“I don’t think so.”
“It helps me to unwind.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“I really appreciate this, Mary Ann. I needed the space.”
“I know. I hope it helps.”
He sat on the hearth and sipped his scotch. She sat next to him. “You don’t have many friends, do you?”
He shook his head. “They’re all DeDe’s friends. I don’t trust any of them.”
“I want you to be able to trust me.”
“So do I.”
“You can, Beauchamp.”
“I hope so.”
She put her hand on his knee. “You can.”
They drove into the village at nightfall and ate dinner at the Mendocino Hotel.
“It used to be wonderful,” said Beauchamp, surveying the dining room. “Funky and cheap and the floors slanted … the real thing.”
Mary Ann looked around. “It looks fine to me.”
“It’s too precious. It knows what it is now. The charm is gone.”
“They have sprinklers on the ceiling, though.”
He smiled. “Perfect. That was the perfect thing for you to say.”
“What did I say?”
“You’re the same way, Mary Ann. Like this building. You should never know what you are … or your magic will disappear.”
“You think I’m naïve, don’t you?”
“A little.”
“Unsophisticated?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Beauchamp … I don’t think that’s …”
“I worship it, Mary Ann. I worship your innocence.”
When they returned to the cabin, there were still a few embers glowing in the fire. Beauchamp knelt down and threw a pine log onto the grate.
He stayed there, immobile, golden as a Maxfield Parrish faun. “They haven’t brought the rollaway. I’ll check at the office.”
Mary Ann sat down next to him on the floor. Gently, she stroked the dark hair on his forearm.
“Forget about the rollaway, Beauchamp.”
Brian Climbs the Walls
BRIAN RANG MARY ANN’S BUZZER THREE TIMES, MUTtered “Fuck” to no one but himself, and skulked back across the hall to his own apartment.
It figured.
A girl like that didn’t spend Saturday night sacking out with Colonel Sanders and Bob Newhart. A girl like that was out gettin’ down … boogying and boozing and nibbling on the Brut-flavored ear of a junior Bechtel exec with a 240 Z, a trimaran in Tiburon, and a condominium at Sea Ranch.
He stripped off his blue denim Perry’s shirt and did two dozen feverish push-ups on the bedroom floor. What point was there getting a mental hard-on over Mary Ann Singleton?
She was probably a dumb cunt, anyway. She probably read Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and swapped chain letters and dotted her i’s with little circles.
She was probably dynamite in the sack.
He climbed into the shower and sublimated his sex drive in a Donna Summer song.
So what would it be tonight? Henry Africa’s. It was far enough away from Perry’s and Union Street to provide at least token escape. Some of the girls there had been known to master witticisms beyond “Really!” and “Far out!” Two, at least.
He couldn’t get into it.
He was dying of fern poisoning, OD’ing on Tiffany lamplight. He was sick of the whole plastic-fantastic scene. But where else …?
Christ! The Come Clean Center.
He had picked up some hot women there last month. Hot women flocked to the Come Clean Center like lemmings headed for the Sea of Matrimony. But you didn’t have to marry ‘em to nail ‘em!
Perfect! He toweled off hurriedly and climbed into corduroy Levi’s and a gray-and-maroon rugby shirt. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of it before?
He slapped his belly in front of the closet mirror. It made a solid sound, like a baseball hitting a mitt. Not too shabby for thirty-two!
He headed for the door, then stopped, remembering.
He grabbed a pillowcase off the bed, returned to the closet and stuffed the pillowcase with dirty boxer shorts, shirts and sheets.
He almost sprinted down Barbary Lane.
The Come Clean Center squatted unceremoniously at the intersection of Lombard and Fillmore, across the street from the Marina Health Spa. It was blue and Sixties Functional, bland enough to have sprouted up in Boise or Augusta or Kansas City. A sign by the doorway said: NO WASHING AFTER 8 P.M. PLEASE.
Brian smiled at the notice, appreciating the management’s chagrin. Some people stayed until the bitter end. He checked the time: 7:27. He had to work fast.
Inside, along a wall of tumbling Speed Queens, a dozen young women pretended to be engrossed in their laundry. Their eyes darted briefly toward Brian, then back to their machines. Brian’s heart felt like a Maytag agitator.
He took stock of the men he could see. Not much competition, really. A couple of leisure suits, a bad toupee, a wimp with a rhinestone in his ear.
Tucking in his shirt and sucking in his belly, he moved with pantherlike grace toward the detergent dispenser. Every detail mattered now, every ripple of a tendon, every flicker of an eyelid….
“Psst, Hawkins!”
Brian spun around to see Chip Hardesty grinning his worst game show grin. Chip was a bachelor who lived in Larkspur and practiced dentistry in a converted warehouse on Northpoint. His office was full of stained-glass panels and silken Renaissance banners. People frequently mistook it for a fern bar.
Brian sighed peevishly. “O.K…. So this turf’s already staked out.”
“I’m leaving. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar.”
That was pure Chip Hardesty. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. He may look like a TV sportscaster, thought Brian, but his wit is straight out of the Chi Psi Lodge, circa 1963.
“No luck?” asked Brian, goading him.
“I wasn’t looking.”
“You weren’t, huh?”
Chip held up his laundry basket. “See?”
“I guess they don’t have laundromats in Larkspur.”
“Look, man, I’ve got a date tonight. Otherwise I’d be scarfing up on a sure thing.”
“In here?”
“As we speak, ol’ buddy.”
“Where?”
“Hey, man, do your own legwork.”
“Fuck you very much.”
Chip chuckled and cast his eyes to the corner of the room.
“She’s all yours, ol’ buddy. The one in orange.” He slapped Brian on the shoulder and headed for the door. “Don’t say I never did you any favors.”
“Right,” muttered Brian, as he regrouped for the attack.
Post-mortem
BEAUCHAMP?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that side O.K. for you?”
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind changing.”
“I’m sure.”
Mary Ann sat up in bed and chewed her forefinger for a moment. “You know what I think would be neat?”
Silence.
“I saw a sign out on the highway for one of those rent-a-canoe places. We could pack a picnic lunch and rent a canoe and spend a nice lazy Sunday morning paddling up … What’s the name of that river, anyway?”
“Big.”
“The Big River?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that could be improved on, but I’m an expert paddler, and I could recite all the poetry I wrote during my senior year in …”
“I have to get back early.”
“I thought you said …”
“Mary Ann, could we get some sleep, huh?” He rolled away from her, inching closer to the edge of the bed. Mary Ann remained upright and kept silent for half a minute.
Finally:
“Beauchamp?”
“What?”
“Are you …?”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter. My mind was wandering.”
“What, goddam
mit!”
“Are you … upset about tonight?”
“What the hell do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter, Beauchamp. I mean, it may matter to you, but it doesn’t matter to me at all. You were probably just tense. It was a fluke.”
“Terrific. Thank you very much, Dr. Joyce Brothers.”
“I’m only trying to …”
“Skip it, will you?”
“You could’ve had too much to drink, you know.”
“I had three fucking scotches!”
“Well, that’s enough to …”
“Skip it, goddammit!”
“Look, Beauchamp, I personally resent the implication that … this … was the purpose of this trip. I came up here because I like you. You asked me to help you.”
“Fat lot of good it did!”
“You’re just concentrating too hard. I think your troubles with DeDe probably …”
“Christ! You have to bring her up?”
“I just thought that …”
“I don’t wanna talk about DeDe!”
“Well, what if I wanna talk about her, huh? I’m the one who stands to get burnt in this deal, Beauchamp. I’m the one who’s sticking my neck out. You can run home to your penthouse and your wife and your goddamn society parties. I’m stuck with … computer dating … and singles dances at the goddamn Jack Tar Hotel!”
She leaped out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” asked Beauchamp.
“Brushing my teeth! Do you mind?”
“Mary Ann, look … I …”
“I can’t hear you. The water’s running.”
He shouted. “I’m sorry, Mary Ann!”
“Mrrpletlrp.”
He joined her in the bathroom, standing behind her, stroking her stomach appeasingly. “I said I’m sorry.”
“Would you mind getting out of the bathroom?”
“I love you.”
Silence.
“Did you hear me?”
“Beauchamp, you’re making me spill the Scope!”
“I love you, goddammit!”
“Not here, for God’s sake!”
“Yes, here!”
“Beauchamp, for God’s sake! Beauchamp!”
She propped her chin on her elbow and studied his sleeping Keane-kid face. He was snoring so softly that it sounded like a purr. His right arm, tanned and dark-furred, was flung across her waist.
He was talking in his sleep.
At first it was gibberish. Then she thought she heard a name. She couldn’t make it out, though. It wasn’t DeDe … and it wasn’t Mary Ann.
She leaned closer. The sounds grew more obscure. He rolled over on his stomach, withdrawing his arm from her waist. He began to snore again.
She slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the window. The moon was slashing a silvery wake across the ocean. “That’s a Moon River,” her brother Sonny had told her when she was ten. She had believed him. She had also believed that someday she would be Audrey Hepburn and someone would come along to be George Peppard.
For the next two hours, she sat by the fire and read Nicholas and Alexandra.
Coming Clean in the Marina
BRIAN’S PREY WAS SITTING IN A PLASTIC CHAIR IN THE Come Clean Center’s shag-carpeted waiting area. She was wearing orange slacks that could have protected a road crew at night.
Her Mao Tse-tung T-shirt was stretched so tightly across her chest that the Chairman was grinning broadly.
And she was reading a People magazine.
Brian hesitated for a moment in front of the dispenser, feigning indecision. Then he turned around.
“Uh … excuse me? Could you tell me the difference between Downy and Cheer?”
She looked up from an article on Cher and peered at him through cobalt-blue contacts. Chewing the cud of her Carefree Sugarless, she sniffed out the new bull who had pawed his way into her pasture.
“Downy’s a fabric softener,” she smiled. “It makes your clothes all soft and sweet-smelling. Here … wanna try some of mine?”
Brian smiled back. “Sure you got enough?”
“Sure.”
She dug a bottle of Downy out of her red plastic laundry basket. “See? It says here …”
Brian moved next to her. “Where?”
“Here … on the label under …”
“Oh, yeah.” Her cheek was inches away. He could smell her Charlie. “I see … April fresh.”
She giggled, reading from the label. “And it helps eliminate static cling.”
“I hate to cling statically, don’t you?”
She turned and looked at him quizzically, then continued to read. “Whites white and colors bright.”
“Of course.”
“Softens deep and luxurious.”
“Mmm. Deep … and luxurious.”
She jerked away from him suddenly, then faced him, grinning coyly. “You are fresh, you know that?”
“April fresh, I hope?”
“You’re too much!”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Well, you can just …”
“You must not be from around here, huh?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You just have a kind of … no, forget it.”
“What?”
“It’ll sound like a line.”
“Will you just let me be the judge of that?”
“Well, there’s something kind of … cosmopolitan about you.”
After blinking at him for a moment, she looked down at her T-shirt, then back at him.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“I couldn’t remember if I was wearing my Paris Match T-shirt.”
He chuckled smoothly. “It’s not your clothes. There’s just … something … an air. Oh, forget it.”
“Are you from around here?”
“Sure. Third drier from the right.”
“C’mon!”
“I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s really pretty inside. Crystal chandeliers, flocked wallpaper, Armstrong linoleum … Where do you live?”
“The Marina.”
“Near here, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“How quick could we walk it?”
“I don’t think … five minutes.”
“You don’t think what?”
“Nothing.”
“Good. Shall we?”
“Look, I don’t even know your name.”
“Of course. How stupid. Brian Hawkins.”
She took his hand and shook it rather formally. “I’m Connie Bradshaw. From the Friendly Skies of United.”
… And Many Happy Returns
THE FLOOR AROUND CONNIE’S BED WAS LITTERED WITH the bodies of its daytime occupants: a five-foot plush Snoopy dog, a chartreuse beanbag frog, a terry-cloth python with eyes that rolled (Forgive her, Sigmund, thought Brian) and a maroon pillow that said: SCHOOL SPIRIT DAY, CENTRAL HIGH, 1967.
Brian was propped against the headboard. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead.”
He chuckled. “That’s very New Wave, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“You know … the couple sacked out afterwards with … It doesn’t matter.”
“All right.”
“Would you like me to leave?”
“Did I say that, Byron?”
“Brian.”
“You can go if you want.”
“Are you pissed or something?”
Silence.
“Ah, methinks the lady is pissed.”
“Oh … you’re such an intellectual, aren’t you?”
“My brain offends you?”
Silence.
“Look, Bonnie …”
“Connie.”
“So we’re even. Look … I’ll be guilty if you want. I’m the quintessential liberal. Ring a bell, I’ll salivate, flog myself, feel guilty for weeks. Just tell me what I did, will you?”
She rolled over
and hunched into a fetal position. “If you don’t know, there’s no point in discussing it.”
“Bonnie! Connie!”
“Do you treat all your bed partners that way?”
“What way?”
“Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!”
“Well, that’s getting to the point.”
“You asked me.”
“So I did.”
“I don’t think it’s abnormal to require a little tenderness.”
“‘She may be weary, women do get weary …’”
“Blow it out your …!”
“‘Wearin’ the same shabby dress …’”
“You’re really an asshole, you know that? You are truly a … pathetic human being! You’ve got about as much warmth as … I don’t know what!”
“Nice simile.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
She was up now, sitting at her French Provincial vanity, brushing her hair with a vengeance.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “O.K.?”
“What’s to apologize for? We don’t even know each other.”
“We shared a fabric softener. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Yeah. The end of a horrible day.”
“Jesus. What else happened to you today?”
“Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”
“So?”
“So it’s my birthday, dink!’
He held her until she had stopped crying, then dried her eyes with a corner of her Wamsutta floral.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “How ‘bout you?”
She didn’t answer. She sat on the edge of the bed like a broken Barbie Doll. Brian left for the kitchen.
He was back several minutes later, holding a tin pie plate with mock solemnity. “Don’t those North Beach bakeries do a nice job?” he said.
From the top of a triple-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich four kitchen matches were blazing festively.
“Make a wish,” he said, “and no wisecracks!”
Mrs. Day at Home
DEDE WAS TICKED. IT WAS ALREADY MIDAFTERNOON Sunday and Beauchamp wasn’t home from his Guardsmen weekend on Mount Tam.
She slammed around the penthouse in search of something to occupy her mind. She had already read Town and Country, watered the ficas, walked the corgi, and chatted with Michael Vincent about the twig furniture for the living room.