Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

man began to boogie by himself, rolling his eyes back like a corpse that had died in copulation. His movements were the tip-off for Michael. He didn’t stop at limp wrists; he had limp ankles.
    By eleven o’clock the dance floor was packed. The crowd, for the most part, was nellie, though Michael spotted a coterie of pseudo-lumberjack numbers watching the proceedings with ill-concealed amusement. He made a point of avoiding them. If they were San Franciscans, he didn’t want to know about it. He didn’t want to meet on a mountainside in Mexico someone he might have gone down on in the back room of the Jaguar Book Store.
    A man asked him to dance. Michael accepted, feeling awkward and insincere. He didn’t want to dance, really; he wanted to be held.
    “First time?” asked his partner, shimmying half-heartedly. He was Mexican.
    “Yes,” said Michael, making a conscious effort not to speak in broken English. He usually did that when confronted with foreigners.
    “You unhappy, I think?”
    Michael tried to smile. “I’m sorry. I—”
    “It’s O.K. Sometimes … me too.”
    Damn, thought Michael. Don’t be nice. If you’re nice, I’ll cry all over you. “I’m happy most of the time, really, but sometimes …” He gave up trying to explain it and fell back on a bar cliché he never would have used in California. “Do you come here often?”
    When the answer came, Michael was only half listening.
    His eyes were glued to the archway, where a tall blond man in a white linen suit was watching the dance floor. Out of ancient habit, Michael cruised him for a fraction of a second, then he stopped with all the abruptness of a dog that had caught its own tail.
    It was Jon Fielding.

Playing Games
    T HERE WERE TIMES WHEN BRIAN WAS SURE SHE WAS following him.
    His imagination conjured her up in the oddest of places: in laundromats on Saturday mornings, on crowded cable cars and empty escalators, in darkened movie houses when he was ripped on Colombian.
    It usually started with a look. A heavy-lidded glance. A private wink. A slow, sardonic smile that devoured him from head to foot. He was used to that, of course, but before, it had meant something different.
    Before, it had meant a conquest, his conquest, a simple, uncomplicated adventure that remained under his control from beginning to end.
    But now …
    Now it could be someone who knew full well his dependence on her.
    Now it could be Lady Eleven.
    And she could be the one in control.
    The question that plagued him remained the same: If she knew who he was, if she knew where to find him … why wouldn’t she want to get it on with him?
    Maybe, of course, she had tried to do exactly that. Maybe she had checked out 28 Barbary Lane in the same way he had searched for her at the Superman Building. His name, he reminded himself, had never been displayed on the mailbox.
    Even so, she could have asked. Mrs. Madrigal would have told her, for Christ’s sake! Maybe Mrs. Madrigal had told her and had forgotten to tell him that …
    On the other hand, there could be something terribly wrong with her. Maybe she was afraid for him to meet her and thereby discover that she was … what? Crippled? Insane? Blind? Right, Brian. Blind people always keep a pair of binoculars handy.
    Then again, she could be somebody famous, a local celebrity who couldn’t afford the notoriety of an overt sexual liaison. Or a Hite Report volunteer doing free-lance research? Or a lesbian trying to reform, one step at a time? Or a porno star practicing for her big scene?
    Or an All-American cunt trying to drive Brian Hawkins right up the wall.
    That night, as they undressed in front of their windows, Brian decided to try a new approach. He stripped to his boxer shorts, but kept his cock out of sight. Leaving the binoculars on the window sill, he folded his arms across his chest and waited.
    Lady Eleven watched him through the binoculars, then mimicked his stance.
    Brian counted to twenty and lifted his binoculars.
    Lady Eleven did the same.
    It’s a chickenshit game , he thought. We’re a couple of bratty kids playing copycat. All right, bitch! Let’s see if you can handle this one!
    He left the window and ran to the kitchen, returning with a large brown paper bag. He tore open the bag and flattened it. Using a Magic Marker, he wrote seven digits on the poster-size banner.
    928-3117
    Then he held it up to the window, watching Lady Eleven’s reaction through the binoculars. She stood frozen