Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

inches tall.”) What do you think caused you to become an international sex symbol? (“Beats me, honey. Some guys just go for a girl with thighs in two time zones.”) All that glibness had begun to catch in her throat like so many dry cornflakes. She was biding her time now, counting the cities—only Portland and Seattle to go—until the final flight would spirit her back to Chicago, to her loft and her cat and her hot Cuban lover with the permanent stiffie.
    Not that she had hurt for attention on the tour. There’d been that body-building cameraman in Miami, brick-shithouse beautiful and full of surprises. And that cute kid in Washington who’d taken her to dinner, entrusted her with his virginity, and driven her to the airport the next morning, whistling all the way. She’d done all right for herself, horizontally speaking.
    She mounted the scales in the bathroom, almost afraid to look.
    A hundred and ninety-two! Her worst fears confirmed! Thanks to the rigors of the tour, she was losing weight like crazy. If she didn’t shape up and soon, the headline writers would lose their two-hundred-pound sex symbol and she—shudder, gasp—would be out on her ever-dwindling ass.
    She savored this preposterous dilemma, then washed her face with a violet-scented English soap.
    Soon there would be blueberry pancakes to set things right again.
    Forty-five minutes later, she waited for her limousine on the curb in front of the Fairmont. She was decked out in her favorite touring ensemble: a low-necked turquoise sweater dress cinched at the waist by a brown leather cummerbund.
    The cummerbund and her boots—Victorian-style lace-up numbers—gave her, she felt, the air of a good-natured dominatrix. As her nerves grew increasingly ragged, she needed all the authority she could muster when she faced her interrogators.
    Her driver was a welcome surprise: young and dark, with pronounced Italianate influences and a set of lips she could chew on all night. As he whisked her down California Street toward her rendezvous with today’s anchoroid, she asked him what he knew about the show.
    “Not a whole helluva lot,” he replied. “Just … it’s called Mary Ann in the Morning.”
    She let out a faint groan. She could picture the little fluff-ball already.
    “My old lady watches it,” said the driver. “It’s real popular. She has on … you know, stars like yourself … Lee Iacocca, Shirley MacLaine, that kid o’ Pat Boone’s with the barf disease …”
    “Right,” she said.
    “I saw you on Carson the other night.”
    “Oh … did you?” She hated it when they left you dangling. What the hell were you supposed to say?
    “You were good.”
    “Thanks.”
    “We’re the same age. I noticed that right off. You’re twenty-eight and I’m twenty-eight.”
    “No shit.”
    He laughed and peered over his shoulder at her. “My ol’ lady’s big too, ya know?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Not as big as you, I mean. Not as big as I’d like her to be.”
    “I hear you,” she said.
    “I like ‘em really big. Like you … if you don’t mind my saying.”
    She found her little egg of Obsession, gave her tits a quick squirt, and lowered her voice an octave. “Not at all,” she said.
    “I didn’t wanna sound like I was …”
    “What’s on our schedule this afternoon?”
    “You mean … after this show?”
    “Yeah.”
    He thought for a moment. “Just a personal appearance.”
    “Where?”
    “You know … one of those Pretty and Plump shops on the peninsula.”
    She dropped the atomizer into her purse. “And then we’re done until tomorrow?” “Right.”
    “So … we’ve got time.”
    She noticed that he swerved the wheel a little, but he recovered instantly and curled those edible lips into a comprehending smile. “Sure,” he said. “We got time.”
    Things went smoothly enough at the television station until the makeup man tried to camouflage her chins with darker makeup. “These babies,” she told him sweetly, “are my bread and butter. What will people think if I’m obviously trying to hide them?”
    “It won’t be obvious, hon. You’ll see. It’s Light Egyptian, very subtle. Lena Horne uses it all over.”
    “Sweetie,” she said patiently, “my chins and I are not of different races. If we were, I’d call them The Supremes or something, but we’re not, O.K.?” He looked a little wounded, so she added: “Nice Swatch. Is it Keith Haring?”
    He glanced down at his watch and answered with a