Tales of the City 01 - Tales of the City

Hillsborough. I grew up in Pacific Heights.”
    “Oh, my! You have been a gypsy, haven’t you?”
    “C’mon. I asked you first.”
    “Well …” She scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers. “For one thing, I was fourteen years old before I realized that American currency does not bear the inscription ‘Good for all night.’”
    Edgar laughed.
    “Also, I developed a number of quaint superstitions that hound me to this very day.”
    “For instance?”
    “For instance … I can’t abide cut flowers, so don’t send me a dozen long-stems, if you want to maintain our strange and wonderful relationship.”
    “What’s wrong with cut flowers?”
    “Ladies of the evening consider them to be a sign of impending death. Beauty cut down in its prime and all that.”
    “Oh.”
    “Not pleasant.”
    “No.”
    Anna looked down at the sand, tracing a line there with her finger.
    And it seemed to Edgar that she not only sensed, but shared, his pain.

Once More into the Breach
    T HE BAY AREA CRISIS SWITCHBOARD WAS LOCATED IN A renovated Victorian house in Noe Valley. Its exterior was painted persimmon, mole, avocado, fuchsia and chocolate. A sign in the window informed visitors that the building’s occupants did not drink Gallo wine.
    Mary Ann felt weird already.
    She rang the buzzer. A man in a Renaissance shirt came to the door. Mary Ann’s gaze climbed from the shirt past a scraggly red beard to the place where his left ear should have been.
    “I … called earlier.”
    “Far out. The new volunteer. I’m Vincent.”
    He led her into a sparsely furnished room dominated by a gargantuan macramé hanging that incorporated bits of shell and feather and driftwood. She had no choice but to comment on it.
    “That’s … really wonderful.”
    “Yeah,” he beamed. “My Old Lady made it.”
    She assumed he didn’t mean his mother.
    To her great relief, he turned out to be a very nice guy. He worked the Tuesday to Thursday shift at the switchboard. He was an artist. He fixed her a cup of Maxim, without apologizing.
    “We’ll probably … like … work together,” he explained. “We get enough calls between eight and eleven to keep us both pretty busy.”
    “Are they all … trying to kill themselves?”
    “No. You’ll learn to psyche out the regulars.”
    “The regulars?”
    “Loonies. Lonelies. The ones who call just to talk. That’s cool too. That’s what we’re here for. And some of ‘em just need referral to the proper social agency.”
    “For instance?”
    “Battered wives, gay teenagers, senior citizens with questions about social security, child abusers, rape victims, minorities with housing problems …” He rattled off the list like a Howard Johnson’s employee reciting the twenty-eight flavors.
    “Then what about the suicides?”
    “Oh … we get maybe two or three a night.”
    “You know, I haven’t had any special training in …”
    “It’s cool. I’ll handle the hairy ones. Most of the time they’re just trying to get your attention.”
    Mary Ann sipped her coffee, drawing strength from Vincent’s casual confidence. “It’s pretty rewarding, isn’t it?”
    Vincent shrugged. “Sometimes. And sometimes it’s a real drag. It depends.”
    “Has it been … hairy lately?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve been off for a couple of weeks.”
    “Vacation?”
    He shook his head, holding up his right hand. Mary Ann had already noticed that his little finger was bandaged … but not the fact that it appeared to have been severed at midpoint.
    “You poor thing! How did that happen?”
    “Aww …”
    The ear … the finger … She was suddenly embarrassed.
    Vincent saw her redden. “I get on downers.”
    “Pills?”
    He smiled. “No … just downers. Depressed. Bummed out.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t …”
    “No big deal. I’m gettin’ it together. Hey, hey! Almost eight o’clock. All set?”
    “Yeah. I guess so.” She sank into the chair in front of the telephone. “I guess I’ll just … play it by ear.”
    She could have bitten her tongue off.

Fantasia for Two
    A FTER WATCHING YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN AT THE Ghirardelli Cinema, Michael and Jon walked onto the pier at Aquatic Park.
    The pier was dark. Clusters of Chinese fishermen broke the silence with laughter and the tinny blare of transistor radios. A helicopter made a whup-whup noise in the sky over Fort Mason.
    The couple sat at the end of the pier on a mammoth concrete bench.
    “It’s a