Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

asked.
    Not too swift. Very un-Candy Bergen.
    “Go ahead,” he urged. “You can take it.”
    She shrugged her shoulders and mugged, hoping it wasn’t too late to try for a Marlo Thomas effect. A tolerant smile spread over the collie’s face when she held her breath and jumped.
    It was a funny little hatbox of a pool, not really wide enough for swimming laps. The cold ocean water was invigorating, but impossible to take for long. Shivering, she reached for the ladder.
    The collie extended his hand. “The goose bumps are very becoming.”
    “Thanks,” she said, smiling.
    “Will you join me for a drink? You and your husband, that is.”
    “My …? Oh, that’s not my …” She turned and looked at Michael, who was smirking at her. He gave his imitation of Queen Elizabeth’s royal wave. “Michael’s just a friend.”
    “That’s nice,” said the collie.
    For whom? thought Mary Ann. Me or Michael?
    The collie introduced himself to both of them. His name was Burke Andrew. He was traveling alone on the cruise. He shook Michael’s hand firmly and excused himself to get the drinks.
    “Well,” said Mary Ann. “Is he?”
    “How the hell should I know? There hasn’t been a secret queer handshake since 1956.”
    “He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?”
    Michael shrugged. “If you like big thighs.”
    Staring out to sea, Mary Ann sighed. “I think he likes me, Mouse. Help me figure out what’s wrong with him.”

The Superman Building
    T HE IRONY, THOUGHT BRIAN, AS HE DRAGGED BACK TO Barbary Lane at midnight, was that he could have gone home with her.
    Easily.
    She had practically drooled on him, for Christ’s sake, jammed up against him there in the brutal, nuclear glare of Henry Africa’s Tiffany lamps. He could’ve bagged her without batting an eye.
    So why hadn’t he? What perverse new quirk of his personality had prompted him to sabotage a sure thing and scuttle his butt back to the little house on the roof?
    The scene in the bar had gone like this:
    “I still can’t get over Freddie Prinze.”
    It figures, he thought. A Farrah Fawcett-Majors fright wig. A Bernadette Peters pout. She gets her material from the tube. In a minute, she’ll be talking about Roots.
    “I mean, he was so young, and … well, even if he was taking drugs and all, I don’t see why that would depress him enough to … God, it’s just such a bummer… . and he was doing so much for the Chicano people.”
    Brian didn’t look up from his beer. “He was Puerto Rican,” he pointed out.
    “Besides, cocaine isn’t supposed to … He was?”
    “Yep.”
    “I had a Puerto Rican roommate once. I got her through the Ethnic Studies Program at college.”
    He sipped his Oly, poker-faced. “She work out?”
    “It was really educational.”
    “Good.”
    “Her name was Cecilia.”
    “Nice name.”
    “Cecilia Lopez.”
    “Mmm. I sent off for a spider monkey once when I was eleven or twelve.”
    “I’m sorry. I don’t …”
    “Those things in the back of comic books. Darling Pet Monkey. Fits in a Teacup …”
    “But what does that …?”
    “Her name was Cecilia too.”
    “Oh.”
    “She was dead when I got her. All packed up in her little crate. It nearly killed me.”
    “How awful! Was … whose fault was it?”
    “Nobody’s, really.”
    She nodded solemnly.
    “It was … suicide!”
    She blinked at him morosely.
    “Drugs,” he explained. “And she was so young.”
    She reached out to lay her hand on his, but he rose abruptly and slapped some money on the bar.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m too depressed to fuck tonight.”
    The Superman Building was a towering Deco apartment house at the corner of Green and Leavenworth. Brian loved it because it reminded him of the Daily Planet building in the old television series.
    Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound …
    He also loved it because it afforded him a kind of power that sometimes bordered on the erotic.
    Tonight, as he shucked his Levi’s and rugby shirt, he noted that there were still six or eight lights burning in the Superman Building.
    He lifted his binoculars and studied the sixth floor for several minutes, concentrating on a large corner apartment. A dumpy-looking woman with short hair and a red sweater moved sluggishly from room to room, plumping pillows.
    At midnight?
    A lover arriving? Not likely. An early departure in the morning? Maybe, but what guest could be that important? It was probably a simple case of boredom. Boredom or