Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

with her. Their brief romance aside, they had a certain media visibility in common, if nothing else. True, she wasn’t a national figure in the purest sense, but she’d been profiled on Entertainment Tonight, and no visitor to San Francisco could have failed to notice her face on television or, for that matter, on billboards on the sides of buses.
    Oh, well. She had a funny feeling he was about to make up for it.

    He was staying at the Stanford Court, it turned out. The operator put her through to his room.
    “Yeah,” he said briskly, answering immediately.
    “Burke?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s Mary Ann. Singleton.”
    “Well, hello! Hey, sorry—I thought you were room service. They keep botching my order and calling back. How are you? Boy, it’s great to hear your voice!”
    “Well,” she said lamely, “same here.”
    “It’s been a long time.”
    “Sure has.”
    A conspicuous silence and then: “I…uh…I’ve got kind of a problem. I was wondering if you might be able to help me.”
    Her first thought, which she promptly discarded, was that his amnesia had come back. “Sure,” she said earnestly. “I’ll do what I can.” It was nice knowing that she could still be of use to him.
    “I have this monkey,” he said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “I have this monkey. Actually, she was more like a friend than a monkey. And she died this morning, and I was wondering if you could arrange to have her freeze-dried for me.”
    Catching on at last, she collected herself and said: “You shithead.”
    He chortled like a fifth grader who’d just dropped a salamander down her dress.
    “God,” she said. “I was actually picturing you with a dead monkey.”
    He laughed again. “I’ve done worse.”
    “I know,” she said ruefully. “I remember.”
    She was embarrassed now, but for reasons more troubling than his dumb joke. Of all the shows he might have seen, why did it have to be today’s? If he’d come a week earlier he might have caught her interview with Kitty Dukakis or, barring that, her top-rated show on crib death. What was he laughing at, anyway? Freeze-dried dogs or the way that she had made her name on television?
    “How the hell are you?” he asked.
    “Terrific. What brings you to town?”
    “Well…” He seemed to hesitate. “Business mostly.”
    “A story or something?” She hoped like hell it wasn’t AIDS. She’d grown weary of explaining the plague to visiting newsmen, most of whom came here expecting to find the smoldering ruins of Sodom.
    “It’s kind of complicated,” he told her.
    “O.K.,” she replied, meaning: Forget I asked.
    “I’d like to tell you about it, though. Are you free for lunch tomorrow?”
    “Uh…hang on a sec, would you?” She put him on hold and waited for a good half minute before speaking to him again. “Yeah, Burke, tomorrow’s fine.”
    “Great.”
    “Where do you wanna meet?”
    “Well,” he said, “you pick the spot, and we’ll put it on my gold card.”
    “Only if you can deduct it.”
    “Of course,” he said.
    She thought for a moment. “There’s a new place downtown. Sort of a tenderloin dive that’s been upscaled.”
    “O.K.” He sounded skeptical.
    “It’s kind of hot right now. Lots of media people.”
    “Let’s do it. I think I can trust you.”
    She wasn’t quite sure how to take that, so she let it go. “It’s called D’orothea’s,” she said. “It’s on Jones at Sutter.”
    “Got it. Jones and Sutter. D’orothea’s. What time?”
    “One o’clock?”
    “Great. Can’t Wait.”
    “Me too,” she said. “Bye-bye.”
    She hung up, then stretched out on her chaise again, discovering to her amazement that her headache was gone.

    The rest of the afternoon was consumed by staff conferences and a typically silly birthday party for one of the station’s veteran cameramen. Just before three, somewhat later than usual, she left the building hurriedly and drove to her daughter’s school in Pacific Heights.
    Presidio Hill was a pricey “alternative” institution, which placed special emphasis on creative development and one-on-one guidance. At five, Shawna was the youngest kid in Ann’s Class (that was what they called it, never kindergarten), and her classmates included, among others, the daughter of a famous rock star and the son of a celebrity interviewer for Playboy magazine.
    The adults were “strongly urged” to participate in school functions, so the rock star’s girlfriend could be found at