Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

Michael’s arm, soothing two creatures at once. “Didn’t it bother you when she moved away?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You thought you were dying, right? She thought you were dying.”
    “It was complicated, babe. She and Brian were on the rocks, and … she got this job offer in New York … and she’d already watched Jon die in the worst kind of way … and she couldn’t handle going through that again.”
    “So she ran away.”
    Michael shrugged. “Sort of.”
    “Seems like a pattern.”
    Michael’s stony silence showed Ben he had gone too far, so he changed his tone—and the subject. “She had a TV show here, right? Was she famous?”
    “Oh, yeah. Her face was on the side of buses. She had a morning talk show. Sort of like Oprah, but … you know … local .”
    Ben noticed that Michael had italicized the last word with a telltale widening of the eyes. “Not great, huh?”
    “It was okay. She was fine, but the show could be a little lame. You know, cooking segments and D-list celebrities. I don’t blame her for wanting something more.”
    “Which didn’t happen in New York, I take it?”
    “The cable channel folded before they could get the show off the ground. She was cut adrift and ended up doing infomercials and shit. Then she worked for a fancy party planner, and that’s where she met her husband, apparently. At a party.”
    And life got a lot easier, thought Ben.
    “I don’t think she married him for the money,” Michael added clairvoyantly. “I think she loved him. She loved his son, too. She helped raise him.”
    “Where is he now? The son.”
    “At NYU. Freshman year. She was already feeling like an empty nester when the Skype thing happened.”
    It was an opening, but Ben didn’t take it; he could get the details later when the time was right. Instead, he proposed that they take Mary Ann to Pinyon City, where the crisp air and snow-capped peaks might lift her spirits before the surgery—or maybe even help with her recuperation. They could rent their usual house by the river and pay a ceremonial visit to their property. Assuming, of course, she would want to.
    “I think she’d love it,” said Michael, who, like Ben, believed Pinyon City could fix anything.

Chapter 7
Somebody to Hang With
    “ So where goes my wandering boy tonight?”
    Jake was pulling on his flight jacket at the door when Anna asked the question. He knew that “wandering boy” was just one of her old-school expressions, but it still made him feel irresponsible. Anna let him live there for nothing, even paid him for his help sometimes, so he was always wondering if he was living up to his side of the deal. “I’ll be on my cell,” he said reassuringly. “I can be home in no time.”
    “Don’t be silly, dear. I was just being nosy.” Anna cupped her hand against his beard and gazed intently—embarrassingly—into his eyes. “Marguerite and Selina have invited me up for a nice Italian dinner. I’m well taken care of.” The upstairs neighbors had been, until recently, the flatmates of Jake and Anna, so, when the upstairs became available, everyone had welcomed the chance to spread out. Jake certainly had, anyway.
    It wouldn’t have killed him to tell Anna where he was going, but he knew from experience that it took too much explaining. Most old-time San Franciscans—his boss Michael, for one—could be really rude about Pier 39. They saw the place as a tourist trap and a serious waste of waterfront. Most of them had never even been there, either, never seen what a good time it could be. They didn’t know shit about the fire jugglers or the cool aquarium or the funny “Gumpisms” scrawled on the tables at Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Company. They called it corny, most of them, without ever having seen it.
    Jake found Pier 39 a welcome relief from the Castro. The ghetto, for all its acceptance and security, made him feel like all eyes were upon him, since, for the most part, they were . If they weren’t sizing him up for sex, they were judging his believability or resenting him for denying the honest butch dyke they thought he should be. At Pier 39 Jake was just another guy in the crowd. His manhood could be casual there, an easy assumption shared by everyone. It was like being back in Tulsa at the mall—only safer.
    And Jake had a major thing going with the sea lions. On evenings like this he would ride his bike all the way down Market Street to the Embarcadero just to grab an hour with