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

It would not.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Michael returned to his armchair before composing his answer. “Okay, first of all, naked—my flabby white ass on a bicycle seat. Second of all, pub crawl— drunk on a bicycle, right? Naked and drunk on a bicycle. Tell me when we get to the fun part. I’d kill myself, honey. In a hot minute. I’d die an ignominious death.”
    Ben smiled. “I bet Shawna will do it.”
    â€œOh, well, there’s a safe enough bet. She’d do that in the city .”
    â€œYou sound like a prissy old uncle.”
    True enough, thought Michael. He had known Shawna since she was a baby. He had become a sort of coparent, in fact, when his old friend Mary Ann made a single dad out of his old friend Brian. He and Brian had doted and fussed and fretted over that child—and later the teenager—to such a degree that the fretting had never stopped. Ben regarded Shawna simply as a hip woman less than ten years his junior. The thought of her naked on a bicycle didn’t make him nervous in the least.
    â€œAs I recall,” Ben added, “you used to get naked all the time.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œYou know . . . at the nude beach. Devil’s Slide. With Mona. You told me so.”
    â€œThat was before you were born . . . practically.” Michael felt a pang at the mention of his old roommate. Cynical, loyal Mona, with her rusty Brillo Pad hair and thrift shop finery. Mona who took no shit and took no prisoners. She’d been gone for a dozen years, her ashes scattered on a Cotswold hillside, but she was right there in the room with him, breathing taunts in his ear, wondering how he’d turned out to be such a scaredy-cat— such a fucking pussy— in his twilight years.
    â€œIt was Mona who got naked at the beach,” he said, correcting Ben. “I wanted a tan line.”
    â€œWhat about three years ago in Tulum?”
    â€œWhat about it?”
    â€œYou got naked then.”
    â€œThat was around the pool.”
    Ben grinned. “So a body of water is required for your nakedness?”
    â€œAn absence of family is required, Ben. Shawna is family. It feels . . . borderline somehow.”
    â€œWe’ll have our tent. We’ll have privacy. Anyway, Shawna has friends in at least three other camps. We’ll probably never see her.”
    Michael looked down at the Kindle aflame in his hands, considering its twisted tale and the bright young woman who had somehow brought it to life.
    It made him proud and nervous at the same time.
    I ’ve been thinking,” said Ben, later that night in bed.
    Michael’s gut clenched. “I’ve been thinking” was often the preamble to change of some sort, and Michael didn’t much care for change. He had his life the way he wanted it, more or less. He was happily married; he was still surviving the plague that had wiped out half the people from his past; hell, he was still surviving the meds that had given him a future. He didn’t want that messed with. At all.
    â€œDon’t leave me,” he said, hoping that his darkest fear could convincingly masquerade as total flippancy.
    Ben chuckled, pulling him closer. “This bed really sucks.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? It’s a Tempur-Pedic.”
    â€œI know what it is, and I know how much we paid for it, but it’s just not cutting it, honey.”
    Thank you, Jesus. It’s the bed. It’s not me.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with it?” Michael asked. “It’s memory foam. It’s comfy as all get-out. It molds to your body.”
    â€œIt molds to your body.”
    Michael still didn’t get it. “And yours too, right?”
    â€œYeah, but . . . when people cuddle all night the way we do . . . and when one of them is—no offense—heavier than the other . . . it forms, you know, a trench that the other one sort of