Babycakes (29 page)

“But couldn’t he bite his way …?”

“He doesn’t want to, mate. He’s stoned.”

“What?”

“I put a bit of hash in his meat.”

The train lurched into motion just as a conductor entered the carriage. Wilfred leaned forward, folding his arms across the top of the box. Then he remembered his ticket, retrieved it from his jeans, and handed it to Michael. Hastily, he hunched over the box again.

The conductor loomed above them. “Where to, gents?”

“Moreton-in-Marsh,” answered Michael, handing him the tickets.

“Lovely village, that. Heart of England.”

“Yes. So we hear.” His smile was forced and must have looked it. “We’re going near there, actually. Easley-on-Hill,”

The conductor’s eyes darted to Wilfred, then fixed on Michael again. “Easter holiday, eh?”

“Right.” Another insipid smile.

“Have a good one, then.”

“Thanks,” they replied in unison.

The conductor shambled to the next carriage.

Michael focused on Wilfred again. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Not a bit.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

The kid shrugged. “Just turn him loose.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Gloucestershire. Anywhere.”

“Great,” muttered Michael.
“Born Free.”

“What?” The kid’s nose wrinkled.

“A movie. Before your time. Stop making me fee! old. Look, what happens if ol’ Bingo here …?”

“Dingo.”

“Dingo. What happens if his dope wears off before we make it to the wilds?”

Wilfred gave him a brief, impatient glance. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about that
now,
is there?”

He had no answer for that.

“Just settle back, mate. Look … look out there. There’s our green and pleasant land. You’re on holiday, remember?”

Michael bugged his eyes at the kid, then sank back in the seat. He flopped his head toward the window as an endless caravan of suburban back gardens flickered past in the rain. They gave way eventually to grimy Art Deco factories, random junkyards, mock-Tudor gas stations squatting grimly beneath flannel-gray skies.

“It’s clearing up,” said Wilfred.

Michael blinked at him, then looked out the window again. “When does it start getting quaint?”

The kid snorted. “You Americans and your bleedin’ quaint,” He paused a moment before asking: “Where will we stay in Gloucestershire?”

“Oh … I guess a bed-and-breakfast place. We’ll have to play it by ear.” Somehow, he liked the idea of that very much. He looked at Wilfred and smiled. “Got any ideas?”

The kid shook his head. “Never been there.”

“We may have to rent a car. It all depends on what that address means.”

“Right.”

“What about your father?” Michael asked.

“What about him?”

“Well … if he doesn’t come back, what will you do?” Wilfred tossed it off with a brittle laugh. “Same as before, mate.”

The landscape grew greener, more undulating. The train stopped at four or five little gingerbread stations before they reached Oxford, where they disembarked and waited for the train to Moreton-in-Marsh. They had coffee and sweet rolls in the station snack bar while a noisy downpour brutalized the neatly tended flowerbed adjacent to the platform.

On the next leg of the journey, they sat in silence for a long time as the train rumbled across the rain-blurred countryside. Dingo had begun to stir slightly, but not enough to attract attention. Wilfred cooed to him occasionally and stuffed pieces of ham sandwich into the air holes. The fox made grateful gulping sounds.

“What did your lover do?” the kid asked eventually.

Michael looked up from a guidebook on the Cotswolds. “For a living, you mean?”

Wilfred nodded.

“He was a doctor. On an ocean liner.” He smiled faintly. “He was a gynecologist when I met him.”

“Really?”

Michael nodded. “I’ve heard all the jokes.”

The kid smiled. “How long was he your lover?”

“That’s hard to say. I knew him for about seven years.”

“He didn’t live with you?”

“Sonic of the time. Not in the beginning, then we did, then we broke up. When we finally got back together, he had the job on the ship, so he wasn’t at home part of the time. That’s when we were happiest, I think. For ten days or three weeks or whatever, I would save up things to tell him when he got home.”

“What sort of things?”

“You know … dumb stuff. Items in the paper, things we both liked … or disagreed on. I hate Barbra Streisand but he loved her, so I became responsible for any Barbra trivia he might have missed when he was on the high seas. It was a terrible curse, but I did it.” He smiled. “I
still
do it.”

“Did you date other blokes when he was away?”

“Oh, sure. So did he. We didn’t sleep together anymore.”

“Why not?”

Michael shrugged. “The sex wore off. We were too much like brothers. It felt … incestuous.”

The kid frowned. “That’s too bad.”

“I don’t know. I think it freed us to love each other. We didn’t ask so much of each other anymore. We just got closer and closer. We had great sex with other people and great companionship with each other. It wasn’t what I had planned on, but it seemed to work better than anything else.”

Wilfred’s brow furrowed. “But … that’s not really a lover.”

“Oh, I know. And we made damn sure our boyfriends knew that, too. We’d say: ‘Jon’s just a friend…. Michael’s just my roommate…. We used to be lovers, but now we’re just friends.’ If you’ve ever been the third party in a situation like that, you know that the difference doesn’t mean diddlyshit. Those guys are
married
… and they’re always the last to know.”

“But
you
knew,” said Wilfred.

Michael nodded. “Toward the end. Yeah.”

“Then … that’s better than nothing.”

Michael smiled at him. “That’s better than everything.”

“Does your family know you’re bent?”

“Sure,” said Michael. “Jon and I went to visit them in Florida a few months before he got sick.” He grinned at the memory. “They liked him a lot—I knew they would—but God knows
what
they were envisioning between the two of us. That’s funny, isn’t it? They didn’t have a damn thing to worry about. I spent five years getting them used to the idea of me sleeping with men … only to bring them one I didn’t sleep with anymore.”

“Where did you meet him?” asked Wilfred.

“At a roller rink. We collided.”

“Really?”

“I got a nosebleed. He was so fucking gallant I couldn’t believe it.” He gazed out the window at two mouse-gray villages crouching in a green vale. “We went home to my place. Mona brought us breakfast in bed the next morning.”

“You mean … the one at Harrods.”

“Right. We were roommates at the time.” Several ragged scraps of blue had appeared above the distant hills. He felt a perverse little surge of optimism. “I hope you get to meet her. She’s not really … what was it you called her?”

“A twitzy-twee bitch?”

“Yeah. She’s not like that. She’s just a good, basic dyke.”

Wilfred looked skeptical.

“You’ll see,” said Michael. “I hope you will, anyway.”

When they arrived in Moreton-in-Marsh, the Stationmaster directed them to the village center, a former Roman road called Fosse Way. It was lined with buildings made of grayish-orange Cotswold limestone, tourist facilities mostly—china shops, map stores, tearooms. The one at the end, closest to the town hall, was a pub called the Black Bear. They found two empty seats in the corner of the smoky room.

“See a barmaid?” asked Michael.

“I think Doll is it.”

“Who?”

“Behind the bar, mate. The one with the eyeliner.”

“How do you know her name?”

Wilfred smiled smugly and pointed to a sign above the bar:
YOUR PROPRIETORS—DOLL AND FRED
. “Any more questions?”

“Yeah. What about … our little friend?” He pointed to Dingo’s box.

“Right. In a bit. How ‘bout a cider?”

“Perfect.”

While Wilfred was at the bar, Michael combed the titles on the jukebox and found Duran Duran and the Boystown Gang, San Francisco’s own gay-themed rock group. The global village was shrinking by the second. He returned to his seat and took refuge in a reverie about ancient inns and craggy wayfarers and Something Queer Afoot.

“Success.” Wilfred beamed, setting the ciders down.

“How so?”

“I asked ol’ Doll about Roughton in Easley-on-Hill.”

“And?”

“Well … Roughton is Lord Roughton, for one thing.”

Michael whistled.

“For another, the house is very grand … one of the grandest in the Cotswolds.”

Michael thought for a moment. “We can’t just walk up and ring the doorbell, I guess.”

The kid grinned mysteriously. “Not exactly.”

“Wilfred … don’t be coy.”

“I’m not. There’s a tour.”

“You mean … of the house?”

Wilfred nodded. “Takes us right there.”

“Then we could …”

“I’ve booked us on it. Tomorrow morning.” It was almost too good to be true. Michael shook his head in amazement.

“Was that wrong?” asked Wilfred.

“Are you kidding? It’s perfect. Did she say if there’s a place to stay?”

“Upstairs. They have rooms. The bus leaves here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Ten pounds for the two of us. That’s the tour, rather. The room is another eight pounds.”

Michael rose, feeling for his wallet. “I’d better …”

“It’s done, male.”

“Now, Wilfred …”

“You can pay for dinner. Sit down. Drink your cider.”

Michael obeyed, acknowledging the kid’s coup by lifting his mug.

Wilfred returned his salute, but remained deadpan. “I’m going to make someone a lovely husband.”

The skies had cleared completely by dusk. They walked to the edge of the village until they found a meadow bordered by a dense thicket of beech trees. Wilfred set Dingo’s box down with ceremonious dignity and untaped one end.

The fox emerged, looking slightly dazed, and stood perfectly still observing his captor.

“Go on,” said Wilfred. “Get out of here.”

The fox scampered several feet, wobbling somewhat. Then he stopped again.

“He doesn’t want to go,” said the kid.

“Yes he does. It’s just new to him.”

Dingo waited a moment longer, considered his options again, and bounded toward the shadowy freedom of the trees.

The Rock Widow Awaits

B
RIAN WAS SURE THE WEEKEND WOULD BE FATTENING,
so he made a point of running two extra miles on Saturday morning. On the way home, he stopped by the Russian Hill fire station and picked up one of the red-and-silver “Tot Finder” stickers he had seen in windows all over North Beach.

The sticker was designed to show firemen which window to break in order to rescue your child. There was a fireman on it, stalwart beyond belief, and he was holding a little girl in his arms.

Corny, maybe, but practical.

And not nearly so corny as the bumper slicker that Chip Hardesty had slapped on his Saab:
HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR CHILD TODAY
? That one drove him crazy every time he passed Hardesty’s house.

When he reached the courtyard, Mrs. Madrigal was scrubbing the mossy slime off the steps leading to the house. “It’s getting so slippery,” she explained, looking up. “I was afraid someone might have a nasty spill.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said.

She stood up, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ve got to worry about
something.
It’s so quiet around here. Doesn’t anyone have any problems?”

He grinned at her. “If you’re really pressed, I’m sure we could cook up a disaster or two.”

“That’s quite all right.” She eyed the “Tot Kinder” decal. “What have we here?”

“Oh.” He could already feel his face burning. “It’s just … kind of a joke, really.”