Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

same arrangement of dead blossoms. Wasn’t she still heading west? Had she veered off her course after taking the last note?
    She looked for the sun. The sun would be west. She remembered that much from Camp Fire Girls. I struggled to remember the training I had received as a Camp Fire Girl in Grass Valley. Did they still have Camp Fire Girls? It made her sound awfully old, she realized.
    Anyway, the sun wasn’t even visible; a thick summer fog had already settled over the park.
    It was all too hopeless for words.
    Vuitton had been missing for well over two weeks now. Even if he had managed to remain in the park, where would he have lived all that time? What would he have eaten? Where would he be safe from dognappers … or average citizens showing kindness to a lost dog … or Cambodians?
    If only she could find a clue, some tiny shred of evidence affirming Vuitton’s presence in this wilderness. She needed more than determination now: she needed a sign.
    And then she stepped in it.
    She knew from experience how difficult it was to clean wolfhound poop off a pair of pumps. And this was wolfhound poop, pure and simple; this was Vuitton’s poop. Her heart surged with joy.
    Looking about her in the dell, she tried to whistle but failed. “Vuitton,” she cried. “Mommy’s here, darling!”
    She heard the rustle of dry leaves, subtle as a zephyr in the underbrush. Twenty feet away a carousel of dead corsages quivered ominously, then parted. Something pale appeared. Like a newborn chick pecking out of a painted shell.
    It was Vuitton!
    “Vuitton, baby! Precious! Darling!”
    But the wolfhound merely stood there, appraising her.
    “Come on, sweetheart. Come to Mommy.”
    The dog withdrew into the dying blossoms; the carousel slammed shut.
    What on earth …?
    Prue pushed her way into the shrub, ducking under its huge black branches until she emerged in a kind of clearing, bounded on the opposite side by a tangle of ivy and eucalyptus trees. Cream-colored fur flickered in the shadows.
    “Vuitton, for God’s sake!”
    The terrain dropped sharply. Vuitton was shimmying clumsily down a steep, sandy slope which ended in a cul-de-sac on an ivy-strangled ledge. There on the ledge stood a curious-looking shack.
    And next to the shack stood a man.
    He smiled up at the society columnist for Western Gentry magazine. “Got time for coffee?” he asked.

Downers
    F RANNIE HALCYON HEAVED A LONG SIGH OF SURRENDER and reached for the pills on her bedside table.
    They had been a birthday present, oddly enough, a sixtieth birthday present from Helena Parrish, the elegant proprietress of Pinus, a resort in the hills of Sonoma County where Frannie had spent several languorous weeks making a graceful passage into her senior years.
    “They’re Vitamin Q,” Helena had explained, “and they’re good for what ails you.”
    Even now, Frannie managed a thin smile at the thought of her earlier innocence. Vitamin Q, indeed. They were Quaaludes, what the young people called “downers.” She had taken maybe half-a-dozen of them during her days at Pinus, giving them up when she discovered they didn’t mix well with Mai Tais.
    Well, now it didn’t matter.
    She popped two of them into her mouth, washing them down with her Mai Tai. There were at least a dozen pills in the bottle, surely enough to put her out of her misery. She was about to swallow two more when she remembered an important detail.
    “Emma!” she called.
    She waited for the sound of the maid’s footsteps.
    Nothing.
    “EMMA!”
    Finally, there was a shuffling noise in the hallway. Emma appeared at the door, holding a dust mop. “Yes’m?”
    “Have you seen my rosary beads, dear?”
    “No’m. Not lately.”
    “I think they’re in the desk in the library. Would you check for me, please?”
    “Yes’m.”
    She was gone for several minutes, long enough for the matriarch to down two more Quaaludes and tidy up the bedclothes. Taking the beads from the old black woman, Frannie felt a great sadness sweep over her. She fought back the tears. “What would I do without you, Emma?”
    And what would Emma do without her?
    It was too late for that now, too late for turning back. Emma was handsomely provided for in Frannie’s will. That would just have to do. Still …
    “You feelin’ poorly, Miss Frannie?”
    Frannie refused to meet her companion’s eyes. The rosary beads had betrayed her. No one knew better than Emma that Frannie’s commitment to the church was