Tales of the City 04 - Babycakes

gents?”
“Moreton-in-Marsh,” answered Michael, handing him the tickets.
“Lovely village, that. Heart of England.”
“Yes. So we hear.” His smile was forced and must have looked it. “We’re going near there, actually. Easley-on-Hill,”
The conductor’s eyes darted to Wilfred, then fixed on Michael again. “Easter holiday, eh?”
“Right.” Another insipid smile.
“Have a good one, then.”
“Thanks,” they replied in unison.
The conductor shambled to the next carriage.
Michael focused on Wilfred again. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Not a bit.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
The kid shrugged. “Just turn him loose.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Gloucestershire. Anywhere.”
“Great,” muttered Michael. “Born Free.”
“What?” The kid’s nose wrinkled.
“A movie. Before your time. Stop making me fee! old. Look, what happens if ol’ Bingo here …?”
“Dingo.”
“Dingo. What happens if his dope wears off before we make it to the wilds?”
Wilfred gave him a brief, impatient glance. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about that now, is there?”
He had no answer for that.
“Just settle back, mate. Look … look out there. There’s our green and pleasant land. You’re on holiday, remember?”
Michael bugged his eyes at the kid, then sank back in the seat. He flopped his head toward the window as an endless caravan of suburban back gardens flickered past in the rain. They gave way eventually to grimy Art Deco factories, random junkyards, mock-Tudor gas stations squatting grimly beneath flannel-gray skies.
“It’s clearing up,” said Wilfred.
Michael blinked at him, then looked out the window again. “When does it start getting quaint?”
The kid snorted. “You Americans and your bleedin’ quaint,” He paused a moment before asking: “Where will we stay in Gloucestershire?”
“Oh … I guess a bed-and-breakfast place. We’ll have to play it by ear.” Somehow, he liked the idea of that very much. He looked at Wilfred and smiled. “Got any ideas?”
The kid shook his head. “Never been there.”
“We may have to rent a car. It all depends on what that address means.”
“Right.”
“What about your father?” Michael asked.
“What about him?”
“Well … if he doesn’t come back, what will you do?” Wilfred tossed it off with a brittle laugh. “Same as before, mate.”
The landscape grew greener, more undulating. The train stopped at four or five little gingerbread stations before they reached Oxford, where they disembarked and waited for the train to Moreton-in-Marsh. They had coffee and sweet rolls in the station snack bar while a noisy downpour brutalized the neatly tended flowerbed adjacent to the platform.
On the next leg of the journey, they sat in silence for a long time as the train rumbled across the rain-blurred countryside. Dingo had begun to stir slightly, but not enough to attract attention. Wilfred cooed to him occasionally and stuffed pieces of ham sandwich into the air holes. The fox made grateful gulping sounds.
“What did your lover do?” the kid asked eventually.
Michael looked up from a guidebook on the Cotswolds. “For a living, you mean?”
Wilfred nodded.
“He was a doctor. On an ocean liner.” He smiled faintly. “He was a gynecologist when I met him.”
“Really?”
Michael nodded. “I’ve heard all the jokes.”
The kid smiled. “How long was he your lover?”
“That’s hard to say. I knew him for about seven years.”
“He didn’t live with you?”
“Sonic of the time. Not in the beginning, then we did, then we broke up. When we finally got back together, he had the job on the ship, so he wasn’t at home part of the time. That’s when we were happiest, I think. For ten days or three weeks or whatever, I would save up things to tell him when he got home.”
“What sort of things?”
“You know … dumb stuff. Items in the paper, things we both liked … or disagreed on. I hate Barbra Streisand but he loved her, so I became responsible for any Barbra trivia he might have missed when he was on the high seas. It was a terrible curse, but I did it.” He smiled. “I still do it.”
“Did you date other blokes when he was away?”
“Oh, sure. So did he. We didn’t sleep together anymore.”
“Why not?”
Michael shrugged. “The sex wore off. We were too much like brothers. It felt … incestuous.”
The kid frowned. “That’s too bad.”
“I don’t know. I think it freed us to love each other.