Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

you?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Well, why are you acting like this?”
    He heaved a sigh of resignation.
    “I thought you’d enjoy it,” she said. “It’s black tie, and it’s in this beautiful house out at Sea Cliff.”

    Thack, of course, saw his acquiescence as something just short of betrayal.
    “Give me a break,” Michael argued. “I can’t stop seeing her just because they’re…”
    “Why not? She dumped him, didn’t she? That’s clear enough.”
    “And we men have got to stick together. Is that it?”
    Thack frowned. “What do our dicks have to do with it?”
    “A lot, if you ask me.”
    “You think I’m being sexist?”
    Michael shrugged. “Maybe unconsciously.”
    “Well, you’re full of shit, then.”
    “I didn’t say…”
    “Is that what she told you? That this was the men versus one poor little woman?”
    “No.”
    “She’s jerking you around, Michael. Just the way she does him. She’ll say anything to get what she wants.”
    “And women aren’t supposed to do that.”
    “Nobody’s supposed to do that! It’s got nothing to do with sexism. You know I’m not a sexist. Why are you so blind about this? I don’t get it.”
    Michael let him calm down for a moment. “You haven’t known her as long as I have.”
    “Well, maybe I can see her more clearly, then.”
    “Maybe you can.” He sighed. “You want me to cancel?”
    “Do what you want to do.”
    “Oh, right.”
    “I’m not gonna lie to Brian about it.”
    “I don’t expect you to.” Michael’s tone was glacial as he left the room. “I hadn’t planned to myself.”

    His tux was spotted in several places and required major sponging. His dress shirt was clean, but he ended up stapling the cuffs, since he couldn’t find his cuff links and he wasn’t about to ask Thack for his. His beeper went off in the middle of this procedure, causing him to fling down the stapler and skulk off in search of water.
    Back in the bedroom, he sat on the bed and finished dressing. As he put on his socks, he spotted something on his ankle—his lower calf, really—that he hadn’t noticed before. He leaned over to look at it.
    “Hey,” said Thack, walking into the room, “if you wanna wear my red cummberbund, go ahead.”
    Michael didn’t answer.
    “What is it?”
    “Come here a second. Look at this.”
    His lover came to the bed. “Where?”
    “There.”
    Thack studied the purplish inflammation, touching it lightly with his forefinger.
    “Does that look like it?”
    No answer.
    “It does to me.”
    “I don’t think so,” said Thack. “It looks like a zit or something. Something healing. Look at the edges of it.”
    When had he ever seen a zit down there? “The color seems right, though.”
    “Go see August, then, if it worries you. Isn’t tomorrow your day for pentamidine?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’ll put your mind at ease, anyway.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Thack, shaking Michael’s knee. “I’ll get the cummerbund.”

    Mary Ann had done a show that morning on baby evangelists, so that was what they talked about on the long drive to Sea Cliff. His guess was that the heavier stuff would come later, when they were both feeling a little more sure of each other.
    The fog in Sea Cliff was as dense as he had ever seen it. The house was seventies modern, a cluster of multileveled metallic boxes with thick glass walls overlooking the ocean. Flash-cubes of the Gods, he thought, as Mary Ann turned the Mercedes over to a valet parker.
    “What’s the deal here?” he asked. The lights along the path glowed soft and spongy in the fog. Out on the darkling plain of the Golden Gate there were horns bleating like lost sheep.
    “We just walk through and look at it,” she said. “It’s a benefit for the ballet.”
    “Whose house is it?”
    “I don’t know, really. Some guy who died. He left a provision in his will that they could let people see it after he died.”
    “How odd.”
    “Well…he was a realtor.” She shrugged as if this explained it.
    Suddenly it hit him. “Arch Gidde. Was that his name?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “That’s it.”
    “Christ.”
    “You knew him?”
    “Not very well. Jon did. He used to come here all the time.”
    “This Gidde guy was gay?”
    “What did you think he died of?”
    “Prue said it was liver cancer or something.”
    “Right,” said Michael.
    “Well…I guess he has a right to his privacy.”
    Michael knew what Thack would have said to