by Chuck Kinder
Windows that gleam in the sunlight. And great pyramids of brand-new books are being displayed behind the gleaming windows of the great bookstore.
Okay, Ralph, I get the picture.
I mean, Ralph said, all the world’s bestsellers are on display. And not only that, but collected works are on display. There’s a whole window of Hemingway’s books. Every book Billy Faulkner wrote in his lifetime has been reissued and is on display in this great bookstore’s windows. All the writers you’ve read and admired. All the books you’ve loved in your lifetime. They are all in print with shiny new covers and they are stacked in pyramids in these gleaming display windows for all the world to see. And right there among them is your own book. Get the picture, old Jim?
I said I get the picture, Ralph. —You’ve got us looking in display windows at the books of the immortals.
Right, Ralph said. —Well, right there, in a window all your own, I mean, all my own in this case, among the immortals, as it were, there it is. My own book! Are you ready?
Ready Teddy, Ralph.
Da ta da, da ta da da da! Ralph chirped, and clicked on the dining-room lights.
Copies of Ralph’s book were scattered all about the floor of the room. Most looked as though they had been half eaten. Two books left on the dining-room table looked as though they had been merely bitten. Ralph clutched his throat and ran to the table. He slowly picked up a bitten book as though it were a small, wounded pet. He ran his fingertips over the tracks of great teeth marks on the book’s shining, glossy white surface.
This is just awful, old Ralph, Jim said.
Ralph held the bitten book against his chest, as though giving it comfort. As he left the room, Ralph turned out the lights. Jim followed Ralph down the hallway to the kitchen. In the kitchen Ralph sat down at the table. Jim leaned in the doorway. Ralph turned the bitten book slowly about in his big hands. He opened it and looked at his photograph on the inside cover. He blinked his left eye shut and studied his picture; then he looked at his picture with his right eye closed. Ralph read the dust-jacket copy, his lips moving, and then he read the blurbs. Ralph put the book down on the table gently, with both hands, and he patted it gendy. Ralph lit a cigarette and waved smoke away from his face, coughing. His eyes were wet.
What a bummer, old Ralph, Jim said. Jim walked over and sat down at the table across from Ralph.
I feel so bad right now, old Jim, Ralph said. —It’s crazy, I know, but I feel about as sad as I did when I buried my dad.
It’s a bummer, all right, old Ralph, Jim said. —Man, you gotta put your foot down around here. I’d shoot that dog for starters.
My dad would have been so proud of me, Ralph said. —If he hadn’t drunk himself to death.
Bummer city, Jim said. —You want me to shoot that dog for you?
There’s not a day goes by I don’t miss my dad, Ralph said, and stood up slowly. He walked over to the kitchen sink, then turned around and walked back to the table.
I couldn’t really shoot any dog, Jim said. —You want me to whip Paco for you, though?
Ralph picked up his book and returned with it to the sink. He put the book down gently on the counter within easy reach. Ralph turned on the cold water and let it run. He fetched several of the empty ice trays from the refrigerator and one by one filled them with water and returned them to the freezer. Ralph looked at his reflection in the window above the sink and let the cold water run over the backs of his hands. He drank some water from his cupped hands and then he splashed his face and rubbed it. Ralph covered his face with his wet hands, and then his big shoulders began to heave with sobs.
Jim walked over to Ralph and patted his back.
What a bummer, old Ralph, Jim said, and patted Ralph’s heaving back. —Paco’s ass is grass and I’m the fucken mower.
What’s wrong? Alice Ann said as she and Lindsay entered the kitchen.
Ralph? Lindsay said. —Jim?
Looks like that fucken Killer went and ate Ralph’s new books, Jim said. He had to bite the side of his tongue to keep from laughing.
Oh, baby, Alice Ann said, and rubbed Ralph’s heaving shoulders. —Honeybunch, baby.
Bummer city, Jim said, and in spite of himself snickered, which he coughed to hide. Jim felt Lindsay’s hand on his back. He looked at her and saw that her eyes were teary. She smiled faintly, and Jim reached up to touch her cheek.
What a day, Ralph said, and put his hands back under the running water. He splashed his face. —Whew boy, Ralph said.
Everything is going to be all right, baby, Alice Ann said, and she hugged Ralph from behind. —And this is the last straw. That dog is out of this house as of now.
Do you mean that? Ralph said. —Really and truly?
Really and truly, hon, Alice Ann said, and she ran her fingers through the back of Ralph’s woolly hair.
What if Paco leaves, then? Ralph said.
Tough titty, Alice Ann said.
What if our daughter threatens to leave with him? Ralph said. —What if she does leave?
I’ll tie her up in her room if I have to, Alice Ann said. —Everything is going to be all right, Ralph. I promise.
Whew, what a day, Ralph said, and rubbed his forehead with his fingers.
Maybe we should be heading home, Lindsay said to Jim. Jim had his arm around her shoulders, and he pulled her gently against him and kissed her forehead.
No, now you guys can’t leave yet, Alice Ann said. —The evening is still young, you guys. And we have these two giant pizzas with the works on the way.
I sure wish that pizza would get here soon, Ralph said. —I sure wish I didn’t have to go to jail.
You won’t have to go to jail, Alice Ann said.
Jail, Ralph? Lindsay said.
Buggery city, Jim said, and hung his head.
You promise I won’t have to go to jail? Ralph said. —Really and truly, Alice Ann?
I promise, Alice Ann said. —Really and truly.
I sure wish that pizza would get here soon, Ralph said.
It will be here in less than eleven minutes, Alice Ann said, looking at the clock on the wall above the stove.
Really? Ralph said.
I promise, Alice Ann said.
In less than eleven minutes? Ralph said. —How could you know something like that, Alice Ann? And, for God’s sake, don’t give me any of that you can predict the future business, please, please, Alice Ann. Not tonight.
They have a strict policy, Alice Ann said. —If they deliver the pizza later than one half hour from when you place your order, they have to refund five dollars.
On each pizza? Ralph said, and looked over at the clock.
Right, Alice Ann said. —On each pizza.
No fooling? Ralph said, watching the inexorable movement of the second hand on the clock above the stove.
No Shelter
1
In late June Lindsay and Jim throw a birthday party for S. Clay Wilson, a good friend of Jim’s who is an infamous underground cartoonist. Clay is a big hairy hulk of a guy originally from the Midwest and quite insane. Clay provides a half-dozen cases of Anchor Steam beer, and his girlfriend, Mary Mississippi, an artist, a painter of some local note, makes a crazy birthday cake shaped not unlike an enormous chocolate cock. Lindsay considers this her own coming-out party, and she is determined to get acquainted like crazy, focus on people whom Jim seems to like the most. Lindsay is determined to be fun and interesting and just generally irresistible. She labors floor to ceiling on the flat, until everything absolutely shines and sparkles. Lindsay produces a table groaning with food that looks catered. Classical music wafts through the rooms, for a time anyway, before Clay takes over the machine with his throbbing dork Delta Blues. Lindsay wears her black dress and her grandmother’s pearls, discovering herself way overdressed, but so what! The place is packed by nine o’clock, when suddenly Clay, who has been holding forth at the kitchen table, begins yelling, “What
the fuck! What the fuck! Where the
fuck am I?” Another guy at the kitchen table slumps over and begins to drool uncontrollably. A girl falls out of her chair laughing hysterically. Then somebody starts yelling that nobody should smoke any more of the grass going around the room. Bad grass here, somebody else shouts. And, dear God, is it ever! PCP perhaps. People are freaking out right and left.
Lindsay considers trying to close the party down, but everybody is simply too stoned by that point to safely depart, too paranoid to do much more than stand around and weep or laugh insanely. Finally this big hairy ape of a biker, all tattoos and chains, identifies himself to Lindsay as the asshole who is passing around the bad dope, announcing that he considers himself a catalytic agent for sudden startling change, who comes to parties and spreads the crazy grass and waits for the tone and tenor of things to become very interesting. When Lindsay tells him to get the fuck out of her house he simply laughs and tickles her under the chin like a child. Lindsay has no idea where Jim is at that point, not to mention Ralph and Alice Ann. Lindsay decides to slip into their bedroom and simply hide out for a while. No such luck. She turns on the light to discover some couple screwing on the bed. Lindsay mutters something like “Excuse me.” She turns off the light and shuts the door to her own bedroom.
Lindsay decides it is definitely time to locate Jim. The crowd is dense and more people keep pouring in. Lindsay wrestles her way through the flat. She finally finds Jim sitting out on the back steps with little Sappho on his lap. He is angry with Lindsay and darkly broody. He tells Lindsay she has been an outrageous flirt all evening and has humiliated him. He tells her that he had seen her touching, no, pawing, Ralph while she was talking with him, clearly giving Ralph and everybody else the wrong idea. At least he hopes it is the wrong idea. Whereupon Lindsay blurts out about the biker asshole passing the bad dope around the party and how said asshole had laughed at her when she told him to leave and tickled her under the chin.
Jim jumps up and hands Lindsay the kitty and tears inside. Lindsay follows, holding her kitty close. Jim scans the room from see the kitchen door. Where is the motherfucker? Jim growls to Lindsay when she comes up behind him, and she points said asshole out across the room, who really is a pretty big guy, bigger than Jim. Who knew who would win. Lindsay doesn’t care. Jim plows a path across the crowded kitchen. When he arrives at the asshole, Jim grabs him up by his throat and slams him up against the wall. Jim gets very much into the asshole’s face, whose eyes are bulging like boils. Jim says something to him Iindsay can’t hear. Whatever it is works, and when Jim lets the asshole loose, he practically runs down the hallway.
Jim wades back across the room to Lindsay, and he takes her in his arms and holds her for a while amid the chaos, and then he kisses her on the forehead gently. Then Jim turns back to the party, and the party is still going strong at 8 a.m., when Lindsay rolls a naked chick off their bed and crawls under the covers.
2
Lindsay and Jim and Ralph and Alice Ann fall by (oh so reluctantly on Ralph’s part) Jim’s Hawaiian gangster biker-buddy Shorty Ramos’s house on Valley Street (across the street from Jim’s old doper hippie commune) for some of Shorty’s wife Edna’s famous pet ales (Edna makes her famous pitales from three kinds of meat, man, Shorty always declares, some pork, man, some beef, and some meat from roof rabbits, you know, man, those furry little fuckers that crawl around on roofs at night going meow). (And you really expect me to eat that stuff? Ralph whines. Are you crazy?) So after pigging out on Edna’s petales (except for Ralph, who orders in an extra-large pepperoni pizza, of which, after Shorty’s five sons get their cuts, Ralph ends up with a single slice and falls into a profound pout), everybody goes out to Shorty’s Noe Valley hillside back yard to sit in the cool evening air and watch the lights of downtown buildings begin to blink on through fog that rolls in like low, slow waves over the hills. There is a crescent moon and higher in the clear, blackening sky above the enveloping fog more stars than Lindsay has seen since she moved down from Montana. Lindsay sits on the back steps and wraps her arms around her knees. She thinks of the star-filled skies of her girlhood, sitting on the porch of that cabin high in the mountains, looking up through the sharp, clear air into the night. Lindsay starts to shiver, and she slides her bare arms inside her T-shirt.
Jim and Shorty stagger on out to the small level area at the top of the yard and begin their karate dances. Shorty is the star of coundess stories Jim has told Lindsay, a seriously “badass” dude with greased-back black ducks and the goatee of a devil. Shorty was a founder of the Sons of Hawaii badass biker gang, bikers so bad that even the Hell’s Angels hire them to break bones and put people into the waters of the Bay, according to Jim. Shorty is, well, short, but built like a fire hydrant, and crude jailhouse tattoos cover muscular arms that bulge beneath a Hawaiian shirt bright with blue parrots crying from pink palms, and he and Jim circle each other, spin, kick high in the air, flail their arms, boys skinned to their animal. Alice Ann sweeps out onto the plain to join them. Ralph sits down on the steps behind Lindsay (Shorty frightens Ralph to death). Lindsay can feel Ralph’s knees touching her back.
The layer of light over the downtown buildings is rosy and an impossible purple. The night air smells like exotic spices. Lindsay watches her husband kick at demons in the dark, and questions come to her as clear and mysterious as lines from poems. How dependent is she upon desire? Can she discard the plots of her old dreams? Can she imagine moving into yet another runaway life? Can she patch up her life in secret? What are the causes for love? Is surviving saying yes to everything? Is ruin an impossible habit to break? What was the nature of this longing that could find no shelter? What does dear old rotten Ralph hope to gain by rubbing his bony knees up and down her back as she watches her new husband dance madly in the dark?
Alice Ann laughs and swirls about the dark yard, her beautiful white face an image of smoke, her thin, pale arms lifted above her head, long blond hair thrown back, as though in a spell, an apparition weaving in and about the shadowy swim of Shorty’s and Jim’s shapes. Jim’s trick, Lindsay has come to understand, is to catch people up, making up the rules as he goes along. Lindsay feels Ralph’s bony knees press and rub almost painfully into her back as she watches Jim carry on and on, the sort of guy who might set his own hair on fire so that one would notice him in the dark.
When Shorty pulls out his ceremonial Jap hari-kari dagger and begins to flash it about, Jim entertains a bright idea. It is high time he and Shorty became blood brothers. They would cut their thumbs and clasp their bleeding wounds together. They would mingle their blood, let their stories and memories mingle, let themselves fold into one great mutual myth. Shorty thinks it’s a groovy idea, freaking far-out, man! Ralph mumbles something to the effect that he is utterly appalled by such an idea. The idea! Ralph mumbles disdainfully. Jim takes the dagger and carefully nicks Shorty’s thumb, which Shorty holds aloft, and hoots into the night. Shorty excitedly takes the dagger, and while Jim stoically gazes toward the lights of the city, Shorty nearly severs Jim’s thumb. For a few moments Jim simply stares at the gushing blood. Shorty is flabbergasted at his work, his jaw drops in shock. Ralph clasps his hands over his mouth and gags. Alice Ann strolls leisurely over to Jim and touches his face. Jim looks up at Lindsay with an expression of sappy surprise bordering bewilderment on his face, and he grins bravely for a moment or two, before his eyes roll back in his head and he keels over in the grass.
At Mission Emergency the Chicano doc informs Jim that he is one lucky dude to get off with merely nine stitches, man, and no apparent serious damage done, for all the good that news does Lindsay, who cannot stop shaking for hours.
Out of the Blue
Ralph studied his face in the restroom mirror and dabbed tenderly at his nose with a damp paper towel. The bleeding had stopped, but there were still traces of blood around the edges of his nostrils, and it looked to Ralph as though his nose had about doubled in size and was rapidly turning purple. Before his very eyes, Ralph’s nose was rapidly begi
nning to resemble an eggplant. It occurred to Ralph that the stricken look on that sorry face with an eggplant for a nose staring back at him from the mirror might have been a visage carved from his worst dream of public humiliation. His whole face looked purple now, in that godawful fluorescent light, as though some purple veil of sick, sad flesh had been lowered over the features of his real face. Ralph shut his left eye and looked intently at that stranger with the purple face and purple clown nose. Then Ralph shut his right eye and took a long look at that purple face full of grief and pain and astonishment, for all the insight that provided him.
