Sure of You (2 page)

“Nice car,” said Polly.

The redhead nodded. “She’s all right.” She pulled away from the curb, flashing her palm in a sort of parting salute. Brian and Polly watched until the car had disappeared around the corner.

“She’s been here before,” Polly told him as they walked back to the nursery.

“Oh, yeah?”

She nodded, scratching a fleck of dirt off her cheek. “I’d have those panty hose off so fast…”

Brian smirked at her sideways.

“You would too,” she said.

“Nah.”

“C’mon.”

“In a pinch, maybe.”

Polly chuckled.

“You think she likes girls?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I thought she might be one of yours.”

“Why?”

He thought about this for a moment. “She called her car ‘she,’ for one thing.”

“Huh?” Polly screwed up her face.

“Her car. She referred to it as a she.”

“And you think that’s some kinda…what? secret lesbo code?”

He shrugged.

“I call my car Dwayne,” she said.

He smiled, picturing Polly behind the wheel of her vintage Mustang.

“You’re something,” she said. “You check ’em all out, don’t you?”

“Look who’s talking,” he said. “I thought you found your main woman last month.”

“Who?”

“Whoever. That one you met at Rawhide II.”

Polly rolled her eyes.

“Done with her, huh?”

No answer.

Brian chuckled.

“What?”

“How long did that last, anyway?”

With her ragged haircut and guilty grin, Polly looked like something out of Norman Rockwell: a truant schoolkid, maybe, caught red-handed at the fishing hole.

“You know,” he told her, “you’re worse than any man I know.”

“That’s because"—she moved alongside him and bumped him with her lean little butt—"I’m
better
than any man you know.”

Polly’s teasing aside, he was hardly the rogue he used to be. He hadn’t strayed from home for over three years now, ever since Geordie Davies got sick. Diagnosed several weeks before Rock Hudson’s announcement, Geordie had lasted almost two years longer than the movie star, finally succumbing offstage, at her sister’s house, somewhere in Oklahoma.

He had offered to care for her himself—with Mary Ann’s knowledge—but she had dismissed the idea with a laugh. They had been playmates, not lovers, she’d told him. “Don’t make us into something we weren’t. We had a good time, pilgrim. Your services are no longer required.”

When his test came back negative, his relief had been so profound that he embarked on a regime of feverish domesticity. Now he rented movies and baked brownies and stayed at home with his daughter, even on the nights when Mary Ann had “important” parties to attend. He had lost his stomach altogether for the sycophants and socialites who revolved around his famous wife.

If something had been lost between him and Mary Ann, it was nothing dramatic, nothing he could pinpoint with certainty. Their sex life still flourished (though it slacked off dramatically during ratings periods), and over the years they had grown increasingly adept at avoiding arguments.

Sometimes, though, he wondered if they weren’t
too
careful in each other’s presence, too formal and solicitous and artificially jolly. As if their domestic arrangement were no more than that: an arrangement, which demanded courtesy in the absence of the real thing.

Or maybe, as she often suggested, he was just overanalyzing again.

He was back in the office, updating the work schedule on the computer, when Michael’s beeper sounded. He tracked the shrill plastic disk to the pocket of his partner’s cardigan, clicked it off, and took it out into the greenhouse, where he found Michael on his knees, potting succulents.

“Oh, thanks,” he said, pocketing the pillbox. “Sorry ’bout that.”

“Hey.” Brian shrugged, embarrassed by the apology. He had long ago accepted the beeper as a fixture in both their lives, but it was Michael for whom it really tolled. Every four hours. “You need some water?” he asked.

Michael had already returned to his potting. “I’ll take ’em in a minute.”

As a rule, he realized, Michael refused to jump to the beeper’s commands. It was his way of keeping the poisonous drug in its place.

“So,” asked Michael, “which one of you got her?” Brian pretended not to know what he meant.

“You know.” Michael jerked his head toward the door. “Jessica Rabbit out there.”

“Who said there was a contest?”

“That’s funny. I could have sworn I smelled testosterone.”

“Must’ve been Polly,” said Brian.

Michael laughed and plunged the trowel into the soil. “I’ll tell her you said that.”

Brian turned and headed for the door. “Take your pills,” he said.

“Yes, Mother.”

Chuckling, he headed out into the sunshine.

Her Day

B
ACK IN THE DRESSING ROOM
,
A VEIN POUNDING BRUTALLY
in her temple, Mary Ann Singleton stretched out on the sofa and kicked off her shoes with a sigh. No sooner had she done so than someone rapped tentatively on the door.

“Yes?” she called colorlessly, already certain it was Raymond, the squirrely new assistant they’d assigned her while Bonnie, her regular, was off houseboating in the Delta with her boyfriend.

Just what she needed right now. Another greenhorn who didn’t know squat about television.

“Mary Ann?”

“Yeah, Raymond, come in.”

The door eased open and Raymond eased in. He was wearing a thigh-length black Yamamoto shirt that was meant to be stylish but only served to exaggerate his dorkiness. “If this is a bad time…

“No,” she said, managing a thin smile. “Sit down, it’s fine.” He took the stool in front of the makeup table and fidgeted with the notes on his clipboard. “Interesting show.” She groaned.

“Where did they find her?”

“Are you kidding? They find
us
. Have you seen the lineup this week? It looks like talent night at Napa.”

He nodded solemnly, obviously not getting it.

“It’s a mental hospital,” she explained. “Up north.”

“Oh.”

“You’re not from here, are you?”

“Well…I am now, but I’m originally from the Midwest.” After a moment’s consideration, she decided not to tell him she was from Cleveland. This was a professional relationship, after all, and she didn’t want things to get too chummy. Why give him something he could use against her later? “So,” she said, “what have you got for me?”

Gravely and with great deliberation, Raymond perused his clipboard. It might have contained a list of fatalities from an airlines disaster. “First off,” he said, “Channel Two wants you for the Jerry Lewis telethon next year.”

“Meaning what? That I have to go to Oakland for it?” He shrugged. “I guess.”

“O.K., tell ’em I’ll do it, but I don’t wanna be paired off with that imbecile cohost they gave me this year. Or anybody else, for that matter. And make sure it’s at a decent hour, like not after midnight or something.”

“Gotcha.” He was scribbling furiously.

“Did you know they actually like him in France?” “Who?”

“Jerry Lewis.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’d heard.”

“That is the sickest thing,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

Raymond merely widened his eyes and shrugged. “Don’t tell me you like him,” she said.

“Well…I know he’s been sort of a joke for a long time, but there’s an increasing number of American cineastes who find his early work…well, at least comparable to, say, Tati.”

She didn’t know what that was and didn’t care. “He uses too much Brylcreem, Raymond. Give me a big break.”

His tiny eyes locked on the clipboard again. Apparently he found her uncool for not knowing that Jerry Lewis was cool again—among film nerds, at any rate. If she’d, told him she was from Cleveland, he’d be using that against her now. You just couldn’t be too careful.

“What else?” she asked.

He didn’t look up. “Some professor at City College wants you to address his television class.”

“Sorry. Can’t do it.”

“O.K.”

“When is it? Never mind, can’t do it. What else?”

“Uh…one of your studio regulars wants you to autograph a picture.”

“Talk to Julie. We have a whole stack of them, presigned.”

“I know, but he wants something personal.” He handed her the clipboard with a glossy. “I brought you an unsigned one. He said anything personal would do.”

“Some people,” she said, grabbing a felt-tip. “What’s his name?”

“Cliff. He says he’s watched you for years.”

After a moment’s consideration, she wrote:
Cliff—Thanks for the Memories—Mary Ann.
“If he wants more than that,” she told Raymond, returning the clipboard, “he’s shit outa luck. Is that it?”

“That’s it.” He turned up his hands.

“Great. Fabulous. Get lost.” She gave him a lame smile to show that she was kidding. “I’m about to do our PMS show a week ahead of schedule.”

“Oh…” It took him a while to get it. “Can I get you a Nuprin or something?”

“No, thanks, Raymond. That’s O.K.”

He edged toward the door, then stopped. “Oh, sorry—there was a phone call during the show. A guy named Andrews from New York.”

“Andrews?”

He retrieved a pink phone memo slip from the pocket of his Yamamoto. “Burke Andrews,” he read.

“Oh,
Andrew.
Burke Andrew.”

“Yeah. I guess so. Sorry.” He set the slip on the makeup table. “I’ll leave it here.”

A thousand possibilities whirred past her like a Rolodex. “Is it a New York number?”

Raymond shook his head. “Local,” he said, sliding out the door. “Looks like a hotel.”

Had it really been eleven years?

He’d moved to New York in 1977 after the Cathedral Cannibals fuss, and she hadn’t heard from him since, unless you counted the Kodak Christmas card, circa 1983, of him, his grinny, overdressed wife, and their two little jennifer-jasons—strawberry blonds like their father—hanging cedar garlands somewhere in Connecticut. It had stung a little, that card, even though, or maybe even because, she was already married to Brian.

She had met Burke on the Love Boat, as irony would have it, drawn instantly to his affable collie face, his courtliness, his incredible thighs. Michael Tolliver, who’d been there at the time, maintained later that it was Burke’s amnesia she’d fallen for: the tempting clean slate of his mind. His memory had returned, however, in a matter of months, and he’d moved to New York almost immediately. He’d asked her to come with him, of course, but she’d been too enraptured with her new life in San Francisco to seriously consider leaving.

From then on her interest in him had been strictly professional. She had followed his increasingly prestigious byline through a succession of glamorous magazines—
New York,
where he’d started out,
Esquire,
a media column in
Manhattan, inc.
—and through television, where he’d recently been making waves on the production end of the business.

She had often wondered why he’d never made an effort to get in touch with her. Their brief romance aside, they had a certain media visibility in common, if nothing else. True, she wasn’t a national figure in the purest sense, but she’d been profiled on
Entertainment Tonight,
and no visitor to San Francisco could have failed to notice her face on television or, for that matter, on billboards on the sides of buses.

Oh, well. She had a funny feeling he was about to make up for it.

He was staying at the Stanford Court, it turned out. The operator put her through to his room.

“Yeah,” he said briskly, answering immediately.

“Burke?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s Mary Ann. Singleton.”

“Well, hello! Hey, sorry—I thought you were room service. They keep botching my order and calling back. How are you? Boy, it’s great to hear your voice!”

“Well,” she said lamely, “same here.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Sure has.”

A conspicuous silence and then: “I…uh…I’ve got kind of a problem. I was wondering if you might be able to help me.”

Her first thought, which she promptly discarded, was that his amnesia had come back. “Sure,” she said earnestly. “I’ll do what I can.” It was nice knowing that she could still be of use to him.

“I have this monkey,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I have this monkey. Actually, she was more like a friend than a monkey. And she died this morning, and I was wondering if you could arrange to have her freeze-dried for me.”

Catching on at last, she collected herself and said: “You shithead.”

He chortled like a fifth grader who’d just dropped a salamander down her dress.

“God,” she said. “I was actually picturing you with a dead monkey.”

He laughed again. “I’ve done worse.”

“I know,” she said ruefully. “I remember.”

She was embarrassed now, but for reasons more troubling than his dumb joke. Of all the shows he might have seen, why did it have to be today’s? If he’d come a week earlier he might have caught her interview with Kitty Dukakis or, barring that, her top-rated show on crib death. What was he laughing at, anyway? Freeze-dried dogs or the way that she had made her name on television?

“How the hell are you?” he asked.

“Terrific. What brings you to town?”

“Well…” He seemed to hesitate. “Business mostly.”

“A story or something?” She hoped like hell it wasn’t AIDS. She’d grown weary of explaining the plague to visiting newsmen, most of whom came here expecting to find the smoldering ruins of Sodom.

“It’s kind of complicated,” he told her.

“O.K.,” she replied, meaning: Forget I asked.

“I’d like to tell you about it, though. Are you free for lunch tomorrow?”

“Uh…hang on a sec, would you?” She put him on hold and waited for a good half minute before speaking to him again. “Yeah, Burke, tomorrow’s fine.”

“Great.”

“Where do you wanna meet?”

“Well,” he said, “you pick the spot, and we’ll put it on my gold card.”