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you.”
    “You were crossing the street with her.”
    “Mary Ann?”
    “Yes.”
    “That is incriminating.”
    “It was lunchtime, and you were looking very chummy.”
    “You missed the good part. You should have been there earlier when I ravaged her in the redwood grove behind the Transamerica Pyramid.”
    “You’re not gonna smartass your way out of this one, Beauchamp.”
    “I’m not even trying.” He snatched the keys to the Porsche from the hall table. “I stopped with you a long time ago.”
    “Tell me,” said DeDe, following him out the door.

The Landlady’s Dinner
    M ARY ANN STOPPED BY MONA’S ON HER WAY TO Mrs. Madrigal’s for dinner.
    “Wanna mellow out?” asked Mona.
    “It depends.”
    “Coke?”
    “I’m on a diet. Have you got a Tab or Fresca?”
    “I don’t believe you.” Mona placed a hand mirror on her cable spool table. “Even you must have seen Porgy and Bess?”
    “So?” Mary Ann’s voice cracked. Mona was spading white powder from a vial with a tiny silver spoon. The handle of the spoon was engraved with an ecology emblem.
    “Sportin’ Life,” said Mona. “Happy dust. This stuff is an American institution.” She made a line of powder across the surface of the mirror. “All the silent film stars snorted. Why do you think they looked like this?” She moved her head and arms spastically, like Charlie Chaplin.
    “And now,” she continued, “all we need is a common, ordinary, all-purpose food stamp.” She flourished a ten-dollar food stamp like a magician, presenting both sides for Mary Ann’s examination.
    “Do you get food stamps?” asked Mary Ann. She makes four times what I do, thought the secretary.
    Mona didn’t answer, absorbed in the operation. She rolled the food stamp into a little tube and stuck it in her left nostril. “Stunning, eh? Verry sexy!”
    She went after the powder like an anteater on the rampage. Mary Ann was horrified. “Mona, is that …?”
    “It’s your turn.”
    “No, thank you.”
    “Aw … go ahead. It’s good for social occasions.”
    “I’m nervous enough as it is.”
    “It doesn’t make you nervous, dearheart. It …”
    Mary Ann stood up. “I have to go, Mona. I’m late.”
    “God!”
    “What?”
    “You make me feel like such … an addict.”
    Mrs. Madrigal looked almost elegant in black satin pajamas and a matching cloche.
    “Ah, Mary Ann. I’m grinding the gazpacho. Help yourself to the hors d’oeuvres. I’ll be right back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
    The “hors d’oeuvres” were arranged symmetrically on two plates. One held several dozen stuffed mushrooms. The other, half a dozen joints.
    Mary Ann chose a mushroom and gave the apartment a once-over.
    Two rather gross marble statues flanked the fireplace: a boy with a thorn in his foot and a woman holding a jug. Silk fringes dangled everywhere, from lampshades, coverlets, curtains and valances, even from the archway that led to the hall. The only photograph was a picture of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
    “Well, what do you think of my little bordello?” Mrs. Madrigal was posing dramatically under the archway.
    “It’s … very nice.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s depraved!”
    Mary Ann laughed. “You planned it that way?”
    “Of course. Help yourself to a joint, dear, and don’t bother to pass it around. I loathe that soggy communal business! I mean … if you’re going to be degenerate, you might as well be a lady about it, don’t you think?”
    There were two other guests. One was a fiftyish, red-bearded North Beach poet named Joaquin Schwartz. (“A dear man,” Mrs. Madrigal confided to Mary Ann, “but I wish he’d learn to use capital letters.”) The other was a woman named Laurel who worked at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. She didn’t shave under her arms.
    Joaquin and Laurel spent dinner discussing their favorite years. Joaquin believed in 1957. Laurel felt 1967 was where it was at … or where it had been