Frannie hesitated for a moment and then told her.
“Ooh, boy,” said Vita. “Ooooh, boy!”
“Vita, what in the world are …?”
“Just you wait, Frannie Halcyon! Just you wait!”
The Cruise Begins
THE AGONIES OF LAST-MINUTE PACKING, A LINGERING cold and a nerve-jangling PSA flight to Los Angeles all but disappeared when Mary caught her first glimpse of the Pacific Princess.
“Oh, Mouse! It’s so white!”
Michael poked the flesh of his forearm. “We’ll blend right in, won’t we?”
Mary Ann didn’t answer, lost in the majesty of the huge, moonlit ship. There was something scary yet exhilarating about this moment. She felt like a skydiver, hurling recklessly through space, knowing that this time would matter, this time was real, this time her chute had to open.
The cabdriver looked over his shoulder at the couple in the back seat. “You folks married?”
“Shacked up,” said Michael, provoking the expected glare from Mary Ann.
“Well.” The driver chuckled. “I guess you seen The Love Boat?”
Michael nodded. “Movie for TV, right?”
“Yeah. Bert Convy. Lyle Waggoner. Celeste Holm …”
“All the biggies.”
The driver nodded. “Filmed it right there. On the Pacific Princess. Pretty sexy stuff.”
“Mmm. I remember,” said Michael, smirking privately at Mary Ann. “Celeste Holm was a plump but lovable matron who thought she was washed up with men, until she met Craig Stevens on the cruise. Craig had been her boyfriend years before, and Celeste … well, the poor thing was petrified that Craig would find out what a chubbette she’d become.”
“Did he?” asked Mary Ann.
“Nope. Happy ending. Craig turned out to be blind.”
“You made that up, Mouse.”
“Scout’s honor! And they were married at the end. Isn’t that right driver?”
“Yep.”
“Apparently,” shrugged Michael, “ol’ Craig couldn’t feel, either.”
The ship’s photographer surprised them on the gangplank, shouting out a jovial, “Smile, young lovers!”
Michael obliged and clamped his hand over Mary Ann’s right breast.
“Christ!” he said, as they boarded the ship. “Is this a cruise or a senior prom?”
“Mouse, would you try to be just a little respectable?”
“For eleven whole days?”
“It’s a British ship, Mouse.”
“Ah, yes! But with Italian stewards.” He held his forefingers erect, several feet apart.
Mary Ann flushed, then giggled. “Straight Italian stewards,” she corrected him.
“You wish,“said Michael.
Their stateroom was on the Promenade Deck, deluxe accommodations with twin beds, wood-grain cabinetry, comfortable chairs, and a tub in the bathroom. A bottle of chilled champagne awaited them.
Mary Ann proposed the first toast. “To Mr. Halcyon. God bless Mr. Halcyon.”
“Right on. God bless Mr. Halcyon.”
“And”—she filled their glasses again—“to … to adventure on the high seas!”
“And romance.”
“And romance!”
“To Mrs. Madrigal … and marijuana … and the munchies … and to every goddamn person in Florida except Anita Bryant!”
“Yeah!”
“But most of all,” said Michael, turning mock-grave suddenly, “to that well-bred, debonaire, but incredibly hunky number who gave the eye to one of us when we came on board tonight.”
“Where? Who?”
“How do I know who? I just got here, woman. You saw him, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think so.”
Michael rolled his eyes in exasperation. “He never stopped staring at us!”
“A passenger?”
“Yep.”
“Looking at us?”
“You got it, girl.”
Mary Ann bit the tip of her forefinger. “Do you think he was blind?”
Michael whooped and raised his glass. “OK, then … to blindness!”
“To blindness,” echoed Mary Ann.
Mother Mucca’s Proposition
MONA WOKE FROM AN UNEASY SLEEP WHEN THE Greyhound pulled into Truckee, California, just before dawn. She was sure her tongue had turned into a dead gopher. The bizarre old woman next to her patted her hand.
“This ain’t it, dolly. Go back to sleep.”
It? What was It? Where was It?
“It’s O.K., dolly. Mother Mucca’s here. I’m lookin’ out for ya.”
“Look, lady, I—”
“Mother Mucca.”
“OK. I appreciate your help, but—”
“That angel dust’ll fuck you up every time. You shoulda heard yourself talkin’ in your sleep, dolly!”
“I don’t … what did I say?”
“I don’t know. Crazy stuff. Somethin’ about mice.”
“Mice?”
“Somethin’ like that. Somethin’ like: ‘Where did the mouse go? I can’t find the mouse.’ Then you started hollerin’ for your daddy. It was goddamn spooky, dolly!”
Mona rubbed her eyes and watched the zombie-faced passengers shuffle out for coffee in the Truckee station. They looked like haggard infantrymen bracing for a predawn assault.
What in the name of Buddha was she doing here?
When Mother Mucca insisted on buying breakfast, Mona was too weak to refuse. Besides, the old biddy seemed kind of together, even if she did look like a refugee from a Fellini movie.
“I had a girl named Judy once.”
“What?”
“You said your name was Judy, didn’t you?”
Mona nodded, opting to remain as anonymous as possible. She’d had all she could take of Mona Ramsey.
“Judy was a peach,” continued Mother Mucca. “I guess she stayed with me longer’n any of ‘em.” She shook her head, smiling, lost in rosy recollection. “Yessir, she was a peach!”
Mona found herself warming to her. “You had lots of children?”
“Children?” She spat out the word.
“You said …”
Mother Mucca began to cackle again. “You’re a lot dumber’n you look, dolly. I’m talkin’ about the best damn whorehouse in Winnemucca!”
Mona was jarred, but instantly fascinated. Of course! A genuine Nevada madam! A rawboned relic of the West’s first group encounter enterprise!
“You …? How long have you …?”
“Oh, Lord, dolly! Too fuckin’ long!”
They both laughed exuberantly, sharing the same emotion for the first time since they’d met. Mona found herself riveted by the sheer, unembarrassed ballsiness of this extraordinarily ugly old woman.
“What brought you to San Francisco?” she asked.
“Hookers union meeting. Coyote.”
Mona nodded knowledgeably. One of the cardinal earmarks of North Beach Chic was an unflinching familiarity with Margo St. James and her prostitutes’ union.
“You know Margo?” asked Mother Mucca.
“Oh, yes,” lied Mona. She had, however, seen the woman several times, breakfasting on coffee and croissants at Malvina’s.
Mother Mucca arched a painted eyebrow. “She’s a lot classier’n me, huh, dolly?”
“I think you’re very classy.”
Mother Mucca ducked her head and blew into her coffee.
“I do,” Mona persisted. “Really. You’re a very … together person.”
“You’re a damn liar, too.” She reached over suddenly and squeezed Mona’s arm above the elbow. For a moment, it seemed that her crusty veneer might crack, but then she cleared her throat abruptly and continued in a tone that was tougher than ever.
“Well, dolly! You ain’t told me why you’re headin’ to Reno with a head full o’ angel dust!”
“There’s nothing special about Reno.”
The old woman snorted. “You’re right about that!??
?
Mona laughed. “I just wanted—I don’t know—to get away for a while. I’ve never seen the desert.”
“We got plenty o’ that in Winnemucca.”
Mona looked down at her hash browns, avoiding what seemed to be an invitation of sorts.
“It’s a big place, dolly. I need some help with the phones. It’s real clean and pretty too. I think you’d be kinda surprised.”
“I’m sure it’s a nice—”
“Hell, dolly! I’m not white-slavin’ ya or anything! You’ll keep me company, that’s all. You can leave whenever you want to.”
“I just don’t think I’m—”
“What do you do, anyway?”
“What?”
“For a livin’.”
“I’m … I used to be an advertising copywriter.”
Mother Mucca roared. “Well, don’t be so fuckin’ uppity, then!”
Mona grinned and dropped her napkin on her plate. “The bus is leaving, Mother Mucca.”
“You won’t do it, then?”
“Nope,” said Mona, chewing on the knuckle of her forefinger. “Not unless I can have my own waterbed.”
Life Among the A-Gays
FOR THE HAMPTON-GIDDES, THE MECHANICS OF PARTY-giving were as intricate as the workings of Arch Gidde’s new Silver Shadow Rolls.
After careful scrutiny, prospective guests were divided into four lists:
The A List.
The B List.
The A-Gay List.
The B-Gay List.
The Hampton-Giddes knew no C people, gay or otherwise.
As a rule, the A List was comprised of the Beautiful and the Entrenched, the kind of people who might be asked about their favorite junk-food or slumming spot in Merla Zellerbach’s column in the Chronicle.
There was, of course, a sprinkling of A-Gays on the A List, but they were expected to behave themselves. An A-Gay who turned campy during after-dinner A List charades would find himself banished, posthaste, to the purgatory of the B-Gays.
The B-Gays, poor wretches, didn’t even get to play charades.
The range and intensity of cocktail chatter at the Hampton-Giddes’ depended largely on the list being utilized.
A List people could talk about the arts, politics and the suede walls in the master bedroom.
B Listers could talk about the arts, politics, the suede walls in the master bedroom, and the people on the A List.
The A-Gays could talk about whoever was tooting coke in the bathroom.
The B-Gays, being largely decorative, were not expected to talk.
“Binky swears it’s the truth,” said William Devereaux Hill III, on a night when the Hampton-Giddes’ Seacliff mansion was virtually swarming with A-Gays.
“Chinese?” hissed Charles Hillary Lord.
“Twins!”
“A litter!” exclaimed Archibald Anson Gidde, butting in.
“I can’t stand it!”
“You can’t? Honey, Miss Gidde over there practically ruined her nails on the Princess phone this morning just spreading the news.”
“I did not.” The host was indignant.
“You told me.”
“Well, that was all.”
“Stoker says you told him too.”
“She lies!”
Charles Hillary Lord needed more dish. “Christ, Billy, an Ornamental? DeDe’s been doing it with an Ornamental?”
“They have teeny pee-pees.” This from Archibald Anson Gidde.
“I think you’re all disgustingly prejudiced,” said Anthony Latimer Hughes, joining the group.
“Oh, Mary! You’re not having another Chinoiserie period, are you, darling?” Gidde again.
“There are two things one should know about San Francisco,” interjected Charles Hillary Lord. “Never meet anyone at the Top of the Mark. And never walk through Chinatown in the rain.”
“Why?” chorused everyone.
“Because they’re so short. Their umbrellas will blind a white man!”
Across the room huddling under the Claes Oldenburg, Edward Paxton Stoker, Jr., swapped pleasantries with his host, Richard Evan Hampton.
“I wish,” said the guest, “that Jon Fielding were here.”
“Oh, pullease!” Rick Hampton had never fully recovered from the fall soiree at which Jon Fielding had suddenly exploded, exiting in a terrible huff. “You won’t find that bitch on any guest list of mine, Edward.”
“But he is DeDe’s gynecologist, and I’m sure he—”
“And an Occasional Piece for Beauchamp.”
“Not any more he isn’t.”
“Really?”
“The doctor, as we all know he is wont to do, got very sanctimonious all of a sudden and gave our Beauchamp the old heave-ho. Beauchamp was livid.”
“I’d love to hear Fielding’s version of it!”
“You’ll have to wait a while, I’m afraid. He’s on the way to Acapulco.”
“What on earth for?”
“What else? A gynecologists’ convention.”
The richer—and older—half of the Hampton-Giddes rolled his eyes laboriously. “Acapulco has gotten so tacky these days.”
Fantasy on the Fantail
SOMEWHERE OFF THE COAST OF MEXICO, A DAZZLING midday sun found dozens of willing worshipers on the fantail of the Pacific Princess. Mary Ann was on her stomach—her bikini top untied—when an unannounced hand glopped something gooey on her back.
“Mouse?”
Silence.
“Mouse!”
“I do not know thees Mouse, signorina. I am but a seemple Italian dining room steward who wants to make ze whoopee weez ze beyootiful, horny American girls!”
“You smoked that joint, didn’t you?”
Michael sat down next to her and sighed dramatically. “I wish you’d learn to fantasize.”
“What is that stuff, anyway?”
“What stuff? Oh … tortuga cream. The room steward gave it to me. He says they make it in Mazatlán.”
“It smells yummy.”
“Uh huh. Ground-up turtles.”
“Mouse!”
“Well, that’s what he said.”
“Ick!”
“What the hell do you think Polly Bergen uses? Rose petals?”
Mary Ann sat up, blinking into the sun, holding her bikini top in place with her right arm.
“Tie me up, will you?”
“Bondage already? You haven’t tried bingo yet. And there’s a swell seniors mambo class this afternoon in the Carrousel Lounge, if you’d care to—”
“Mouse … don’t look now, but he just dove into the pool.”
“Who?”
“Our Mystery Man. The guy you saw when we were boarding.”
“The one who was cruising us?”
Mary Ann corrected him. “One of us.”
“Maybe he’s into three-ways.”
“Mouse, do you think he’s gay?”
“Well … his backstroke is a little nellie.”
“Mouse, I’m serious.”
“Then ask him, dummy! Invite him over for a Pina Colada!”
Mary Ann turned and studied the strong white body thrashing through the green water of the pool. He was a strawberry blond, she noticed, and he shook his head like a wet collie when he surfaced at the ladder.
She looked back at Michael. “You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?”
Michael just grinned at her, maddeningly.
“OK. Just watch me!”
The wet collie was stretched out on a towel at the pool’s edge. Mary Ann approached as casually as possible, her eyes fixed on the surface of the water. Her intent was to look vigorous and liberated, like Candice Bergen out for a swim after a rough day of photographing the African wilds.
The collie looked up and smiled. “The only way to do it is to close your eyes and jump.”
“Is it cold?” Mary Ann asked.
Not too swift. Very un-Candy Bergen.
“Go ahead,” he urged. “You
can take it.”
She shrugged her shoulders and mugged, hoping it wasn’t too late to try for a Marlo Thomas effect. A tolerant smile spread over the collie’s face when she held her breath and jumped.
It was a funny little hatbox of a pool, not really wide enough for swimming laps. The cold ocean water was invigorating, but impossible to take for long. Shivering, she reached for the ladder.
The collie extended his hand. “The goose bumps are very becoming.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling.
“Will you join me for a drink? You and your husband, that is.”
“My …? Oh, that’s not my …” She turned and looked at Michael, who was smirking at her. He gave his imitation of Queen Elizabeth’s royal wave. “Michael’s just a friend.”
“That’s nice,” said the collie.
For whom? thought Mary Ann. Me or Michael?
The collie introduced himself to both of them. His name was Burke Andrew. He was traveling alone on the cruise. He shook Michael’s hand firmly and excused himself to get the drinks.
“Well,” said Mary Ann. “Is he?”
“How the hell should I know? There hasn’t been a secret queer handshake since 1956.”
“He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?”
Michael shrugged. “If you like big thighs.”
Staring out to sea, Mary Ann sighed. “I think he likes me, Mouse. Help me figure out what’s wrong with him.”
The Superman Building
THE IRONY, THOUGHT BRIAN, AS HE DRAGGED BACK TO Barbary Lane at midnight, was that he could have gone home with her.
Easily.
She had practically drooled on him, for Christ’s sake, jammed up against him there in the brutal, nuclear glare of Henry Africa’s Tiffany lamps. He could’ve bagged her without batting an eye.
So why hadn’t he? What perverse new quirk of his personality had prompted him to sabotage a sure thing and scuttle his butt back to the little house on the roof?
The scene in the bar had gone like this:
“I still can’t get over Freddie Prinze.”
It figures, he thought. A Farrah Fawcett-Majors fright wig. A Bernadette Peters pout. She gets her material from the tube. In a minute, she’ll be talking about Roots.
“I mean, he was so young, and … well, even if he was taking drugs and all, I don’t see why that would depress him enough to … God, it’s just such a bummer…. and he was doing so much for the Chicano people.”