Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

realizing it wasn’t exactly true; he just hadn’t envisioned food in this scenario.
    “There’s some great fruit salad. Everything fresh.”
    “No,” he said.
    She slipped her arm around his waist. “You’ve lost weight,” she said. “It looks good.”
    He avoided her gaze.
    “Cheekbones,” she said, touching the side of his face.
    He sat on the sofa and kicked his shoes off. She curled up next to him and said: “I taped Entertainment Tonight. It looks pretty good.”
    “So I heard.”
    “Who told you?”
    “Well … Mrs. Madrigal, actually. Michael talked to her.” He couldn’t very well admit to calling the landlady, not when Mary Ann hadn’t heard from him.
    “I thought you did,” she said. “Shawna said you did.”
    “Oh, well … yeah, that time. This was another time.” Seizing upon his daughter as an evasion tactic, he added: “How’s she been?”
    “Fine. She sprayed the Sorensons’ cat with mousse this morning.”
    He smiled a little.
    “The hair kind,” said Mary Ann. “Not the chocolate.”
    He chuckled.
    “She missed you,” she said.
    “I missed you both.”
    She looked at him with tenderness, but obliquely, cautiously. “Did it help?” she asked.
    “What?”
    “Getting away.”
    What could he say to that? He put his arm around her, pulled her closer. “I wasn’t trying to get away from you.”
    “It’s O.K.,” she said, her cheek against his chest. “People get sick of each other.” She giggled and patted him. “I get sick of you sometimes. You just beat me to it this time.”
    This stung a little. He had never really been sick of Mary Ann. Even when he’d been with Geordie, it hadn’t been because he was sick of Mary Ann.
    When he didn’t reply, she asked: “What’s the matter?”
    “We have to talk,” he said.
    It was terse enough—and dire enough—to make her sit up, blinking at him. “O.K.,” she said quietly.
    “I have this friend who has AIDS,” he began, delivering the line as rehearsed.
    Her brow furrowed. Her fingertips came to her chin and lighted, gently as a butterfly. “Brian … don’t tell me Michael is …?”
    “No,” he said forcefully. “No, he’s fine.”
    “God, you scared me!” Her hand slid to her chest in relief. “Who is he?” she asked.
    “It’s a woman,” he replied.

Man and Boy
    I T WAS LATE MORNING WHEN BOOTER FINALLY EMERGED from his bedroom in Hillsborough, enticed by the camplike aroma of sausage frying. He had slept for over fourteen hours, and his system seemed to have recuperated admirably. The aches in his limbs were nothing more than the aches of being seventy-one. He could live with that, as always.
    In the kitchen, he found Emma laying out paper towels on the countertop. “That smells wonderful,” he said, hovering over the big iron skillet.
    “Don’t snitch none,” she said. “It’s for company.”
    He gave her a teasing glance. “Aren’t I company? I’m invited, aren’t I?”
    “Ask Miss Frannie,” said the maid. “You been gone so long, I don’t reckon she remembers who you are.”
    “Oh … now.” He smiled at her, largely in recognition of her dauntless loyalty. When Frannie pouted, Emma pouted right along with her. It had been that way as long as he could remember. “Where is she?” he asked.
    Emma laid some links out to drain. “The patio, I reckon. She’s fixin’ flowers for the table.”
    He found Frannie doing just that, up to her elbows in blowsy pink roses. Seeing him, she seemed to brighten a little, so the maid’s grumpiness had probably been residual, a lingering ceremonial gesture.
    Frannie said: “Aren’t these lovely?”
    He nodded and smiled at her, his old friend. “There are some nice ferns down behind the tennis court.”
    She fluttered her eyelids, faintly befuddled. Her face took on a plump-cheeked childishness which always tickled him.
    “To go with the roses,” he explained.
    “Oh, well … yes … fine.”
    “Where are the shears?”
    She rummaged in her garden things, handed him the shears and said, “Thank you,” with a look of mild amazement.
    From the border next to the tennis court he clipped five or six large maidenhair fronds, returning to his wife as she adjusted the little linen tepees on the glass-topped table. “Those are perfect.” She took the fronds, beaming.
    “Who’s for breakfast?” he asked.
    “Oh … just family today. You look much more rested, Booter.”
    “I am,” he assured her. “What