Read Online The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin - Free Book Online

the ocean.
    â€œThe point is,” said Wren, sliding her hand onto his leg, “you know she wants to do it. You heard what she said about unfinished business.”
    Brian had heard all right, but it made no sense to him. Who could Anna possibly know in Winnemucca after seventy-five years? And what difference would it make?
    â€œOld ghosts,” said Wren, reading his mind.

Chapter 6
    SCORCHER
    J eanette MacDonald’s coat was slinky satin trimmed in marabou, but Andy had only a moment to admire it before the room shook and the balcony cracked and people began screaming bloody murder. He usually saved a few Milk Duds for after the movie, just to prolong the experience, but he gobbled every last one of them in the three minutes it took for the city of San Francisco to collapse into rubble.
    â€œMy goodness,” said Margaret as they spilled out of the American Theater into the unglamorous daylight of Bridge Street. “You were wolfin’ down those Duds like gangbusters. Scared the hell out of you, huh?”
    â€œIt was sure realistic,” Andy replied, though truthfully he had been more shaken by Clark Gable’s treatment of Jeanette than by the ensuing earthquake. Gable had just humiliated her onstage, after all, evicted her from his club and his life, this blustery brute who couldn’t recognize true love when it came along. It was almost as if he had caused the earthquake. Andy had seen plenty such men, and so had Margaret, but Margaret, oddly, trembled only in the face of collapsing buildings.
    â€œI ate all mine too,” said Margaret, holding up an empty box of Red Hots. Andy expected her to blow on it and make it honk like a goose, and that’s just what she did, prompting an old lady standing by the ticket booth to jump, then turn and frown at them. He smiled a sheepish apology. Margaret could be childish sometimes.
    â€œI love the song,” he said, hoping at the very least to keep Margaret from attempting a second honk while there were people around.
    It worked. Margaret puffed up her ruffled bosom, shook her loose platinum hair, and began to sing: “ San Francisco, open your Golden Gate —”
    Andy took it from there. “ You’ll let no stranger wait, la, la, la, la .”
    They burst into laughter and joined in a duet, heading down the dusty sidewalk like some goofball vaudeville act. “ San Francisco, here is your . . . la, la, la . . . saying I wander no more. Other places only make me la, la, la —”
    â€œOkay, that’s enough!” Margaret brought an end to their routine by yanking on Andy’s arm.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou were twirling.”
    â€œI was giving it some pep.”
    â€œWe’re making a scene,” she whispered. She nodded in the direction of two men in dirty overalls scowling at them from the alley by the five-and-dime.
    Andy shrugged. “Big deal.”
    â€œYou can twirl at home, lamb. Just don’t do it here. Folks will get the wrong idea.”
    Andy could have told her that an old chippie honking on a Red Hots box was making just as big a scene as a boy twirling on the sidewalk, but he kept his mouth shut because he knew what she meant, and because he could hurt her feelings more than she could ever hurt his. They took care of each other in different ways. She did it with movies and tender conspiracies. Sometimes silence was all he could offer.
    Margaret glanced at him as they passed Kossol’s Kosy Korner. Even there, in the dim glare of the diner on a sober Saturday afternoon, people seemed to be watching them through the streaky glass, including old Kyle Kossol himself. “Did you like your birthday present?” Margaret asked him.
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œI thought you’d like those colors.”
    â€œI did. Yeah.” His face was aflame with mortification and unarticulated gratitude.
    â€œYou can’t tell your mama, Andy.”
    â€œI