Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

confirmed that the unnumbered house was, in fact, 437 Tandy Street. It was too late for quibbling, though. If her cryptic note about a dead woman had landed in the wrong hands, at least she’d have a chance to explain herself.
    Remembering the broken doorbell, she rapped on the door three times.
    A dog— that dog from the last time—began to bark from somewhere in the back of the house. It was silenced very quickly by a gruff male voice yelling, “Quiet!”
    Moments later, the door opened. A large, stoop-shouldered old man stood there glowering at her, holding the little dog under one arm. He was wearing the red Snuggie she had seen through the window. It gave him an absurdly ecclesiastical look.
    “I’m sorry to bother you at night,” she said. “I’m the person who left the note last week.”
    He just gaped at her, swaying. She realized he was drunk.
    “You’re Sheila?”
    “Shawna.”
    He beckoned her in with a wave of his ecclesiastical arm. This was too much for him to handle at once, so he lost his balance and had to steady himself against the door. When both the dog and the Snuggie escaped to the floor, Shawna was relieved to see that the old man was wearing something underneath: a short-sleeved white shirt and worn-shiny trousers. He was eightyish, she figured, but probably had not been handsome at any age. When she tried to pair him mentally with the stunning Alexandra, the most charitable she could be was Beauty and the Beast .
    “Sorry I didn’t call,” he said, closing the door. “I’ve had some sorting-out to do.” He was slurring his words, so it sounded more like “shorting out,” which Shawna thought was a good description of his emotional state. She could practically hear the sparks.
    “I understand,” she said.
    “I can’t ask you to sit down. I have to go somewhere. There’s something I have to do.”
    “That’s okay … really.”
    “How did you know Alexandra?”
    “I didn’t, exactly. I brought her to the hospital once. I visited a few times. I just felt a sort of connection with her. She seemed like a good person.” Why give him the gory details? she thought. He was suffering enough already. “She was your wife, right?”
    He nodded dolefully. “Once upon a time.”
    “Before the drugs took over.” Shawna spoke these words softly, almost reverently, not as a question but simply to finish his thought.
    “Did she say anything about me?” he asked.
    He looked so pitiful and ruined that Shawna couldn’t bring herself to say no. “She saved a letter you wrote her. A love letter. She must’ve loved you very much. You can have it, if you like. Well … you wrote it, but still … it means something.” She was glad Otto wasn’t here to watch her scrambling so shamelessly for her happy ending. “I have several of her things, in fact. Photos, mostly, but you’re welcome to them.”
    “That would be nice,” he said.
    He looked so grateful that she was emboldened to go all the way. “I also have her cremains.”
    “Her what?”
    “Her ashes. She was cremated.”
    “Oh.”
    “It’s up to you, of course. There might be someplace you’d like to scatter them.”
    He seemed to think about that for a moment. “Where are they?”
    “In the car.”
    “Get them, please.”
    She all but sprinted there and back.
    He took the ashes from her on his doorstep, holding them close to his chest as if they might somehow escape from him.
    “I’m so glad I found you,” she told him.
    He went back into the house without a word.

Chapter 32
Back Before Bedtime
    “ It gets dark so early,” Mary Ann was saying, apropos of nothing. She was hugging her knees in the window seat in Michael’s living room, gazing out at the cottage in the garden. The sky above Twin Peaks was almost drained of its magenta stain.
    “I hate winter,” Michael announced, slouching in a nearby armchair. “Fucking Daylight Savings. Ben always gets home after dark.”
    “Why doesn’t he just leave early? He’s his own boss, right?”
    “Yeah, but … the traffic in the Mission is god-awful at rush hour, so it’s better just to miss it altogether and sleep in later in the morning.”
    “Makes sense, I guess.”
    “He’ll be home soon,” Michael added. “He makes a point of it when he has a play date.”
    She turned and looked at him. “A what?”
    “A play date. Some hot daddy he met at the Y.”
    It took her a while to catch his drift, and then she couldn’t think of anything to say