“Hawk sales,” says Bobby. The traveler doesn’t show his bafflement.
“Now what’re you going to do?”
“Kind of an escort service,” says Bobby.
“How do you mean?”
“Arranging for girls.”
“I see.”
“Does that offend the heck out of your sensibilities?”
The traveler goes ha-ha-ha and says, “No, I just wish you had one with you.”
Pause. “I do.”
“Oh, God.”
“You want her?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Let her figure it out. Hey! That’s what they’re for.”
“What’s it cost?”
“You be the judge. Seat Twelve-A. Wake her and tell her the deal is history. I’ll keep your place until you get back.”
The traveler rests his head in deep thought and then says, “Okay.”
The traveler gently awakens the beautiful sleeping Marianne.
“I’m Jonathan.”
“Hello.”
“I’ve been speaking to your gentleman friend.”
“And?”
“He said to tell you that we’ve come to an arrangement. May I sit down?”
Utah.
Jonathan sits and kisses Marianne full on the lips. She neither yields nor pulls away. He slides his hand up her dress.
“May I ask you what you think you’re doing?”
“I should like to interest you … in love.”
“Do you do this with all the passengers?”
“I just thought — I—”
“I know, Bobby told you he was a pimp. It’s his way of passing the evening.”
“I’m very sorry,” says the traveler, rising. “But I must tell you, you left it a little ambiguous yourself.”
“Please go back to your seat.”
Bobby sits alone, his head against the rest, tilted back, in intense thought. He thinks he can make out the lights of Salt Lake City, but his view is abruptly interrupted by a sharp, open-handed slap across his face.
“May I have my seat?” the maritime lawyer inquires.
“Of course.”
Not till the Ramada limo service does Marianne make mention of the odd event on the 747. She says, measuring her words, “Next time you do that, I’m going to go for it. So think about that.”
“I’m going to be decent or know the reason why. My ears are ringing.” Earnestness floods Bobby’s face. He could cry.
“Like how?”
“I’m going to find us a good little house with a garden and a view of the sea. I’ll get you books on Jane Austen and, for me, Ernest Hemingway. We will make war on meat byproducts by elevating our minds. There will be days when we view paintings or relax at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.”
A woman realtor named Jane Adams, who seems distinctly San Franciscan, shows them a hidden gem with a sea view above the Presidio. The city cascades at the feet of Bobby and Marianne. Jane Adams notes that it’s a little bit of heaven for a young couple. Bobby gapes at her ass.
“We’ll take it. We’ve got a couple of books to read and no telephone. Plus, we’re looking for a small business together, something with no overhead.”
Jane Adams laughs, directing her face across the city to the high seas.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I just had a silly thought. I really can’t repeat it.”
At first, Bobby and Marianne love their little house, with its latticed understory and the gleaming bladderworts of its small garden. There are absolutely no fleas in the carpet, and the front window is free of decals that would violate the view of the Pacific.
In the morning, pretty, foggy light reveals Marianne carrying coffee and croissants up the wooden stairs; then, side by side in the bed, the two agree not to turn on the “Today” show.
“I can smell the ocean in the curtains,” says Marianne.
“That Barbara Walters is a real tire biter,” says Bobby. “Is she on that show?”
“Your bathrobe makes me laugh.”
“This marmalade was a good year.”
“I think so.”
“I want a book on the Tong wars. Those old Tongs had this town in knots. Underground tunnels, opium, captive girls.”
“Let’s go to Golden Gate Park today.”
Really, they should never have gone to Golden Gate Park. When they arrive at the casting pools, Bobby gazes at the well-dressed anglers with a certain terror.
“I would like you to note,” he says, “that there are no fish in those waters.”
“Those men are having a good time.”
“Oh, great.”
“It’s not symbolic, Bobby.”
When they get to the buffalo paddock and view the great mementos grazing in the coastal fog, Bobby says, “There you have it. The American West. I feel weak all over.”
Bobby seems serious. He demands they go to a drugstore. “I don’t feel so well.” They buy a thermometer and take his temperature out on the sidewalk: normal. He announces that his hematocrit is out of whack and that he must be losing blood.
“I absolutely know that the ratio of red blood cells to plasma is way off. I felt it the minute I spotted those buffalo.”
After the blood test, Bobby insists on the upper and lower GI series. The radiologist mans the machine in his lead apron while Bobby gulps barium. The radiologist slams plates in and out of the machine. Bobby feels at death’s door in his odd gown.
At length, the doctor says, “Your blood’s fine. Your mucosa patterns are exquisite. You’re fine. Good-bye.”
In the waiting room Bobby tells Marianne, “I’ve had a very close call. I’d like a nickel for every farewell speech I’ve composed. My life passed before my eyes, and I concluded, as anyone would, that there was not a minute to be lost. Let’s hit the streets.” Bobby takes Marianne down Maiden Lane and shows her Frank Lloyd Wright’s initials on a red tile. Then he buys her a pair of silver pumps with bright macaws on their sides. Marianne stretches her pretty legs to smile at her shoes. In Joseph Magnin, Bobby seems hypnotized as Marianne tries on silk dresses. His heart is racing.
They stop at a park bench on Union Square with delicatessen sandwiches and a bottle of red wine or, rather, Pagan Pink. They pass the bottle back and forth as though they were hunkered down in some railroad yard.
Marianne says, “I was engaged twice and ducked out both times. I’ve been worried about life passing me by. I thought if I got married, that would happen, and I would disappear without a trace.”
“I felt that when I saw those buffalo.”
“In college I saw that if I improved my mind, I would always be broke. Then came meat byproducts.”
“Now what?”
“Chance. And you, I guess.”
At the dinner table, Marianne is dressed in her new clothes, her eyes and lips darkened savagely. She wears the silver shoes. The two have sent out for veal piccata. Neither has eaten yet. It’s a matter of who goes for his gun first. Thin green candles burn, and the table is walnut. Bobby wears his Blake’s Hotel clothes: Levi’s, cowboy boots, chambray shirt, and a bottle-green velvet jacket.
“Let’s hit it.”
Despite the yearly deterioration of what used to be known as the passing scene into the current smarmy flux, Enrico’s Sidewalk Café remains a grand spot to view it, whatever it is. There are those who would argue that this is on the order of a front-row seat at a nose-picking contest. But Enrico’s customers don’t feel that way. In any case, Bobby and Marianne sit at one of the sidewalk tables, demand tall, frosty drinks, and join the others on the lookout. Marianne’s eyes fall naturally on a prosperous man in his forties, leaning on one hand and punching away at a calculator with his other.
Bobby would like to meet an astronaut. Marianne loves the breeze through her clothes. She has no interest in the kind of people who would leave a golf putter on the moon. Moreover, they would probably have to go elsewhere to meet astronauts. “Ever since you traded the bird to that Arab, we’ve been on the move.”