Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

grittiness of the café. Tonight, as a freighter droned dolefully on the black satin bay, she was glad she hadn’t cut her Bettie bangs just yet.
    “Excuse me, I know you must hate this …”
    Shawna looked up to find what she expected: a typical fan of her blog—early twenties, male, slightly geeky—approaching her with extreme care, as if she were a skittish creature in a forest. Or maybe some bad-ass dominatrix.
    “You’re Grrrl on the Loose, right?”
    She smiled, giving her stock answer: “That’s the blog, not me.”
    “Good title, though.”
    “I don’t know. Those three r s are getting tired, aren’t they? I may have to put them to bed.” She gave him a friendly, jaundiced glance. “Hope you’ll still read me.”
    “My girlfriend loved your piece on eco-friendly sex toys. This is her.” He pulled the poor woman forward to present her. “You friended her on Facebook.”
    “Ah … right.” You and five thousand other people, she thought as she shook the woman’s hand. “Nice to see you in the flesh.”
    The couple laughed nervously, as though Shawna’s offhanded response had been riddled with innuendo. Why did they always expect her to be dirty? She prided herself on writing about sex in a healthy, joyful, unapologetic way, but people were determined to cast her as the Duchess of Smut. That was still on her mind when Otto strode into the café. As she waved him down, an idea was assembling in her head.
    “That for me?” he asked, eyeing the beer she’d bought for him.
    “If you play your cards right.”
    He grinned and gulped half the glass before sitting down.
    “How were the hordes?” she asked.
    “Hordey.” He took off his backpack—the one that held the monkey puppet and some of his clothes—and set it on the floor beside him. He’d made an effort to clean up, but there were still traces of clown white in his smile lines, and his big, honey-colored mane was a matted, scraggly mess. “Picked up some cash, though.”
    “Cool.”
    Otto snatched an artichoke heart and popped it into his mouth.
    “You wanna order something?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “I had a burger at the pier. Mostly I wanna go back to your place and cuddle the fuck out of you.”
    “Okay.” She smiled crookedly, loving the sentiment in spite of his wording. “I wanna ask you something first.”
    “Shoot.”
    “You know how lately I’ve been sort of disenchanted with the blog?”
    “Not really.”
    “Well … I have. I think it’s kinda run its course. I mean, I think I’ve done some good, but I’m tired of being Debbie Dildo, you know?”
    Otto shrugged. “You’re good at it.”
    “Thanks, but … it gets to be limiting after a while. I think I wanna open it up, talk about life in general … you know, the petty shit and the big issues we all have to deal with. Something substantive. I think my readers would follow me, and I would really—”
    “Go for it. What’s stopping you?”
    “Well … I need you to tell me it’s okay.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I might be writing about us. In part, at least.”
    “Oh.” A cloud passed over his face. “Like … using my name and all?”
    “Yeah, unless …” She decided to keep it light. “You’re not wanted for something in ten states, are you?”
    He wouldn’t pick up on the gag. “I like my privacy, Shawna. I love what we have, but … I don’t know about sharing it with strangers.”
    “You just performed on a pier with a ton of strangers.”
    “No,” he said quietly. “That was Ottokar. Or Sammy sometimes. But it wasn’t me. That’s why I’m able to do it.”
    That made sense, in a way, but she suspected his fears ran deeper than that. “I wouldn’t be writing about our sex life,” she said. “I wouldn’t be as … specific as—”
    “It’s not that.”
    “Then what?” She was starting to feel hurt, and, worse yet, sounding that way. “Are we just not … that serious?”
    Otto saw her mortification and grabbed her hand across the table. “Listen, ladylove … if we weren’t serious I wouldn’t give a shit what you put in that blog. I just don’t want to feel self-conscious about what we have. I don’t want to be weighing my words all the time. I don’t want to think of us as … you know … material.”
    Anyone else who’d called her “ladylove” would have received, at the very least, a derisive snort, but Shawna found it sort of sweet. It was possible Otto had picked up that expression the