Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

of course.
    “It shouldn’t interfere with your job at the station. I need you as a consultant, more or less. I’m prepared to pay you a thousand dollars a week for a period of roughly four weeks.”
    Mary Ann made no attempt at playing it cool. “That’s wonderfully generous, but I don’t … well, I’m not trained at PR, Mrs. Halcyon. My duties at Halcyon Communications were strictly …”
    “There’s a story in this, Mary Ann. A big one. And it’s yours when the right time comes. This will get you on nighttime television, young lady—I can promise you that.”
    Mary Ann shrugged helplessly. “Then … what do you want me to do?”
    The matriarch rose and began pacing the terrace. When she clasped her hands behind her back, the pose was so suggestive of Patton briefing the troops that Mary Ann was forced to suppress a giggle.
    “I want you to give me your utter allegiance for a month,” said Frannie Halcyon. “After that, you are free to act as you see fit. The Halcyon family has a story to tell, but I want it told on our own terms.”
    She stopped dead in her tracks; her tiny fist clenched determinedly. “I will not … I will not be chewed up and spit out by the press the way the Hearsts were!”
    She was obviously rolling now, so Mary Ann waited, reinforcing her hostess with sympathetic little nods. Mrs. Halcyon continued, shaking her head somberly as she stared at the light dancing on the surface of the swimming pool.
    “Poor Catherine,” she intoned softly. “Her family knew everything about journalism, but nothing about PR.”
    Mary Ann smiled in agreement. This dowager was no dummy.
    Mrs. Halcyon continued: “The really good PR people, as my husband must have taught you, are the ones who keep people’s names out of the newspapers. That’s what I want from you, Mary Ann—for a month, anyway.”
    “Why a month?”
    “That will be explained later. The point is this: if you take this job, I don’t want Barbara Walters crawling through my shrubbery a week from now. I’m too old to take on the networks alone, Mary Ann.”
    “I can understand that,” said Mary Ann. “It’s just that I can’t guarantee …”
    “You don’t have to guarantee anything … except your silence for a month.”
    “I see.”
    “That’s four thousand dollars for your ability to keep a secret for a month. After that, we’ll give you … an exclusive. That’s the word, isn’t it?”
    Mary Ann smiled. “That’s the word.”
    “It’s agreed, then?”
    Mary Ann didn’t hesitate. “Agreed.”
    Mrs. Halcyon beamed.
    “So what’s the story?” asked Mary Ann.
    The matriarch signaled Emma, who was standing just inside the double doors on the edge of the terrace. The maid scurried away, returning moments later with a young blond woman, very lean and tanned.
    “That’s the story,” said Frannie Halcyon. “Mary Ann, may I present my daughter DeDe. I believe you two have already met.”

The Bermuda Triangle
    T HE BARS WHERE MICHAEL HUNG OUT, WHEN HE DID that sort of thing, often featured a big black Harley-Davidson bike, reverentially pinspotted and suspended from the ceiling on shiny chrome chains.
    Mary Ann, on the other hand, haunted a place called Ciao, a white-tile, toilet-tech bistro on Jackson Street where a pristine wall-mounted moped—a Vespa Ciao, of course—reigned supreme as the house icon.
    Today, Memorial Day, while Mary Ann was poolside in Hillsborough and Michael was poolside in Hollywood, Brian was worshiping the motorcycle of his choice, a glossy wine-red Indian Warrior from the fifties, dangling overhead at the Dartmouth Social Club, a watering hole on Fillmore Street for the terminally collegiate.
    Jennifer Rabinowitz had appeared out of nowhere.
    “God, what are you doing back in The Bermuda Triangle?” Brian smiled. Regulars to the Cow Hollow singles scene often referred to the intersection of Fillmore and Greenwich as The Bermuda Triangle. Nubile computer programmers and other innocents had been known to pass through this mystical nexus and never be heard from again.
    It was stretching it, however, to regard Jennifer as nubile. Brian had been freshening her coffee at Perry’s for over half a decade now. They were veterans of the bar wars, he and Jennifer, and Jennifer, like her incredible breasts, was still hanging in there.
    “Gotta eat somewhere,” grinned Brian, holding up his hot roast beef sandwich. “Grab a seat. Sit down.”
    She did just that, smiling