Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

if we only just …” There was a scuffling noise in the background. “Give me that!” snapped a voice that Mary Ann recognized as Frannie Halcyon’s.
    “Mary Ann?” Now the voice had softened to a matronly purr.
    “Yes, Mrs. Halcyon. What a nice surprise.”
    “Well … I’m just a big fan of yours.”
    “How sweet.”
    “I am. Truly. You’re a very talented young lady.”
    “That’s so nice. Thank you so much.”
    A long pause, and then: “I … uh … I called because I hoped you’d be able to have lunch with us … with me, that is, on Sunday. The weather’s just lovely down here now and the pool is … well, you could bring your bathing suit if you like and …”
    “I’d be delighted, Mrs. Halcyon.” Mary Ann almost giggled. Michael’s get-away to L.A. had made her yearn for escape, and she and Brian hadn’t had a good, cheap mini-vacation in a long time. This was practically a Godsend. “Would it be O.K. if I brought a friend?”
    “Oh … I … actually, I’d rather you didn’t, Mary Ann.”
    “Of course …”
    “I’m really not prepared to entertain more than one.”
    “Fine. I understand.” She didn’t, actually, but now her curiosity was aroused.
    “Just a little … girl talk. You and I have got so much to catch up on.”
    Mary Ann was thrown. She and Frannie Halcyon had absolutely nothing to catch up on. Why was this sweet, but rummy, society dowager talking to her like an equal?
    Well, she thought, the poor woman lost a daughter in Guyana. That was reason enough to be a little indulgent. Besides, she had a pool. That was an offer no San Franciscan could refuse.
    “What time shall I be there?” asked Mary Ann.
Larry and Bambi were returning to the station when Mary Ann left the building. It was all they could do to keep their hands off one another, she observed.
    “Great tie,” said Mary Ann, breezing past them in the lobby. He was wearing the one with the Porsche emblem in a repetitive pattern.
    “Hey,” said Larry, “thanks.”
    The only fun thing about assholes, Mary Ann decided, was that they almost never noticed when you were calling them assholes. “How was the Trailside Killer’s girlfriend?” she asked Bambi.
    “Shaken,” said the anchorperson.
    “Mmm. I’d imagine.”
    Ever so subtly, Larry steered Bambi toward the elevator. “Stay out of this business,” he told Mary Ann. “It ain’t a bit pretty.”
    “Mmm.”
    “Really,” he added. “You’re better off out of it.”
    She cursed him all the way back to Barbary Lane.

Tinseltown
    N ED LOCKWOOD CHECKED THE CLOCK ON THE DASHBOARD as his pickup rattled through the corridor of palms flanking Hollywood High.
    “Ten-twenty. We did O.K. Hail to thee, Alma Mater.”
    “You went to Hollywood High?” asked Michael.
    Ned’s jaw squared off in a grin. “Didn’t everybody?”
    “Then you were trained to live with a movie star. It didn’t just come natural to you.”
    “I suppose you could say that,” laughed Ned.
    Michael shook his head in wonderment. “Hollywood High,” he murmured, as the pale building slid by in the darkness. “I always wanted to go to school with Alan Ladd’s son when I was a little boy.”
    “Why?”
    Michael shrugged. “The quickest way to Alan Ladd, I guess. I had the biggest crush on him.”
    Ned laughed. “When you were how old?”
    “Eight,” said Michael defensively. “But a kid can dream.”
    “Horny little bugger.”
    “Well,” retorted Michael, “if I remember correctly, you had some sort of a thing for Roy Rogers, didn’t you?”
    “I was at least ten,” said Ned.
    Michael laughed and looked out the window again. There weren’t many libidos that hadn’t been stirred, one way or another, by the kingdom which stretched out luxuriantly before him.
    Like a lot of his friends, he made a ritual of bad-mouthing Los Angeles behind her back—her tacky sprawl, her clotted freeways, her wretched refuse yearning to breathe free….
    But at times like this, on nights like this, when everyone in town seemed to own a convertible and the warm, thick jasmine-scented air made itself felt like a hand creeping up his thigh, Michael could abandon the obvious and believe again.
    “It’s amazing,” he said. “Every time I come here I feel like Lucy and Ricky hitting town. This place must get more second chances than any place on earth.”
    Suddenly, Ned swerved the truck, narrowly missing a bottle blond teenager on a skateboard. His 69 football jersey had