Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

Alone.
    Most of his mail still said “Occupant.”
    Once upon a time, of course, he had been a fiery young radical lawyer. Before that fire subsided (and relocated in his groin), he had fought the good fight for the cause of draft resisters in Toronto, blacks in Chicago, Indians in Arizona, and Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles.
    Now he was waiting tables for WASPS in San Francisco.
    And he loved “chasing pussy” almost as much as he had once loved hating Nixon.
    He pursued this tarnished grail through fern bars and coed bathhouses, laundromats and supermarkets and all-night junk-food restaurants, where the pickings were slim but the gratification was almost instant. There was little time to waste, he told himself. Menopause was just around the corner.
    If he needed something lasting—and sometimes he felt that he did—he never stayed with anyone long enough to let that need be visible. His logic was circular but invincible: The kind of woman he wanted could not possibly be interested in the kind of man he’d become.
    His libido had taken charge of everything.
    It had even governed the selection of this latest apartment, this drafty, cramped little house on the roof of 28 Barbary Lane. Women, he had reasoned, would get off on its panoramic view and nursery-tale dimensions. It would work for him as an architectural aphrodisiac.
    “Are you sure you want it?” Mrs. Madrigal had asked when he requested a change of apartments. (At the time, he was living on the third floor, just across the hall from the foxy but hopelessly uptight Mary Ann Singleton.) He had told her yes without hesitation.
    The landlady’s spookiness, he presumed, had to do with the apartment’s former occupant, a fortyish vitamin salesman named Norman Neal Williams.
    But all he knew about Williams was that he had disappeared without a trace in December.
    A stiff wind shook the little house, giving Brian a morbid sense of déjà vu.
    Five on the Richter, he thought.
    He knew what that meant now, for he’d felt his first earthquake only the week before. A deep, demonic growling had awakened him at 2 A.M ., rattling his windows and reducing him instantly to a frightened, primeval creature.
    But this was only the wind, and the crunch of the Big One would be just as horrendous on the third floor as it would be on the roof. Or so he had told himself as soon as the little house became his.
    His door buzzer startled him. Pulling on a sweat shirt, he opened the door in his boxer shorts. It was Mary Ann Singleton.
    “Brian, I … I’m really sorry to bother you this late.” The shorts had obviously flustered her.
    “That’s OK.”
    “You’re not dressed. I’ll get somebody else.”
    “No problem. I can throw on some pants.”
    “Really, Brian, I don’t need—”
    “Look! I said I’d help, didn’t I?”
    His tone jarred her. She managed a faint smile. “Michael and I are going to Mexico. There’s a suitcase that I can’t quite—”
    “Hang on a second.”
    He pulled on a pair of Levi’s and led the way down the stairs to her apartment. He dislodged the suitcase she needed from the top shelf of her closet. “Thanks,” she smiled. “I can make it from here.”
    His eyes locked on her. “Can you?”
    “Yes, Brian.” Her inflection was firm and faintly school teacherish. She knew what he had meant, and she was saying no. Again.
    Back on the roof, he shucked the Levi’s and picked up the binoculars he kept on the shelf by the bed. Facing the cottage’s south window, he cursed the impenetrable Miss Singleton as he scanned the midnight cityscape.
    First the green-black enigma of Lafayette Park, then the Maytag agitator of the ultramodern St. Mary’s Cathedral, then the Mark’s obscenely oversized American flag, flailing against the inky sky like a Bircher’s acid trip.
    All of which was foreplay.
    His real quarry was something he called the Superman Building.

Father of the Year
    F OR THE FIRST TIME IN WEEKS, DEDE ROSE BEFORE Beauchamp.
    She greeted her husband with a kiss and a croissant when he stumbled into the kitchen at seven forty-five. She was chirpy for that time of morning—excessively chirpy—so Beauchamp instinctively grew wary.
    He leaned against the butcher-block countertop, rubbing his eyes. “League meeting or something?”
    “Can’t I fix breakfast for my husband?”
    “You can,” he said dryly, nibbling tentatively at the croissant, “but you don’t.”
    DeDe thrust two shallots into the Cuisinart.