Further Tales of the City Read Online Free PDF

guffawed. “It’s the truth,” grinned Michael. “Every single word of it.”
    “Yeah,” said Ned, “but people don’t really break up over stuff like that.”
    “Well …” Michael thought for a moment. “I guess we just made each other do things we didn’t want to do. He made me alphabetize the classical albums by composer. I made him eat crunchy peanut butter instead of plain. He made me sleep in a room with eggplant walls. I made him eat off Fiesta Ware.We didn’t agree on much of anything, come to think of it, except Al Parker and Rocky Road ice cream.”
    “You ever mess around?”
    “You betcha. None o’ that nasty heterosexual role-playing for
us.
Lots of buddy nights at the baths. I can’t even count the number of times I rolled over in bed and told some hot stranger: ‘You’d like my lover.’”
    “What about rematches?”
    “Once,” said Michael grimly, “but never again. Jon sulked for a week. I saw his point, actually: once is recreation; twice is courtship. You learn these nifty little nuances when you’re married. That’s why I’m not married anymore.”
    “But you could be, huh?”
    Michael shook his head. “Not now. Not for a while. I don’t know … maybe never. It’s a knack, isn’t it? Some of us just don’t have the knack.”
    “You gotta want it bad,” said Ned.
    “Then, maybe I don’t want it bad enough. That’s a possibility. That’s a distinct possibility.” Michael took a sip of the mineral water, then drummed his fingers on the bar in time to the music. The band had stopped playing now; someone at the jukebox had paid Hank Williams Jr. to sing “Women I Never Had.”
    Michael handed the Calistoga back to Ned. “Remember Mona?” he asked.
    Ned nodded. “Your old roommate.”
    “Yeah. Well, Mona used to say that she could get by just fine without a lover as long as she had five good friends. That about sums it up for me right now.”
    “I hope I’m one of ’em,” said Ned.
    Michael’s brow wrinkled while he counted hastily on his fingers. “Jesus,” he said at last. “I think you’re three of them.”

House of Wax
    P RUE GIROUX AND VICTORIA LYNCH WERE KINDRED spirits.
    For one thing, they were both handsome women. For another, Victoria was engaged to the ex-husband of the woman who was engaged to Prue’s ex-husband. Bonds like that were not easily broken.
    Today, Victoria had called to share a secret with her spiritual sister.
    “Now listen, Prudy Sue, this is cross-your-heart stuff, definitely not for publication, understand?” (Prue’s closest friends always addressed her by her childhood name.)
    “Of course,” said Prue.
    “I mean, eventually of course I would adore for you to give it a little publicity in your column, which is part of the reason I called, but right now it’s just in the embryonic stage, and we don’t want to kill the baby, do we?”
    “Of course not,” said Prue.
    “Well,” announced Victoria, sucking in breath as if she were about to blow a trumpet fanfare, “yours truly is in the process of organizing the world’s first society wax museum!”
    “The … come again?”
    “Now, shut up a sec, Prudy Sue, and hear me out. I met this absolutely divine little man at the Keatings’ house in Santa Barbara, and it seems he’s fallen on rather hard times lately, which is too tragic, because it turns out he’s descended from the Hapsburgs or something. I mean, he’s got the prominent lower lip and everything. Anyway, Vita told me he used to work at Madame Tussaud’s, where he was their principal designer …”
    “Ah, yes. I have one of his gowns.”
    A pause, and then: “You do
not
have one of his gowns, Prudy Sue.”
    “But that mauve cocktail dress I wore to …”
    “That’s a Madame
Gres,
Prudy Sue. You do not own a Madame Tussaud. Madame Tussaud’s is a wax museum in London.”
    “I knew that,” sulked Prue. “I thought you said …”
    “Of course you did, darling. Those French names all sound