Tales of the City 04 - Babycakes

hack of his throat.
She looked up at Mrs. Guttenberg. “He doesn’t belong to anyone, does he?”
The old lady shook her head, fingertips pressed to her throat. “All of us feed him. He’s lived here for ten years at least … twelve, Mona … he’s got to be put out of his misery.”
Mona nodded.
“Could you drive him to the SPCA? It’s just a few blocks.”
“I don’t have a car, Mrs. Guttenberg.”
“You could push him.”
Mona stood up. “Push him?”
“In that shopping cart I take to the S & M.”
So that was what they did. Using the blanket to hoist him, Mona laid Pete in Mrs. Guttenberg’s shopping cart and pushed him six blocks to the SPCA. An attendant there told her there was no hope for the dog. “It won’t take long,” he said. “Do you want to take him back with you?”
Mona shook her head. “He isn’t mine. I don’t know where I’d … no … no, thank you.”
“There’s a surrender fee of ten dollars.”
A surrender fee. Of all the things they could have called it.
“Fine,” she said, feeling the tears start to rise.
Five minutes later, when the deed was done, she wrote another bad check and pushed the empty cart home in the rain. Mrs. Guttenberg met her at the door, babbling her gratitude as she fumbled in her change purse for “something for your trouble.”
“That’s O.K.,” she said, trudging toward the elevator.
During her slow, clanking ascent, she thought suddenly of the maxim Mouse had called Mona’s Law: You can have a hot lover, a hot job and a hot apartment, but you can’t have all three at the same time.
She and Mouse had laughed about this a lot, never dreaming that one day, two out of three would be regarded as something akin to a miracle.
The lover part didn’t bother her much anymore. By living alone she could maintain certain illusions about people that helped her to like them more—-sometimes even to love them more. Or was that just her rationale for being such a crummy roommate?
The apartment part went straight to the pit of her stomach when she reached the fourth floor and opened the door of the drab little chamber she bad learned to call home. There was something profoundly tragic—no, not tragic, just pathetic—about a thirty-eight-year-old woman who still built bookshelves out of bricks and planks.
She was on the verge of reevaluating the job part, when the telephone rang.
“Yeah?’’
“May I speak to Mona Ramsey, please?” It was a woman’s voice, unrecognizable.
“Uh … I’m not sure she’s here. Who’s calling, please?”
“Dr. Sheldon’s bookkeeper.”
Mona tried to sound breezy. “I see. May I take your number?”
“She’s not there, then?”
“ ‘Fraid not.” Less breeze this time, more authority. This bill hound wasn’t giving up without a fight.
“I tried to reach her at her place of business, and they said she had gone home sick today. This is her residence, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but … Miss Ramsey has left for a while.”
“I thought she was sick.”
“No,” Mona answered. “In mourning.”
“Oh …”
“Her best friend died this afternoon.” That sounded a little too conventional, so she added: “He was executed.”
“My God.”
“She took it kinda hard,” she said, getting into it. “She was a witness.”
This was almost overkill, but it worked like a charm. The caller audibly gulped for air. “Well … I guess … I’ll call her when … Just say I called, will you?”
“Sure will,” said Mona. “Have a nice day.”
She set the receiver down delicately, then yanked the phone jack out of the wall. If periodontists had any link with organized crime, she was in deep, deep trouble.
She made herself a cup of Red Zinger tea and withdrew to the bedroom, where she searched the mirror for even the tiniest clue to her identity. In an effort to be charitable, Serra had once told her that she looked “a lot like Tuesday Weld.” Mona had replied: “I look a lot like Tuesday Weld on a Friday.” Today, the wisecrack was all too applicable.
Her “character lines” made her begin to wonder if there was such a thing as too much character. What’s more, the frizzy red hair had slopped looking anarchistic years ago. (Even Streisand had finally abandoned the rusty-Brillo-pad look.) Was it time to relent, to throw in the towel and become a lipstick lesbian?
Some of the most political dykes in town had already converted, tossing out their Levi’s and Birkenstocks in favor of poodle skirts and heels. It