Read Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives for Free Online Page A

comforts me in ways I’ve forgotten how to measure. And were we to leave for momentarily greener pastures, I know we’d harbor the fear of all San Franciscans who leave—that the real estate market, that cruelest of sentinels, would never let us back in.
    So I concentrate on what I have and where I am. I take pleasure, for instance, in the way the house is aging—the shingles in particular, which have moved so gracefully past tan and tarnished silver to a rich dark brown. Some of this is just dirt, of course, left there by the vagrant fog, but the effect is enchanting. The shingles have grown as rough and mossy as bark, so the house seems more organic, like something rooted in the earth that will have to return there, sooner or later. To my overly romanticizing eyes, shingles are most beautiful when they’re closest to collapse.
    On my better days, I try to see my own weathering this way. I rarely succeed. I’m not ready to discolor and rot, no matter how charming the process might seem to others. I’ll have to get over this, I know, since I’d rather not leave the planet in a state of panic and self-loathing. I’d rather there be peace and a sense of completion. And I’d like Ben there, of course, cuddling me into the void with the usual sweet assurances. I know that’s not original as fantasies go—and impossible to ordain—but a boy can dream.
    In the meantime, I tinker with our home in a way that Ben finds comical, if not a little pathetic. I arrange objects like talismans in a tomb, carefully balancing according to color, texture, and motif. I could show you, for instance, how the rivets on the bowl on the coffee table are repeated in the frame of the dining room mirror and the base of an Arts and Crafts candlestick. I know where every spot of Chinese red can be found in the living room. I never add anything to the decor without considering the metal-to-wood ratio and the need for the sheen and color of ceramics. “Have nothing in your houses,” William Morris decreed, “that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,” and I can show you a wastebasket that fills that bill to a tee. I bought it off eBay for $385. This house will be perfect by the time I’m committed.
    A case in point: one night Ben and I were watching Six Feet Under when I sprang from the sofa and began rearranging the art pottery on the shelf above the TV tansu. Ben indulged me sweetly as I swapped the purple Fulper ginger jar for the light-green one and offset them both with the large bronze Heintz vase.
    “That’s been bothering you, has it?”
    “I couldn’t put my finger on it,” I told him, “but it’s better, don’t you think?”
    “Oh, absolutely.”
    “Don’t look at me like I’m Rain Man,” I said.
    “Come back,” he said. “Keith is about to get naked.”
    As we settled in again for the show, Ben’s head warming my chest, my gaze began to creep away from the television screen and back to that shelf of now perfectly composed pottery. And Ben somehow sensed this without looking up.
    “Stop that,” he said, slapping my belly. “Watch the damn show.”

    If I’m a stickler for perfect interiors, Ben is our tech support, our resident troubleshooter. He’s practically a dyke in this regard, so I’m lucky to have him, since I’ve never troubleshot anything beyond a snail-infested garden. Anna, my octogenarian friend, is much the same way and has learned to tap Ben for his expertise in thorny matters of the new millennium. She’s always been good about asking for help.
    “They’re turning off my email,” she told him bleakly one night. The three of us were eating Thai delivery food in her garden apartment off Dubose Park.
    “Who’s turning it off?” asked Ben.
    “The people at Wahoo,” she said.
    Ben smiled faintly but didn’t correct her. “Have you paid your bill?”
    “Certainly,” she replied, “but they found a virus on an email someone sent me. It was called ‘Your Doom.’