Page 185 - Stonewall-50th-v2_Book_WEB-PDF_Cover_Neat

Stonewall: Stories of Gay Liberation 155

show him a recipe which his father’s wife, Mrs. Kirk Douglas, had
been asked to supply to the “Gourmet Supplement” she was reading.
“What about our order?” Cameron said. “We were here first.”
“We’re not famous,” Ada said.
The waiter returned with two gin fizzes and a Sanka for Brenda
Vacarro. So close were the two tables, he kept his position and turned
on point to Cameron and Ada. “Have you decided?” he asked politely.
“We’ll have...” Cameron began.
“Whatever they’re having,” Ada interrupted, triumphant.
*

Cameron grinned as he sped north off the Bridge. Sausalito lay
below him to the right, and that crazy Sunday in Tiburon lay even
farther off in time and space. Ada should have written her thesis on
Millay, he thought. With her little petulant hand an annotation of
her greatly petulant life. He took the off-ramp from 101 and headed
up the canyon roads, past the Muir Woods turnoff, shifting gears
and climbing the snaking asphalt up the mountain, above the Pan-
toll Ranger Station, roaring beyond the natural Mountain Home
Theater, to the top of Mount Tamalpais, the highest point in the
Bay area, a forest and crest sacred to the old Miwok Indian gods.
Cameron loved the mountain.
It was worn and smoothed, twisted with trails as ancient as the
fog that rolled through its pines. Hikers puffed up and down its
paths, rediscovering traces of the old gravity-pulled Mt. Tamalpais
Railway that before the San Francisco quake had pulled fashionable
ladies and gentlemen up the steep grade for picnics of chicken and
lemonade in the sun.
Cameron kicked up his bike in the asphalt parking lot below
the peak. The ladies with the lemonade had vanished. A tie-dyed
hippie replaced them, lounging in the mountain heat against the
stainless-steel sides of a pickup truck fitted out to serve cellophaned
sandwiches and coffee.
“Black or white?” the hippie asked.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK