Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

slightest touch of acrophobia, so the climb left me woozy. I steadied myself at the top, catching my breath for a moment as I gazed across the valley at the television tower on Mount Sutro. It’s a gangly War of the Worlds monstrosity, but sometimes—like that particular afternoon—the fog erases everything but the top three antennae, creating the ghostly effect of a galleon sailing above the clouds, the Castro’s own Flying Dutchman .
    They’ve gone to the guy’s room, no doubt. Or maybe to Ben’s, if he rented one this time. The terrycloth has hit the deck by now, and somebody’s blowing somebody. Or maybe they’re even fucking already. Right. This. Very. Moment.
    I began scooping handfuls of leaves out of the gutter. It’s a handsome gutter, as gutters go: copper beginning to show traces of green. I installed it ten years ago, right after Thack moved out, partly to reassert my dominion over the house. The downspouts were badly clogged with leaves last winter, inundating the terrace at one point and threatening to do the same to the house. This year I’d be ready for the rain.
    When the gutters were clean, I climbed down from the ladder and returned it to the truck before raking the rotten leaves from the terrace. There was still space left in the green recycling bin, so I crammed in a few dead fronds from the tree fern at the end of the driveway. The rest of the garden looked okay, but I figured there were chores aplenty in the kitchen. Sure enough, the grime under the sink had reached crisis proportions, so I pulled out all the rusting cleanser containers and Simple Greened the hell out of the place.
    Are they done yet? Or have they started all over again? Are they lying somewhere together now, catching their breath, explaining themselves to each other?

    By four o’clock I was on the sofa watching a Netflix movie. Normally I save them for the two of us, but this one was a thriller, and Ben’s never been crazy about the creepy stuff. Besides, I required serious distraction, and I’d run out of stuff to clean.
    In the midst of the movie the phone rang. I hit mute and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
    “Hi, babe. It’s me. I’m on the bridge.”
    “Hey, sweetie.”
    “What are you up to?” he asked.
    “Just a movie,” I said. “Sharon Stone in a big house with snakes dropping from the chandeliers.”
    “Glad I missed that one.”
    “How were the tubs?”
    “Okay,” he said with a comforting lack of enthusiasm.
    “Just okay?”
    “It was pretty slow for a Sunday.”
    “Ah. That’s too bad.”
    “There was this guy from San Leandro who was kinda hot, but he had awful dragon breath.”
    “Ugh,” I said, but of course I meant Thank You, Jesus.
    “He knows you, in fact,” Ben added. “Or of you, anyway. You worked on his ex’s backyard in Pacific Heights.”
    “It’s not ringing a bell,” I said.
    “It was back in the eighties, I think. He remembered your name, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.”
    He was right. All that mattered was that Ben had brought up my name to this foul-smelling stud, making it patently clear that he already belonged to someone else.
    “Do we need anything?” he asked.
    I did a quick mental inventory. “We’re out of laundry detergent, if you feel like stopping at the corner.”
    “Okay. What about for dinner?”
    “I thought we’d do some chicken on the grill. I got this great new finishing sauce with apple and chipotle. Fuck!”
    “What?”
    “We’re out of propane.”
    “No we’re not. There’s a spare tank in the shed.”
    “Oh, you’re right,” I said. “What would I do without you?”
    He chuckled. “Watch Sharon Stone movies, I guess.”

    We lay on the sofa after supper, intertwined and swapping endearments. I won’t bother to repeat them here. Whoever named them sweet nothings was right. They really are nothing; they’re little more than footnotes to a feeling, almost useless out of context.
    “You know what?” said Ben, idly caressing my chest.
    “What?”
    “I’d sort of given up believing this could happen. I thought I was being unrealistic.”
    “C’mon,” I said. “You’re thirty-three.”
    “So?”
    “So that’s too early to have given up.” I realized this was bullshit the moment it came out of my mouth. I spent most of my twenties feeling unrealistic about love.
    “You don’t know,” said Ben. “It’s not that easy to find an older guy who isn’t already fucked up.”
    “Why, thank you,