I ran into a woman I had met at some charity auction earlier in the year. She was expensively sleek, a decorator or a gallery owner, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember her name, either.
“Maggie,” she said, kissing the air somewhere around my head. “Do you have a sick little one?”
“Just visiting,” I said. “Doing some background research.”
“You must interview my Rachel.” She carried a bag from a downtown food boutique. “I always bring her favorite soup when she’s sick. Anything to make my million-dollar baby feel better.”
I had nearly asked if she was visiting a grandchild. Even with her face stretched, she couldn’t hide sixty years of sun on her hands. The director had told me they accepted children up to the age of fourteen, but I thought the oldest there that day was around ten. The math didn’t work for this woman.
We found million-dollar Rachel in the television room, reclining on a beanbag chair and wrapped in a small comforter. She had her thumb in her mouth and a stuffed cat in her arms. Her dark eyes were glassy with fever, but she perked up when the woman knelt beside her.
Rachel was about three years old. A pretty child, as dark as her mother was fair. My guess was she came from Indian stock in Central or South America.
“My baby feels better?” The glossy mother hovered over Rachel, fussing with the blanket and kissing the little girl’s damp face. She looked up at me. “Isn’t my Rachel a sweet ums thing?”
“Very sweet,” I said. “Your million-dollar baby?”
“Not really a million. But plenty. And worth every penny and peso.” She hovered over Rachel with a spoonful of soup. “Aren’t you, my precious baby angel?”
I could see she had more than a million-dollar emotional investment in the girl. I was happy for her. I wondered how long her child dream had been deferred.
I left them snuggling together in the beanbag chair.
Early Friday evening, Casey left for Denver to attend her new half brother’s baptism. When I got back from driving her to the airport, the house was far too quiet. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Lyle had a dinner date. That left Bowser and me to entertain each other.
Bowser is nothing much to look at, uneven masses of medium-brown fur over a body built by a genetic committee. But he is an affable fellow. I have had worse dates. He loves two things above all others: sleeping and running. He was beside himself with doggie glee when I pulled out his leash and snapped it to his collar.
We took a long run through Marina Green and Fort Mason, over Russian Hill, then back home by way of Lombard Street. I hadn’t run for over a week, so the course I had set out was much too ambitious. The last mile was sheer torture, all uphill. Even Bowser was flagging.
Halfway back up our own hill, my legs gave out. I stumbled into the neighborhood video store. I wasn’t so much interested in renting a movie as I was in finding a place to catch my breath with dignity before I collapsed. To have his master collapse on the sidewalk might humiliate a sensitive fellow like Bowser. And Bowser is sensitive. Anyone as ugly as he is has to be.
I was choosing between the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Aliens when someone brushed against me. “Hot date tonight, Maggie?”
I turned and found my neighbor, Felix Mack, with two John Wayne movies under his arm. I like Felix. He’s a great talker – a quality I admire in a man. He teaches neurosurgery at the University of California because his mother won the big argument. His ambition was to play sleazy sax in nightclubs. Now and then he jams with a group from the medical school that is equal parts Ivy League surgeons and jive-wise janitors. I love to tag along.
“Bowser is the hottest date I could come up with,” I said to Felix. I tapped his cowboy movies. “Planning a romantic evening at home tonight?”
“Do you like John Wayne?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
He stuffed his tape boxes onto the nearest shelf. “If Bowser won’t mind, you want to go get something to eat with me? No sense both of us soloing on Friday night.”
“Love to,” I said. “Give me half an hour to get presentable.”
I limped home, showered, slipped into wool slacks and a blazer with spangles on one sleeve. Bowser was snoring on the brocade sofa when I passed him on my way out.
Over frittata at Balboa Cafe, Felix and I solved an amazing number of the world’s problems, if none of our own. In no time at all we found the bottom of a bottle of very good cabernet.
It was still early when we finished eating, so we took a cab to Kimball’s, a jazz club over by the Civic Center. We stayed through three sets, another bottle of wine, and a snifter of brandy. Maybe two. By the time our shared cab pulled up in front of my house, I was full-on mellow; equal parts good wine, good music, good company.
“Come in for coffee?” Felix asked as the cab drove away.
The question had undertones that made me uneasy. I really liked Felix. We had had a wonderful evening, one of several over the years. In the cab coming home, because it had seemed to be only a companionable gesture on his part, when he took my hand I hadn’t pulled away. On the sidewalk, with him looking into my eyes, I began to think maybe that had been a mistake. Then again, maybe I was reading a lot into nothing. It’s just that I didn’t want to move our relationship beyond the comfortable point where it had been before we left Kimball’s.
I gave Felix’s arm a firm squeeze.
“This evening was a great idea,” I said. “Thanks for suggesting it. It’s late and I think I’ve reached my limit.”
“Me, too. I guess.” He leaned forward and gave me an awkward hug. “Let’s do it again. Soon.”
It was nearly one o’clock when I opened my door, according to the hall clock. Lyle takes good care of himself and usually goes to bed early. He had left lights on for me, always considerate.
As I locked up and turned out the lights, I tried to imagine Felix as a love interest. I had no success with it. Felix was great. Few better. His only flaw was, he wasn’t Mike Flint.
When I thought about how Mike Flint might be spending his Friday night I went suddenly cold all over. I knew how we used to spend Friday nights. And every other night of the week when we were together. I tried to shake away the images; they made my chest feel tight.
I was so confused. Calling Mike, I knew, could lead to dangerous complications. Not calling him hurt too much. I hated feeling indecisive. I was glad I was a little tipsy so I would fall right asleep.
Bowser was snoring in the living room. After thinking about Mike, I wasn’t going up to bed alone, even if it meant sleeping with the dog. I went in to fetch the old fellow.
Bowser wasn’t in his usual place on the brocade sofa. I couldn’t find him at first in the dark room. Then I saw that the big leather wingback chair that usually sat in the far corner of the room had been pulled around to face the window that overlooked the street. All that I could see of Bowser was his tail hanging over the arm of the chair.
I walked around the chair to rouse him.
Bowser was sound asleep, all right, but it was Mike Flint who was snoring. I looked at him for a moment, making sure that I hadn’t conjured up Mike’s image out of those bottles of cabernet. Booze coupled with lust can do stranger things to the mind.
If I had conjured him, however, I knew I would never have put so many clothes on him. Nor would my erotic fantasies include the dog that was sprawled over him, with his muzzle in the crook of Mike’s neck where my muzzle should have been.
It was a sweet scene, dog and man together, man snoring with his mouth open. Mike is tall, with a distance runner’s slenderness. He is only in his mid-forties – he lies about which zero he’s closer to – but his hair is already silver. He may not be Cary Grant, but he is very striking.