Tales of the City 01 - Tales of the City

first cab she saw.
    “Where to?”
    “Uh … what’s a nice museum?”
    “The Legion of Honor?”
    “Out beyond the bridge?”
    “Yep. Lotsa nice Rodin stuff.”
    “Fine.” It was perfect, really. She needed Art now … and Beauty … and anything else with a capital letter that would pull her through the worst Christmas Eve of her life.
    She wandered through the museum for almost an hour, then returned to the therapeutic sunlight of the colonnade courtyard. She sat at the base of The Thinker until the comic irony of the scene drove her back indoors to the Café Chanticleer.
    After three cups of coffee, she made up her mind.
    She found a phone booth near the entranceway on the ground floor, dug Norman’s Nutri-Vim business card from her purse, and dialed the number scribbled in pencil on the back.
    “Yeah?”
    “Norman?”
    “Yeah?”
    “It’s Mary Ann.”
    “Hello.” He sounded drunk, very drunk.
    “I have … sort of a problem. I was hoping you could come meet me.”
    There was a pause, and then he said, “Sure.” Even now, knowing what she did, she hated herself for the way she could govern his feelings.
    “I’m out at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.”
    “No problem. Half an hour, O.K.?”
    “O.K. Norman?”
    “Huh?”
    “Drive carefully, will you?”
    She was waiting for him in the parking lot, under the statue of The Shades. Norman crawled out of the Falcon with exaggerated dignity. He was blitzed.
    “How ya doin’?”
    “Pretty good, pretty good.” Why did she say that? Why was she being nice to him?
    “You wanna go in the museum?”
    “No, thanks. I’ve been there all morning.”
    “Oh.”
    “Could we take a walk?”
    Norman shrugged. “Where?”
    “Over there?” She pointed across the road to what appeared to be a golf course with a network of footpaths. She wanted to get away from people.
    Norman extended his arm with drunken gallantry. Everything he did, in fact, seemed a hideous parody of the things she had once admired about him. She took his arm, suppressing a shudder. If nothing else, it would keep him from falling flat on his face.
    They crossed the road and descended a path along the edge of the golf course. The fog had begun to roll in, blurring the Monterey cypresses on a distant rise. Somewhere beyond those trees lay the ocean.
    Mary Ann let go of Norman’s arm. “I wanted to talk to you in private, Norman.”
    “Yeah?” He smiled at her, apparently allowing his hopes to rise again.
    “I know about the pictures.”
    He stopped in his tracks and stared at her, slack-jawed. “Huh?”
    “I’ve seen the pictures, Norman.”
    “What pictures?” Of course he wasn’t going to make it easy for her.
    “You know what I’m talking about.”
    He stuck out his lower lip like a petulant child and began to walk again. Faster now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
    “‘Tender Tots’? ‘Buxom Babies’?”
    “You must be …”
    “I know about you and Lexy, Norman!”

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
    H OVERING OVER A TABLE SET FOR FOUR, MONA hummed her mantra in a last-minute effort to calm her nerves.
    D’orothea’s parents were arriving in ten minutes.
    And D’orothea still didn’t know.
    “I’m not kidding, Mona. I hate surprises. If you’ve invited those dreary backpacking dykes from Petaluma, you can count me out. I know all I need to know about skinning squirrels, thank you.”
    Mona didn’t look up. “You’ll like them. I promise, D’or.”
    Shit, she thought. What if she doesn’t ? What if she feels more alienated than ever? What if the Wilson’s oddly bourgeois interracial marriage had left unimaginable scars on the psyche of their daughter?
    “And another thing, Mona … the minute one of those garage-sale gurus of yours starts spouting off about The Third Eye or whose moon is in …”
    “I’ll split a Quaalude with you, O.K.?”
    “You can’t drug me into submission, Mona.”
    Mona turned away and readjusted a fork. “Forget it, then.”
    “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
    “Will you try to act human, D’or?”
    “Sure. What the hell.”
    “I want this to be … well, I want it to be nice.”
    “I know. And I’ll try.”
    The next fifteen minutes were the worst in Mona’s memory.
    She scurried around the house, pretending to busy herself with housekeeping, certain her terror would show if she stayed in one place.
    The Wilsons were late.
    D’orothea was upstairs, fixing her face in the