Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

might be.”
    A stifled groan from Mary Ann.
    “I’m just sayin’. You could have some fun with it. Make ’em sweat a little.”
    “Sweetheart,” said Ben, admonishing his husband with a look. Michael had a way of working a gag until it screamed bloody murder.
    “The thing is,” said Mary Ann, “I’m not even positive that he doesn’t already know that I know.”
    “What do you mean?” asked Ben.
    She shrugged. “He could have done it on purpose.”
    Michael looked annoyed. “Well, of course he did it on purpose!”
    “I mean, left the Skype on.”
    “No!” Michael looked genuinely aghast.
    “Bob’s not good at confrontation,” she said. “Not about the tough stuff. He might have just decided to show me rather than tell me.”
    “C’mon, babycakes. No one could be that vile. Hadn’t you just told him you might be pregnant?”
    Ben wasn’t sure he’d heard this correctly. “I’m sorry … what?”
    “My cancer symptoms,” Mary Ann explained quietly, looking at Ben. “I didn’t know what was happening yet.”
    He still wasn’t sure what she meant, so he nodded and left it alone. He could see from her face that the conversation was beginning to get to her.
    “Anyhoo,” said Mary Ann, chirping away the darkness, “I have twenty-six friends already.”
    Michael seemed confused. “Oh … on Facebook, you mean.”
    “Yeah. Ben friended me, and some of his friends recognized my name from my TV days.”
    “That’s because they’re old,” said Michael.
    Mary Ann batted her eyes in half-serious indignation. “Excuse me?”
    “I didn’t mean it that way.”
    “What other way could you mean it?”
    Though Michael didn’t deserve it, Ben let him off the hook. “He was being jealous,” he told Mary Ann. “That comment was for me, not you.”
    “His Facebook friends are older gentlemen with facial hair …”
    Ben grinned at Mary Ann. “He’s exaggerating. A few of them maybe …”
    “ … and they all look like me … fleshy features, big bellies. It’s totally unsettling.”
    “So?” said Mary Ann with a shrug. “You’re his type. What’s so unsettling about that?”
    “Thank you,” Ben mumbled through a mouthful of bread.
    “It would be much more unsettling,” Mary Ann added, “if they were all cute little twinkies or something.”
    “Don’t be so sure,” said Michael. “Now that I know what his type is I have to worry about whether I’m the best version of that type. Not to mention what will happen when … you know, I’m no longer that type.”
    Mary Ann rolled her eyes so Ben could see it. “He’s always been like this, you know.”
    Ben nodded. “I kinda figured.”
    “When things are going great, he finds a way to make it not count.”
    “Hey,” said Michael. “Gang up on me, why don’t you?”
    “I’m not saying a word,” said Ben, exchanging a private smirk with Mary Ann.
    It was a moment of bonding he had not really expected.

Chapter 11
An Underlying Agenda
    S o here they were, at last—sitting underwater on a floating island in San Francisco Bay—a wack place to eat dinner if ever there was one. But something about the way the waiter had just crooned the word “gentlemen” as he handed them their menus had turned their excellent adventure into an embarrassing dinner date.
    Or so it seemed to Jake. He wondered if Jonah was feeling the same discomfort over the assumption that they were a couple. It was Jonah, after all, who’d insisted on this goofy outing to Forbes Island, so he was the one whose motives were suspect. At first Jake had written off the evening as a boyish whim, but now there was something brightly expectant in Jonah’s eyes that hinted at an underlying agenda.
    “May I show you our wine list?” the waiter asked, while a solitary, bewhiskered fish idled in the murk beyond the porthole.
    Jake glanced at Jonah, who shook his head. “I’m good with ice water.”
    “Same here,” said Jake, relieved that he’d been spared the ordeal of wine selection. He was sure that duty would have fallen to him, since he was the one with the beard, and Jonah, weirdly enough, seemed even younger than his twenty-two years now that he was spiffed up in a blue blazer and a white shirt.
    When the waiter had left, Jonah pulled an iPhone from the breast pocket of his blazer and summoned a photograph. “That’s Becky,” he said, showing it to Jake.
    The girl was a toothy brunette with flat, shiny hair. She was standing in front of a