Mary Ann in Autumn (18 page)
Read Mary Ann in Autumn Online
Authors: Armistead Maupin
T
hree or four times a week, usually in the afternoon, Ben would leave his workshop on Norfolk Street to swim laps at the Embarcadero Y. This stolid old brick building (according to Michael, at least) had been a sort of seedy flophouse/orgy palace back in the days before the Village People told the world that it was fun to play at the YMCA. Now—inside, at least—it was a modern health club whose indoor pool and StairMasters had dramatic close-up views of the Bay Bridge. The locker room could be cruisy from time to time, but only in a subtle, subterranean way, since there were plenty of straight guys and kids who went there. The members were wildly diverse, in fact. Some of them looked like CEOs, others like homeless men on a day pass.
The showers were semiprivate. There were dividers between them, but they were open on the end, so you could see the person showering across from you. At the moment, that was a beefy, hook-nosed Mediterranean—Italian or Greek, Ben guessed, and probably in his mid-fifties—with a dense doormat of a chest and a hefty provolone between his legs. He was doing the familiar mating dance of the shower, lathering longer than necessary, making extravagant white slaloms of soap through his fur.
He glanced at Ben enough to make his interest clear, so Ben shortened the ritual with a welcoming smile before heading to his locker. Three minutes later, as Ben was climbing into his jeans, the guy appeared in his boxer shorts, presenting his business card.
“My cell is on the bottom there. If you wanna call.”
“Cool,” said Ben, putting the card in his back pocket.
“Unless you got time now. My place is in South Beach. Walking distance.” The guy smiled at him; his teeth were good, and he seemed straightforward enough, trustworthy. His hair was dyed—unnecessarily and not very well—but some things could be forgiven, if the other elements were right. And, man,
were
they.
He had planned on going back to the studio to finish an end table for a client in Seattle, but early-afternoon hookups worked well for him, since Michael raised a fuss when Ben’s play cut into their evening time. On the other hand, Michael expected full disclosure after the event, and this was not the day for that: they’d be waiting for the results of Mary Ann’s surgery, and there would be other things to talk about before dinner. “Sorry,” he told the guy. “I’ll give you a call, though.”
The guy nodded but looked rejected, so Ben showed his sincerity by fishing a business card from his wallet. “That’s my cell,” he said. “Or you can call me at my studio. I’m usually there during the day.”
The guy studied the card. “Master craftsman, huh?”
“I work wood.”
“Oh, yeah? Sure hope so.” The guy winked and squeezed Ben’s arm as if no one had ever made that joke before, then sauntered back to his own locker.
Too bad,
thought Ben, as he watched him round the corner out of sight.
Then, as he tugged his T-shirt over his head, someone came up behind him and asked: “How was Pinyon City?” He pulled the T-shirt into place and turned to find a face so jarringly out of context that it took him a while to identify it.
Cliff from the dog park. Cliff of Blossom and Cliff. The old man was shirtless and wearing baggy brown trousers that were shiny-thin with age.
“Oh . . . hey, Cliff . . . it was fun.” Ben had mentioned their upcoming trip to Pinyon City on his last visit to the dog park. In fact, he’d probably bored the old man on the subject, since Ben tended to babble around Cliff just to keep the conversation afloat. For someone who seemed to crave company, Cliff wasn’t especially gregarious.
“And your friend from the East?”
“Oh . . . Mary Ann? Yeah, she went with us.”
“She liked it?”
“Yeah. She loved it. It snowed while we were there.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah . . . it was.”
Long, awkward silence.
“I didn’t realize you were a member here,” Ben said, filling the void. “I mean, I’ve never seen you.”
“I come on a day pass sometimes.”
“Right.”
“I like the pool.”
“Yeah, me too. Especially when it’s nasty outside.”
“Yep. Nice today, though. The weather.”
“How’s Blossom?”
“She’s good.”
“That’s great. Cool name, by the way. Perfect for a little dog.”
The old man nodded, then sighed with unexpected intensity. “The wife named her. After Blossom Dearie. The jazz singer. She was one of our favorites.”
The wife,
thought Ben. Such a straight-guy thing to say. But Ben liked knowing that this melancholy codger had company at home. Assuming he wasn’t a widower.
“Is she . . . still with us?” he asked.
“Think so. Don’t know if she’s still singing, but—”
“I meant your wife.”
“Oh . . . yeah . . . she’s alive.” Cliff looked flustered. “But she’s not . . . with me anymore.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“She had problems. I tried to make it better, but . . .” His voice trailed off as his eyes filled with weariness and despair. “I have to get home . . . speaking of Blossom.”
“Nice seeing you,” said Ben. “Say hi to her for me.”
“Will do.” Cliff stood there a moment longer, avoiding intimacy by keeping his eyes fixed on the tile floor. “Thanks for being so nice to me.”
It was heartbreaking to hear him lay out his loneliness in such a blatant way. “Oh . . . hey . . . it’s easy, Cliff. You’re good company.”
“No, I’m not. You don’t have to say that.”
Ben would have protested, but the old man turned and walked away.
“Catch you at the dog park,” Ben called, trying to end this on an upbeat note.
Cliff lifted his hand in mute reply and just kept walking. It was then that Ben noticed the scar on his back: an ugly puckered line, smoothed somewhat by the passage of years, running all the way from his shoulder blade to his waist.
Surgery? For a tumor or something? It seemed too irregular for that.
A war wound, then? Ben remembered Cliff’s story about the mascot dog that had to be shot when he was serving in Vietnam.
Whatever its cause, the scar only deepened the sense that Cliff’s gloom was the product of a lifetime of troubles. There were layers to that resident darkness, Ben thought, and no one outside of the old man himself would ever know what they were.
T
andy Street was a bitch to find. It wasn’t on the hill behind the Mint, as Otto had remembered, but closer to the Lower Haight, and its only street sign had been all but obscured by graffiti and antiwar stickers. What’s more, the address they were looking for—437—was not displayed on any of the houses. They located 429 and 445, so they had to assume it was the house between them, a Victorian cottage made Spanish in the twenties by a flat stucco facade. The Band-Aid–colored plaster was falling away like so many scabs, exposing the laths beneath. The window’s colorless curtains were drawn.
“Alexandra’s love nest,” Otto said sardonically.
“Well,” said Shawna, “it could have been heaven on earth, considering her shitty childhood. Maybe it was nice when she lived here. Maybe there’s a garden in back.”
“Maybe Jeffrey Dahmer has a workshop in the basement.”
It irritated her that Otto was trying to fuck up Alexandra’s happy ending—or, at least, her happy middle. Who was Otto to point fingers? His own little alley studio was way depressing, but it could still be incredibly sweet on a rainy evening when they were snuggling after sex. She needed to know that such pleasures had come to Alexandra, however briefly, that somewhere between the child rape and that flesh-eating disease someone had made her feel safe and loved and at home. Shawna was beginning to think she couldn’t scatter Alexandra’s ashes
anywhere
without some reassurance of that. There would be nothing to celebrate but her death.
“It looks deserted,” said Otto.
“Why? Because it’s run-down?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“So let’s ring the bell and see.”
“Why not just look through the curtains?”
She rolled her eyes impatiently. “Like that’s any less invasive than ringing the bell?”
“I didn’t say that. I just think it might be advisable, under the circumstances. Wouldn’t you like to see how they live before we see who comes to the door?”
This did make a certain sense, so she looked both ways down the sidewalk to make sure they were alone before sidling over to the window, a featureless rectangle of aged aluminum, speckled with corrosion. She peered through the foot-wide opening in the curtains to what she could see of the living room, then reported back to Otto.
“It’s not the tidiest place, but it’s not Grey Gardens either. It’s kind of homey, actually. They’ve got a Snuggie.”
“A what?”
“You know. Those ridiculous blanket things with sleeves. As seen on TV?” She grinned at him. “That soul-sucking corporate appliance you want no part of?”
He gave it right back to her. “It’s a good thing
you’ve
got one, then, or I never would’ve known what a Snuggie is.”
“I’m gonna ring the bell.”
“Go right ahead.”
“If somebody’s here, we can show them the picture. If not, we can go home and fuck.”
Otto held up crossed fingers, smiling.
She pressed the dark Bakelite nipple of the doorbell. It made no sound at all, so she pressed it again. “Do you think they can hear it inside?”
He shook his head. “It’s dead.”
She rapped on the door, and, almost immediately, a dog began to bark.
“Hey there, little buddy,” Otto crooned, when the apoplectic dog appeared in the window to confront the intruders. It was tiny, though, and its tail was wagging.
“I guess
he’s
the doorbell,” said Shawna.
They waited for someone to show up. No one did.
“C’mon,” said Otto.
“Just a little longer.”
“The neighbors are noticing, Shawna.”
Across the street an old woman with garish red hair was eyeing them as she poured water from a saucepan onto a potted plant on her doorstep.
Shawna strode over to talk to her, with Otto close behind. “We’re looking for the people who live here.”
The woman regarded her dubiously. “Are you here for the environment?”
“No, no.” Shawna grinned. “Not at all. I mean . . . we’re totally
for
the environment, but . . . we’ve just got something we’d like to show them.”
“Them?”
“Well . . . whoever lives there.” Realizing how shady this was sounding, Shawna got specific. “We have some information about someone who used to live there back in the nineties. Alexandra Lemke?” She pulled one of the photos from her shoulder bag (the gorgeous grown-up shot taken at the fabric store) and showed it to the neighbor. “This is probably ten or fifteen years old, but . . . maybe you recognize her?”
The woman said nothing.
“That may have been before you lived here, of course.”
Shawna’s effort at a smile was not returned. “You social workers, then?”
“No. Just . . . private citizens.”
Seeing how badly she was bungling this, Otto stepped forward and tried to establish their credentials. “She was a friend of Alexandra’s. We both were.”
“Are,” said Shawna, correcting him. She didn’t want to relay news of Alexandra’s death until she was able to do so in a respectful fashion, explaining things in her own words. For all she knew, this woman would call her neighbor as soon as they left.
“Can’t help you,” the woman said, returning the photo. “You’ll have to come back when he’s home.”
He,
thought Shawna.
It’s a man, and he lives there alone.
“Would that be Mr. Lemke?” she asked. “Is that who we’re looking for?”
“Come along,” said Otto, slipping his arm around Shawna as if she were a benign lunatic who had strayed too far from the asylum. He was lighthearted about this, but she still found it annoying. She kept her eyes fixed on the neighbor lady. “But you recognize her, right? She used to live here? They were married, weren’t they?”
The woman went back into her house and closed the door.
Otto was smirking. “Nice work, Sherlock.”
“Fuck you.”
“I believe that was the plan, yes.”
She began walking across the street. “You can forget that shit.”
“Aw . . . dude.”
“You saw her expression, didn’t you? She recognized Alexandra.”
“Yeah. The fucked-up junkie who used to live across the street. Wonder why she wasn’t more helpful?”
“How do you know Alexandra was already fucked up? She could’ve had a grace period. She and her husband could’ve still been . . . you know . . .”
“Honeymooning.”
“Yeah . . . in a manner of speaking.” She studied his face for a moment, wondering where he planned to go with that.
“You’re funny,” he said.
“Am I?”
“Yeah. For a ‘grrrl on the loose’ who doesn’t believe in marriage.”
She gaped at him. “By which you mean . . . ?”
“Just that you seem determined for her to have been married. You’ve got one letter . . . a nice letter, granted . . . and now you’ve got this whole chick-flick message-in-a-bottle thing going on, and I find it a little strange that you’re doing that, that’s all.”
“Strange,” she repeated in the most neutral tone she could muster.
“Not strange. Just . . . it doesn’t seem like you at all. Is it for your blog or what?”
She didn’t defend herself, since she had just figured out what he meant:
Why can’t you be that way about us? If you can make all this fuss over a dead woman’s romance, why not ours?
His big, wounded, monkey-loving heart was fully exposed.
She picked her words with care. “I want her to have been happy. It’s not about marriage. Yes, it’s partially for the blog . . . but it’s also about . . . I dunno. Wouldn’t you like to know that someone had at least been kind to her before the drugs took over?”
He didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be considering the perils of pursuing this discussion. “Fine. Sure. Why not leave a note, then?”
“Funny you should say that.” Perhaps a little too jocular now, she reached into her shoulder bag and removed the note she’d composed that morning.
He asked her what it said.
“Just that I’m a friend of Alexandra Lemke . . . who used to live here . . . and that she died this week at SF General . . . and to call me if they knew her and want to talk.”
“That should do it,” he said.
She slipped the note under the door.
“It’s certainly worth a shot,” she said.
“It always is,” he said vaguely.
She was pretty sure he was talking about them.