Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

garish Amy Winehouse eye makeup to compensate for her skeletal Amy Winehouse limbs. “Karma is clinically blind, you know. She could knock the shit out of herself.”
    Ben didn’t know which of these dogs was Karma, but he saw the woman’s point. The hydrant was an immoveable iron stump, and these dogs yielded to nothing once they got going. Why compromise their safety for some kitschy human effort at witticism?
    “Anybody know who did it?” Ben asked.
    “Not me,” said Cliff, almost as though he were a grade-schooler who’d been asked to snitch on a friend. Cliff kept his profile low when it came to the politics of the park. He was friendly enough, but usually limited his talk to the dogs themselves, avoiding all discussion of their owners. Ben sometimes thought of him as “Mr. Cellophane” from Chicago . ’Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I’m there.
    “I have my suspicions,” said Amy Winehouse, persisting in her investigation of the Great Fire Hydrant Mystery. Now she was aiming her caked turquoise lids toward a cluster of dog owners chatting in the middle of the park.
    The group included a chubby Asian teenager, a middle-aged white woman in an Obama sweatshirt and a pair of look-alike ginger bears dispensing treats to their Jack Russell. Ben felt a peculiar sympathy for the culprit, whoever it was. He (or she or they) must have believed that the others would be deeply amused by the fire hydrant.
    But this was the wrong crowd to be second-guessing. The hardcore regulars saw the park as an extension of their homes, fiercely debating every change that came along. When, for instance, the new redwood planters were installed along the fence, there were those who fretted that smaller dogs might get cornered there by the larger ones. The exact distance between the planters and the fence was a subject of grave deliberation for weeks. Ditto the contents of the planters, since some of the prettiest flowering trees dropped blossoms that were potentially poisonous. (“But only if eaten in large quantities or boiled into a tea,” Ben’s husband had explained—and Michael, after all, was a gardener. “There’s nothing to sweat until you see a Doberman with a teapot.”)
    The ginger bears had left the others, and Ben realized they had done so to watch their Jack Russell tentatively approach the fire hydrant. There was a glimmer of dad-like pride on their faces as the dog began circling the alien totem, obviously as baffled by its presence as the humans were. When he finally headed off without lifting his leg, the ginger bears were noticeably crestfallen, though Ben did not remark upon it.
    It occurred to him that Michael would probably have suspected these guys from the get-go. Michael was a bear himself, though not exactly a member of their fraternal order. He had once remarked that the most hidebound of bears, the ones who invoked manhood in beards, suspenders and long johns, had a penchant for cramming their homes with juvenilia: mid-century cookie jars and Disney figurines under glass domes.
    That corny fire hydrant certainly fit the profile.
    “Well,” said Ben, slapping his knees as he rose from the bench. “Time to hit the road, I guess.”
    A cloud passed over Cliff’s face. “Don’t go on my account. I can sit anywhere.”
    Ben felt bad for the old guy, who, for one reason or another, always seemed on the verge of apology. “No, I’d love to hang out. I’ve just got shopping to do. We’re cooking for a friend of my partner’s tonight.” Ben usually called Michael his husband but had gone with the less threatening word in deference to Cliff’s age and the likelihood that he was straight. Michael wouldn’t approve, but Ben saw it as good manners.
    “Well,” said Cliff. “Cook him something nice.”
    “It’s a her, actually.” He decided to make it more interesting for Cliff. “Maybe you’ve heard of her. She had a TV show here in the late eighties. Mary Ann Singleton?”
    Cliff blinked at him in mild befuddlement. “She still lives here?”
    Ben shook his head. “She’s been back East for years. She’s just visiting. You remember the show?”
    “Sure. Went to it once even, sat in the audience. Got her autograph. Not personally, but … her producer took it.”
    “No kidding? Small world.”
    Roman appeared and nuzzled the leash in Ben’s hand. “I guess that’s my cue,” he said, grateful for another excuse to get out of there.
    D