Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

driver.
    When Michael didn’t react, Thack added: “Don’t you feel like kicking some butt?”
    He tried to keep it light. “Can’t we just hug it for a while?”
    Thack was not amused. “I have to do something,” he said.
    “About what?”
    “Everything. AZT, for one thing. How much do we pay for that shit? And Jesse Fucking Helms is gonna fix it so poor people can’t even get it. And you know what those sorry bastards think? Serves ’em right, anyway. Shouldn’t’ve been butt-fucking in the first place.”
    “I know,” said Michael, patting Thack’s leg.
    “I can’t believe how cold-blooded people have gotten.”
    Michael agreed with him, but he found his lover’s anger exhausting. Now, more than ever, he needed time for the other emotions as well. So what if the world was fucked? There were ways to get around that, if you didn’t make yourself a total slave to rage.
    “Thack…”
    “What?”
    “Well…I don’t understand why you’re mad all the time.”
    His lover paused, then pecked Michael on the temple. “I don’t understand why you’re not.”
    Harry heard the kiss and scrambled frantically over their intertwined legs, whimpering like a spurned lover. “Uh-oh,” said Thack. “Kiss Patrol.”
    They parted enough to admit the dog, then scratched him in tandem, Thack attacking the lower back, Michael attending to his head. Harry invariably left the room when they were having sex, but simple affection was too much for him to miss.
    “This jealousy isn’t healthy,” said Michael.
    “He’s all right.” Thack kissed the dog’s neck. “Aren’t you?”
    Harry gave a breathy har-har in reply.
    “He smells gross,” said Michael.
    “Is that right, Harry? Do you smell gross?”
    “I’ll wash him tomorrow.”
    Thack leaned closer to the dog’s ear. “Hear that, Harry? Better head for the hills.”
    Soon enough, Harry did retire to the bedroom, leaving his masters to snooze on the sofa. Michael drifted off to a rising chorus of foghorns and the occasional screech of tires down in the Castro. At eleven o’clock he was jolted awake by his beeper, prickly as a needle in the darkness.

A Practicing New Yorker
    F OR SEVERAL YEARS NOW THE TENDERLOIN HAD BEEN on a surprising upswing. Where formerly had been wino dives and inflatable plastic lady shops now bloomed chocolatiers and restaurants with arugula on the menu. Easily the most stylish of the new eateries was D’orothea’s Grille, a postmodern fantasia with trompe I’oeil marble walls and booth dividers that looked like giant Tinker Toys.
    As Mary Ann entered, her eyes made a clandestine dash to the wall behind the maître d’s stand. There a row of caricatures alerted newcomers to the restaurant’s more illustrious customers. Her face was still there, of course—why had she worried that it wasn’t?—sandwiched comfortably as ever between the renderings of Danielle Steel and Ambassador Shirley Temple Black.
    The maitre d’ looked up and smiled. “There you are.”
    “Hi, Mickey. I’m expecting a guy…”
    “He’s already here.”
    “Ah. Great.”
    The maitre d’ leaned forward conspiratorially. “I put him at the banquette in the back. There’s a table available in the front room, but Prue’s there with Father Paddy, and I thought”—and here he winked—“it might be a little quieter back in Siberia.”
    She rewarded him with a rakish chuckle. “You’re way ahead of me, Mickey.”
    “We try,” he said, and smiled wickedly.
    Grateful for this promise of privacy, she fled to the back, while Prue and the priest yammered away obliviously. When she reached the furthermost banquette, Burke Andrew leapt to his feet and hugged her awkwardly across the table.
    “Hey,” he said. “You look great.”
    “Thanks. Look who’s talking.”
    He let his head wobble bashfully. She caught a glimpse of the troubled youth who had left her for a career in New York. Most of that person was gone now, with only the broad shoulders and great hair (strawberry blond and receding heroically) remaining to trigger her memories. His earnest collie face, once such a blank slate, had developed crags in becoming places.
    He sank to the banquette and studied her for a moment, shaking his head slowly. “Ten years. Damn.”
    “Eleven,” she said, sitting down.
    “Shit.”
    She laughed.
    “And you’re a star now,” he said. “They’ve got your picture on the wall and everything.”
    She thought it best not to know what he