Read Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City for Free Online Page A

plenty o’ that in Winnemucca.”
    Mona looked down at her hash browns, avoiding what seemed to be an invitation of sorts.
    “It’s a big place, dolly. I need some help with the phones. It’s real clean and pretty too. I think you’d be kinda surprised.”
    “I’m sure it’s a nice—”
    “Hell, dolly! I’m not white-slavin’ ya or anything! You’ll keep me company, that’s all. You can leave whenever you want to.”
    “I just don’t think I’m—”
    “What do you do, anyway?”
    “What?”
    “For a livin’.”
    “I’m … I used to be an advertising copywriter.”
    Mother Mucca roared. “Well, don’t be so fuckin’ uppity, then!”
    Mona grinned and dropped her napkin on her plate. “The bus is leaving, Mother Mucca.”
    “You won’t do it, then?”
    “Nope,” said Mona, chewing on the knuckle of her forefinger. “Not unless I can have my own waterbed.”

Life Among the A-Gays
    F OR THE HAMPTON-GIDDES, THE MECHANICS OF PARTY- giving were as intricate as the workings of Arch Gidde’s new Silver Shadow Rolls.
    After careful scrutiny, prospective guests were divided into four lists:
    The A List.
    The B List.
    The A-Gay List.
    The B-Gay List.
    The Hampton-Giddes knew no C people, gay or otherwise.
    As a rule, the A List was comprised of the Beautiful and the Entrenched, the kind of people who might be asked about their favorite junk-food or slumming spot in Merla Zellerbach’s column in the Chronicle.
    There was, of course, a sprinkling of A-Gays on the A List, but they were expected to behave themselves. An A-Gay who turned campy during after-dinner A List charades would find himself banished, posthaste, to the purgatory of the B-Gays.
    The B-Gays, poor wretches, didn’t even get to play charades.
    The range and intensity of cocktail chatter at the Hampton-Giddes’ depended largely on the list being utilized.
    A List people could talk about the arts, politics and the suede walls in the master bedroom.
    B Listers could talk about the arts, politics, the suede walls in the master bedroom, and the people on the A List.
    The A-Gays could talk about whoever was tooting coke in the bathroom.
    The B-Gays, being largely decorative, were not expected to talk.
    “Binky swears it’s the truth,” said William Devereaux Hill III, on a night when the Hampton-Giddes’ Seacliff mansion was virtually swarming with A-Gays.
    “Chinese?” hissed Charles Hillary Lord.
    “Twins!”
    “A litter!” exclaimed Archibald Anson Gidde, butting in.
    “I can’t stand it!”
    “You can’t? Honey, Miss Gidde over there practically ruined her nails on the Princess phone this morning just spreading the news.”
    “I did not.” The host was indignant.
    “You told me. ”
    “Well, that was all.”
    “Stoker says you told him too.”
    “She lies!”
    Charles Hillary Lord needed more dish. “Christ, Billy, an Ornamental? DeDe’s been doing it with an Ornamental? ”
    “They have teeny peepees.” This from Archibald Anson Gidde.
    “I think you’re all disgustingly prejudiced,” said Anthony Latimer Hughes, joining the group.
    “Oh, Mary! You’re not having another Chinoiserie period, are you, darling?” Gidde again.
    “There are two things one should know about San Francisco,” interjected Charles Hillary Lord. “Never meet anyone at the Top of the Mark. And never walk through Chinatown in the rain.”
    “Why?” chorused everyone.
    “Because they’re so short. Their umbrellas will blind a white man!”
    Across the room huddling under the Claes Oldenburg, Edward Paxton Stoker, Jr., swapped pleasantries with his host, Richard Evan Hampton.
    “I wish,” said the guest, “that Jon Fielding were here.”
    “Oh, pullease!” Rick Hampton had never fully recovered from the fall soiree at which Jon Fielding had suddenly exploded, exiting in a terrible huff. “You won’t find that bitch on any guest list of mine, Edward.”
    “But he is DeDe’s gynecologist, and I’m sure he—”
    “ And an