Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

her of being capable of romance only in the abstract, or worse yet, only for the purposes of her blog. How could she have addressed that without being unkind? How could she have told him that her problem wasn’t with romance per se but with Otto himself—or, rather, the thought of permanency with Otto. She loved what they had—the sex certainly, the laughs, the warm body at night—but she had never been able to envision whatever was supposed to come next. Outright rejection wasn’t usually in her repertoire, but lately Otto had been forcing the issue.
    “Hey, listen,” he said, without looking up. He was hunched over a burrito at the Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, his skinny shoulder blades jutting out of his shrimp-colored T-shirt like little wings. “Remember my buddy Aaron with the awesome place in Bernal Heights with the open plan and the industrial skylights?”
    “I think. Yeah. Sort of Rob Thomas-y.”
    “I meant the apartment.”
    “Oh … yeah … sure. We dropped off those tumbling mats.”
    He finally looked up at her. “It’s all ours if we want it. He’s going to Costa Rica for a job. All we have to do is pick up the rent … which, by the way, would be a fuck of a lot cheaper than our two rents combined.” He took a bite out of the burrito and waited.
    All she could think to say was: “There are clowning jobs in Costa Rica?”
    Otto didn’t smile. “It’s a very eco-friendly country.”
    “And … what? … he’s an eco-clown?”
    “I don’t know what he is, Shawna. Why aren’t you answering me?”
    “Because this isn’t about the rent … and I don’t know what to say to you.”
    He looked crushed. “Guess you just did.”
    She reached across the table and took his hand. “C’mon, dude. I love our two or three nights a week. I do.”
    “What is it? Are you bored with me? Do you wanna be with a woman again?”
    She rolled her eyes, trying to keep things as light as possible. “If I do, I’ll get one. And you’ll be the first to know.”
    He returned to his burrito for a while, coming back with his final shot:
    “That apartment is really sick, ya know. There’s even two bathrooms. It wouldn’t have to mean anything.”
    Yes, it would, she thought. Yes, it would.
    T HEY PARTED COMPANY AFTER DINNER. Not in any dramatic way, but Otto clearly wanted to sulk in private. Shawna walked back to her apartment and worked off her frustration by washing the dishes that had piled up in the sink. Why did he have to be this way? Why couldn’t he just be content with what they had and not keeping angling for more? When people started making demands of each other, that’s when the trouble started. Lucy had been that way in Brooklyn, and Shawna had grown sick of it.
    She rolled a joint from her stash and smoked it contemplatively as she stared at Alexandra’s ashes. She wanted this to be over now, so she considered driving to Dolores Park and scattering the ashes on the grassy slope at the upper end, where the gay boys liked to sun in the summertime. There was a great view of downtown from there, and the moon would soon be rising above the urban labyrinth that Alexandra had roamed for the last years of her life. To give her ashes on that swath of green, high above the fray at last, would be just the imagery Alexandra deserved. Dolores Park, Shawna remembered, had even been a cemetery in the old days, and the name itself meant “sorrows” in Spanish.
    It was perfect.
    But as soon as she was in the car and heading for the park, that voice in her head, her own instinctual GPS, began directing her back to Tandy Street. She had been there only in the daytime, after all. There would be a much better chance of finding someone home after dark. How could it hurt to check one more time? She wouldn’t even have to get out of the car if there were no lights on in the house. She could just keep on driving, say her good-byes to Alexandra, and be back at her apartment in time for Conan O’Brien.
    As it happened, there was a light burning at the unnumbered house on Tandy Street. It wasn’t in the front window but somewhere in the back of the house. Shawna couldn’t see the window itself, since the space between the houses was so narrow, but something was illuminating the blind wall of the neighboring house.
    It was much harder to park there at night, so she had to comb the neighborhood for a while to find a space. As she was walking back toward the house, it occurred to her that she had never