Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale

by Chuck Kinder

Lady, this man is naked in public, the guard gasped. He tightened his grip on Ralph’s head.

  Give him one, Alice Ann, Ralph whimpered. —Kick him!

  My husband is ill, Alice Ann said, her voice calm now. —He walks in his sleep. He needs assistance, not this physical abuse. He is under a doctor’s care. My husband needs medical attention.

  Lady, what we have here is a real drunk man, the guard said. —A drunk, naked man.

  A woman opened the door of the room across the hall from Ralph and Alice Ann’s room. She stood there motionless, watching this scene, one hand on the doorknob, the other at her throat.

  Would you call down to the desk for me, please? the guard asked the woman. —Get the manager. Get anybody down there.

  Another door opened down the hall and a gray-haired man stuck his head out.

  Are you people getting your eyes full? Alice Ann said. —A sick man is being assaulted before your very eyes and you people just gawk. This poor man needs somebody’s help!

  Call the desk, somebody, the guard said. —Have them send somebody up here quick. Please!

  This man is an important American author! Alice Ann said. —How can something like this happen in America? Where is this, Germany? Are we in the Soviet Union?

  Somebody just call the desk, please! the guard said.

  Don’t you people dare look upon my husband’s nakedness! Alice Ann screamed. —Shut your fucking doors! All of you fuck¬ing rubberneckers! You shut your doors now! Alice Ann screamed, and stepped toward the woman. The woman backed into her room and slammed the door. Alice Ann glared at the man up the hall. He shut his door.

  Call the desk, someone! the guard called out. —These are crazy people!

  That does it, asshole, Alice Ann said. —Who do you think you are? Who are you, anyway? That man is an important American author.

  Kick him! Ralph croaked. —Do it, Alice Ann!

  Come on, lady, the guard said.

  The guard ducked away just in time from Alice Ann's round¬house right, but it caught him behind his right ear and knocked his cap flipping to the floor. Ralph broke the guard's hold and lunged for the door. Ralph slammed the door behind him. The guard bent to pick up his cap, and Alice Ann aimed a kick at his face which he barely blocked with an elbow. The guard ran sev¬eral yards down the hallway before turning and shaking a finger at Alice Ann.

  Lady, you are under arrest! the guard yelled.

  I will sue you for every nickel you have, Alice Ann said. —We have friends in high places. Senator Ted Kennedy is a personal friend. And I mean really personal!

  The woman from across the hall cracked her door again.

  Lady, I just don’t want no more trouble, the guard said, and he hurried down the hallway toward the stairwell exit.

  God bless you, Alice Ann said to the woman hovering behind the door. —God only knows what that brute would have done to me if you hadn’t been my witness.

  The woman closed her door. Alice Ann knocked on the door to Ralph’s and her room.

  Open up, Ralph.

  When there was no answer, Alice Ann pounded on the door.

  Let me in, Ralph.

  Who is it? Ralph mumbled from behind the door.

  Who do you think it is, goddamn it! Open this goddamn door, Ralph!

  Is there anybody with you?

  Open the goddamn door, Ralph, or I’ll kick it in!

  This is the worst thing that has happened to me in my life up to now, Ralph said. He shut the door behind Alice Ann and locked it. He was dressed.

  This is just too much for one man to handle, Ralph said. He stumbled over and sat on the bed. He put his face in his hands. —I was innocent, Alice Ann. I was just hunting for the bathroom. It was an honest mistake, Alice Ann. I just opened the wrong door. Which is the story of my life, I guess. This is the straw that broke this old camel’s back.

  Get your things together, sweetie, Alice Ann said. She began packing her overnight case on the dresser with her makeup.

  Being nude out there in that hallway was my worst dream come true, Ralph said. He lay back on the bed. He pulled the covers up over his head.

  Come on, sweetie, Alice Ann said. —Where did you put your shaving kit?

  Let them come and get me, Ralph said. He rolled into a ball under the covers. —Let them just take me away.

  This is like old times, Alice Ann said, and laughed. She put her robe and nightgown into the suitcase. She dressed quickly in her jeans and blouse. She quickly began packing Ralph’s things into her suitcase. —Do I have everything of yours here, Ralph?

  I guess, Ralph said. —Except my underwear. I forgot to put it back on when I got dressed. That’s how rattled I was.

  Where is it? I don’t see it anywhere.

  In my pocket, Ralph said. —I packed it in my pocket. Did you get that asshole with a good one?

  Not really, Alice Ann said. —Come on, honey, get out from under those covers. You should have seen it all. He ran down the hall, then turned and announced that I was under arrest.

  You mean you’re under arrest? Ralph said, and peeked from beneath the covers.

  Can’t you tell, Alice Ann said, and laughed. She held the opened champagne bottle up before the television’s light and shook it. She split its final inches between two plastic cups and carried them to the bed.

  Am I under arrest, too? Ralph said.

  Here, baby, Alice Ann said, and sat down on the bed by Ralph. —Look what Momma has for us.

  Ralph pulled the covers from over his head and sat up. Alice Ann handed him a cup.

  I guess we’re just outlaws, Alice Ann said, and laughed. —No matter how rich and famous we get we’ll just always be outlaws. Let’s have a toast, Ralph.

  To what? Ralph said. —My God, to what?

  To whatever, Alice Ann said. —To our fresh start. I don’t know, Ralph. You make the toast, sweetie.

  All right, Ralph said. —I will. To Disneyland, Ralph said.

  To Disneyland? Alice Ann said. —To Disneyland, Ralph?

  You bet, Ralph said. —To our trip to Disneyland when we get on our feet. I want to be the sort of man who takes his wife to Disneyland if that’s where she wants to go.

  What about the kids? Alice Ann said.

  What about the kids? Ralph said. —We’ll get those little gang-sters stoned out of their minds and drag them along. They’ll love Disneyland. They’ll think Disneyland is a trip, especially if they’re on acid. We’ll cover every inch of that Caddy convertible with stickers.

  Ralph, what I said about your stories, you know I didn’t mean it, Alice Ann said. —I think you’re a genius, Ralph, you know that. I love your stories. I’ve always been your champion. Your stories are spiritual, Ralph.

  Really? Ralph said. —Do you really think so, Alice Ann?

  Your stories are the most spiritual stories being written in our time, Ralph, Alice Ann said. —And you are spiritual. You are a very spiritual man, Ralph. More than even you know.

  Honest to God, Alice Ann?

  You are, Ralph. Trust me on that, sweetie.

  Sometimes I worry I’m just turning into an old worthless drunk, Ralph said. —Who’ll be down on his luck for life.

  We just need to get on our feet, Alice Ann said.

  There was a loud knock at the door.

  They’re here, Ralph whispered.

  To Disneyland, Alice Ann said, and raised her cup. —Come on, sweetie, to fucking Disneyland.

  Right on, Ralph said. —You bet. Why not? To Disneyland.

  Alice Ann and Ralph touched cups, whereupon they drank the champagne down.

  Hey, Ralph said, furrowing his brow. —This stuff has already gone flat.

  There was another loud knock on the door.

  Well, sweetie, Alice Ann said, and grinned, we can always call room service.

  Brand-New Life

  1

  Jim had returned to teach at Stanford in the fall, after a summer of amazingly emotional ups and downs with Lindsay, but
he was desperately in love with her, and he had not minded the dark, cheap room he had rented at a midtown Palo Alto residential hotel, with its single-channel, blurry black-and-white, fifteen- inch television set and the scumbag bathroom up the hall he had to share with three outpatients from the V.A. hospital. Jim had not minded eating the cheap chop suey at the Seven Seas Cafe, or shuffling endlessly along in line with senile senior citizens at mystery meat-loaf cafeterias. Jim even let old coots ahead of him in line. Jim happily let a blue-hair have that last stuffed pork chop he coveted. Jim had not minded lying in that narrow bed in the dark listening to the lonesome sound of late-night downtown traffic, the sad sounds of distant sirens, faint midnight music from the bars down the street, a woman’s sudden, drunken laughter from the sidewalk below, relentless coughing from the rooms around him, rats running in the walls. Jim had not minded the sad air of defeat at the end of the faded hallway, or the ancient air of loneliness and despair that settled like shadows into the corners of his crummy room. Jim breathed in a green cloud of desperate decay, and he did not give a shit. Happy as a clam, Jim lay there in the hot dark of his crummy room, sipping a warm bottle of beer, the television on soundlessly, his one window open. Down the street a country-western bar had its door propped open in the heat and Jim could hear a Merle Haggard tune about an outlaw moving town to town on the run. Down every road there’s always one more city, old Merle sang. Jim grinned in the hot dark, a legendary outlaw of love who had found his one more city, whose running days were over.

  Because Jim was in love, he was only bemused by undergraduate girls’ winks and blinks. Night after night he killed time at the Oasis Bar on El Camino, carving heart-enclosed Jim Loves Lindsays in the thick wooden tables with his switchblade knife. Jim was in love with the astonishing idea that Lindsay, with those beautiful, wide eyes, that generous, smiling mouth, full, sensuous lips, loved a big bizarre bozo who affected a fedora. All that previous summer, Lindsay had kept a calendar of passion, had pasted silver stars marking each day’s acts of lust. Jim would lie alone in bed in his dingy room like a monk astronomer whole nights sometimes poring over that celestial chart. He marveled at that calendar pasted thick with summer love’s constellations of silver. Jim reimagined the memory of each star, its spinning planets and their moons.

  Jim reimagined everything about last summer. Those silly, sentimental ice-cream-cone walks by the evening river. Making garbage bags full of buttered popcorn and watching old movies until dawn, then sipping coffee on the back porch in the cool birdsong sunrise. That trip up to Browning for the rodeo and Indian Days, the drunken cowboys’ and Indians’ sweaty eyes watching Lindsay sweep along. Fishing way up the Bitterroot that time, the sun hot on his bare back, the water icy on his waders, Lindsay lying on a quilt up in the long grass topless, that first bite. Jim had glanced up at Lindsay. She was up on her elbows, face tilted to the sun, eyes closed, her breasts getting brown. A picnic of two small, sweet trout fried fresh on the spot, Chablis chilled ice cold in the river, oily, sun-baked sex on the bank. How they swept into the bars those cool Montana nights, brown and babbling a mile a minute, people looking up, that sudden silence, their envious eyes widening, their nostrils flaring in the sexual scent of Jim and Lindsay’s wake. How they slow- danced to boogie music out at the cabin, at the Am-Vets, even at the Trail’s End, where serious, high-betting, good-old-boy pool players paused to watch. How they wrote letters to each other daily, and talked on the phone for hours now that they were apart.

  Finally Jim had landed a second-floor railroad flat in San Francisco’s North Beach by sheer luck, by taking over another Stanford’s faculty member’s lease when he and his wife split up and fled for their lives. It was a fantasy flat, with working fireplaces, high beamed ceilings, old hardwood wainscoting, a stained-glass window at the end of the long central hallway, sliding wood doors, an ancient marble mantel in a huge front room that had a corner half-turret with windows of curved glass through which he gazed at the frozen flight of lights in fog. In that one sweeping view he could see Coit Tower on a nearby hilltop, and above the trees of Washington Square down the hill the illuminated spires of Saint Peter-Paul’s Cathedral rising like huge sleek, elegant bones, and down descending avenues of fog toward the Bay, where far below at Fisherman’s Wharf he could see a great red neon fish flashing before some restaurant. Beyond that was Alcatraz Island glowing through the fog like an enormous ship anchored in the dark bay.

  Jim had moved his few boxes of belongings up from the low- rent residential hotel in Palo Alto into the flat, and he had spent all his spare time cleaning and polishing, polishing the broad windows until they cast the prismatic colors of light across the shining parquet floors; and at night, pooped from polishing, Jim would make a fire in the front room’s fireplace and stretch out on his sleeping bag before it, listening to plaintive, trumpety Mexican music on his portable radio and sipping jug red wine while he imagined that firelight flickering on Lindsay’s perfect, pretty titties.

  2

  Finally Jim got around to calling old Ralph. Let’s get together for a drink and shoot the shit, Jim suggested. They both arrived at the appointed bar late and half loaded. They took one look at each other and began to laugh and punch each other in the shoulders. You are the real Running Dog, Ralph said. You always call me the Running Dog, but you’re the real Running Dog around here. Well, Jim had to agree. Jim felt so magnanimous he was nearly wiggling with it. Jim fed Ralph a bag of what he knew in his heart was baloney about the nature of Lindsay’s old love for Ralph, that Ralph was a great, no, maybe the great love of Lindsay’s life, but that Ralph had let that love slip through his fingers. Jim told Ralph that if Ralph had been the one to go up to Missoula the previous May, Ralph would be the lucky dog strolling down that aisle in the chapel of love next spring and not Jim. What Jim really thought was that he and Lindsay were a celestial pair, a match made in heaven, destined legendary lovers, and that Ralph and Lindsay’s puny little affair, if that’s what you even wanted to call that little fling, was only a minor instrument of fate to get Lindsay and Jim together. Jim was only bemused instead of bored stiff and pissed as Ralph bragged on and on about new stories written and soon to be accepted by major magazines. Jim did truly love that old Running Dog, his old buddy who was doing his damnedest to hide his broken heart and who Jim did not really mean to do dirt, this old Ralphie boy.

  Ralph asked Jim to read at his Thursday-afternoon class at Berkeley, and said they’d use the fifty-bucks honorarium Ralph could probably scare up for a nice dinner and drinks. By the time Ralph’s class met on the selected afternoon, he and Jim had already drunk up the fifty bucks, and Ralph introduced Jim first as a distinguished panel and then, after several students pointed out the obvious, Ralph reintroduced Jim as Norman Mailer.

  That night Ralph and Jim had found themselves somehow deep up in the Sacramento Delta, lost among the levees, in a beer joint with a bunch of pretty college coeds Ralph kept claiming he had never given A grades. Those honeys never got A grades from me, Ralph kept claiming. Except for the tall, black-haired beauty with the tattoo of a rose on her right shoulder, whose first-person stories always concerned the funny albeit sometimes fatalistic exploits of the female biker gang she apparently led. They were in some godforsaken, crossroads roadhouse named Dutch’s, which had a low ceiling of polished anders and walls covered with wild fur and the stuffed faces of animals, and after they had both fallen in and out of love with the tall, beautiful, tattooed biker chick several times, but had finally decided to give her up before she came between them, Jim put his arm around old Ralph’s shoulder and he said, I’m sorry, old dog. You’re like a brother to me, old Ralphie, and I did you dirt. But goddamn it, Ralph, I love the girl. No, not the beautiful, fucken tattooed chick, you can have her, I already told you. Lindsay. I love her. Lindsay. I love you, too, old dog. But I love the girl, Ralph. I do. We didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did. Ralph, I feel terrible. I never wanted to cause you of all people in the world pain a
nd suffering and any feelings of humiliation and inadequacy. I’d cut off my right arm, old Ralph, before I’d deliberately cause you, my best old pal, the pain and suffering that come with feeling like a loser, especially in the love department. But I love her, old Ralph. No, goddamn it, not the tattooed chick. Lindsay! Lindsay! Ralph, do you forgive me?