Tales of the City 01 - Tales of the City

her and held her for half a minute, then leaned down and kissed her lightly on the eyelids. When he was done, Anna looked up and said, “Fitzgerald.”
    “Ma’am?”
    “That’s from The Great Gatsby … ‘She was the kind of woman who was meant to be kissed upon the eyes.’ Something like that, anyway … Do you want something to drink, or are you already drunk?”
    “Anna!”
    She nudged him in the ribs. “You smell like expensive scotch.”
    “I’ve been to a cocktail party at The Summit.”
    “With Frannie?”
    Edgar nodded.
    “How did you …?”
    “DeDe took her home.”
    “Edgar … surely she notices when you …”
    “She was barely conscious, Anna.”
    Anna rested her hand on his chest and pointed a long, delicate forefinger toward the window.
    “There,” she said, adjusting the pillow under his head. “You want proof?”
    He rolled over to face the window and saw a plump tiger-striped cat inching along the ledge. The animal stopped for a moment, mewed at Anna, then moved on.
    “His name is Boris,” said Anna.
    “You don’t let him in?”
    “He doesn’t belong to me.”
    “Ah … then it doesn’t count.”
    “I love him,” she said flatly. “That counts, doesn’t it?”
    “There’s a theory,” said Anna, handing him a cup of tea as she climbed back into bed, “that we are all Atlanteans.”
    “Who?”
    “Us. San Franciscans.”
    Edgar grinned indulgently, bracing himself for another yarn.
    Anna caught it. “Do you want to hear it … or are you getting stuffy on me?”
    “Go ahead. Tell me a story.”
    “Well … in one of our last incarnations, we were all citizens of Atlantis. All of us. You, me, Frannie, DeDe, Mary
    Ann …”
    “Are you sure she’s out of the building?”
    “She’s gone to her switchboard. Will you relax?”
    “O.K. I’m relaxed.”
    “All right, then. We all lived in this lovely, enlightened kingdom that sank beneath the sea a long time ago. Now we’ve come back to this special peninsula on the edge of the continent … because we know, in a secret corner of our minds, that we must return together to the sea.”
    “The earthquake.”
    Anna nodded. “Don’t you see? You said the earthquake, not an earthquake. You’re expecting it. We’re all expecting it.”
    “So what does that have to do with Atlantis?”
    “The Transamerica Pyramid, for one thing.”
    “Huh?”
    “Don’t you know what dominated the skyline of Atlantis, Edgar … the thing that loomed over everything?”
    He shook his head.
    “A pyramid! An enormous pyramid with a beacon burning at the top!”
    When Edgar slipped into the lane an hour later, Anna was watching him from the window. She rapped once, but he didn’t hear her.
    Someone else was watching too, concealed in the shrubbery at the edge of the courtyard.
    Norman Neal Williams.

Hanging Loose
    M ARY ANN WAS RUNNING LATE, BUT THE MERCEDES parked at the foot of the Barbary Lane stairway caught her eye. Its personalized plates said franni . She recognized it instantly as Edgar Halcyon’s.
    A small town, she thought. Smaller, in a lot of ways, than Cleveland. She wondered which celebrated Russian Hill hostess was serving cocktails to the Halcyons tonight “Off to the body shops?”
    It was Brian Hawkins, striding down Leavenworth with a definite smirk on his face.
    “I’m late for the switchboard,” she said crisply.
    “Oh … the suicide place.”
    She frowned. “That’s only part of it.”
    “What time are you off?”
    “Pretty late.”
    “I see. O.K…. Well, if you feel like it, come on up for a joint afterwards.”
    “I’m usually pretty tired, Brian.”
    He brushed past her, heading up the stairway. “Right. Can’t get much plainer than that, can you?”
    As usual, the J Church streetcar was a zoo.
    Once past the scowl of the conductor, Mary Ann inched through a cloud of Woolworth’s cologne to an empty seat in the back. She sat next to an old woman in a pink cloth coat and a battered brown wig.
    “Warming up.”
    “Ma’am?”
    “Seems to be getting warmer.” A talker, thought Mary Ann. It never fails.
    “Yes, ma’am. It does.”
    “Where you from?”
    “Cleveland.”
    “My sister went to Akron once.”
    “Oh … Akron’s very nice.”
    “I was born and raised here. Castro Street. Before all the you-know-whats moved in.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Have you found Jesus yet?”
    “Ma’am?”
    “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Saviour?”
    “Well … I’m … I was