Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale

by Chuck Kinder

  A man came into the restroom and, glancing at Ralph, walked over to the urinal against the far wall. Ralph coughed behind his hand and turned on the hot water again. He made a big production of punching liquid soap into his hands from a container above the sink, and then thrust his hands in the hot water and soaped them vigorously. Ralph cleared his throat several times, and he studied the man’s back in the mirror. He was a handsome, white-haired man, tall and distinguished-looking in an expensive suit, as though he might be a big-time business executive, or a doctor, or an attorney, or even a judge maybe. Ralph wondered if the distinguished gentleman had been a witness to the recent humiliating events in the restaurant’s bar.

  When the restroom door banged open and Alice Ann charged in, the distinguished gentleman did a double take (as did Ralph), then jerked around away from her. The distinguished gentleman took a quick look down at his dick, did a little dance in place, bent slightly, and zipped up.

  tl, and pointed at Ralph, and I have business to conclude. This is a private matter. So do you mind? she said, nodding toward the door.

  Not at all, the distinguished gentleman said as he backed around Alice Ann toward the door.

  Thank you, Alice Ann said. —Would you care to wash your hands first?

  Not in the least, the distinguished gentleman said, holding his hands out palms up as though for Alice Ann to examine, and then the distinguished gentleman disappeared through the door.

  For God’s sake, Alice Ann, Ralph muttered. He smacked the button on the hot-air hand-drying machine beside the sink. When it didn’t come on, he smacked it several more times. —I hate these contraptions. These contraptions never work right. Never, Ralph said. He held his dripping hands helplessly beneath the quiet machine and watched Alice Ann out of the corner of his eye.

  I have just one final question to ask you, Ralph, Alice Ann said. —When exactly did you decide to ruin my evening?

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice Ann. This is all just crazy and I refuse to be a part of it.

  Did you set out, Ralph, to ruin my evening? Did you actually plan on it? When did it come to you, Ralph, the plan you devised to ruin my anniversary evening?

  Alice Ann, you’re way off base. Can’t you see how way off base you are?

  When we were getting dressed up to go out, Ralph, did you know it even then? Or was it earlier? What time today did you know it, Ralph? Just answer this one last question for me. This is the last thing I will ever ask of you, Ralph.

  We have to get out of here, Alice Ann. You can’t be in here like this. They already threatened to call the police when you belted me at the bar. We’re going to get arrested yet, Alice Ann.

  Did you know it as early as this morning, Ralph? Please tell me, please.

  No way, Ralph said. He shook his dripping hands in the air before him and then blew on them with great puffs.

  No what, Ralph? Alice Ann said, and took a step toward him.

  No to everything. You’re not going to catch me up with one of your trick questions.

  Here we have come through the flames, Ralph. We are on the verge of a new life. We are on the threshold of the future. Things have finally begun to go our way. And then you had to break my heart one last time.

  Go our way? Our way? Ralph said, and flapped his hands like crazy little wings in the air. —Are you really bonkers, Alice Ann? Our house is a hotbed of dopehead hoodlums. Things are a shambles in our house. Holes knocked in the walls. Dozen of godawful cats pooping everywhere in sight. Pooping right on the kitchen sink. One of them had a giant bowel movement on my typewriter the other day. It’s true! The electricity is about to be shut off again. I’m on the verge of going to jail. Where God only knows what sort of sordid events lie in wait for me. And most of all, you went back on your word to get rid of Paco and Killer. And now you can talk about how things are going our way? Crazy, I say.

  This has always been your biggest problem, Ralph, Alice Ann said. She glanced in the mirror behind Ralph and touched her hair. —You have never been somebody who could look on the bright side of things.

  Bright side of things? My God, Alice Ann! One minute we’re sitting here in a tony bar having a nice after-dinner drink, and the next minute I’m flat on my back.

  You broke my heart. You called me by another woman’s name.

  I never did.

  You did, Ralph. You broke my heart.

  Your ears are playing tricks on you, Alice Ann.

  My ears are just fine. It’s my heart that is broken.

  You were hearing things, Alice Ann. Maybe one of your ancient Egyptian mummy buddies was trying to get through to you, and you just thought you heard me.

  You called me Lindsay, Ralph. That’s the bottom line.

  You just misunderstood me, that’s all.

  I know perfectly well what I heard.

  I might have been saying something about calling Jim and, you know, Lindsay. I might have been saying something about the fact we haven’t seen them, Jim and Lindsay, lately.

  You called me by another woman’s name, plain and simple.

  I didn’t either. I didn’t. And even if I had made some slight slip of the tongue, that doesn’t give you the right to clip me out of the blue.

  You have ruined everything once again, Ralph.

  You didn’t have to come unglued. You’re the one who has ruined everything. You’ve ruined this tony place for us, for one thing. Now it’s just another fine establishment where we are no longer welcome as customers, no matter what the color of our money. Which, come to think of it, is probably not such a bad thing, considering the prices here. Which were outrageous, didn’t you think?

  Is Lindsay who you really want to be with tonight, Ralph? Is that the reason you called me by her name?

  You’ll never pin that on me, Alice Ann. Not in a million years. You were just hunting for an excuse to clip me one. And I’ll tell you this, if I had been looking, you would never have landed that punch. Not in a million years, Alice Ann. You just got lucky, that’s all. You had to go and suckerpunch me. Fine anniversary present that was, a suckerpunch out of the blue.

  It wasn’t a suckerpunch, Ralph, Alice Ann said. —I gave you ample warning.

  No, you didn’t, either. Just wait until tomorrow when you sober up, see how you’ll feel about these humiliating public events tomorrow. You’ll be sick with shame and regret tomorrow, and it will be too late. Mark my words! Ralph said. Ralph suddenly punched the hot-air machine solidly with his fist.

  —Oh oh oh ouch! Ralph cried and hopped up and down. He held his hand up before his face and blew on his knuckles. —Now you’ve really gone and done it, Alice Ann. This is your fault, too. You got me all worked up. I’d never have hit that infernal contraption if you hadn’t got me in a state. Now I have a broken hand on top of everything else. None of this would have happened, Alice Ann, if you hadn’t come unglued in the first place. I lay every bit of this pain and misery and my broken hand right on your doorstep.

  Goodbye forever, Ralph, Alice Ann said.

  What? Ralph said and blew on his knuckles. —What are you talking about now, Alice Ann?

  Goodbye forever, my darling, Alice Ann said, and turned toward the door.

  Turkeys in the Rain

  1

  TGIF, Lindsay thinks as she begins that day throwing up into the toilet for a solid half hour, which as usual Jim either does not notice or refuses to acknowledge. Then Shorty calls up with an apparently interesting itinerary for a full, fun-filled day of criminal activity to share with his blood brother Jim, which means all day Lindsay will have the pleasure of half-expecting a call from authorities to come down to juvie so that her delinquent husband can be released into her custody.

  As usual Jim walks Lindsay down the hill on Union Street to see her off, passing a paper cup of coffee back and forth. They stop on the corner of Bush to let an almost empty trolley car clang through the intersection, then they step carefully over the slick, humming rails. On the f
ar corner the green-and-white- striped awning of Fugorios Resturant flaps in the breeze, and the cool air is full of the slightly scorched but freshly clean smell of baking bread. Down the corridors of streets sloping toward the Bay, they can see the vague outline of a large ship making its way slowly through the fog off Alcatraz Island. Lindsay and Jim sit on a bench in Washington Square Park with two old Italian ladies wearing long black coats, who are chattering loudly and eating small pieces of bread they take turns tearing from a long, slender loaf in a white paper sack. When Lindsay shivers, Jim puts his arm around her shoulders and draws her to him.

  Are you okay, kiddo? Jim says.

  Nope, Lindsay says, then says, Actually, yes. It’s just chilly this morning. And I’m tired. The day hasn’t even started and I’m tired to my bones. But that’s being whiny and boring, I know.

  It ain’t whiny and boring, Jim says.

  Lindsay lights a cigarette and they sit there on the bench passing the cup of coffee and silently watching the gulls circle and glide and land to stagger like drunken sailors across the damp grass. On the far side of the little park, before a statue of Benjamin Franklin, thirty or so old Chinese men and women go through their slow, graceful tai chi exercises. They look like apparitions in the thick fog, as they do their soundless dance. A big man with a long gray-black beard wearing a raggedy pea coat sits down on the next bench. Now and then he takes a pull from a bottle in a brown paper bag. He seems to be glaring at them, but Jim doesn’t appear to notice, which is probably a good thing. When Lindsay sees her bus, the 30 Stockton, rumbling up Columbus Street in the slow but surprisingly quiet traffic, Lindsay puts out her cigarette and begins rummaging in her purse for change.

  Well, fuck a duck, Lindsay says. —I’m off to another day in America.

  It’ll be a dandy day in America, Jim says. He hugs Lindsay to him and gives her a quick kiss on the lips.

  A dandy day in America is in the mail, right? Lindsay says.

  You bet.

  And you love me, right?

  You bet, Jim says, and they get up and walk toward the bus stop.

  Don’t get into trouble with Shorty today, okay?

  I’m just giving him a hand. He’s got a line on a load of frozen turkeys that fell off a truck somewhere, or something crazy like that. I’m just going to drive down to San Jose and help him cop a few. I’ll meet you at Powell’s for drinks.

  Frozen turkeys? You bet.

  You bet, Jim says, and hugs and kisses Lindsay again like an affectionate brother. Jim finishes off the coffee and crumples the cup and tosses it into a trash container. Just as they pass the bearded man on the next bench, he shakes his bottle at Jim and growls, What the fuck do you know about love, anyway?

  Jim stops and Lindsay can feel the muscle of his arm tense through his leather jacket. Her heart skips a beat.

  But Jim simply grins and says, Not nearly enough.

  And they walk on.

  2

  Lindsay goes to bed alone. Lindsay goes to bed alone.

  Sometimes Jim does come to bed, but only to fall instantly asleep. Or sometimes he will tuck Lindsay in, even rub her back, when she has been a good girl and not bugged him about anything, especially his booze and dope and dealing. Then back up the long hallway to the kitchen, where he turns to the TV, or his music, country-song-sad and shit-kicky, but most of all to his trusty manuscript, his book and its beauty, night after night given over to its celebration, celebration and then more booze and dope, waxing sacramental until early morning, when the wine, the real blood in his veins, usually wins out.

  They do still have some high times together, Lindsay and Jim, but more and more often only out at the bars with other revelers, who see them as this fun-filled rather outrageous couple, or when they have troops back to the flat, which is often, perhaps too often, for high old times around the kitchen table, Jim’s tableaux, where he holds forth, telling story after story; the tales getting taller with each telling, and more funny, truly, turning the disastrous daily events of their lives into high comedy, everybody in stitches; and Lindsay does have fun and she feels love for Jim and even pride, and for extended moments sees their life together in another light.

  But this night Lindsay waits awake in the darkness, per usual, slow-dancing in her mind to an oldie-but-goodie station on the radio. Jim doesn’t come to bed, per usual. Finally Lindsay masturbates, angry and deliberately imagining other men, imagining Ralph, that’s who.

  3

  On that early August night of particularly wanton nakedness Jim borrows Shorty’s Harley so that he and Lindsay can make a grand entrance at the opening of Mary Mississippi’s “Handsome Suicidal Sailors” show at a gallery south of Market Street. It is evident immediately to Lindsay that Jim does not really know dick about the handling of a Harley, and Lindsay buries her face into the back of his leather jacket as they roar around turns on shining, rain-slick streets. The short red-leather skirt Jim had begged that Lindsay wear is hiked high on her spread legs and cold spray stings her bare thighs. Adjusting his fedora once as they bounce over old trolley tracks, Jim almost drops the huge machine and Lindsay’s heart jumps into her throat. At least, Lindsay begs at the top of her lungs into Jim’s back, take off those fucking shades so you can see the fucking road! But to no avail. The gallery is in a converted warehouse and Jim shudders the Harley up to the open double doors and then idles it on inside the huge, hot, barn-size room as the startled, staring crowd at first spreads away like a sea of hip people parting, but then folds back in about them gawking and impressed just as Jim has hoped.

  The striptease starts back at Mary Mississippi’s loft after her show, when for no particular reason Jim tosses a boot in Mary’s direction and she tosses it back along with one of her own little red cowgirl numbers. Mary’s show has been a great success, and she sold several of her huge paintings depicting handsome sailors naked save for their caps, heavily tattooed and amazingly hung, leaping off brightly illuminated ships that look like floating ocean cities into the high seas at night.

  The big drink, Jim says, as he takes off his other boot. —That’s why I dig your paintings, Mary. I understand them things. I almost took the big drink myself one time, Jim says, and he tosses the boot at Mary Mississippi’s boyfriend, the aforementioned S. Clay Wilson.

  Now why ever did you want to take the big drink, darlin’? Mary Mississippi asks Jim, in her relentlessly Southern-belle, blinky, breathless mode. Mary is sitting on a white rattan couch beneath the skylight beside S. Clay, who is busy cleaning his fingernails with a switchblade knife. The high, whitewashed brick walls of the big loft are illuminated by spotlights directed onto paintings selected from some of Mary’s earlier series; a couple from her “Falling Window Washers” series, three from her “Hotel Chinese Insomniacs” series, a few from her “Sacrificial Virgins and Assorted Burning Saints” series.

  As Jim relates how he once almost committed suicide by jumping off a bridge because he had lost the true love of his high- school honey, Lindsay walks around the huge room looking at the illuminated paintings and touching the odd collections of items Mary has piled high on shelves and tabletops everywhere: including a whole shelf covered with the severed heads of dolls and tiny torn-off dolly limbs, little dolly arms and legs, which Lindsay runs her fingers over gently. They make her feel sad. When she picks up a tiny, plastic head, its blue eyes blink open and Lindsay quickly puts it down.

  Mary Mississippi leans forward, her elbows on her knees, a look of sappy rapt attention on her pretty face as she listens to Jim hold forth about that time he balanced himself on the railing in the center of that bridge and listened to the dark water rush below, cold rain coming in gusts across his face. Lindsay flutters her fingers over enormous feathers that are arranged like exotic flowers in antique glass vases lined along a wall which is covered with a collection of feathered masks. No, one would have to describe Mary Mississippi’s face as more than simply pretty, Lindsay decides. It is an odd face but beautiful in its wa
y, with a slightly upturned nose, faint freckles, a bud of a mouth, short coppery-blond hair rich with flickering highlights. Mary always wears long, dangling, silver-and-turquoise earrings which she designs and makes herself and often sells for a bundle. Lindsay has not been able to wear earrings since that night years earlier when she had undressed hurriedly drunk and ripped an earring caught on a pullover sweater through her left lobe. Lindsay had not realized this until the next morning, when she awoke sick as a dog, dizzy, still half-drunk. Lindsay had awoken to discover the head of a man whose name she could not for the life of her recall beside her own on a blood-soaked pillow.