Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

know Jon Fielding, didn’t you?”
    Michael rang up the purchase. “Something like that,” he replied.
    “Oh … if I hit a nerve, I’m sorry.”
    “Not a bit.” He smiled nonchalantly, hoping he didn’t sound as feisty as he felt. “It’s been a long time, that’s all.” He slid the box of primroses in the direction of his inquisitor. “You know him, huh?”
    The realtor nodded. “We did a fly-in together once. Gamma Mu.” He tossed out the name like bait, Michael noticed, as if everyone had heard of the national gay millionaires’ fraternity.
    Michael didn’t bite. “Give him my best when you see him,” he said.
    “Right.” The realtor simply stared for a moment, then reached over and stuffed his business card into the pocket of Michael’s coveralls. “This is who I am,” he said sotto voce. “You should come over one night. I have a Betamax.”
    He left without waiting for a reply, passing Ned in the doorway.
    “What about it?” asked Ned.
    Michael looked at the realtor’s card long enough to read the name, Archibald Anson Gidde, then dropped it into the trash can. “Sorry, Ned, what did you say?”
    “Devil’s Herd,” said Ned. “Tomorrow night?”
    “Oh … yeah. Sure. I’d love to.”
    Ned checked him out for a moment, then tousled his hair.
    “You O.K., Bubba?”
    “Sure,” said Michael.
    “Did that guy …?”
    “He knew Jon,” said Michael. “That’s all.”

The A-Gays Gather
    A RCH GIDDE WAS A MESS. TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE his dinner guests were scheduled to arrive the yellow primroses were still in their tacky little plastic pots. And Cleavon—damn his lazy, jiveass soul—was still in the kitchen, dicking around with the sushi.
    Arch bellowed from the bedroom. “Cleavon … Cleavon!”
    “Yo,” replied Cleavon.
    The realtor winced at himself in the mirror. Yo, for Christ’s sake. Harold had never said yo. Harold had been campy, to be sure, but never, ever disrespectful. Arch had lost Harold in the divorce, however, and Rick was too selfish (and far too shrewd) to part with a competent servant who was both black and gay.
    “Cleavon,” yelled Arch, “I cannot stress too strongly that the primroses must be potted before the guests arrive. I want four of them in that elephant planter and four in the box on the end of the deck.”
    A pause. Then another yo.
    Arch Gidde groaned out loud, then pushed up the sleeves of his new Kansai Yamamoto sweater from Wilkes. It was embroidered with a huge multi-hued hyena that draped itself asymmetrically across his left shoulder. Is it too much? he wondered.
    No, he decided. Not with the sushi.
The guests arrived almost simultaneously, all having attended a cocktail party thrown by Vita Keating, wife of the Presto Pudding heir.
    They included: Edward Paxton Stoker Jr. and Charles Hillary Lord (the Stoker-Lords), William Devereux Hill III and Anthony Ball Hughes (the Hill-Hugheses), John Morrison Stonecypher (sometimes referred to as The Prune Prince) and Peter Prescott Cipriani.
    Conspicuously absent was Richard Evan Hampton, Arch Gidde’s ex; the Hampton-Giddes were no more.
    “Well,” cooed Chuck Lord as he swept into the living room, “I must say I approve of the help.”
    Arch smiled reservedly. “Somehow I thought you might.”
    “He’s not from Oakland, is he?” asked Ed Stoker, Chuck’s Other Half.
    “San Bruno,” said Arch.
    “Pity. Chuckie only likes the ones from Oakland.”
    Chuck Lord cast a withering glance at his lover, then turned back to his host. “Don’t mind her, “ he said. “She’s been having hot flashes all week.”
    Arch did his best not to smirk. Chuck Lord’s addiction to Negroes from the East Bay was a matter of common knowledge among the A-Gays in San Francisco. While Ed Stoker stayed home, popping Valiums and reading Diana Vreeland’s Allure, his multi-millionaire husband was out stalking the streets of Oakland in search of black auto mechanics.
    And whenever Ed asked Chuck for a divorce (or so the story went), Chuck would recoil in genuine horror. “But darling,” he would gasp, “what about the baby?”
    The baby was an eight-unit apartment house in the Haight that the two men owned jointly.
    “Guess who I saw at the nursery today,” said Arch over dessert.
    “Who?” asked The Prune Prince.
    “Michael Tolliver.”
    “Who?”
    “You know. The twink who used to be Fielding’s lover.”
    “The cripple?”
    “Not anymore. Jesus, where have you been?”
    “Well,