Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

Madrigal?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did she say?”
    “Nothing. Just sent her love. It was on the machine. She was in Athens, apparently.”
    “She must be on the way home.”
    “Yeah,” said Thack. “I guess so.”

    D’orothea’s Grille was a little short on celebrities that day, so their people-watching centered around the bubble-butted boy who brought them their Chinese chicken salads. DeDe emerged from the kitchen when they were almost done, kissing Michael’s cheek, then Thack’s. “Hi, boys. Like the new decor?”
    “Not bad,” Michael told her.
    “Not finished either. We’ve still gotta knock out that back wall, open the whole thing up. God, it makes me tired just thinking about it. How were the salads?”
    “Great,” said Thack.
    “You should’ve come earlier. Chloe Rand was here.”
    Thack grunted.
    “You know her?”
    “No,” said Thack. “But her husband tried to fuck my husband last night.”
    DeDe turned to Michael and let her jaw drop comically. “No!”
    Michael chuckled.
    “Did you do it?” asked DeDe.
    He smiled cryptically.
    DeDe glanced at Thack. “I think he did, don’t you?”
    Thack laughed.
    “Where was this?” asked DeDe.
    “Out at Arch Gidde’s.”
    She nodded. “We were invited to some brunch thing at Prue Giroux’s, but D’or didn’t think she could stomach it. She used to model for him, you know, back when he was still gay.”
    This got a hoot out of Thack.

    An hour later they scored big in a junk store on Valencia Street: two matching wooden dinette chairs, covered in cruddy white vinyl but displaying an unmistakably Deco silhouette. They paid an old man ten bucks for the pair and tied them onto the VW, fussing like nuns with a fresh busload of orphans.
    Back at the house, they set to work with hammers and crowbars, ripping away two, three, four layers of plastic and stuffing, until the original chairs were revealed. Their peaked backs and oval handholds conveyed a sort of Seven Dwarfsish feeling, which Michael thought suited the house perfectly.
    At dusk, as the fog rolled in, they lay on the deck completely spent, staring at their treasures.
    “What should we paint them?” asked Michael. “A Fiesta color, maybe?”
    “How about turquoise?”
    “Perfect. God, look how many tacks there were!”
    “Yeah.”
    “They must feel better,” said Michael.
    “Who must?”
    “The chairs. To have all those tacks out.”
    “Right.”
    “Well, think about it. It was like a crucifixion or something.”
    Thack gave him a sleepy smile. “You’re such a weird guy,” he said.
    Michael reached over and took hold of Thack’s cock. It felt fat and warm through the padding of his sweat pants. Holding on, he slid closer and kissed Thack softly on the lips.
    “Feeling better?” asked Thack.
    “Much.”
    “I want you to stick around, O.K.?”
    “O.K.,” said Michael.
    They heard the hiss of a pop-top in the kitchen and realized without looking that Brian had come home.

Inheritance
    O N HER WAY BACK TO NEW YORK THE MORNING after, Chloe had left a chirpy see-you-soon on Mary Ann’s machine, so whatever nastiness had transpired between Michael and Russell must not have made its way back to his wife. Thank God for that, anyway. Four days after the debacle in Sea Cliff, Mary Ann still hadn’t heard from Michael, and knowing him, he wasn’t likely to relent anytime soon. His tantrums had a way of lasting.
    Ditto Brian. Yesterday she’d left a message on Michael’s machine, telling her husband that she’d be gone by the end of the week, that Shawna should not be deprived of her father any longer than necessary. He hadn’t called back. She’d begun to wonder if he was deliberately trying to screw up her departure, knowing she couldn’t leave in good conscience without turning over Shawna to his care.
    Shawna, thankfully, had taken all this grownup childishness in stride. (If anything, she seemed more distressed by her father’s current absence than by Mary Ann’s impending one.) The same could not be said for Mary Ann’s bosses at the station. Their ill-disguised resentment over her new position had been gratifying only to the degree that it confirmed—or betrayed, rather, since they’d always kept it a secret—her real value to the station.
    As she’d sat there outlining her new duties and watching a vein throb in Larry Kenan’s temple, it was all she could do not to pull a Sally Field and blurt out the revelation that had finally come to her