Babycakes Page 12

  Miss Treves brushed a fleck of dust off the armrest, then arranged her hands demurely in her lap. “Simon didn’t tell me you were coming,” she said. “Otherwise I might have tidied up a bit.”

  “I don’t mind,” he replied. “It’s fine.”

  She looked around the room disgustedly. “ ‘Tisn’t a bit. It’s perfectly vile.” She shook her head slowly. “And he’s supposed to be the gentleman.”

  Her indignation made him feel much better. He had begun to wonder if he was being too prissy about the apartment, too American in his demands. This second opinion, considering its source, reinforced his earliest suspicions about Simon’s basic slovenliness.

  He remembered the tea he had offered her. “Oh … excuse me. I’ll put the kettle on for us.” He spun around to make his exit, crashing ingloriously into a shadeless floor lamp. He steadied the wobbling pole with one hand, while Miss Treves tittered behind his back.

  “Now there, love. You’ll get used to it.”

  She meant her size, apparently. He turned and smiled at her to show that he was a Californian and knew his way around human differences. “What do you take in your tea?” he asked.

  “Milk, please … and a tiny bit of sugar.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have sugar.”

  “Yes you do. On the shelf to the right of the cooker. I keep it there for myself when I stop by.”

  In the kitchen he ran hot water into the teakettle, removed a milk bottle from the refrigerator, and located Miss Treves’s private cache of sugar. Sugar crystals, actually, like the stuff he had shared with his first sex partner, the non-scene, non-camp bricklayer from Hampstead Heath.

  When he returned to the living room, he handed Miss Treves her tea and sat down on the end of the sofa closest to her. “So … Simon tells me he ran away from you once in the British Museum.” It was a weak opener, but it was all he had.

  She took a cautious sip of her tea. “He has a nasty habit of doing that, doesn’t he?”

  He assumed that was a rhetorical question. “He says you were a wonderful nanny.”

  She looked into her teacup, trying to hide her pleasure. “We made a sight, the two of us.”

  He started to say “I can imagine,” but decided against it. “And now you’re a manicurist, huh?”

  “That I am.” She nodded.

  “Do you have a shop?”

  “No. Just regular customers. I visit them in their homes. A select clientele.” She cast a reproving glance at his hands. “You could use a bit of help yourself, love.”

  Embarrassed, he looked down at his jagged nails. “It’s a new bad habit, I’m afraid. I had flawless nails for thirty years.” He decided to change the subject. “How did you know that Simon had … left the royal yacht?”

  She sighed. “Oh, love … The Mirror went daft over it. You didn’t read it? It was just a few days ago.”

  “No … actually, I didn’t.”

  “They made it sound as if he’d slapped the Queen.”

  He made an effort to look duly concerned. “It was nothing like that,” he said. “He just got tired of the navy.”

  “Balls,” said Miss Treves.

  “Uh … what?” He wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. “The navy is one thing, love. The Britannia is quite another. It’s a terrible disgrace.”

  “How did the press find out about it?”

  She growled indignantly. “Some bally woman on the telly.”

  “In San Francisco?”

  She nodded. “Then the Mirror did their own snooping about and found his address. Printed it, if you please.”

  He thought about that for a moment. “Is Simon’s family … upset about it?”

  Miss Treves chuckled. “You’re lookin’ at it, love.”

  “Oh …”

  “His mum and dad came to a tragic end when Simon was still at Cambridge.”

  “Oh … I didn’t know that.”

  Her hands fidgeted in her lap. “Simon doesn’t like to talk about it. A dreadful wreck.”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t mention it to him, will you? The poor lad has spent eight years getting over it.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” said Michael. He had already begun to forgive Simon for the apartment and to regard this miniature nanny as a kind of guardian angel in tweeds. “He’s so lucky to have had you,” he added.

  Her small pink rosebud of a mouth made a smile that was just for him. “Simon always has such lovely friends.”

  A Good Match

  MARY ANN HAD LEFT FOR THE PENINSULA TO DO A human interest story on the closing of an auto plant, so Brian sought tangible ways to celebrate his first official day as a househusband at 28 Barbary Lane: He trimmed the ivy on all the windowsills. He scoured the crud off the grout in the shower stall, then organized the cleansers and sponges under the kitchen sink. Slithering under the bed, he went after dust balls with the single-minded frenzy of a terrier routing a gopher from its lair.

  He was working for three now. Every sweep of the dust-cloth, every squirt of Fantastik, every mouse turd he banished from the pantry, made the house just that much safer for The Kid.

  The Kid.

  He capitalized it in his mind, paying superstitious homage to the seed which, even as he swabbed the toilet, could already be sprouting in Mary Ann’s womb. The Kid was everything now. That incredible, microscopic little bugger had turned his life around and given him a reason to get up in the morning. And that was nothing short of a miracle.

  He took a break and made himself a ham sandwich, eating it in the little house on the roof while a rust-red tanker slid silently across the great blue expanse of the bay. Above the terra-cotta tile of the Art Institute, a rainbow-striped kite flickered in the wind.

  There was so much to show a child in this city, so many commonplace glories to be seen again through the eyes of The Kid. The windmill in Golden Gate Park. Chinatown in the fog. The waves that come crashing over the seawall at Fort Point. In his mind’s eye, they were frolicking on a generic beach, he and this little piece of himself, this bright and lovable boy-or-girl who called him … what?

  Daddy?

  Dad?

  Papa?

  Papa wasn’t bad, really. It had a kindly, old-world ring to it—stern but loving. Was it too stern? He didn’t want to come off as autocratic. The Kid was a person, after all. The Kid must never fear him. Corporal punishment was out of the question.

  He returned to the apartment, dropped his plate into the sink, then decided to scour the sink. As he worked, he could hear Mrs. Madrigal going about her gardening chores down below in the courtyard. She was humming a fractured version of “I Concentrate on You.”

  He was dying to tell her about The Kid, but he squelched the urge. For reasons he couldn’t exactly pinpoint, he felt the news should come from Mary Ann. Besides, it would be more fun to wail until they had some indication that Mary Ann was pregnant.

  He wanted to show Simon that there were no hard feelings, so he went downstairs and invited the lieutenant to go running with him. Later, as they huffed and puffed past deserted docks toward the Bay Bridge, he was impressed by Simon’s endurance. He told him as much.

  “We’re a good match,” was the gracious reply.

  “Not only that,” Brian continued, “but you seem to do O.K. in other departments too.”

  “How’s that?”

  Brian cast a brotherly leer at the lieutenant. “I saw her when she left this morning.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah is right. Where did you find her?”

  “Oh … a little boite called the Balboa Café. Do you know it?”

  “Used to,” he replied. “It’s been a while. Was she good?”

  “Mmm. Up to a point.”

  Brian laughed.

  “No pun intended, sir.”

  “Right.”

  “She was a little too … uh … shall we say enthusiastic?”

  “Gotcha,” said Brian. “She bit your nipples.”


  The lieutenant was clearly dumbfounded. “Well, yes … as a matter of fact, she did.”

  “That’s big with her,” said Brian.

  “You know her, I take it?”

  “Used to. Before I was married. Jennifer Rabinowitz, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Quite a lady.”

  “She’s made the rounds, then?”

  Brian chuckled. “She’s the head shark in the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s what they call it,” he explained. “The neighborhood where the Balboa Café is.”

  “I see.”

  The lieutenant seemed a little nonplussed, so Brian tried to buck him up. “I mean … it’s not like she’s the town whore or anything. She doesn’t sack out with just everybody.”

  “Gratifying,” said Simon.

  They stopped running when they reached the bridge, then walked inland from the Embarcadero and sat at the base of the Villaincourt Fountain. A small Vietnamese child approached them, bearing a net bag. Brian waved him away.

  “What was that about?” asked Simon.

  “He wanted to sell us garlic.”

  “Why garlic?”

  “Beats me. They gel it in Gilroy and sell it on the streets here. Dozens of little Artful Dodgers hustling the white men who invaded their parents’ country. Poetic, huh?”

  “I should say.”

  “You’re a great running partner,” said Brian.

  “Thank you, sir. So are you.”

  He shook the lieutenant’s knee heartily. He liked this guy a lot, and not just because Jennifer Rabinowitz had made them equals. “You’re looking at one happy sonofabitch,” he said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Well … Mary Ann and I have decided to have a baby. I mean, she’s not pregnant yet, but we’re working on it.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Simon. “Yeah … it sure as hell is.”

  They sat there in silence, lulled by the splash of the fountain.

  “Don’t tell her I told you,” said Brian.

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t want her to feel like there’s … you know … pressure on her.”

  “I understand.”

  “What will be, will be … you know?”

  “Mmm.”

  “By the way, you’re more than welcome to use the TV room whenever you feel like it.”

  “Thank you. Uh … where is it?”

  “On the roof. All the way up the stairs. Everybody in the house uses it.”

  “Marvelous.”

  “I’ll show you how to work the VCR. You might have some fun with that. I’ve got Debbie Does Dallas.”

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s a porn movie.”

  “Ah,”

  “I haven’t played it very much … only when Mary Ann goes on assignment or something. Then I put that baby on and … wrestle with the ol’ cyclops.”

  A slow smile spread across Simon’s face. “You mean bang the bishop?”

  “You catch on fast.” Brian grinned.

  Mirage

  MICHAEL’S TEENAGE SOJOURN IN LONDON HAD been spent with a family in Hampstead who housed him through a student program sponsored by the English-Speaking Union. Mr. and Mrs. Mainwaring had been childless, and they’d fussed over him as if he’d been their own, taking him to plays in the West End, plying him with shortbread at tea-time, stocking the pantry with his favorite brand of thick-cut English marmalade.

  He’d lost touch with them years before, so he couldn’t help wondering if they were still watching their beloved telly in that snug little house off New End Square. Even if they weren’t, the thought of seeing Hampstead again was wonderfully exhilarating. There was nothing quite like going back to an old neighborhood.

  Leaving Simon’s house, he wound his way through the vegetables and bric-a-brac of Portobello Road until he reached the ragtag commercial center of Notting Hill Gate. The familiar circle-bar brand of the London Underground beckoned him to a hole in the sidewalk, where he pumped coins into a ticket machine that listed Hampstead as a destination.

  An escalator carried him still deeper, to the platform of the Central Line, from which he caught an eastbound train to Tottenham Court Road. Disembarking, he strode as knowingly as possible to the platform of the Northern Line, where a once-dormant signal in the back of his brain advised him that the Edgware train, not the High Barnet, would take him to Hampstead.

  He loved the particulars of all this: The classic simplicity of the Underground map, with its geometric patterns and varicolored arteries. The warm, stale winds that whipped through the cream-and-green-tile pedestrian tunnels. The passengers—from skinheads to pinstripers—all wearing the same mask of bored and dignified disdain.

  When the train stopped at Hampstead, his next route was indicated by a sign saying WAY OUT, a nobler phrase by far than the bland American EXIT. Since Hampstead was London’s most elevated neighborhood, the lift to the street was London’s deepest, a groaning Art Nouveau monster with a recorded voice so muted and decrepit (“Stand clear of the gate,” it said) that it might have been a resident ghost. He remembered that voice, in fact, and it gave him his first shiver of déjà vu.

  The streets of the borough were mercifully unchanged, despite the encroachment of fast-food parlors and chrome-and-mauve salons specializing in “hair design.” He strolled along the redbrick high street until he came upon the hulking redbrick hospital that stood by the street leading to New End Square.

  Four minutes later, he was hesitating in front of the house that had been his home for three months in 1967. The chintz curtains that had once shielded the living room from the gaze of passersby had been replaced by Levolors. Did a gay person live there now? Had the Mainwarings retired to some characterless “estate home” in the suburbs? Could he deal with the changes, whatever they were? Did he really want to know?

  He really didn’t. Returning to the high street, he ate lunch in one of the new American-style hamburger joints, a “café” decorated with neon cacti and old Coca-Cola signs. Once upon a time, he recalled, Wimpy bars had served the only hamburgers in London, but they had hardly qualified.

  He downed several ciders at an old haunt in Flask Walk, then considered his options for the afternoon. He could stroll over to the Spaniards Inn and down one or two more. He could look for the house where the inventor of the Christmas card had lived. He could wander down to the Vale of Health and sit by the pond where Shelley had sailed his paper boats.

  Or he could look for the bricklayer.

  Another cider settled the issue. Shelley and the inventor of the Christmas card were no match for the memory of a hairless scrotum. He breezed out of the pub and ambled along the pale green crest of the city toward Jack Straw’s Castle and the Spaniards Road.

  The heath was much as he had remembered it—rolling reaches of lawn bordered by dark clumps of urban forest. There seemed to be more litter now (which was true of London in general), but the two-hundred-acre park was still rife with the stuff of mystery. On his last visit, the sound of the wind in its thick foliage had instantly evoked an eerie scene from Blow-Up, a movie which meant London to Michael in the way that Vertigo meant San Francisco.

  He entered the heath from the Spaniards Road, following a broad trail through the trees. When he reached Hampstead Ponds, he stopped for a while and watched a trio of children romping along the water’s edge. Their mother, a freckled redhead in a green sweater and slacks, smiled at him wearily as if to thank him for the tribute he had paid her offspring. He smiled back and skipped a stone on the water, just to get a rise out of the kids.

  It was here, he remembered, that a road led down to the south end of the heath and the street where the bricklayer had lived. The street where he lived. He laughed out loud at his gay rewrite, then began humming the tune from My Fair Lady.

  The street was called South End Road. He remembered it because it intersected with Keats Grove, the street where
the poet had lived, and Keats had been one of the things they had discussed after sex, along with Paul McCartney, motorcycles and world peace.

  He found the place almost immediately, recognizing the nightingales in the Edwardian stained glass above the door. This was no time to think, he decided. He threw caution to the winds and rang the bell of the ground-floor flat. An old man in a cardigan came to the door.

  “This is kind of unusual,” Michael began, “but a friend of mine lived here a long time ago, and I was wondering if he still does.”

  The old man squinted at him for a moment, then said: “What was his name?”

  “Well … that’s the unusual part. I don’t remember. He was a bricklayer … a big, strapping fellow. He must be about fifty now.” Come to think of it, I believe he did have a hairless scrotum.

  The current occupant shook his head thoughtfully. “How long ago was this?”

  “Sixteen years. Nineteen sixty-seven.”

  A raspy chuckle. “He must be long gone. The wife and me have been here longer than the other tenants, but that’s just eight years. Sixteen years! No wonder you’ve forgotten his name!”

  Michael thanked him and left, accepting the futility of the quest. It didn’t really matter. What would he have said, anyway, had he found his savior? You don’t know me, but thanks for being there first?

  The sun was quite warm now and cottony clouds were scudding across the sky, so he crossed the heath again and headed for the wooded mound that locals knew as Boadicea’s tomb. No one really believed that the ancient queen was actually buried under the hillock, but the name endured nonetheless. He had gone there once at midnight, upon reading in The Times that the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids would gather at the site for their Midsummer’s Night ritual. The intrigue had vanished like ectoplasm when he saw for himself that the “Druids” were bank clerks in bedsheets and grandmothers in harlequin glasses.

  As another chunk of the past slipped away from him, he sat down on the grass and tilted his face to the sun. Fifty yards below him, a large black sedan crossed the heath slowly, then came to a stop. A woman got out—blond hair, white blouse, gray skirt stopping at midcalf—a striking figure against the endless green of the landscape. She turned in every direction, apparently searching for someone.