Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

surface weeks later during a late-night Marilyn Monroe movie on TV.
    And people talked of nothing else. Who has it. Who thinks he has it. Who’s positive. Who couldn’t possibly be negative. Who will never take the test. Who’s almost ready to take the test.
    To get away from the tragedy—and the talk—some of his friends had moved to places like Phoenix and Charlottesville, but Michael couldn’t see the point of it. The worst of times in San Francisco was still better than the best of times anywhere else.
    There was beauty here and conspicuous bravery and civilized straight people who were doing their best to help. It was also his home, when all was said and done. He loved this place with a deep and unreasoning passion; the choice was no longer his.
    When he reached the nursery, a renegade Pinto was parked in his usual place out front. He spotted Polly among the arborvitae, clipping a can for a customer, and tapped the horn gently to get her attention. “Someone we know?” he hollered, pointing toward the offending car.
    His young employee set her clippers down and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “David’s new squeeze,” she yelled back. “I’ll get him to move it.”
    He could see another parking space at the end of the block, so he decided not to make an issue of it. “That’s O.K.,” he told her. “Don’t break up the lovebirds.” It was lunchtime, after all, and David and his new beau were undoubtedly in the greenhouse making goo-goo eyes over Big Macs.
    He parked and walked back to the nursery in the toasty sunshine. Polly was on the sidewalk now, hefting the arborvitae into the back of the customer’s station wagon. “Sorry about that. Didn’t know you’d be back so soon.”
    “No problem,” he said.
    Brushing the dirt off her hands, Polly followed him to the office. “How did it go? Did you bring me a lipstick print?”
    “Shit,” he murmured, remembering his promise.
    “You didn’t,” she said calmly. “That’s O.K.”
    “I didn’t meet her,” he explained. “She and Mary Ann had rotten chemistry, so I decided not to risk it.”
    Polly shrugged.
    “You’re disappointed,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” So far she had cajoled lipstick prints from Linda Evans, Kathleen Turner and Diana Ross.
    “Was she gorgeous?” Polly asked, leaning dreamily against the cash register.
    “Yeah,” he answered. “In a Fellini sort of way.” He thought it wise to downplay the thrill of it all.
    Polly sighed. “She’s welcome in my movie any ol’ day.”
    He amused himself by picturing the confrontation: the voluptuously rotund Wren Douglas putting the moves on pretty Polly Berendt, muscular yet petite in her faded green coveralls. “Well,” he said, “she shows every sign of being hopelessly het.”
    “So?” said Polly. “I’m no separatist.”
    He laughed. The new lesbian adventurism was a source of endless amusement to him. If gay men could no longer snort and paw the ground in fits of purple passion, it seemed only fitting that gay women could. Somebody had to keep the spirit alive.
    Polly slipped her hand around his waist and pressed her freckled face against his shoulder. “I want a wife, Michael. I want one bad.”
    “Yeah, yeah.”
    “Is it because I’m twenty-two? Is that what it is? Were you this way when you were twenty-two?”
    “I was that way when I was thirty-two, but I got over it.”
    She tilted her face toward him. “My friend Kara went to a psychic last month, and she said that Kara’s true love would show up within the month … and that she’d be driving a golden chariot.” “Right.”
    “I swear this is true. Kara met this girl called Weegie last month and they’ve been inseparable ever since.”
    “What about the golden chariot?”
    “She was driving a Yellow Cab!”
    He snorted.
    “Kara called a cab from DV8 and Weegie drove up, and that was it. Wedded bliss. Me … I look and look and end up with some former battered wife who takes me to see The Women at the Castro and hisses at all the sexist parts.”
    “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
    She hesitated, then said: “Cuz I wanna go to Wimminwood.”
    “Where?”
    “A women’s music festival up at the river.”
    He shrugged. “Go. You’ve got vacation coming. What’s the problem?”
    “Well … it’s next week, when you’re on vacation.”
    He saw her point; that left only David and Robbie to run the nursery.
    “I really wanna go,