Chapter 7

Friday, August 29

“Louis Vuitton sucks. Four hundred dollars for an itsy-bitsy carry-on with somebody else’s weird initials all over it?”

“Then solve the problem. You desire luggage—”

“I can’t see flying to London with that wedding dress in my hand.”

“—You desire luggage which is out of the ordinary, cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s. What will you have?”

“Steamer trunks.”

He fell silent at once, and made one lap of the carpet. Two laps. Head absorbed in concentration, hands absorbed in pockets. “Ah. Too bulky. The airlines should cooperate for a fee, but I doubt they’ll cram into the limo. Being met at Heathrow by a lorry wouldn’t do at all.”

“Very small steamer trunks.”

“From what source?”

“We-Buy-Junk-We-Sell-Antiques shops.”

“Ah. Mold. Mildew. Dry rot. Fragile handles—” Harlan’s “fragile” rhymed with the river Nile. He pronounced it with infinite relish.

“Look,” I said, “old steamer trunks are what you call ‘collectibles.’ There’s like, this social stratum—of crafty women in California who make their entire income off restoring old steamer trunks, or antique dolls, or whatever. Strip, paint, shine the metal, new canvas, kill the bugs, new fancy paper, new handles—”

“Show me.”

“Okay, Missouri.” I didn’t think he got the reference.

———

I found one lousy lonely steamer trunk, big and gringy, like the hatchet murderer’d use to ship his victims. I said, “No thanks: just looking.” The man at the antiques galleria followed us around anyway. I could feel Harlan’s superior gaze. Modest. Attentive. Insufferable. Right through the back of my skull loud and clear.

But the man says, “I know what you want, and we aren’t it—” He’s digging out the phone book: good sign in this business, as I recognize already. “There is a shop—” He has it open. “—out in the Fillmore—” Visions of bay breeze and Italian stucco; meanwhile he’s cruising down the page. “—A shop called Pachyderm. Their entire business is restoring trunks.” Vindication is a very sweet commodity.

———

In the window: a white ceramic elephant, waist-high, potted cymbidiums blooming from its howdah. Against it: two elk hide portmanteaux the color of oyster bisque, perfect: loving hands put them away in tissue a hundred years ago. And on them, just casually, as if the owner tossed it at his bags, a Knights of Columbus cocked hat, splendid and blue-black, smothered in braid, gold couched work crosses and a froth of ostrich plumes.

Ms. Pachyderm is slim, modish, vague, intense, and cross-eyed. Human version of a Siamese cat. Whichever eye you choose to talk to, the other points over your shoulder. She has some vintage clothes as well as luggage, one tall ornate brass rack of them, labeled April 14, 1911. The question, of course: why? And Harlan makes the big mistake of asking.

“Oh,” she says, “that’s the date of the sinking.”

I can tell he’s headed for deep water. I head for the back of the shop. Trunks and trunks standing open, trunks of romance, trunks of mystery, trunks full of dreams.

“You mean you don’t know about Titanic Parties?”

One is coffin-shaped, and standing upright on the flat end, has a hanging locker to the left and drawers for nameless treasures on the right. Beside it is a gloriously handsome little trunk, its inside and its several trays done in rose-sprig paper, flyspecked just enough to be original.

“—Well, on the anniversary of the sinking, we charter a Bay Cruise ship, and everyone comes in 1911 outfits; there’s food and champagne and dancing all night, people who get really into it want period luggage so they can change from their deck clothes to their evening wear—”

Inside the high, bowed lid a label says,

Nathan Neat & Co.

Manufacturers, wholesale and retail Dealers

in the finest quality of

Trunks and Traveling Equipage

Saratoga trunks, Eugenie, Continental, Beach, Imperial, French,

Sole leather Portmanteaux, Sole leather valises,

Hat boxes, Extension bags,

Railroad, Mackintosh, Shopping,

In Russia, grain, seal,

and alligator leather

Trunks and bags repaired and made to order

at short notice.

It’s me this time. I want it. Nathan Neat indeed. I’d love to set him up with Joshua Sweet, on whom I laid my extra Belshangles ticket. Nathan Neat and Joshua Sweet’d make a classy pair of Rap MC’s. I’d love to order out one each of everything in Nathan Neat’s hundred-year-old catalog, all held together with alligator leather.

“—So popular,” she’s saying, “we’ve added another in November and tickets are left for that one—” (Harlan nods in all the right places but his eyes are beginning to glaze.) “—only fifty dollars, everything included; such a sensational fun value for these days—”

———

I took the coffin, Nathan Neat and the two portmanteaux from the window; Ms. Pachyderm looked quite disconsolate at the Titanic Party’s loss.

But Harlan broke her heart. He paid her price, and took away her cocked hat. Poor bare window: only its elephant and orchids left.

We belted the coffin in the passenger seat, Nathan Neat sat on the floor, the huge portmanteau eased into the boot (as Harlan called it), much newspaper safeguarding it from jack, lug wrench, and spare tire’s rage. I crammed myself behind the seats, hugging the smaller one. Harlan wore his Knights of Columbus hat. We Porsched home through fog and sun and other San Francisco traffic.

A bellhop helped us port our treasures: big tall girl in monkey-suit. Long gold hair. Then I checked the shoes. It was the same pretty guy who’d tried so hard to lavish Tom with almond tart. Harlan stopped digging for change, and glancing up sharply, gave him much the once-over he himself had received from Tim the Tailor.

“What’s your name?”

The boy shuffled and studied his feet, shyly as any sweet child. “Christopher.”

“Christopher what?”

“Grantham. Most people call me Chris.” Small hope raised his eyes.

“In which case, I shall call you Kit,” said Harlan (and owned him for life). “I need someone for errands—”

“Can’t sir, during hours—”

“My name’s Harlan. When are you off? Soon enough. Come in, I’ll give you money; here are the things I need—

“—now these you can have from a cleaners’ if you ask politely and offer to pay; the sewing thread should be of the following shades; this is from the market; and this—may have been sold. If not, lay it away and cash the second check. Should the bank give you difficulties, call me.”

———

So Harlan called Tom this time.

We’d been ransacking the hotel newsstand for hype on Rhymer’s Jig. Tom told him where to find the good stuff. Harlan wrote down titles and issues.

He lay on his back on the couch, telling stories that didn’t need ends, giving cryptic rebuttals to undecipherable questions. He giggled and sang. Tom’s part sounded just the same. Private accent, private grammar, private words.

Twin language.

Then Tom puts on some English for my benefit; Harlan leaves us privacy. Look at me: another poorly informed tourist, a stranger in their strange land.

Damn.

They don’t need anyone to leave them privacy, they secrete their own, like an octopus does ink.

And now I have a yet worse guilty conscience. I’ve written Tom’s London phone number in ball point pen on the palm of my hand while Harlan wasn’t looking.

“I take it you do like white leather?”

“Women who bought silk frocks didn’t do elastics.”

“So why didn’t she hand it to her dressmaker or her lady’s maid or something, if it’s such a treasure?”

“She could afford a new one.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“The elastics.”

The item in question was crinkled, yellowed, enormous in the waist as some old lady’s baggy underwear. Harlan found it in a basement Salvation Army Store by his usual method, running a light hand and a jaundiced eye down the shoulders of the garment racks.

The woman at the register was also old and yellow.

“Whazzat fabric? Ha? Whazzat? Zat silk! Ha!” She looked at the tag: $2.99, marked down to $1.99. “Those girls in back,” she said grimly, “they don’ know nothin’.”

I heard her, as we left, vigorously upbraiding the back room in whatever language they spoke.

“Elastics is all?”

“Wash it.”

“All the silk tags I see say dry clean only.”

Harlan gave his chin that haughty little tilt. “Do you believe everything you read? Washing old silk is a sensual experience. Run your hands through it. Cleanse it of its care. Think about the brown silk moths in their mulberry trees, and the summer moon in old China.”

Some of the stuff our new liveried retainer Kit was buying vanished, unopened and mysterious, into Harlan’s room. But a scary large amount of it was for me: packaged elastic in several widths, assorted needles, thread in off-white, beige, black, navy, midnight blue, pearl gray, and red—why those colors exactly? Plastic dry cleaner bags, vinyl drip-dry hangers, padded hangers, bottles of Ivory Liquid.

I hauled the crackly attenuated old elastic from its casing, using it as line to pull the new one in. I sewed it up. The old dress gained a whole new shape, all the sags and bags departed. I dumped it in the sink, as per instruction, with a shot of Ivory. The water turned dirty orange. About ten sinkfuls later, the silk had lightened to the color of dead skin. I hung it in the shower. It clung to itself and shivered.

“Shake it,” said Harlan.

“What?”

“The frock. Repeatedly. Until it dries. It reduces the necessity for ironing.” Like they say in the movies, I got a bad feeling about this.

But sometime in the night the silk faery came and made a changeling of my withered washee. The top is like a guy’s shirt now: cuffed sleeves, pearl buttons, breast pockets. Only the collar’s long, I can make a small tie of it or let it flow down smoothly on the breast. Then the nipped-in waist with loops for a tiny belt. Kathryn Hepburn could have worn this dress. The skirt’s a half circle (like the one Tim’s making) that shimmers and glimmers around my legs and swings and clings, curls and swirls, shines and twines—Lauren Bacall could have worn this dress. And maybe she did.

———

Tim has the skirt of the wedding dress deployed like a parachute, engulfing his upstairs worktable. Stacked around, all over everywhere like giant communion wafers, are circles or discs of white kid leather. About 2½ inches in diameter, fine, thin, flexible, rich, alive to touch.

Here I stand, with my little bag of silk stuff that wants mending and pearl buttons, wondering where the merchants live who deal in magic leather. Are they more good friends, and all Tim has to do is call and they deliver? Have they died too, and left it to him? Wondering how Tim cut the piles of discs so cleanly and so round; how long it’d taken him to do it. He must sit up all night at home, working on my stuff.

I wonder where home is.

A house within walking distance. Inhabited by him and four boys. I’ve heard its genial uproar on the phone; I’ve never seen the house. I haven’t been invited. Haven’t spied on Harlan’s every move, but I don’t think he’s been invited either. Would he be invited if I wasn’t here?

I’ve seen the boys, one at a time.

Cody’s a motorcycle mechanic. Cute cute cute.

Danny’s going to California Culinary Academy and trails this wonderful aura of onions, garlic, lemon, and sweet basil behind him. Makes me drool whenever he walks in.

Neil. There’s a priceless one. Neil wears the surplus of several armies, lots of pockets pulled wrong-side-out into flapping tongues, a yellow shower cap with a big pink button asking “What’s Innuendo??” and answering (fine print underneath) “Up your ass in Italian!” and condom packets on earring wires in both ears.

That’s a game I know well: Cut-Rate Hideous, your most outrage for your least outlay. The kid is obviously with some rude boy band. Bet I could even guess the name of it.

Richard is a bank clerk and dresses as straight as the Golden Rule.

Tim calls all of them “son” and “dear,” but they aren’t his sons. Or are they? They aren’t all his lovers. Are they? What’s he keeping? A boarding house? A harem? A sanctuary for rare and endangered youth?

“Yes,” I said, “I do like white leather. Very much.”

He’d turned the hem outward by an inch and a quarter, flattening and distributing the extra cloth along the curve. Over it went the leather disks, tangent to each other and the finished edge. The raw edge vanished. Then in all the valleys, as if they’d sifted down, a rain of precious hailstones, lodging in every depression between the white leather moons, went the pearls.

“There. Now that’s how it’s going to look.”

He had the partly finished top already on a hanger in a bare closet. The remnant silk lay carefully re-rolled, enthroned in imperial darkness on the shelf above.

“I was reading in a paper,” I said, “where this—like, soap opera heroine? —got married in Texas; it took four people three whole months to sew the seed pearls on her dress. Now, I hope that I don’t have three months.”

“Larger pearls,” said Tim.

“More people?” queried Harlan.

“Smaller people.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Tim had enlisted the services of a seamstress, or rather, seamstresses to sew them on: a tiny smiling Thai woman, Lourdes Ng, and her daughters. She spoke no English but introduced them anyway: Lorette, Salette, and Fatima. The Pearl Ladies.

“I do hope she’s not past the age of childbearing,” Harlan whispered in my ear. “I can hardly wait for Garabandal.”

“And Medjugorje,” I whispered back. We shared a good long giggle over that.

Religiously as any surgeon, Tim washed his hands, then spread the long silk semicircle on the cutting table. “I want to do the leather part by machine, and I’ll do it myself.” He’d hefted a portable from another room. Now he positioned it and eased the silk hem into its metal jaw. Gently, he immobilized the discs with hairdresser’s tape. “Stronger tape’ll mar the surface; no pins for the same reason. Can’t re-stitch or alter anything, so—we’ll just have to do it right the first time.” With a tiny regular stitch, he edge-sewed the first disc: from its left, where it covered the raw edge of the silk, in a right-hand arc across its top; then he smoothly pivoted the cloth, punched “reverse,” and sewed the bottom sector backward, arriving where he began.

I understood, intellectually, what he’d done, sewed a full circle without screwing the silk full circle through the machine. Skill of that kind leaves me cowed and speechless. All sewing machines hate me on sight. Needles shatter, bobbins jam. Gordian knots form in their insides.

Tim broke his threads and positioned the second disc. Then the third. After about the sixth, he washed up again.

I saw Harlan absorbed in working with him, easing and expediting the flow of cloth into the master’s hands, deftly as an apprentice of many years.

Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be mine?

Thou shalt not wash the dishes or else feed the swine,

But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,

And feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream—

My inner voice and I are not always on speaking terms. I got out, quick, through French doors at the back of the shop, onto the sun deck (tar and gravel inside a solid wooden parapet). I was now on top of Valerie’s apartment with my dumb plastic sack of mending.

She was still singing in her kitchen down below.

A giant eucalyptus overshadowed me, dropping shreds of bronzy bark, green sickle leaves, drifts of bloom and woody seed pods onto gravel, a few dusty metal chairs, and a chaise. Big redwood planters filled the corners, man-high jade plants thriving in them. Next to the sunnier one was a cardboard carton with an arch scissored in its side.

Somebody’d taken felt pens and written in a rainbow round the arch the name “Shadrach.” From the arch, the front end of a large land tortoise eyed me placidly.

My inner voice, completely unrepentant for “Curly Locks, Curly Locks,” sang “O-o-oh, they all walked around in the fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego-o—”

The boook of Daniel’s “three children in the furnace,” walking up and down and singing praise, with that shadowy fourth, “like an angel to God” to keep them company. Add the bass line to their harmony. Keep them from burning up. I think all the grown-up children of this town are walking in the furnace, with no asbestos angel anywhere.

Shadrach rose high on his legs and surged to meet me, sedately grand, a miniature colossus. He solemnly checked each Eucalyptus dropping in his path, ending with the toes of my shoes. The eyes that looked up into mine were gold as Harlan’s. Oh, look out. Suddenly there’s no place safe from Beauty Incarnate.

I said, “Hold it right there,” to Shadrach, dumped my mending, zipped in, across the room, and down the banister, averting eyes from Harlan and all his works.

Old city houses have kitchens like ships’ galleys, narrow, wooden, and dark. Valerie’s isn’t hard to find. Just follow the Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Sure enough, right above the sink is an antique picture of the Sacred Heart, one of the disembodied kind the New Church banned as heresy. You wouldn’t expect her to pay much heed to that.

Mama had its double—flaming with love made visible, rose-wreathed, wound with thorns and dripping blood, in sweet, faded nun’s embroidery on padded silk—stuck behind our own front door at home. Where we’d have to deal with it going out, but visitors wouldn’t have to coming in. It always fascinated me, even before I knew it was anything radical. I remember being very small and asking, “Is that a heart wrapped in barb wire?” Mama said, “Yes.”

“’Scuse me, Mrs. Lagomarsino, who feeds the tortoise?”

Took her a moment to catch up. Then she turned this most amazing smile on me, big, silly, sloppy-loving as a dog. “Why dear,” she said, “you do!”

She fixed me up a blue and white bowl full of lettuce and tomato. I knew exactly now why old Tim hired her.

Saturday, August 30

“Well, it is fun,” I conceded. Ms. Pachyderm and her Titanic parties filtered uneasily through my mind.

Harlan nodded sagely.

White silk isn’t white.

It’s beeswax color: new wax comb nothing’s been laid in, no brown honey, no orange pollen, no white bee-grubs.

They used to melt that virgin wax for church candles.

Candles the color of white silk. Work of insects, both: the bee queen’s nursery, the caterpillar’s shroud. They have to kill the worms to get the silk off. Wax and silk and candlelight, all the same magical-mystery color. (Don’t look now, I think I’m being seduced.)

Some thrift shops harangue and flirt and giggle in Spanish. Some buzz Vietnamese. Some operate on Island time, weighty, bright colored and Samoan slow, while some are witty black as Africa. Some keep the books in Tagalog. Some hire the handicapped. And their wares? Oh. Just everything, from K-Martian ticky-tack to Paris originals. Come in, friend, and see if you can tell the difference.

And add to those the tribe of vintage clothes shopkeepers and the flea market and antique show gypsies with the wonderful shady gauderies they buy and sell, you have the whole City of Man on parade. Parade, nothing! For sale! Come by, come try, come buy! Tim’s old Charlie, the vintage clothes guy, must have enjoyed one incredible fun life while it lasted.

I don’t just think I’m being seduced, I know. Like an insect victim with one or two more seconds of thrash left, before the spider poison gets me.

“However,” I said. “However, there is something still just basically, morally unsatisfactory about spending all day every day shining myself and playing games.”

He looked perfectly shocked. “Humankind was designed and placed here for the express purpose of playing games! The fate of the universe hangs upon how well we do it! Holy Wisdom—” he waved a finger at me, “‘Holy Wisdom says:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways,

before he had made anything from the beginning—

I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day,

playing before Him at all times;

Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men—

So the Devil can quote scripture.

I surveyed myself in the mirror again, full length front, back, and side, in my latest vintage clothes shop treasure, bought with wild excitement, washed and pressed and mended with endless loving care at Tim’s this morning. A midnight blue silk ’30s dress, a print of small gold clockwork spangled over it like innards of a watch.

“No, this is absurd. I look like shit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I can see.”

“Thomas is a lover of beauty, and I mean a lover, not a critic. His taste in human flesh is kindly (as he is), and eclectic, but excellently high. Thomas doesn’t bed ugly people. And, since he is, first and last, a slippery bugger, ugly people don’t bed him—”

Feeling more and more bitterly at risk, I sneered. “Not even the rich ones?”

“The rich are seldom ugly. No, I assure you, keeping close check on Thomas’s activities yields an almost frighteningly formidable catalog of human beauty. In which your own is, to date, the latest entry—

“If your self-evaluation is so lacking, shouldn’t you honor his? You’re built like a thoroughbred filly; most all Thomas’s women are. You could do high-fashion modeling. In an era capable of fueling its fantasy on Princess Stephanie of Monaco, you could rule the school. There is nothing wrong with your looks: you just weren’t properly brought up, that’s all.”

What I wanted, what I wanted very badly, was to punch him in the mouth. “I was very well brought up; I was raised to use my head!”

“Ah,” he said, “That is exactly how you look. And I do understand: for so was I. Fortunately, such things are—not past remedy. Every mutually agreeable bargain wants a buyer and a seller, hmm? Buyer says ‘Here’s my cold cash, serve me one of those.’ Seller strikes a pose and says ‘If you want my services, bid high.’ And you do want your services to be required, don’t you? Buyer sees, and makes advances, seller advertises, and, when the desired offer is received, accepts. With grace. You’ve been taught so far to see, and make advances—”

“‘Worked, hasn’t it?”

“Granted. But now you intend to marry—”

“Have married,” I put in.

“—You are marrying—” He paused to check my expression.

I nodded. “Better.”

“—What is known in the common parlance as a Rock-and-Roll Star. You are about to be seen.”

“Look,” I said. “I told you, I’m the kid whose blouse was always out of her skirt and whose socks came down, but I was a great two-miler. There’s only so much you can do.”

“You’re the kid married to Thomas.”

“Well maybe I shouldn’t be married to him! Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No. I’m asking what he saw in you.”

“I don’t know!”

“Think!”

“Whatever it was, I’d better not mess with it, had I?”

“Ah. Which you are in constant proximate danger of doing, just as long as you don’t know what it was. In order to defend, you must evaluate—”

“There’s bound to be more to self defense than learning to keep your clothes straight!”

“Quite possibly so, and when we’ve accomplished the matter of the clothes, we’ll turn our investigations in that direction, but—”

“Clothes first?”

“Clothes first. Well, who ever told you there was anything wrong with ‘shining’ yourself? It’s only the most human and humane of pastimes, even for the sanctified: one of the Fathers (Bernard, I think) said, ‘You wouldn’t want a Bride of Christ to be dull?’ Games are the stuff of life.

“Oh, and you do play them; only the name of yours is ‘Unobserved Observer,’ while I say: in order to observe, or know to the full, one must oneself be known, seen, observed. Choose your term. You’ve loaded all the world’s glamour onto poor Thomas and kept none for yourself, a form of self-denigration he’d be the last to ask for or approve. You’ll have to stop it soon; you’ll make him dreadfully uncomfortable, and you don’t want that. You want the Parr Short Course on Grace and Advertising. Let’s have a look at you.”

I stumped around in a blind fury.

“Ah,” he said, “problem. You need shoes.”

“I have shoes.”

“Heels.”

“I can’t wear heels.”

“Why not? Have you trouble with weak ankles?”

“Certainly not!”

“The paper-thin flats young stylists are affecting, aside from enriching the shoe men by being unrepairable, are nothing in origin but witless imitation of our Princess Diana, who has, after all, extraordinary reasons for wearing them. Standing taller than one’s mate ain’t politic, when one’s mate is the future King of England. But you are not five-foot-ten, and Thomas (thank God) is not the Prince of Wales. You should dress in two-inch heels. They convey authority.”

“Bullshit! They convey sore feet!” Going barefoot always was my mode of choice. After that came the best running shoes I could torque my near-and-dear into buying for me, and after that, the cheapest canvas tennies going: good honest things according to their kind.

But force me to look civil, it was paper-thin flats, and even those worn in—to the point of worn out—before they felt acceptable. Princess Diana never entered the picture. And I kept on wearing them, till mere fragments of sole remained between my grubby little toes and the pavement and the uppers looked like spats.

He practically bum’s-rushed me to a dancer’s supply store. “There,” he said. “Sturdy, sensible, old-fashioned, wicked all at once: athletic gear for medalists of stage, boudoir, and silver screen: a genuine, authentic pair of Fuck Me Pumps.”

Character shoes. Tap shoes minus the taps. Suggestively displayed on a Lucite shelf shaped like a grand piano, with blue sequin shorts, a top hat, and a telescoping cane. I would gladly have killed him. He had the shop girl snickering already.

“How many pairs of her size have you? In the white, that is?” They came in black, white, and tan. Harlan took one pair each of the blacks and tans, and all four whites. “Three white pairs we’ll have dyed. One red, one blue, one—you name it?”

“Lavender,” I said.

“Lavender it is.”

“I really don’t care what color you have ’em dyed, I don’t intend to wear ’em anyway.”

“I think you will.”

“Nobody makes you run around in heels!”

“Perhaps not, but I can. Thomas is quite elegant in them.”

Feeling almost unendurably spiteful, I said, “Just too slow to catch the boys, huh?” God, what a mistake.

“You don’t understand. Thomas doesn’t chase ‘boys.’ Thomas chases girls. ‘Boys’ chase Thomas.”

“Do they catch him?”

I got an amused look out from under that mass of hair. Just a trifle mocking. “Well that depends, doesn’t it, on whether or not he runs—”

“Does he?”

“—And how fast.”

“Does he?”

“More often than not.”

“Not in stupid uncomfortable old heels!”

The sales girl had come back with all the boxes.

“What’s the largest size in these?” asked Harlan.

“We have tens, I know.”

Harlan had his sock foot on the measuring gadget. Dumb girl was giggling up a storm now. “Good heavens, tiny feet! That’s a ladies’ nine and a half! (giggle giggle giggle).”

“In the black, please,” he said. And when she’d gone, “I’ll wear them just as long as you will. Is it a wager?”

Damn. His shoes were a full size bigger than mine. So why should they seem so small? How, in fact, did he get off seeming small? He was exactly the same height as I was. Exactly. And he got off being this elegant little creature. He didn’t have to wear panty hose: he had plain masculine socks, little tweedy ones that bagged around his ankles. They looked just darling. I saw no justice in that.

I longed to promenade him by some flock of Japanese tourists with their cameras out. So fixated on his shoes, I hardly noticed my own: only the sound we made together coming briskly up the sidewalk: clop-clip, clip-clop, like the two ends of a horse. Fairly sharp thoughts I had, too, about which end was which. I wondered if there’d ever been such a phrase (or such a concept) as an “homme fatal.”

It was his face. Nothing human deserves a face like Harlan’s—not the perks or the burdens of it, either one.

Women with beauty like Harlan’s warm the beds of princes and tycoons and presidents; their faces hog the covers of the magazines. People want to know the last small thing about them, how they live and love, and how they die. And if they drug or drink themselves to death, if their lovers bash or their husbands divorce them, when they get fat or go crazy and die young, well, everybody’s interested, but not too very much surprised. It had to be paid for someway. People are obsessed, fascinated, and scared as hell of a woman with looks like Harlan’s.

But what about a man?

I knew this guy at school who kept a poster of The Doors’ Jim Morrison on his wall. He said, “I thought I was an atheist, but whenever I look at him, I’m not so sure—”

Morrison was the ultimate Black Romantic, all doom and gloom, but, supposing you don’t fall for it completely, just a hair—(Say it in a whisper) stodgy. Even before he wasted it. Harlan had it over poor Jim Morrison every way. And he was anything but wasted. Drugged out, at one time, he may have been (I wasn’t sure I understood that, even now): his face was still a museum piece of ivory and ebony and gold inlay, a treasure out of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Perfect preservation.

Damn his eyes.

The rest of the day I spent sneaking my own eyes shut, times when it didn’t matter, pretending I was blind. Wondering how it would be simply to enjoy Harlan’s company. Wondering how it had been growing up inside his face. He couldn’t’ve ever spoken with a person, male or female, not for a minute—before he’d see their eyes begin to slide around his face like melted butter.

And my husband said the rest of him matched it.

———

We spent the afternoon on Polk street, the place to go for bootleg music. Whenever a shop gets busted, a better one takes its place. Where we went had the good stuff individually priced in racks up front. After it sat there long enough, it was half-priced in boxes underneath. The truly high mileage crud was banished at a buck an album to the back room and finally, tied in newsprint, forty or fifty to a bundle, was disposed of, ten bucks each, as “Mystery Mounds.”

But with the really, really interesting stuff, only the cover was in the rack: you asked for the vinyl at the desk.

Young guy behind the desk was the kind who couldn’t stand still very well, and practiced drum riffs on everything. So Harlan found himself a Belshangles bootleg, Hard On Belshangles, plain white jacket with the oddest contents list you ever saw, 129 of a limited 500 edition, on clear orange vinyl. And he wanted to write a check.

“Could I see your driver’s license, please?” Then the guy saw the license. Then he saw Harlan. Unlike Tom, all he had to do was tack his hair back: nobody knew him. But today he had his shades on, and his hair was looser than Medusa’s.

Holy shit.

Oh my God.

Could I take you to lunch?

The Hot Szechwan place next door was closed for the lull between lunch and dinner, but he hauled us in there anyway. Food began appearing. A whispered word, a phone call, and weirdo music guys began appearing too, like so many dwarves on Bilbo Baggins’s doorstep. They spent the rest of the afternoon enthralled, listening to Harlan pontificate. And he could do it for hours without telling anybody anything.

Food came in three speeds, brewed mild for American taste, hot, and lethal. I went for lethal, as usual (as did Harlan), and had the usual disappointment. “Lethal” was only mildly warm. “I wish,” I whispered in his ear, “like just once, somebody’d lead me to something that’s genuinely too hot.”

Harlan turned on me that long, warm, gold-eyed look that can raise your internal body temp from the center out, like microwaves.

“I meant food!”

The look broke down under pressure of a grin. He whispered, “Okay, Missouri.”

When the restaurant should be opening for dinner, and everyone was full of Princess Beef and Kung Pao Chicken, and the guys were mostly full of Tsing Tao, Harlan slithered away amid loving farewells.

He had all their phone numbers. Nobody had his.

Down the street, at a lingerie shop, he found what he’d looked for elsewhere, China silk-knit panty hose, brand-named archly (but not inappropriately) “Queen’s Wear.” They were twenty bucks a pair, and came in twelve colors. Harlan calmly bought me all twelve colors, three pairs each. $720 plus tax.

I was flabbergasted.

They also had silk-knit bikini briefs from China.

Harlan, again, prepared to go for all the colors.

I said, “Wait a minute, I happen to prefer white pants.” (Scared too many times by a hemorrhage of paisleys.) So white was what I got.

They had all sorts of frisky stuff for guys, this being Polk Street. Silk knit briefs cut for the male crotch, black satin briefs with studs. And the most obnoxious joker jockstraps of pink satin; the pouch for the balls was an elephant face, complete with button eyes and ostrich-fluff forelock, and a quite unnecessarily large satin tube trunk poking out in front.

Harlan bought something for himself. I didn’t want to know. I stayed as far away as possible. I mean, what if it was one of those elephants?

And it could have been a giggle meant for Tom.

Sunday, August 31 11:00 AM

We motored down to Palo Alto and sang with the Saint Ann’s Choir.

Marc Swann is a professor of early music. Marc Swann is also my godfather. He has directed Saint Ann’s choir since before I was born. The choir rehearses an hour before Mass.

MARC: “What part do you sing?”

HARLAN: (meekly) “All of them.”

MARC: “Soprano?” That got a big laugh from everybody. Marc put him on tenor. He sang it, sweet and clear. He sight-read perfectly.

MARC: “What about bass?” He had three tenors, and only himself on bass. Harlan switched. His bass was accurate but unexceptional. Marc squinted and glowered at him: you could see that Harlan had him just intrigued as hell. Next motet, he said, “Okay, alto.”

Harlan’s alto was a natural extension of his tenor, full, rich, and loud. The rest of the women sounded like breathy kids.

“All right! Soprano!”

Out came this glorious blazing falsetto. Nobody was audible but him.

Marc said, “Where did you study?”

“King’s College Chapel Choir. Cambridge.”

“Oh.”

Harlan sang bass with Marc, neat, straight, I almost said to myself “inconspicuous.” Hardly the word for him. Every woman, girl, female whatever in the place cozied up to me in turn, goggling and gushing.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Ooooo, he’s wu-uhnderful!”

“That’s Harlan Parr? The rock star?”

Pray harder, and field his compliments for him. Try to keep my teeth from showing. Pray for insight. Some Holy Wisdom from the Mass to help me keep my shit together.

When you are invited by someone to a wedding party, do not sit in the place of honor in case some greater dignitary has been invited. Then the host might come and say to you, ‘Make room for this man,’ and you would have to proceed shamefacedly to the lowest place—

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

I got out. Just cruised out the side door at the homily, and lay on the sunny lawn between the chapel and Newman House. My pain in the gut was there in force. I felt queasy, bloated, and weird. Infected. And it wasn’t all in my head: things were noticeably swollen out; I could feel it with my hands. Maybe I’d lie here till the Mass was over. When my parents found me, I’d say I was sick.

Shadow fell across my face. The pastor’s big gold furball of a collie came, panting solicitous dog breath, darkening the sun. When he started to drool in my eye, I retreated to the house. Harlan found me.

Harlan asked me no questions, I told him no lies. He took me away instead, and fed me jalapeno fettuccini. I scarfed it down embarrassingly fast, seeing as it wasn’t my first square meal in weeks. Gut pain still with me.

Well, I could be getting my period. How about that?

Quick hike to the ladies’ room. Nothing.

On to the thrift shops.

Silk blouses.

Oh wow. Some kid’s junior ROTC Marine’s dress jacket. It fit me perfectly. Midnight blue with red piping, brass buttons, and epaulets. Stick daisies in the epaulets, I’d look like Sergeant Pepper. Get myself a jarhead haircut, I’d look like a Marine. A very small Marine.

It also fit Harlan. He didn’t look like a Marine.

I am the Monarch of the Sea,

(my inner voice suggested)

The Ruler of the Queen’s Navee,

Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants—

I went and found myself an item he couldn’t wear: a shirtwaist frock in Thai silk, very proper with a self belt and self buttons, blue and white all over pattern like Tim the Tailor’s Chinese dishes.

I took that back, and he said “God, no. Sorry, but it’s strictly Princess Margaret.”

Princess Margaret is known to have a penchant for rock stars. Going off to the Caribbean with ’em. Shit. Harlan might know Princess Margaret. I wondered how well.

———

Sunday night dinner.

I ate, and didn’t hear what was said to me. Everyone who knew my family must have been there. They pushed the two long tables together and had to bring another from outside. People were eating off their laps in the living room. Every damn Stanford musicology student came to hear Harlan hold court: those intellectual Ph.D-bound women especially, simpering and dangling on his every word.

I got my Choosing the Wrong Side glass full of milk, and went off.

Mama has a little bookcase by her side of the bed, all favorite stuff, some of it kid stuff, like Milne’s Now We Are Six. Something in there I’d wanted to remember, about dressing a bride.

Here. A poem called “Shoes and Stockings.” I got to the part about all the old wives “weaving gold stockings for her dainty feet,” and put the book back where I’d found it.

Unreal. Totally. My feet are very practical, nothing dainty about my feet. And as of yesterday I am the owner of enough Polk-Street silk pantyhose to last for life.

You can’t mend anything with sugar frosting. Nothing quite so unpredictable as anchoring one’s whole world view to half-remembered poetry. And I wanted cosmic glue so very badly.

Finish the milk. Back to the bookcase.

Now here was input of a different kind, The Lost Books of Eden. Hokey title, but the contents aren’t: all the early church stuff that didn’t quite make it into the Bible. Here was the Gospel of Mary, and the Protevangelion, with the stories about Saint Joachim and Saint Ann.

I did the random access trick. Close eyes, open page, finger in the middle, smack.

What I wanted—was where Joachim met Anna in the city gate, and they kissed (so nothing would fall, like the song says), and both lived (like the other song says) happy ever after in the marketplace. And that’s not the way to do it, need I say; you can’t go looking for what you want, only for what’s there:

—At this Anna was exceedingly troubled, and

having on her wedding garment, went about

three o’clock in the afternoon to walk

in her garden.

And she saw a laurel-tree, and sat under it

and prayed unto the Lord—

And as she was looking toward heaven she

perceived a sparrow’s nest in the laurel.

And mourning within herself, she said “Woe is me,

who begat me? And what womb did bear me that I

should be thus accursed before the children of

Israel and that they should reproach and deride

me in the temple of my God: Woe is me, to what

can I be compared?

I am not comparable to the very beasts of the

earth, for even the beasts of the earth are

fruitful before thee O Lord! Woe is me, to

what can I be compared?

I am not comparable to the brute animals, for

even the brute animals are fruitful before thee,

O Lord! Woe is me, to what am I comparable?

I cannot be compared to the waters, for even

the waters are fruitful before thee, O Lord!

Woe is me, to what can I be compared?

I am not comparable to the waves of the sea,

for these, whether they are calm or in motion

with the fishes which are in them praise thee,

O Lord! Woe is me, to what can I be compared?

I am not comparable to the very earth, for

the earth produces its fruit and praises thee—

I roosted on the edge of my parents’ bed (which Papa regularly told me not to do for eighteen years because it breaks the mattress down) and cried in the dim bedroom.

Both my wedding garments are hanging in a gay tailor’s shop in San Francisco. It’s nine o’clock at night. I don’t have a sparrow’s nest. I don’t even have a laurel tree.

Papa, instincts firing on all cylinders as usual, came looking for me and told me to get off the edge of his bed.

I got into the middle. Still, what a ride I was embarked on. Not the product of my own imagination this time, but, as A.G. Bell said when he produced the telephone, “What God Hath Wrought.” I am an observant flotsam in the fierce throes of reality. Praying like crazy, Lord: that I may see. Lord: that I may see.

And while You’re at it, heal me. Please.

Papa stuck his head back in. “What nationality did you say he was?”

“Who?”

The head jerked toward the laughter in the dining room.

“I’ve carpeted this place with fan mags for six, almost seven years, and you haven’t got that much by osmosis?”

“Not required. It’s fairly obvious.”

“What?”

“Spanish aristocrat. I went to Berkeley with a couple of brothers like that.”

“Nope. Wrong.”

“What d’ya mean ‘Wrong’?”

“He’s half English, half Arabic.”

“Well? Doesn’t that about describe what I said?”

My mind strayed momentarily down the genealogy of Spanish princes, Northman and Saracen bred into one, like the night of southern climes and starry skies, with all the best of dark and light met in their hair and in their eyes.

PAPA: (unflapped) “So which side are the nobility on?”

“The Arabs, I think.” Horribly sober thought: the English might be as well; Parr is a super old name, after all. Like Catherine Parr, the wife who outlived Henry VIII.

“You sure you married the right one?” said Papa.

Monday, September 1

“This,” he said, standing in the middle of the living room carpet in the hotel suite, graphite bass in hand, “was the basic movement of the minuet. I trust you’ve done some dance?”

I’d have to lie to say no.

“Levé—French for ‘up’, a step on tiptoe—Plié—”

“French for ‘squat’?”

Didn’t quite break him up. His face shimmered, but stayed straight. “Relevé—up again, and stand. Up, down, up, stand—” All the while he’s holding that bass and circling the carpet slowly to the left. Freaking eighteenth century must have had the strongest thighs in history.

Levé, plié, relevé, stand,

Levé, plié, relevé, stand—

The bass began to speak in rhythm:

Dum di-dum-dum

Dum dah—

Dum di-dum-dum

Dah—

“Also familiar, I trust?”

Not the minuet for sure, any more than this is Kansas.

It was the bass to “Holy Names.”

“Holy Names” was off the Sundog album. All it said on the lyrics was, “Since the Names of the Almighty are infinite, no one knows them all.”

Even wordless, it was several shades more exotic-erotic than “Calling Sister Midnight” or Led Zep’s old “Cashmere.” Even with the amps down, “Holy Names” should be meaner than Ravel’s “Bolero.” We’ve been playing electric rock for two weeks in this hotel room; either they’ve got totally great insulation, or total indulgence with the rich and famous.

It’s the first Belshangles piece he’s chosen. No excuses, I’ve survived the rest, he has me cornered. He hands me the bass, and settles into the Morocco strap of his electric Oud.

One-and-ah Two-and

(Rest) and Four (and)

One-and-ah Two-and

Three (and-rest-and)

step left, behind, left, point—

right, behind, right, and point—

My knees shook. My pelvis gritted. Round and round we went, rhythmic follow the leader, like the old camp game Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Like the old joke: “Know what happens if I unscrew your belly button? Your ass falls off!” My belly button’s not just loose, it’s gone. All my insides, from the ribs down, are gonna drop out on the floor.

My friend Mimi was a volunteer, answering phones for the VD Hotline. Said some guy called in and told her he had things dropping out of his rear, like grains of rice, only they wriggled. He was scared to death.

“So what did’ya tell him?”

“I told him he didn’t have VD.”

“You dummy! The poor guy had a tapeworm! Those were tapeworm sections! You mean you didn’t recognize he had a freaking tapeworm? You got his number? Call him back!”

Maybe I have a tapeworm.

Keep the beat. Keep the spare, bony faith:

One, ( ), ( ), and-Four,

One, ( ), Three, ( ),

For Harlan’s guitar line to wind in and out of, purr and rub its sides against in endless orgasmic variation: cough and moan, wheedle and hyperventilate like a tigress in heat.

I hurt all day.

———

“What say,” said Tim, “we lower the V back.”

“It’s down to my shoulder blades already.” Tim and Harlan, side by side, no response. “Any further and I can’t wear a bra!”

“Pardon my ignorance: why should you?”

“Cause I look like a fourteen-year-old guy if I don’t.”

Tim and Harlan, side by side, fixated on my chest in thoughtful silence. “Slip the bra from under that and show me,” said Tim. “You can do it in the next room.”

“This silk’s got show-through places.”

“Mmm,” said Harlan.

Tim said, “Clever, those Chinese.”

Next room, hell. It’s full of giggling Pearl Ladies. Downstairs I go, to the claustrophobic bathroom.

The bathroom is full of Thai food memories: “Garlic,” says Tim. “Fish sauce. Call it by its rightful name: Nam pla! We eat it and thrive, we also wash it off.” After their meals, he washes his Pearl Ladies’ fingers personally. By now that sink has a Nam Pla ring.

Jettison the useless little bra. Slip the unfinished top back on. What an amazing thing it is already: elegant, priceless, and funny all at once, not the least bit like my old dress. Tim’s security works; it doesn’t smell like Nam Pla. It smells like Sam Wah’s treasure room. Like Harlan, only older.

Harlan’s taste.

Me and mine getting all made over to Harlan’s taste. I want to scream and fling it, like a spider I’ve picked up by mistake. Yet what a flaming hypocrite I am. I’m head over heels in love with Harlan’s taste, always have been.

How much of Belshangles was Harlan’s taste?

How much of Tom was Harlan’s taste?

Harlan’s taste infected and infested everything he touched. Rare luxury, cheap luxury, found luxury, hard-won luxury, awesome luxury, funny-as-hell luxury, exquisite and down-at-the heel dirt-comfortable luxury sprouted around him like a garden of delights.

I started out of the bathroom, leaving the bra on the floor, and heard Tim’s voice above say, “I still have the sense I’m missing something.”

“Oh, assuredly.”

“It isn’t a joke?”

If Harlan said anything, I couldn’t hear.

Tim persisted. “He is marrying this child? I’d hate to butcher Sam Wah’s silk and find the whole thing wasn’t on the up-and-up.”

“As up-and-up as Thomas gets.”

“If you don’t mind my asking: Why, O Wise Effendi?”

And that would be the question, wouldn’t it? The very thing I wanted most to know.

And sure as I was that Harlan knew, I was even surer that I didn’t want to hear it. Scared to, scared to, scared to! The bathroom was suddenly unbearable. I was going to get sick. In the top half of my wedding dress. I pounded up the stairs to sunlight and fresh air. I made as much noise as possible.

Tim and Harlan. Side by side in grave inspection as I spun slowly before them, a jeweled Imperial treasure above the waist, Levi’s below. “Hormones and silicone away from any boy I know,” said Tim.

“I know.”

“‘If you can’t hide it, decorate it!’ Corollary Two of Tim’s law: ‘If the truth hurts, wear it.’”

Harlan choked on his piroshki.

Tim had me stand facing from him, while his big bright shears took another three inches off the back neckline.

———

I had a dream that night about the hem of my dress. The white leather discs became all the full moons of summer inherent in the dragon’s blessing; the pearls, an August meteor swarm of strange sky wealth sifting down among them.

Tuesday, September 2

My Harlan problem, I decided, was a guilty conscience. I took him to the beach, across the Golden Gate and out to the headlands of Marin through windy green valleys like the Braes of Scotland. We stopped at Rouge et Noire for a Brie, a French bread, and a bottle of Chardonnay.

Drake’s beach. Long, straight, almost empty on a weekday afternoon. Behind us, the chalky bluffs that had made Drake homesick for the cliffs of Dover. In front, a mile or two across a placid sea, the fog bank lurked. In the narrow sea alley between fog and surf commercial salmon boats tended their wet business, back and forth. A queue of gulls screamed hopefully after each.

Harlan drank most of the wine and was going on about the press and countermeasures (a favorite topic). Things I Needed to Learn. He was quite emphatic with his bread and cheese.

“—So when they enquired about sexual matters, you see, I merely said, ‘I sleep with my guitar.’”

“Plugged in.”

“Exactly. (You’ve done your homework.) Noncommittal, you see, but memorable. Put them off, but give them some tidbit for the daily column. A technique to be mastered early.

“Actually some time elapsed before one of them had presence of mind to ask if I still slept with my guitar, to which I answered, ‘Yes, and since I own over a hundred of them, it gives me a very rich emotional life. But busy.’ Since that time, that’s all they remember.”

Just look at him now: white shirt, white slacks, white canvas jacket, white cap, white shoes. If Tom was like the classified ads for thoroughbreds, you know, the dressage and three-day event hopefuls “Athletic, willing, spectacular mover—,” Harlan brought more to mind the listings on collector cars: “World-class racing performance with classic luxury. One owner. Lovingly maintained.” Wow.

It didn’t matter how he was gotten up, it was always done with the same whimsical, delicious care. He was just ultimately desirable. It was equally obvious he belonged to no one present. Look. Don’t touch. I knew what Tom meant when he’d said he looked “expensive.” I would have called it more like “unaffordable.”

We were sitting on the sand below the cliffs at Drake’s Bay, and the wine was all gone and the Brie and French bread almost were, and things had gotten very quiet except for the waves’ long, lazy arch and dump against the sand, when the question, which had been baying at me now since yesterday, slipped out like a dog under the fence.

“Why did he marry me, Harlan?”

He loaded up the last of the bread with the last of the cheese and ate it. Dusted off the crumbs. “Why do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“You never asked him?”

“Scared to.”

“Ah. And he never said? I assumed some conversation took place on the matter.”

“He said a lot of stuff.”

“Par exemplum?”

“Like, kids have a right to know they were conceived in love.”

“Ah. Such a romantic.” He clicked his tongue in contained mirth. “Having not the slightest doubt one was conceived in love is not the bower of roses Thomas fantasizes.”

“Like, if one or the other of you had sex change surgery, he could’ve married you.”

Done it at last. The man is shocked. Eyes as round as Krugerrands. “He didn’t!”

“He did.”

“He lied to you!”

“He said he’d rather have it done to himself than you. He cried a lot, Harlan.”

“That was most unkind of him, seeing there’s no truth in it. What a wretched wedding day he must have given you.”

“Don’t know; it had its up side.”

“What’s more, he’s left me guilty by implication; I feel obliged to set your heart at rest. No such matter was ever discussed; you can’t realize how contrary to his nature that would be. Thomas never, never considered sex change surgery. Be assured. Why, the procedure adds five years to one’s looks at best, or so I’m told.”

I gaped at him.

I’d been had. Intellectually, emotionally strung along. Bested. Or worsted. Stung beyond endurance, overcome with the urge to do something ignominiously physical to him—I scored a fast hit on his immaculate little shirtfront with a double scoop of sand. I hoped it went inside! I hoped it got in his underwear! I hoped it chafed!

He was laughing, scrambling backward.

“You! You—you—you—”

“Go on! Think of a word!”

“Poop!”

I arced another great gout of sand at his head, his dark blowing hair. He was running down the beach—“The word is poof, dear—”

“The word is snake!” He should be like an Arab horse, longer on endurance than speed. What I hadn’t known, but was finding out—he could also dodge and change directions faster than Joe Montana.

“My favorite is—catamite—interesting derivation—look it up sometime—Means—a pretty lad—kept for—immoral purposes!”

The idea Joe Montana brought to mind: I’d always wanted to try tackle football, but never found a social opportunity. I launched myself arms first through the air, like a cartoon superhero.

Talk about beginner’s luck. I hit his back and grabbed. Then he was going arms first too, both of us sailing through the air. Into the wet sand Harlan plowed, with me on top of him. The next wave, a big, foaming pile of gritty, icy, gray-green Pacific broke waist deep over us.

The water drained through our clothes—mine into his, into the sand, sucking and sliding away below us. His hair streamed out over the departing water, black foam tendrils.

I was lying on him, full frontal contact, like a heavy breathing scene out of some movie, a sex-reversed China Girl or From Here to Eternity—looking down into his face, and he was a shipwrecked sailor whom lascivious mermaids thought far too pretty to let drown. The expression on his face was unmistakable. He melted. What used to be known as “sweet surrender.”

I’d been had again. Yet. Still. Conned into setting him in his position of greatest strength. This was his game, his gambit: he was master of it. He’d taken Tom with it a thousand times.

I got off him as fast as I could.

I walked up the shelving sand to where the dry began, and sat down with my arms around my knees and my head in my arms. Under my elbows I could see a billion sandflies streaming by, all in one direction, absorbed in their own affairs. The waves dumped quietly. Arched over, broke, and retreated. After a while, Harlan was sitting there beside me. We sat in silence for a long time. I heard him sigh. “Learn something new every day, don’t we?” he said.

“Speak for yourself.”

“I was. Miranda. Look at me.”

“Nobody’s called me Miranda since third grade: a bunch of guys made it ‘Miranda Salamander’ and I had to kick ’em all repeatedly in the shins to make ’em stop.”

“You might have been more gracious. The salamander lives in fire.”

“No they don’t. They’re little and wet and they live under rocks.”

“Legend,” he said softly, “has them native to the fire. So don’t look at me, then. But listen. I want you to know that Thomas never contemplated sex change surgery. Third World butcher shops are not his venue. And together, we are the last, the very last thing on earth that any legitimate clinic wants to see come prancing through its doors. A five-minute evaluation of his personality profile, or of mine, and with any professional conscience they would say—”

“No way, Jose.”

“Not my words, dear, but certainly my drift.”

“Don’t call me dear.” The waves came in their order, pouring over heavily. Sighing back out again, playing with the sand. “Unless you mean it, that is.” I had to take my head out of my arms to look at him. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes-No. I suppose.”

“Make it a hundred percent, and you’re welcome. You are covered with sand from head to foot, know that? You are a sight!”

He grinned wickedly. “At last we match.”

We were too filthy and too far away for our regular evening pilgrimage to Chez Panisse. We found an oyster-market-cum-café on the east side of Tomales Bay, serving oysters and oysters, and very little else but oysters. We each put down a dozen fried, and when that didn’t seem to do the trick, we split a third dozen between us. All there was to drink was American beer, which Harlan didn’t fancy. We went home very sober.

“Thank you for a wonderful outing. You should consider going into business: the finest tours of San Francisco and environs.”

“C’mon, you: I wouldn’t do it for just anyone.”

He went into the bathroom. I heard the shower start.

What if he burst out wet and naked and pulled me into the shower with him? Nothing. The shower went on running. Some night I’d go inside my room and shut the door, and only then I’d notice his hand was still in mine, and he was on the end of it. And then. And then.

I went to the phone in my room, found Tom’s London number that I’d cribbed off Harlan when he wasn’t looking. I got an operator, asked for England, asked for the number. I imagined him answering. Imagined everything I had to say—

“Tom.”

“Well, well.”

“I’ve got a question for you.”

“Unusual time.”

“I wanted privacy.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m worried about Harlan.”

“You two not getting along?”

“Contrariwise. I’m afraid we are.”

“Oh?”

“Tom. You know how attractive he is.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

Then I could say, “I practically made love to his picture when I was thirteen, just like yours—” No I couldn’t. I could say, “We’re getting closer and closer. We’re living together: falling in love with him would be so inanely simple—”

“Christ, I understand that, but is he doing something to provoke it, outside of just breathing in and out?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think not, others I get myself convinced he’s moving in.”

“He wouldn’t. God. Maybe he would. Is he trying to get back at me? I’m really getting what I’ve earned; that’s what you’re trying to tell me, isn’t it?”

“I simply want to know what I should do if he winds up in bed with me some night!”

Even thinking it I felt stupid and miserable, like the jerk who’s just yelled “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

Then Tom—the real one—answered the phone. “Rhymer.”

“Hello, love.”

“Well, telepathy works.”

“I wanted to hear your voice, that’s all.”

“Getting cold on me already? Here I was wanting you in bed. Or the shower, or the living room or—What’d y’do, give Harlan the slip? Wondered how long that’d take.”

“He’s the one in the shower.”

“Is he now.”

“I took him to the beach. Got him all sandy.”

“God. Don’t mar the finish.”

I had to laugh; I knew just what he meant. I told him about Harlan on the first day, in his black leopard coat and eyeshadow, saying, “I am safe on the street—”

“He is, too: nobody takes liberties with Harlan.”

“You do.”

He chuckled. “Look closer. He issues the invitations. All I do is RSVP.” Then he said, “Is he being happy?”

And here was the place to tell him. “He’s running around raising my consciousness on vintage clothes and vintage cars and vintage wines, and playing guitar and dancing at the same time, and jogging Golden Gate Park and eating better than I ever dreamed was possible, and—”

“Oh, Harlan’s fond of his comforts, all right. I’m fond of his comforts. Keep on loving me, that’s all I ask. Any sign of your papers?”

“No. We’ll be on that plane the minute they arrive.”

“Certain he’s not doing a number on you?”

“Who?”

“Who else?”

“What do you mean?”

“About the papers, and how long it takes.”

“I was right there in the passport office with him—”

“Every time?”

“The only time. Why would you ask that?”

“Thought I caught a whiff of where he’d been, that’s all.” Almost as good a jab as the one about the finish.

“Tom?”

“Still here.”

“What’s the name of it? The perfume he’s soaked in.”

“Seraglio.”

“What? Oh no!”

“What I call it. Well? Don’t you think he smells like the Sultan’s favorite?”

“Favorite what?”

He giggled. “I won’t tell. Seriously. He’s very territorial, like a dog fox. Anything that’s his, he puts his scent on it. You couldn’t borrow his shirt and forget for a moment whose it was, now could you?”

Another item of the class “things I can’t tell him”: I’m wearing Harlan’s silk jersey and shorts for pajamas.

“Ah—” said Tom, “I guess it’s got no name but his.”

“What?”

“I had it blended specially for him in Paris.”

“His own private perfume? People can do that?”

“Lots of old-time stars have had their own. Famous men have done it. For their lovers.

“I fancy that old master parfumier wasn’t so surprised. He asked me what I saw in Harlan. I told him, too. He did some tests to see what his skin was like. Then he squired him around Paris for a night or two to see what he was like. Quite a scene. And that’s what he came up with.”

“I think he got it right.”

“Yeah. I’m proud. One grand gesture I thought up that worked. Harlan’s got a million tricks like that, all swarming in his head; but I, well I’ve never been so fertile-minded. I’m in luck if I come up with one. Find one right gesture for him.” He drew a breath. “So now, how about yourself? I owe you a wedding present. I bet you’re thinking about that.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Has to be something really special. Think about it.”

He was up to something.

I suddenly remembered Madame Hoang’s bracelet. I knew that was it: I’d been so dense, I thought he’d bought it for himself.

And teasing me to guess was going to be half his fun.