Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

neck, smiling up at her, greased and graceful in his green Speedo trunks. This boy, thought Anna, is a curious mixture of menace and vulnerability. A coyote begging for scraps. “Yeah?” he said. “I’m in your way?”
    “No, no. I can sweep around you. I wanted to ask you something.”
    “Sure. Shoot.”
    “Do you and Mona … communicate very often?”
    Brian laughed cynically. “I think ‘relate’ is the word she’d use.”
    “Oh, dear. There’s been friction?”
    He nodded. “Nothing drastic. I invited her to dinner and she told me that the energy was wrong. She couldn’t relate to someone who—in her words—spent his Wonder Bread years learning to unhook bra straps.”
    “Oh, my! I hope you didn’t let her get away with that.”
    Brian smiled wickedly. “I told her she wasn’t putting off enough energy to power a dime-store vibrator. Just your basic small talk. She told you about it, huh?”
    “No. I just thought you might have some clue as to why … She isn’t herself, Brian. Something’s bothering her a great deal, but I can’t get her to talk to me about it, and I thought that maybe you … I guess it’ll pass.”
    Brian sensed her distress. “She’s happy with you—her new home, I mean. I know that much.”
    “Oh … she told you that?”
    “She’s told everybody that.”
    The landlady smiled. “She’s a good person most of the time. Please don’t give up on her for dinner.”
    So Brian tried again. He called Mona as soon as he got back to the little house on the roof.
    “Why do you hate me?”
    “Who is this?”
    “Is it because I work at Perry’s? Or that I’m straight?”
    “Brian, I’m in no mood—”
    “I’m not a pig, Mona. I’m promiscuous as hell, but I’m not a Male Chauvinist Pig. For Christ’s sake! I was at Wounded Knee, Mona!”
    “Don’t expect me to validate your … You were?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “I cooked a meat loaf.”
    “At Wounded Knee?”
    “Yesterday , you heartless woman! I cooked a goddamn meat loaf for the first time in my life, and you won’t even eat it with me!”
    She laughed in spite of herself. “You didn’t tell me that.”
    “I’m telling you now. Come to dinner, Mona. Tonight.”
    She accepted more readily than he expected.
    He spent the rest of the afternoon cooking his first meat loaf.
    Mona and Mary Ann passed on the stairway at four-thirty. Mona was making a last-minute dash to the laundry. Mary Ann was heading out to meet Jon for a trip to St. Sebastian’s.
    Mona, Mary Ann noted, seemed far less laid back than usual. And she was smiling.
    “Give Mouse a sloppy kiss for me, O.K.?”
    “I will,” said Mary Ann.
    When she and Jon reached St. Sebastian’s, Mary Ann realized with some guilt that kisses wer e all she had given Michael during his time of crisis. Burke’s phobia had ruled out even the quickest visit to the hospital florist.
    But Burke was in Jackson Square now, getting a haircut at Alexandre’s, so why shouldn’t she pick up a nice azalea or something?
    She told Jon she would meet him upstairs and headed for the glass-fronted shop in the hospital lobby. When she entered, there was no one in sight, so she rang the bell on the counter.
    Presently, a man emerged from the refrigerated chamber in the rear of the shop. “Brrr,” he said merrily, “I like it better out here.” If he recognized his customer, he gave no indication of it.
    But she knew who he was. Instantly.
    The man with the transplant.

Meat Loaf at Wounded Knee
    B RIAN’S DINNER WAS A QUALIFIED SUCCESS, MONA remarked on the tastiness of his meat loaf, but chastened him for being scornful of vegetarian principles.
    “Wait a minute,” he countered. “If you’re such a vegetarian, why didn’t you just tell me so in the …?”
    “You said you’d already cooked it, Brian. Besides, I’m not as … strict with myself as I used to be.”
    “I see.”
    “Ground beef isn’t nearly as personal as a solid hunk of steak. I mean, it seems much less of a violation of the sanctity of the animal. You don’t know which part of the cow it came from.” She grinned suddenly, recognizing the inanity of the remark.
    Brian grinned back at her, dropping another chunk of meat loaf onto her plate. “This isn’t cow, I’ll have you know!”
    “Well, steer or whatever.”
    He shook his head. “Dog. Cocker spaniel, to be specific. Do you think a waiter from Perry’s can afford beef?”
    After dinner, they sat