Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

blank. She was halfway hoping he would make a fuss, or at least talk Michael into bowing out graciously. Four tagalongs was a bit much. The Rands were already getting more than they had bargained for.
    Burke gave her another doggy look. “I would’ve mentioned it earlier, but…”
    “Look,” she said, getting a brainstorm. “Why don’t you invite them here?”
    “Well…”
    “They can just…kick back and relax.”
    “That’s nice of you,” said Burke, “but I think they’re kind of…entrenched.”
    “Right,” she said evenly. But she was thinking: He hates the house. He thinks it’s not chic enough for them.
    “Shall I check with Brian?” Burke asked.
    “No,” she said. “He’ll go.”
    “Great,” said Burke, and he went back to the phone.
    Where had she screwed up, anyway? The Indian blankets, the saguaro skeleton, the painted steer skulls…?
    The tiny, clear voice of her fashion sense told her that was impossible.
    She had copied that stuff from a Russell Rand ad.

    It was agreed that they’d arrive at the restaurant in two cars: Mary Ann, Brian, and Burke in Mary Ann’s Mercedes; Michael and Thack in their VW. There was also the minor matter of a baby-sitter, and Nguyet, as usual, required nothing less than a bald-faced bribe before consenting to stay at the house past midnight. Brian, typically, knew next to nothing about the Rands, so while Burke was in the bathroom, Mary Ann dug into her stash of Interviews and gave her husband a hasty briefing.
    On the way there, while Brian and Burke gabbed away in the front seat about Joe Montana’s vertebrae, she filled her nostrils with the sweet scent of her gray leather interiors and took stock of herself. Had she known the evening would end with the Russell Rands, she might not have worn this uneventful little Calvin Klein cocktail dress.
    Still, it showed she cared about such things. It seemed a bit much, anyway, to wear a Russell Rand outfit in the actual presence of Russell Rand. She conducted a hasty mental inventory of the women she’d seen with him in photographs. Had Liza worn his clothes when she went out with him? Had Elizabeth? Maybe only desperadoes like Prue Giroux did that.
    For that matter, what about the Passion she had on? Was it gauche to wear Elizabeth Taylor’s perfume around people who knew Elizabeth Taylor? People who knew what she actually smelled like? Maybe her real friends found the stuff laughable and pretentious. Certainly Cher’s must. How could they not?
    She would not dwell on it. The stuff wasn’t cheap, after all, and Taylor had done so much for AIDS. Mary Ann had worn it mostly to please Michael, to show her support. She would say that, if the subject came up. It was the truth, anyway.
    “And over there,” Brian was telling Burke with great authority, “is the Hard Rock. It’s O.K., but it’s kind of a kid’s joint.”
    “Brian,” she said, “I think they’ve got one in New York.”
    “I know that. I was just telling him about this one.”
    “They’re all the same,” she told him.
    “The one in London is decent,” Burke put in. “It was the first, I think.”
    “Yes,” she said. “It was.”
    “Look at that fog,” said Brian. “Look what it does to the neon. Isn’t that great?”
    Burke made an appreciative noise, obviously just being polite.
    She shot Brian a quick look. “Not everyone likes fog, you know?”
    “Go on,” he replied with mock disbelief.
    “Well, it’s true.”
    Brian looked at Burke. “You like it, don’t you?”
    An easy grin and a shrug. “Sure.”
    “You gotta admit it beats the shit outa that stuff in New York. That stuff you have to scrape off your face.” Brian laughed, apparently to keep this from sounding hostile, but it didn’t work. “I mean… c’mon .”
    Burke was gallant about it. “Yeah…well, you’re right about that.”
    “He’s such a San Francisco chauvinist,” she told Burke.
    “And you’re not?” Brian mugged at her.
    “I like it,” she said calmly. “I don’t think it’s the be-all and the end-all. And I don’t think it’s particularly nice to bad-mouth our guest’s city.”
    “C’mon,” said Brian, smiling to cover his tracks. “He didn’t take it that way.” He gave Burke a buddy-buddy wink. “Anyway, I like New York. I wouldn’t wanna live there…et cetera, et cetera.”
    She clutched for a moment. Was that remark just coincidental, or was he onto her? Either way, she vowed to ignore it.
    “How do