the Mrs.?”
    “Yes.”
    “Widows and divorcees don’t get … what’s Mona’s word? … hassled. We don’t get hassled as much as single girls. You must have figured that out by now.”
    “Who’s hassled? I haven’t had so much as an obscene phone call since I moved to San Francisco. I could use a little hassling, frankly.”
    “The town is full of charming young men.”
    “To each other.”
    Mrs. Madrigal chuckled. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
    “You make it sound like the flu. I think it’s terribly depressing.”
    “Nonsense. Take it as a challenge. When a woman triumphs in this town, she really triumphs. You’ll do all right, dear. Give