Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

O.K., Mouse. They can start you as mailboy in two weeks, if you’re up to it.”
    He let out a cheer. “A working girl at last!”
    “You’ll like the new boss, I think. He used to be the creative director.”
    “Uh oh,” mugged Michael.
    Mary Ann nodded. “Gay as a goose.”
    “Oh, happy ending! Happy ending!”
    “In part, at least.”
    “In part? The world has never been so good! Mona and Brian have been shacked up for almost a week. Mrs. Madrigal is grinning like the Cheshire Cat. You may get rich selling your confessions … and Burke even richer. I’m a healthy, strapping boy again, and Jon and I can … well, never mind that part. Plus —oh, miracle of miracles!—my mother sent me a pound cake yesterday.”
    Mary Ann smiled. “I know. Jon gave me some. I’m glad she’s coming around, Mouse.”
    “We don’t know that yet. There wasn’t a message. Just the pound cake.”
    “She’s trying, Mouse.”
    He smiled. “A fruit cake would’ve made me a little nervous.”
    Mary laughed half-heartedly.
    “What is it?” asked Michael. “Something’s the matter.”
    Silence.
    “Oh, God! Not Mr. Williams? His body hasn’t shown up, has it?”
    “No! For God’s sake, Mouse, don’t bring that up again! It’s Burke, Mouse. He’s moving to New York. He’s been offered a job with New York magazine.”
    “Oh, no!”
    “I should be happy for him, Mouse. It’s a fabulous opportunity. Most journalists would kill to have a chance to work there.”
    “Has he asked you to go with him?”
    She nodded. “It was the first thing he asked.”
    “And …?”
    “I can’t, Mouse.” She looked despairingly around the courtyard. “It’s too pretty here.”
    “Good girl.”
    “No. Dumb girl. Dumb girl.”
    He shook his head.
    “What’s the matter with me, Mouse?”
    “Nothing, Babycakes. You’re just tired of running away from home.” He took her arm and steered her slowly toward the house.
    “Where are we going?” asked Mary Ann.
    “Back to Tara,” he grinned. “We’ll figure out a way to get him back. After all, my dear, tomorrow is another day!”

Praise for

More Tales of the City
    “Maupin has done it again. He is a consummate yarn weaver and his admirers will find this volume as fascinating and titillating as the first.”
Charleston Post “Maupin has a genius for observation. His characters have the timing of vaudeville comics, flawed by human frailty and fueled by blind hope.”
Denver Post “Scintillatingly mischievous and bittersweet. The author’s trademarks—crackling repartee and cunningly interwoven plot—prevail. Highly readable, Maupin is the Me Generation’s P. G. Wodehouse.”
Library Journal “Armistead Maupin is a first rate, world-class novelist, creating characters so vivid, complicated, tender, and true as to seem utterly timeless…. I’m willing to bet that fifty years from now Maupin’s work will be read for its detailed descriptions of late twentieth century America, its rollicking humor and kind heart, its Chekovian compassion, its Wildean wit, its intricate … sometimes unbelievable but always utterly irresistible plotlines.”
Stephen McCauley “Like those of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Armistead Maupin’s novels have all appeared originally as serials. It is the strength of this approach, with its fantastic adventures and astonishingly contrived coincidences, that makes these novels charming and compelling. Everything is explained and everything tied up and nothing is lost by reading them individually. There is no need even to read them chronologically.”
Literary Review
    BY ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

Novels
    Tales of the City
More Tales of the City
Further Tales of the City
Babycakes
Significant Others
Sure of You Maybe the Moon

Collections
    28 Barbary Lane
Back to Barbary Lane

Copyright
    This work was published in somewhat different form in the San Francisco Chronicle.
    Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint: Lines from “Shorts” from Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
    MORE TALES OF THE CITY.
Copyright © 1980 by Armistead Maupin.

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