Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

was and didn’t notice her standing there. He seemed to be admiring the new cottage, the one where she was living now, and that somehow made her happy. She considered engaging him but settled on solitude, holding back until he was gone.

Chapter 10
A Force for Good
    P asta made the most sense, Ben decided, since they were cooking for Mary Ann that night, and it was best not to overwhelm her with one of his all-veggie extravaganzas. Nobody thought pasta was weird. He could make a nice penne dish with a little Gimme Lean sausage and his basil-and-cashew pesto. He had Googled “vegan + uterine cancer” at his Norfolk Street workspace that morning to find what he had expected: a documented correlation between cancer and animal-food consumption. A vegan diet could not in itself cure cancer, the experts said, but it could limit the places where cancer could live. That was good to know if Mary Ann’s cancer had yet to spread beyond her uterus.
    Leaving his workspace with Roman just after four, he drove to the Whole Foods on Potrero Hill and shopped for dinner. (Michael, like many, had always called this market “Whole Paycheck,” which was certainly true enough, but Ben couldn’t resist the scope of its organic inventory.) When Ben returned to the parking garage, Roman was sitting up in the front seat with a look of quizzical pathos on his face.
    “What is it, Mr. Doodle? You wanna go to the park?”
    The dog reacted with disproportionate glee, panting his reply.
    “No,” said Ben, sensing a misunderstanding, “not the beach … the park .”
    Roman just looked puzzled now.
    “You like the park. All your friends are there. Don’t you wanna see Mercy? And Blossom and Cliff? And Crazy Amy Winehouse Lady?”
    Ben knew he was babbling like a lunatic—to a dog, no less—but he felt no shame about it. Most people were babbling these days, some of them into a headset, others just tweeting into the void, into the gray ether of faceless strangers. At least he knew Roman was listening. At least he knew Roman was trying his best to understand.
    That’s what Ben liked about the dog park. It was nothing if not a constant effort at direct communication. Even the people there were actively engaged in the practice. Today, for instance, seven or eight of them had pulled their white plastic chairs into a circle and were shooting the breeze like old men on the porch of a country store. All of them, in fact, were male, and most of them could easily fit someone’s definition of old. Not a problem for Ben, of course, except that one of them, a writer named Gabriel Noone, who told stories on NPR, had come on to Ben in the locker room at the Y, and Ben, put off by the guy’s needy posturing, had politely declined. Better to go it alone today.
    So he sat on one of the benches against the fence while Roman went nuts with a scrappy Boston terrier. He didn’t remain alone for long, however, because Cliff came into the park with Blossom, spotted Ben and Roman, and began making his way slowly toward the bench. The old man was wearing a faded green car coat that Ben recognized from previous visits. He used its many pockets to store dog treats, tennis balls and assorted squeaky toys—all for the enjoyment of Blossom and her friends.
    Seeing Cliff, Roman parted company with the Boston terrier and made a beeline for the old man’s pocket. “Well, look at ol’ Roman come running.”
    “Make him sit for it, Cliff. Don’t let him jump on you.”
    “Okay then, sit,” the old man told Roman. “No … stay … sit. That’s a good boy. You want another?”
    “Just one more,” Ben said. “Otherwise he’ll never leave you alone.”
    The dog was sitting attentively, waiting for the next bonanza, when a nerve-jangling scream made him jerk his head toward Collingwood Street. At that end of the park the cyclone fence was four times taller than elsewhere and covered with canvas panels, not only to keep balls from escaping but presumably to shield the neighbors from the undesirable sight of dogs at play. It was therefore impossible to find the source of the scream—even when another one came, followed by a string of explosive words:
    “I’M ONTO YOU, YOU FUCKIN’ MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT! YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY FROM ME, MOTHERFUCKER? YOU COCKSUCKING SORRY-ASS EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING!”
    “Uh-oh,” said Cliff, cocking an eyebrow at Ben. “She’s back.”
    “Who is it?”
    “Some schizo. She comes by here from time to time.