Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

four or five years ago, when I was still single, having picked him up at the Lone Star Saloon one night. Though he lives upstairs from Anna in another apartment, he comes and goes freely as a helpmate.
    Appearing on the terrace that night, Jake looked like someone from another era—my own, in fact—in loose khakis with wide suspenders and a flannel shirt. The effect of this mining-camp getup is just as deliberate as Jake’s rusticated name. Both were chosen to suggest the strong, earthy, no-nonsense person he intended to become.
    “You guys wanna vaporize?” he said, holding up a wooden box from which a plastic hose dangled like an umbilical cord. Vaporizers, for the uninitiated, are designed to heat cannabis just enough to release its psychoactive ingredients but not enough to create harmful respiratory toxins—i.e., smoke. They’re all the rage now among the health conscious and the elderly. The ordinary kind is sold for a hundred bucks or so at shops in the Haight, but this wacky contraption was Jake’s own creation. He was proud as he could be of it. He had built it out of barn timber from Sonoma and adorned it with eucalyptus pods.
    “Your timing is perfect,” said Anna. “Come sit down, dear.”
    So Jake joined the family circle and plugged the vaporizer into an outlet in the terrace. Soon we were passing the tube around, sucking up the smokeless, pot-flavored air like Alice’s caterpillar. Ben, as usual, abstained. By his own account, he did too much speed and ecstasy in his youth (way back in the mid-nineties), so he limits himself to wine and the occasional mojito. He would never be so sanctimonious as to say that he’s high on life, but he is, the little bastard; he’s his own source of intoxication.
    “What is that smell?” he asked, when the rest of us were pleasantly buzzed.
    “Can you smell it?” asked Jake. “Your nose must be really sensitive.”
    “No. That floral smell. It’s so intense.”
    “That’s the datura,” said Anna. She lifted her wobbly blue-veined hand and pointed to the tree at the end of the garden. “It releases its scent at night.”
    Ben turned and looked at this preposterous plant with its dozens of pendulous trumpet-shaped blossoms. “It has psychotropic qualities,” I explained. “Shamans have used it for centuries to see spirits and induce trances.”
    “It’s also a poison,” Jake added. “It can drive you insane.”
    Anna was already lost in recollection. “We had a lovely one at Barbary Lane. A golden one. In the corner next to the garbage cans. Mona was always threatening to make tea out of it.” She turned and looked at me sweetly. “Do you remember it, Michael?”
    I wasn’t sure I did, but said so, anyway.
    “The more I trimmed it back,” she said, “the more blossoms it grew. All year long. I thought it would never stop entertaining us.”
    There was a distinctly bittersweet ring to these words, so Ben, bless his heart, leaped gallantly into the silence that followed. “Michael’s told me about Barbary Lane. It must’ve been wonderful. Your own little secret world up there.”
    “It was nice,” said Anna, keeping it short and sweet. She seemed on the verge of tears. “You should see for yourself, dear. It’s an actual city street. They can’t keep you out. Just walk up the stairs and act like you belong there.”

    Later that night, when we were done with the vaporizing, I told Anna and Jake that Ben and I would be visiting my family in Florida the following week.
    “Well…that’ll be nice,” said Anna. “For how long?”
    There was a trace of anxiety in this question, so I tried to minimize it. “Just three or four days. No more than that. My mother’s not doing very well.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Anna. “Would you give her my best?”
    Anna met my mother no more than twice, and well over twenty years ago, but she never stopped sending her best to Florida. My mother had little use for it. She rarely ever remembered who Anna was, unless I broke down and referred to her as “my colorful landlady.” That always nailed it for Mama, and I’m pretty sure Anna’s “color” was what made her suspect in Mama’s eyes. I don’t think she had a clue about Anna’s sex change, but the instinct that “something ain’t right” was deeply embedded in her DNA. “When it comes to folks,” Mama always said, “you can’t be too careful.”
    “When were you last home?” asked Jake.
    “You mean in