Read The Days of Anna Madrigal for Free Online Page B

creepy expectation of allegiance. It was like school spirit back in high school. He didn’t have it then, and he didn’t have it now. To him, the biggest advantage of being queer was being queer.
    â€œCome,” said Ben. “Try this on.”
    Michael followed orders, holding his arms akimbo while Ben adjusted the wiring. The jacket was tight around the waist. He felt tubby and preposterous, like Wavy Gravy being suited for the Fourth of July parade in Bolinas. Ben, of course, had looked as smart as a tin soldier when he tried on his metallic silver jacket at a retro shop on Haight Street. Get over yourself, thought Michael. He’s always going to be younger than you. Have eight years of marriage taught you nothing?
    â€œThat looks so cool,” said Ben.
    â€œDoes it?”
    â€œHere, check it out.” Ben led him, tethered, to the hall mirror so he could see the amber mandala glowing ecstatically on his back. It was cool. And all the more so because Ben had made it for him, toiling for two nights at this genteel sweatshop on the crest of Noe Hill. “That’s amazing, sweetie.”
    Ben studied his handiwork, skimming his hand across the top of his sandy brush-cut head. “It’s not bad, is it?” He handed Michael the controls, a small oblong box. “Keep it in your pocket. You can turn it off and on or make it blink.”
    Michael was now preoccupied by a niggling, high-pitched sound, like a mosquito keening in his ear. “What’s that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat noise.”
    â€œOh. You won’t hear that when you’re there.”
    â€œWhy won’t I hear it when I’m there?”
    â€œBecause it’s kinda . . . noisy. A lot of the camps play music all night. The sound of the EL wire will blend right in. You won’t even notice it.”
    Swell, thought Michael.
    â€œI’ve bought us earplugs for sleeping. And we can take the wave machine with us.”
    The wave machine, with its faux-oceanic lullaby, made its home on Michael’s bedside table. That’s where it belonged, he felt, forever and ever. Why should they have to import the sound of crashing surf to the middle of the Black Rock Desert?
    â€œWill I have a place to plug it in?” he asked feebly.
    â€œIt works on batteries too. Why are you being so grumpy?”
    â€œHave I said anything?”
    â€œYeah. More or less. You have.” Ben caught his eye in the mirror. “I thought you wanted to do this?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œBut?”
    â€œI dunno . . . it sounds more and more like a party I can’t go home from. I’ve never liked an all-nighter, Ben, and this is . . . an all-weeker. I get tired of people and noise. Even when I was young, I went home early to Barbary Lane.”
    â€œYou said you left the baths at dawn sometimes.”
    Michael shrugged. “That was different.”
    â€œOh, yeah?”
    â€œIt wasn’t noisy.”
    Ben laughed.
    â€œNot in that way,” Michael added with a smirk.
    Ben slipped the jacket off Michael’s shoulders like a tailor done with the fitting. “It’s really peaceful on the playa. We can ride our bikes out there and be totally alone. It’s like being on the moon or something. Just the two of us.”
    The image was seductive, except, of course, for the bike part. Michael hadn’t ridden one in years, so he was already concerned about looking clumsy on the pink clunker Ben had found for him on Craigslist. Add to that the presence of large menacing vehicles and thousands of other bikers who assumed he knew what he was doing, and you had a recipe for abject panic. At least it’ll be flat, he told himself.
    â€œWhich reminds me,” said Ben, returning to his sewing machine. “We should go on the Naked Bike Pub Crawl.”
    All Michael could manage was a snort.
    â€œSeriously, honey. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
    â€œNo.