Tales of the City 04 - Babycakes

looks like this.”
“O.K.”
“I only dyed it for … this job. I wanted a change and this seemed like a good excuse.”
He nodded.
“It locks like shit, doesn’t it?” Another nod.
“Your honesty is refreshing,” she scowled.
    A Theory
I T WAS THEIR THIRD, MAYBE FOURTH, TRIP TO THE SCREENING room.
“My appetite is shot,” said Brian.
Theresa was hunched over the mirror, chopping away. “This is why they invented sushi. Or why they imported it to Beverly Hills. Here. Do that one.” A blood-red nail pointed the way to Nirvana.
Brian sucked it up.
“The crowd’s getting smaller,” she said. “Thank God.”
“Is it Easter yet?”
She rolled her eyes. “Two hours ago. Where have you been?”
“Well … no one blew a horn or put on a funny hat or anything.”
“Right.” She took the rolled bill from him.
“How many are spending the night?” he asked.
“Oh … five or six, I guess. That’s all I want to deal with for brunch. Arch and his new indiscretion. The Stonecyphers. Binky Gruen, maybe. You. I don’t know … we’ll see.”
“What about that guy with the beard?”
Theresa snorted a line. “What? Who? Oh … Bernie Pastorini?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“I don’t know if he’s staying or not. Why?”
“Nothing. I just wondered about him.”
“Wondered what?”
“Well … he said he wanted to talk to me about something. Maximal something. It didn’t make any sense.”
“Oh … Maximale.” “What’s that?”
“His male empowerment group.”
“Huh?”
“Well … the theory is that some guys have been turned into wimps by feminism and the peace movement, so they … you know, leach them to be aggressive again.” She pushed the mirror toward him. “Take some more.”
“No, thanks.”
“C’mon.”
He hesitated a moment, then complied. “Is it … like … a serious thing?”
“At three hundred bucks a pop? You bet it’s serious! He’s raking it in like Werner Erhard did in the old days.”
“Jesus.”
She shrugged. “Makes sense to me. I’ve known plenty of ‘em.”
“Plenty of what?”
“Soft males. That’s what they call ‘em.”
“What do they do with them?”
“I don’t know. Take them on wilderness hikes … survival living, that sort of thing. There’s also some aikido, I think. And hypnosis.”
He was beginning to take this personally. “So this guy thinks I’m a wimp, huh?”
She glanced at him sideways. “Don’t get threatened, now. He pitches it to everybody. Besides, it’s what you think that matters.”
“It’s really unbelievable.”
“No it isn’t.”
“A seminar for guys who are pussy-whipped.”
She threw back her mane and roared. “Now, there’s an expression I haven’t heard for a hundred years or so.”
He gave her a rueful look. “I guess it’s in fashion again.”
“Relax,” she said, “I think you’d be wasting your money.” She gave him a smoldering glance. ‘Now … the late Mr. Cross was another story. He was practically a classic case.”
“Of what?”
“Soft male.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “He was so-o-o-o in touch with his feelings. Christ. Sometimes it made me wanna puke.”
It jarred him to hear his idol defamed. “I admired him for that,” he said.
She shrugged. “It made for a pretty song, I guess.”
“It made for a nice guy too.”
“Listen,” she said. “You weren’t married to him. I would push and push just to get a rise out of him, and he would cave in every time. There are times when a woman wants … you know … authority.”
“So we march bravely back to the fifties and drag our women by the hair. Is that it?”
“Sometimes,” she replied. “Sometimes that’s just the ticket.”
He thought for a moment, “If men are soft now … it’s because women want it that way.”
She smiled faintly. “I know marriages that have collapsed under that assumption.”
He met her eyes, wondering what she meant.
“Of course,” she added, “I’m sure yours is different.”
    Mad for the Place
W HEN WILFRED DIDN’T RETURN, MICHAEL LEFT his room and searched the hallway for a toilet. Most of the rooms he passed were devoid of furniture—musty, mildewed spaces inhabited only by spiders. Suddenly, a man’s head emerged from a doorway. “Hallo!”
Michael jumped.
“Sorry,” said the man. “You gave me a fright too.”
Collecting himself, Michael said: “I’m looking for the bathroom…. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I shouldn’t be sorry about that. It’s the last room on the right.” He