Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

time, so … dear, I hope you’re not suggesting—”
    “No, of course not!” Shawna snapped. “I’m just trying to figure this out!” She was starting to sound like a waterboarder at Guantanamo, so she returned the snapshot to the lunch box and softened her tone considerably. “Sorry. My nerves are kinda frayed.”
    Anna’s wheels seemed already to be turning. “When was that taken?”
    “I’m guessing late seventies. Maybe a little earlier.”
    “Why are you guessing that?”
    “Because she looks to be about seven or eight, and the coroner said she was barely past forty when she died. If that.” Shawna was trying hard to absorb this fact herself, reckoning with the bitter truth that Alexandra had only recently achieved middle age. “Plus,” she added, “the photo has that orangey seventies look.”
    Anna was no longer listening, just blinking into the distance, engrossed in some flickering old movie of her life. After a moment she said: “Mr. Williams.”
    “What?”
    “He lived in the pentshack for about six months. He was a private detective. My wife—my ex-wife—hired him to track me down and spy on me.”
    “Did you ever see him—?”
    “—with a child? No. Never. He was a mean, conniving little man … he tried to blackmail someone … that I was seeing at the time and had grown very close to, but I never saw any evidence that …” Anna’s words trailed off feebly.
    “But he might have been capable, right?”
    Anna nervously rearranged the folds of her throw. “I can’t imagine anyone being capable of that. Much less under my roof.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “I don’t know. He got very drunk one Christmas Eve, and he never came back.”
    “Ever?”
    Anna shook her head slowly. “We called the police after a week or so, but nothing came of it. I always assumed he skipped town once his cover was blown.”
    Anna’s crime-fiction lingo made Shawna grin.
    “What?” asked Anna. “That’s what they say, isn’t it?”
    “That’s what they say.”
    Anna regarded her with grandmotherly concern. “I hope you’re feeling better, dear. You had me worried.”
    “I just don’t understand, that’s all.”
    “Understand what?”
    “Why the universe hands me such random shit.”
    Anna’s smile was inscrutable. “Sometimes the universe has a slow day.”
    N OT LONG AFTER DARK, BACK at Otto’s cramped studio in the Crocker Amazon, Shawna provided her own coda to the saga that had consumed her for weeks.
    “I’ve asked them to give us the ashes,” she said. She was lying naked on Otto’s futon, her head resting on the warm slab of his chest, trying to find her way back to the ordinary and the beautiful.
    “Cool,” he said. “What do you wanna do with ’em?”
    “I thought we could take them to the headlands when the weather gets better. Or maybe the park. Stow Lake or something.”
    “Totally.”
    They were both silent for a while as she rode the rhythm of Otto’s heart, drugged by his ripe, cedary essence. It was raining now, so hard she could hear it, and there were fat droplets, like beads of mercury, rolling down the security bars in the window.
    Otto said: “I have to tell you something.”
    She thought she’d heard guilt in his voice. “Oh, yeah?” she said, bracing herself for another unpleasant surprise, another shitstorm out of nowhere.
    He pulled her closer until she was straddling his leg like a koala on a tall, skinny tree. Finally he said: “I went to see Alexandra last night.”
    She was infinitely relieved. “That’s it?” She had planned to stop by the hospital herself, but she’d already committed to a reading at “Writers with Drinks” and hadn’t wanted to disappoint her friend Charlie, who hosted the event. “Why is that something you have to tell me? That’s wonderful, Otto. She had company before she died.”
    “I dunno … you were sort of funny about it before.”
    “Funny about it? I asked you to be part of it.”
    “Yeah, but … just me.”
    It took her a moment to get it. “You took Sammy, you mean?”
    “Yeah.”
    Of course he’d taken the monkey. Sammy was Otto’s envoy, the purest and deepest expression of his heart. It shamed her to think that she’d denied him the use of that silent language. She scooched her hand up his leg and cupped his junk, loving its silken familiarity, the reassurance of her own puppet pal. “Was she aware of you?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    “She wasn’t when I was