Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

butch.”
    “Somebody’s gotta do it.”
    “You’re a stuffy bastard, you know that?”
    Jon glared daggers at Michael and grabbed the back of his belt, bringing him to a standstill. Then, in full view of the most distinguished gynecologist on the West Coast, he spun him around and kissed him on the mouth.
    “Satisfied?”
    “Satiated,” beamed Michael.
    They picked up Jon’s car in the airport garage and drove to his apartment in Pacific Heights. On the way, Michael rattled on about Barbary Lane and Mrs. Madrigal’s recent revelation to her “family.”
    Jon shook his head incredulously. “That is … a mind-fucker.”
    “Don’t you love it?”
    “You mean Mona didn’t know?”
    Michael shook his head. “She knew that Mrs. Madrigal was a transsexual—she was the only one who knew that—but she didn’t know that Mrs. Madrigal was her father.”
    “What about Mona’s mother?”
    “What about her?”
    “Does she know?”
    Michael shrugged. “She called Mona just before Mona left for Winnemucca. She was acting pretty freaky, Mona said—about Mrs. Madrigal, that is—but Mona isn’t sure how much she knows.”
    Jon whistled. “Bizarre!”
    “And I haven’t even gotten to Mary Ann yet. She’s turned into Nancy Drew under our very noses.”
    “Jesus. How’s Burke taking all this?”
    “Not badly, everything considered. He and Mary Ann are too obsessed with that damn key to notice much of anything else.”
    “Any leads?”
    “Zilch. I think it’s a locker key myself.”
    “Like at a bus station or something?”
    “Or a bathhouse.”
    Jon scolded him. “The whole world isn’t gay, Michael.”
    “I know, I know.”
    “Well, is that it?”
    “What d’ya mean?”
    “That’s all the news? No earthquakes to report? No Mongolian hordes barricading the bridge?”
    Michael smiled mysteriously. “You’re close.”
    “What?”
    “I got a job today.”
    “Great! Where?”
    “Halcyon Communications. Mary Ann got me the interview. The mailboy Xeroxed his cock one too many times, and Beauchamp Whatshisname canned him. I take his place starting Monday.”
    “That’s wonderful, Michael.”
    “Yeah, I guess.”
    “Sure it is. You can advance from there, Michael.”
    “I know. I know it’s a good job. That’s the problem. It got me to thinking about Mona’s Law.”
    “Huh?”
    “Mona’s Law. That’s what she calls it. She says you can have a hot job, a hot lover and a hot apartment, but you can’t have all three at the same time.”
    Jon laughed, then winked at Michael. “What makes you think you’ve got a lover?”

Heroic Couplets
    B URKE’S FIRST WEEK BACK IN SAN FRANCISCO OFFERED no new clues to the cause of his amnesia. One night, after a particularly nasty red rose scene at the Washington Square Bar & Grill, Mary Ann made up her mind to propose a new plan of attack.
    “You know,” she said casually, as she crawled into bed with Burke, “maybe we’ve been handling this whole business in the wrong way.”
    He grinned at her. “You wanna start carrying barf bags?”
    “Burke, be serious!”
    “Right.”
    “The thing is, we’ve been avoiding roses and walkways—at least, we’ve been trying to—and as long as we do that, we’re gonna keep avoiding the cause of your amnesia.”
    “That’s fine with me.”
    She frowned. “You don’t mean that. I know you don’t.”
    He shrugged. “Go on. Finish.”
    “Well, I just think we should be … dealing with it, that’s all.”
    “What shall I do? Camp out in a rose garden?”
    “Well, yes … something like that.”
    “Forget it.”
    “Look, Burke: there’s a place down south of Market called the San Francisco Flower Mart. It’s where the retailers get their flowers.”
    “At five o’clock in the morning, no doubt.”
    “Three.”
    “Ouch.”
    “We could stay up all night and find a place with onion soup, like they used to do at that flower market in Paris. We could make it into a real adven—”
    “Now you’ve flipped out.”
    “Don’t you see, Burke? If we exposed you to a lot of roses, thousands of them, we might be able to—I don’t know—short-circuit whatever it is that’s freaking you.”
    “Terrific.”
    “It wouldn’t be like a surprise or anything. You’d know about it in advance. You could prepare yourself. And I’d be with you the whole time. Doesn’t that sound reasonable?”
    He stared at her in disbelief. “And just when do you propose we pull off this caper?”
    “Well