Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

Leia.
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” The carrion stench of the woman was going straight to the pit of Shawna’s stomach. “Just lie still, sweetheart. We’re gonna take care of you.”
    Shawna dug her phone out of her coat and dialed 911.
    “I have a woman here,” she told the operator. “She’s been stabbed, I think.”
    “You think ?” growled Leia.
    “And what’s the location?”
    “Oh … shit … I don’t know. It’s an alley in the Tenderloin. It’s off of Hyde Street. Please hurry.”
    “I’ll need a name, ma’am. Is there someone there who can—?”
    “Cocksuck,” said Leia.
    “Hang on, Leia … Operator, maybe I could meet them out at—”
    “Cocksuck Alley!”
    Shawna looked down at Leia. “Seriously? That’s the name?”
    The woman grunted in the affirmative. “The cops call it that, too.”
    “Okay … great. Operator, apparently it’s known on the street as Cocksuck Alley.”
    Silence.
    “Please don’t hang up. This isn’t a prank, I swear.” Desperate, still holding Leia’s hand, Shawna looked toward the end of the alley where Otto had just reappeared, breathing heavily. “What does that sign say?” she yelled.
    “What sign?”
    “On the wall there. Where are we?”
    Otto looked. “Cossack,” he hollered back.
    “Like … Russian?”
    “Yeah.”
    Shawna clarified things for the operator, spelling the word for her. “We need an ambulance quick. She’s bleeding a lot.”
    Otto joined them, stroking Shawna’s hair while she held Leia’s hand.
    “Did he take my knife?” asked Leia.
    Down the alley the guy under the polyester blanket continued intoning his evening prayer: “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
    Even the sirens, when they came, didn’t silence him.

Chapter 13
A Nibble on the Line
    “ I have the perfect person,” said DeDe Halcyon-Wilson as she topped off Mary Ann’s wine glass like the gracious hostess she’d been raised to be. “Her office is just a couple of miles away. You could recuperate here, if you like.”
    Here was Halcyon Hill, the mock-Tudor manor house in Hillsborough that had been DeDe’s home since childhood. She and D’orothea had recently re-chintzed the furniture and installed pretty green-silk Roman shades, but the house was still very much the way Mary Ann remembered it. Only DeDe herself had changed significantly; the prodigal debutante who’d returned from Guyana so sinewy and serious was now this pleasant little partridge of a woman. Her patrician, finely furred jawline evoked the previous mistress of this house, DeDe’s long-dead mother, Frannie Halcyon. And Mary Ann could well imagine what Frannie would have said about the fountain on the wall of the sunroom: a stylized vagina with water sluicing through petals of smooth pink marble.
    “Too much?” asked DeDe, seeing where Mary Ann’s eyes had landed.
    “No … it’s very subtle, actually. It’s like a Bufano.”
    “That’s what it is.”
    “You’re kidding?” Mary Ann had prided herself on spotting the sculptor’s distinctive work when she’d lived here—all those faceless penguins and slope-shouldered mama bears embracing their young. “I didn’t know he did … people.”
    DeDe chuckled. “He didn’t. D’or bought it in a spiritual shop in Gualala. I told her it was a horrid idea, but she’d just taken a Lorezepam and could not be contained.”
    “It’s not a Bufano, you mean?”
    “God, no. I feel so insensitive, Mary Ann. I should have taken it down before you got here.”
    “Why?” Mary Ann gave her a spunky smile. “I get to keep that part.”
    Clearly relieved by this offhanded absolution, DeDe managed a laugh. “Leaving in the playpen, as they say.”
    “What?” said Mary Ann.
    “Our friend Barb had a hysterectomy last summer. She told us: ‘They may be taking out the baby carriage, but at least they’re leaving in the playpen.’ ”
    Cute, thought Mary Ann, if not especially comforting, since these days her playpen saw about as much action as her baby carriage. “So your friend is okay?”
    “She’s great. Just fine. I asked her to join us today, but she had a meeting of her sustainable-gardening group. You know, it’s the most fixable form of cancer there is.”
    “So they tell me.”
    “Are you scared?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “Of what exactly?”
    Mary Ann’s gaze drifted through the diamond-paned window into the green-and-gold blur of the garden. “That I’ll be different when it’s over … or dead. I