Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

while. “Not that I don’t trust that face,” she said.
    He felt himself reddening. You fucking dork. How long has it been, anyway?
    “Think I could tax those muscles?”
    “What? Oh…sure.”
    “My car’s down the street.”
    He gestured toward the cans. “Is this all?” Of course this is all, asshole. You just rang up the purchase, didn’t you?
    “That’s it.” She wet her lips with a cat’s precision, touching only the corners with the tip of her tongue.
    He had grabbed two of the cans when Polly came bolting into the office. “Need a hand with those?”
    “That’s O.K.,” he said.
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah.”
    His employee sauntered around the shrubs as if to size up the situation for herself. “You can’t do three.”
    “Says who?”
    Polly gave him a half-lidded smile and a courtly little sweep of the hand, as if to say: She’s all yours, greedy. Polly was young enough to be his daughter, but she could be pretty damn intuitive when it came to sex.
    The woman looked at Brian, then at Polly, then at Brian again.
    “O.K.,” he told Polly. “Gimme a hand.”
    Flashing a freckled grin, Polly hefted two of the cans and strode out of the office. “Where to?”
    “Over there,” the woman told her. “The Land Rover.”
    Polly led the way down the sidewalk, her tank top wet at the breastbone, her silky biceps made wooden by her cargo. Behind her strode the redhead, pale and cool as marble, her ass looking awesome in a knee-length white sweater. Brian brought up the rear, lugging his lone plant and feeling, against his better instincts, less a man for it.
    “This is nice of you,” said the woman.
    “No problem,” said Polly.
    “You bet,” Brian put in idiotically. “Part of the service.”
    They stuffed the cans into the back of the Land Rover, Polly pondering the placement a lot longer than usual. “That oughta hold you,” she said at last, whacking one of the cans.
    “Thanks.” The redhead smiled at Polly, then slipped behind the wheel and pulled the door shut.
    “Remember,” Brian said, dropping his voice conspiratorially. “Keep ’em real wet. I know we’ve got a drought on, but they’ll die if you don’t.”
    “I’ll do it at night,” she said, looking at both of them, “when the neighbors aren’t looking.”
    He laughed. “There you go.”
    “Thanks again.” She turned on the ignition.
    “Nice car,” said Polly.
    The redhead nodded. “She’s all right.” She pulled away from the curb, flashing her palm in a sort of parting salute. Brian and Polly watched until the car had disappeared around the corner.
    “She’s been here before,” Polly told him as they walked back to the nursery.
    “Oh, yeah?”
    She nodded, scratching a fleck of dirt off her cheek. “I’d have those panty hose off so fast…”
    Brian smirked at her sideways.
    “You would too,” she said.
    “Nah.”
    “C’mon.”
    “In a pinch, maybe.”
    Polly chuckled.
    “You think she likes girls?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
    “I thought she might be one of yours.”
    “Why?”
    He thought about this for a moment. “She called her car ‘she,’ for one thing.”
    “Huh?” Polly screwed up her face.
    “Her car. She referred to it as a she.”
    “And you think that’s some kinda…what? secret lesbo code?”
    He shrugged.
    “I call my car Dwayne,” she said.
    He smiled, picturing Polly behind the wheel of her vintage Mustang.
    “You’re something,” she said. “You check ’em all out, don’t you?”
    “Look who’s talking,” he said. “I thought you found your main woman last month.”
    “Who?”
    “Whoever. That one you met at Rawhide II.”
    Polly rolled her eyes.
    “Done with her, huh?”
    No answer.
    Brian chuckled.
    “What?”
    “How long did that last, anyway?”
    With her ragged haircut and guilty grin, Polly looked like something out of Norman Rockwell: a truant schoolkid, maybe, caught red-handed at the fishing hole.
    “You know,” he told her, “you’re worse than any man I know.”
    “That’s because”—she moved alongside him and bumped him with her lean little butt—“I’m better than any man you know.”

    Polly’s teasing aside, he was hardly the rogue he used to be. He hadn’t strayed from home for over three years now, ever since Geordie Davies got sick. Diagnosed several weeks before Rock Hudson’s announcement, Geordie had lasted almost two years longer than the movie star, finally succumbing offstage, at