And Yesterday Is Gone (16 page)

The word “Cowboy” took me back to my time at the Haight-Ashbury mansion. Seemed like a century ago. I guess I looked pretty blank because she said, “I'm the one who got you dressed—remember the tie-dyed bell-bottoms? And I cheered you on when you raced down the hall screaming for a jacket as naked as the day you were born. Well, there may have been some soap bubbles. How would I ever forget you?” She laughed.

After the shock wore off, I laughed, too.

Then the climate changed.

“Why in the world did you park way down there?”

“Why did you park directly in front of me on an incline? And didn't you set your brakes?”

She turned and was tugging at the fender with no success.

“Never mind,” I said as I heard her sniffling.

I dug around in the trunk and found the jack and managed to slip it under the front wheel of that old monster—it weighed a ton. I lifted the car just enough to be able to dislodge the two cars.

The Volkswagen's fender was wrinkled and crushed into the tire.

“I don't think you can drive this—the fender is gouged too deep in the rubber and I can't make it give an inch.”

“Oh, no…” The tears gathered momentum.

“Will you stop that bawling? I'll take you where you need to go. You can call a tow truck there,” I said, a bit ungraciously.

“I've got a part-time job and I'm already late. And I don't really even know you. How do I know…”

I interrupted, “Do I look like a serial killer to you?”

She laughed. “I don't know. I haven't seen a naked serial killer.” She blinked away the tears.

I looked at her in amazement. First she was blubbering like a baby, now she's making jokes.

“I'm Rica Vallea, and you are…?”

“Steve McAllister. Don't call me ‘Cowboy.' ”

As Rica got some things from her car, I pushed some stuff out of the way and piled the rest of it in the backseat. I held the door open for her and noticed she looked as good going as coming.

I maneuvered around the VW. It looked as forlorn sitting there as the beetle it was named after.

“Where to?” I asked.

“I'm embarrassed to tell you. I need to go to Pacific Heights—it's not just around the corner. I suppose you know it's across the bay.”

“I don't really know San Francisco. I never got any farther than the Haight-Ashbury and I wasn't very clear then. You'll have to direct me. What's happening in Pacific Heights?”

“I have a part-time job tutoring a young man for a few months. The pay is wonderful and he is a real sweetheart…but different. They live in a mansion that makes that other place look like a tenement. He got a Mercedes coupe for his birthday so I taught him to drive. He's learned so quickly that I think my job may soon be over. I'll miss him—he seems almost like a brother. Sometimes he seems so sad—lonesome, probably.

“That's the Bay Bridge exit coming up. Stay on the right side.”

It seemed like all of San Francisco was rushing home and the only possible way was over that bridge.

There were so many vehicles converging, I thought amnesty had been granted to every sinner on earth and the gates of heaven had been flung open for perhaps five minutes.

I dared to glance down for a split-second at the heat gauge—had it crept up? In moments of stress, the old clunker had been known to overheat.

As though on another planet, in the far, far distance, the vague outline appeared of the city, only to disappear again and again. The speeding cars and trucks passed around and over, horns blaring, lights flashing. I got shaky.

The great span of metal and concrete that was the Bay Bridge hung against the sky in great swoops and swirls that glinted in the late afternoon sunshine.

I was almost frozen with fear; my knuckles were white against the dark of the steering wheel as I held the car steady in a lane that I hoped was for the uninitiated.

I guess she noticed because she laughed and said, “Guess this must be pretty intimidating—your first trip across the bay?”

“It's hardly my first crossing, but it still is a bit daunting.”

My heart throbbed until I thought my ribs would crack. I said, as casually as possible since my tongue was frozen to the roof of my mouth, “Oh, this isn't so much. I went over Victoria Falls in a birch-bark canoe a couple of times.” But I was caught in my own lie when I stuttered.

She giggled. “This is only five lanes and there are five more on the bottom level.” Then added, “The bridge is only about five miles long—actually one of the longest in the world. The scary part is that long, dark tunnel built through the rock of Yerba Buena Island.”

I looked to see if she was putting me on, but her smile was so innocent that I was halfway ashamed to be so suspicious.

But then she said, “Sure would be a mess after an earthquake.” And I knew.

I took a quick glance at the temperature gauge. The needle was slowly creeping up. “Please God, don't let it blow on this bridge. I promise…”

“Hang in there, Cowboy, you're doing okay.”

“Don't call me Cowboy.”

“You'll always be Cowboy to me. You've got a face like one of those Marlboro men.”

“How about the rest of me?” I tried to joke.

“Don't know—haven't seen the Marlboro Man naked.”

Damn this girl.

“Are you going to Oakdale College?” she asked. “My girlfriend goes to Oakdale and I was hoping to catch her between classes.”

“Yes,” I answered sharply as I tried to keep some maniac from crowding me over into the railing.

“What subjects are you taking?”

“Journalism—feature writing.”

“I'm in my second year at the School of Nursing at the University of San Francisco. My fiancé graduated last year from the University of California, San Francisco Medical School and is interning there now. UCSF is considered one of the world's leading health centers.”

This was more information than I needed to know.

It seemed like I had driven forever as she chatted like a magpie, when suddenly the bridge was behind us and I started to breathe again.

I fought the rush-hour traffic in the busy city and drove through some magnificent neighborhoods. I was in awe.

“You haven't seen anything yet,” she said.

The tired old Buick steamed and sputtered up the hill as though it was embarrassed to be intruding into this world of luxury.

“Pacific Heights coming up,” she said, and pointed to a long, winding driveway flanked by century-old trees just beginning to drop their leaves.

The ornate iron gate stood open and, beyond that, a house the likes of which I'd never even imagined stood as though it had been waiting—just for us.

I pulled into an enclosure, later learning that it's called a “porte cochere.”

As I shut off the engine, I noticed the red flag on the temperature gauge burned bright. The old car was ominously silent—not a creak or a crack.

A figure ran down the steps calling, “Rica, we were worried about you. Are you all right?”

That voice—where had I heard it before? It teased my memory. I knew that voice, but who? Where?

I hesitated, then turned and looked.

My logical mind said no as I looked away. I felt a momentary sense of fear. I'd been studying late into the night, losing sleep, was pretty shook up driving over that bridge. I must be hallucinating.

I looked back again and his eyes met mine.

A disbelieving, questioning voice barely spoke above a whisper. “Steve?”

Then the wild, jubilant cry, “Steve, Steve, Steve.”

Juan flung himself against me, his arms wrapped so tightly around me that I couldn't lift my own to wipe the tears that ran like a river down my face.

Together our tears wet his cashmere jacket as Rica, in shock, ran screaming to the house. “Dr. Teddy, Dr. Teddy.”

Sara and Dr. Teddy stood transfixed in the doorway. Rica peeked from behind.

It was at that moment that the car from Maryland decided to expel a great explosive grunt, a long hissing sigh that rose high in the air to form a billowing cloud of steam, then passed over to wherever it is that old Buicks go to die.

A
t the unaccustomed sound, Mr. Mackey, the pruning tool still in his hand, walked as fast as his arthritic old legs would carry him. He muttered to himself as he puffed with unusual exertion, “I hope the missus hasn't let that pressure cooker explode. I've told her a dozen times…”

As he threw opened the kitchen door, he saw her taking something from the oven and was reassured.

He stepped back and moved around the corner as fast as his old legs could carry him and was relieved when he spied the steaming car, but then he scowled watching the two young men embrace, stand back, then come together again and hold each other close.

Then the final straw—the Mexican held the other man's face between his hands and kissed him on both cheeks.

Outraged, he went back to the kitchen and helped himself to a handful of cookies, the vivid picture of the two men embracing festering in his mind. He chewed steadily while pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“You're awfully quiet. Are you tired? I think dinner will be a little late tonight—growing boys, you know,” his wife spoke.

“I don't know about anything anymore,” he growled, “but boys? Hardly. Six feet if they're an inch—they are grown men. You should have seen them out there wrapped up with each other like Siamese twins.

“I suspected that Mexican was queer, but have they brought another one home to roost? Beats me. I'll never understand—it's not right. They ought to be ashamed—in broad daylight, too.”

“Henry Mackey,” came his wife's surprised—and angry—voice. “You—yes,
you
ought to be ashamed. Miss Sara loves that boy and any fool can see that he adores her. Only the day after he got home from the hospital you said what a nice boy he was—for a Mexican—for working down there in the hothouse with you, his ribs all taped up. And I don't hear you complain about Miss Sara or Dr. Teddy or is that because they sign your paycheck?

“It's a different way of life, but does that make it wrong?”

She turned with her hands on her hips and demanded, “Do you understand why the sun rises in the east? What if it rises in the west tomorrow? Would you understand that? Would that make it bad? Obviously, there are lots of things about love that you don't understand. I'm here to testify to that. Shame on you.

“Get out of the cookies now. You've made me mad so get out of my kitchen, too.”

•  •  •

Surprise and amazement were written on the faces of the three women who stood in the doorway watching the two embracing, exhilarated young men, the steaming car in the background.

Sara said, “Let's have a cup of tea and give them some privacy. I'm sure this is the friend Juan has told me about.”

Rica asked, “May I use the phone to call my dad?”

“Surely, use the one in the kitchen, and would you tell Mrs. Mackey we would be delighted with a pot of tea. We'll have it on the veranda. I think I smell cookies, probably still warm from the oven.”

When Juan and I had run out of breath and were able to speak coherently, I asked, “Juan, what are you doing here? Who are these people? What happened at the ranch?”

“Later. Later I'll tell you everything. Not now.”

But I persisted, “How in the world did you get here?”

He paused a moment, then answered, “Mamá Sara found me in the park and now I am her son. Come.”

He took me by the hand, my heart thudding, and led me like a child through those massive front doors. We followed the sounds of laughter, voices and the unmistakable aroma of fresh-baked cookies.

Two older women and Rica sat at a large glass-topped table upon which stood a pedestal plate that now held only a few chocolate crumbs.

They paused in their conversation as we stood for a moment in the doorway. Then the smaller woman motioned us to her and stood with an outstretched hand.

Juan choked out an emotional introduction with pride in every syllable. “Mamá Sara, this is my friend, my friend that I love—Steve.”

Looking down at this little woman, her gray hair tied back with a colorful band, I saw Juan's love reflected in her twinkling green eyes.

Laughing, she turned to the woman beside her. “Teddy, I'm sure you've suspected that this is Juan's friend.” Then she added, “Steve, this is my dearest friend, Dr. Teddy.”

“This calls for a celebration,” Sara said. “It's too early for champagne, but I'm sure Mrs. Mackey will come back with the tea cart.”

As Sara predicted, the tea cart reappeared as if by magic, and Dr. Teddy and I reached for the cookies simultaneously.

My cookie stopped in midair as Dr. Teddy said seriously, but with a sly smile on her lips, “I must tell you how I admire your bravery in that incredible act of raw courage.”

Me? She's talking about me? What act?

Noting my confusion, she added, “You know, when you went over Victoria Falls in that birch-bark canoe. I suppose the water was very wet, too.”

Everyone laughed. The ice was broken.

Rica had ratted.

I looked across the table and my eyes refused to move, riveted to the picture she had made as she sat, totally unselfconscious, one long, shapely leg crossed over the other.

She didn't seem to notice—or care about the smudge of dirt that colored her skirt, a farewell gift from the dented fender.

A shaft of light from the tall window behind her shone through that long, black hair, black as the soft underfeathers of a raven's wing. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to leap over the glass that separated us to run my fingers through that silken hair and kiss away the almost nonexistent chip of orange paint near the corner of her mouth. For starters.