Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

you know … impose my …” He didn’t finish, since it would have been an outright lie. He had done what he’d wanted to do. Why pretend to be considerate now?
    “It’s O.K.,” said Brian. “I just wanna get away. You didn’t tell him about … Geordie and all?”
    “No,” said Michael. “Nothing.”
    “Good. That’s strictly between us, Michael.”
    “I know,” said Michael.

Settling In
    W REN’S NEST, AS SHE HAD COME TO THINK OF IT, was an oversized redwood bungalow with porches on three sides and a huge central fireplace built of smooth stones. It was perched on the ridge above Monte Rio, the last house on the road. From her porches she could look down on a squadron of turkey vultures, circling endlessly above the sleepy river.
    There was a washer and a dryer, a black-and-white TV set, an assortment of comfy old chairs and couches. The refrigerator had been extravagantly stocked with wines and exotic deli food. The linen closet would have been ample for a family of six.
    After several days in this cleansing environment, her end-of-tour tension had all but disappeared. She had lost track of time again, and the sensation was pure bliss. Life was a random pastiche of reading, eating, sleeping, sunning, wandering, and eating some more.
    Sometimes, she would drive down to the Cazadero General Store in the white Plymouth Horizon Booter had rented for her use. She would loiter there with a dripping Dove bar, marveling at the time-warpy blend of tourist kitsch, organic grains and tie-dyed Tshirts. Most of all she adored the bulletin board, with its folksy index cards about belly-dance classes and “fixer-uppers” and solar panels for sale.
    Her only other foray into the outside world had been to see Some Like It Hot at the movie house in Monte Rio. The Rio Theater was an entertainment in itself, a riverside Quonset hut with a Deco facade, noble in its failure to be grand. After the show, a chubby teenager had recognized the world’s most beautiful fat woman and requested an autograph.
    Comforted to learn that her fame was still intact, Wren had written “Think Big” on the kid’s popcorn box.
    Her agent had been pissed, of course. Not to mention her PR man, to whom fell the sorry task of canceling her Portland and Seattle engagements. Neither one of them believed her cock-and-bull story about this impromptu getaway, and her now-delayed return to Chicago had alternately wounded and enraged her lover, Rolando.
    She didn’t give a damn, really. She was more content now than she’d been in ages, and she was being paid handsomely for it. Her bed time with Booter had totaled less than two hours so far, and his requirements had been reasonable and few.
    Besides, she liked the old buzzard.
    “Where is it?” she asked him when he arrived for his third visit. It was late afternoon and they were standing on the porch.
    “Where’s what?”
    “You know. This mystical scout camp of yours. Point it out to me.”
    He gestured vaguely off to the left. “You can’t really see it from here. It’s a sort of bowl. You can only see it from Bohemian property. That’s the beauty of it.”
    She gave him a teasing look. “When you’re plotting world domination.”
    He smiled thinly and shook his head.
    “Don’t you swim in the river?” she asked.
    “Sure. That part down there with the platform. We call it the swimming pool.”
    She followed his finger to a gray pier, a row of tented changing rooms. “Those teeny little people … they’re Bohemians?”
    He nodded.
    “They don’t look very Bohemian from here.”
    He chuckled. “And even less so close up.”
    She laughed. “And there are no girls allowed?”
    “Not during the encampment.”
    “I bet I could get in.” This made him flinch a little, so she added: “Not that I would, of course.”
    “The gate guards are pretty smart,” he said.
    “I’d swim the river,” she said. “I’d wait until it got dark and I’d swim the river naked, with my clothes in a plastic bag. Then I’d—”
    “I hope you’re not serious.”
    She shook her head, smiling. “I like making you nervous, Boo-Roger.”
    His relief was evident. “I don’t know you that well,” he said. “I don’t know when you’re joking.”
    “I was right, though, wasn’t I?”
    “About what?”
    “Getting in. That beach is your weak flank.”
    He shrugged. “You’d still be a woman. You couldn’t do much about that. You’d be spotted the first time you showed your