by Chuck Kinder
I know, Jim says. He rubs strands of Lindsay’s hair in his fingers.
Do you love me?
I do.
I hate feeling old and ugly.
You’re not old and ugly.
I always feel as though I’m smelly or something. I don’t even care if we fuck, necessarily. I just need to feel a man’s arms around me.
Any man’s?
The man who loves me. All I ever felt like I was good for with that asshole of a first husband was washing his socks and sucking his cock. But at least the sonofabitch would roll over every couple of weeks and want to stick it in my mouth. I felt desired that much at least. You’re the one who makes me feel old and ugly and smelly, Jim. And you’re the one who promised to love and cherish me until death us do part.
Let’s talk about this later.
But you always put me off. You never want to talk.
I talk.
Why do you make me feel so fucking awful?
Thanks, Jim says. —Put all your problems at my doorstep.
Now you sound like fucking Ralph.
That’s probably the worst thing you ever said to me, Jim says. —Look, I’m trying to write a book. It’s taking about everything I got.
That’s not good enough. Jim, honey, we need to talk. Even when it’s painful. Tonight is the first time we’ve even come close to talking about anything since I don’t remember when.
I know, Jim says.
We have to stay in love, Jim. We have to try, anyway. Staying in love is the most difficult thing to do on the face of the earth. But we can do it. We simply can’t keep drifting apart.
I know, Jim says.
Two people are capable of loving one another all their lives, I know it. I have to believe this. If I don’t believe anything else in the world, I have to believe this. Your book is no reason for us to drift apart.
I’ll do better.
Do you really still love me?
I love you.
God, I hope so, you big bozo. I love you. I do.
I’m glad.
Well, I’m glad you’re glad, Lindsay says, and laughs. She strokes Jim’s nipples through the hair on his chest with her thumbs. Jim touches the sides of Lindsay’s breasts with his fingertips. He cups her breasts and squeezes gently.
The Kindness of Strangers
Ralph had to look high and low, rummage around in countless drawers, before he found a functioning pair of scissors, which he then arranged in his son’s left hand (the boy was a lefty, another suspicious sign in the devil department). In the boy’s right hand Ralph arranged several fistfuls of greasy hair and, as an afterthought, a ripped section from one of the evil posters. Ralph locked the boy’s bedroom door behind him, and he fled the scene of that crime against nature with hopefully no solid clues pointing in his direction.
In the kitchen Ralph lifted the print of the green pepper above the stove and reached into the hole behind it. He wiggled his fingers around until he found the little bottle. It was only a half-pint of bourbon, but an unopened cherry, and in a pinch what else could a man hope for. Ralph unscrewed the top and took a long hit and, after swatting a cat off the chair, sat down at the kitchen table. He reached up and clicked off the overhead light and then sat there in the dark chain-smoking and sipping from the little half-pint, one sip for himself and one for his dad, as he watched the driveway. He reflected upon that naked, nearly bald boy in that bedroom of black walls. At this point, Ralph reflected, it was all out of his hands.
A car Ralph did not recognize pulled into the driveway and stopped. It was a big, black, expensive-looking affair, and whoever was driving left the engine and high beams on. Ralph ducked back away from the window and stubbed out his cigarette. The backseat’s door was flung open and Alice Ann tumbled out onto the gravel on her knees. Ralph killed off the pint in a single gulp. Alice Ann was laughing hysterically. The driver’s-side door of the car swung open and Ralph saw a pant leg.
Ralph blinked his eyes in the bright overhead light when Alice Ann clicked it on with the switch by the door, and spots spun in his vision. When he was able to focus, Ralph peeked out from behind the refrigerator. Alice Ann was being supported on either side and guided along by a couple, an older couple, who were complete strangers to Ralph. They were a tall, handsome couple, and the woman had beautifully coiffed white hair. The man looked like that junior-high-school principal who had expelled Ralph for smoking in the boys’ room. The woman made encouraging cooing sounds at Alice Ann, and kept saying, “There, dear; there, dear; there, dear.’’ At this point Alice Ann was weeping uncontrollably. Suddenly Alice Ann began to laugh again. Both the man and woman had stricken looks on their otherwise pleasant, kindly faces.
Over there, Alice Ann said after a particularly wrenching combination sob and hoot, and she pointed at Ralph, who ducked back behind the refrigerator and held his breath. —Over there is Mr. Crawford, the man who happens to be my husband of all these wasted lifetimes. We are the Crawfords, my husband and I. Come out from behind the refrigerator, Mr. Crawford, you miserable sonofabitch, and meet the Myerses, the kindest human beings on the face of the fucking earth, who just saved my life.
Hello, Ralph said, and stepped out from behind the refrigerator. —I was looking for something. I dropped something back there. Hello, hello, Ralph said, and offered his hand to Mr. Myers, who shook it once.
She—your wife, I mean, Mr. Myers said to Ralph, in a whisper Ralph supposed he meant to somehow fly over Alice Ann’s head, she was walking on the side of the road.
Your wife was stumbling, Mrs. Myers stage-whispered, her lips pursed and her wide eyes suggesting her utter astonishment. —She was stumbling on the roadside. We had to stop, Mr. Myers and myself. We had to help her some way.
This is the third house she has asked us to stop at, Mr. Myers said, his kindly eyes crinkled with confusion and concern. —We really didn’t know quite what to do.
We had to help her, though, if we could, Mrs. Myers affirmed, nodding her white head vigorously.
She is not deaf and dumb, Alice Ann said. —She is not a dead person or a child or somebody simpleminded.
My wife has been under the weather lately, Ralph said. —And she’s been taking medications. Prescribed medication, of course. She had a glass of wine with dinner. Two tops. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before.
These kind people, the Myerses, were kind enough to drive me home after you dumped me on our eighteenth wedding anniversary. Mr. and Mrs. Myers, I will never be able to adequately thank you enough for your kindness. Mrs. Myers, I would bet my life that Mr. Myers has never been an inconsiderate cocksucker to you, has he? Unlike Mr. Crawford. By the bye, Mr. and Mrs. Myers, would you care to have a little drink? A nightcap?
I looked everywhere for you, Alice Ann, Ralph said. —I thought you had left me. I did, I did, Ralph said to the Myerses.
We really have to be going, Mr. Myers said, looking at his watch. He took his wife by her elbows and edged her toward the door. —Mr. Crawford, Mr. Myers stage-whispered, perhaps she, Mrs. Crawford, should see somebody, somebody, you know, professional.
Please, Mr. and Mrs. Myers, I implore you, Alice Ann said. —Permit my husband, Mr. Crawford, to fix you a little drink. Pull up a couple of chairs and let’s get better acquainted. My husband’s first name is Ralph. Call Mr. Crawford Ralph from here on out, please. My first name is Lindsay. Call me Lindsay like my husband, Mr. Crawford, does, I implore you. Mr. Crawford, will you please fix us all a nice little drink and we will explain to the Myerses how things went astray tonight. So they will understand and hopefully not think too badly of us and hopefully will give us a second chance, as I have given Mr. Crawford. Mr. Crawford has had more chances than you can shake a stick at. Mr. Crawford, Ralph to you, went outside the marriage, you understand. A woman’s charm, as we all know, is fifty percent illusion, but when a thing is important, I tell the truth, and this is the truth. I, for one, have never cheated on Mr. Crawford as long as I have lived.
Is it that I am not young and desirable enough any longer, Mr. Crawford? Is that why you were fucking my sister royally? Look at dear Mrs. Myers here. Mrs. Myers is no longer young and desirable, but does that mean Mr. Myers would fuck her sister royally? I think not. I have always believed that whatever good you possess is good enough to merit your salvation. Something has happened to Mr. Crawford and myself while we weren’t looking. But what was it? Mr. Crawford, why don’t you see if our children are awake. I’d love for the Myerses to meet our children. They’re wonderful kids. They want to be lawyers and doctors.
Not tonight, Alice Ann, Ralph said. —Some other time.
We have to leave, really, Mr. Myers said. —Really we do. We are sorry, you understand. We truly are.
Our kids will be heartsick if they don’t get to meet you folks, Alice Ann said. —Ralph, goddamn it, fix the fucking drinks.
Really, not for us, Mr. Myers said. —Perhaps another time. We really have to be going. People are waiting for us. We are expected somewhere.
At three or four o’clock in the fucking morning? Alice Ann said. —Don’t make me laugh.
Our children are not at home, is that it, Ralph? Ralph, tell me where our children are at three or four fucking o’clock in the morning.
Mr. Crawford . „. Mr. Myers said.
Ralph to you, Alice Ann said.
Somebody professional, Mr. Crawford, Mr. Myers said. —Somebody recommended. A good doctor.
Did you know, Mr. and Mrs. Myers, that my husband, Mr. Crawford, is a famous author?
Please, Alice Ann, Ralph said. —Please.
Don’t be so modest, Mr. Crawford, Alice Ann said. —Haven’t you folks heard of Ralph Crawford, the famous author?
Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Myers said, I’m not very conversant with contemporary authors. A fact I am rather ashamed to admit, since I’m a professor of literature at San Jose State. My area of concern is the Victorian period. I am something of an Arnoldian, I must confess.
He is very prominent in his field, Mrs. Myers said.
I will make it a point to look up your work, however, Mr. Crawford, Mr. Myers said, and withdrew a small notebook from his coat pocket. —Perhaps you could give me some of the tides of your books.
No, that’s all right, Ralph said. —Really. Just forget about it. I’d much rather that you forget everything about tonight, if you can.
My husband, Mr. Crawford, won’t forget anything about this night, Alice Ann said. —My husband is probably making this into a story right now. Tell him the stories of your lives, Mr. and Mrs. Myers. Go on, I dare you.
Well, it has been nice to meet you folks, Ralph said to the Myerses, who stood there frozen in an attitude of departure. —Even under these trying circumstances.
Mrs. Myers, Alice Ann said, and raised a hand toward Mrs. Myers, I simply cannot tell you how much you remind me of my mother. She was beautiful and kind, as you are. I got my hair from her, and my voice. My mother would have looked exactly like you, Mrs. Myers, if her brain had not exploded, Alice Ann said, and picked up the empty half-pint bottle from the table. She shook it and looked at it in the light.
I’m afraid that little baby is history, Ralph said. —To tell the sad truth, I don’t think there’s a drop of anything in the whole house for a nightcap. I don’t suppose you have a little drop of something with you, do you, Mr. Myers?
When Mr. and Mrs. Myers turned hurriedly for the door, Mr. Myers stumbled over a scrambling cat. Alice Ann jumped up from the table and rushed after them.
Let’s stay in touch, Alice Ann called from the doorway to the departing Myerses.
Sea of Love
1
The Beach Chalet was a two-story Byzantine dream of a bar. Once a fabled watering hole for the wealthy, it was now an aging, once-grand Beaux Arts building on the curb of the Great Highway, with the Pacific Ocean as a view and inspiration for serious boozing. A vast cathedral of a gin joint, it was flooded with a smoky lyric light that left you with an illusion of flying buttresses and a floating cloudy dome of a ceiling dim and distant and rich with mysterious portents as meaningful for some as a Sistine Chapel, beneath which its generally lowlife but dedicated disciples could get truly religious about their drinking—graybeard biker types and their sagging bleached-blond babes; old salts nodding with nostalgia as they nursed the last, sad beers of their lives; fading, tattooed trollops tottering around the room, as they slow-danced in lonely self-hugs and awaited the second coming of desire. They all took turns plugging silver into an enormous Mexican folk altar of a jukebox packed with those sentimental, plaintive country tunes in which self-pity just comes natural, in which at the end of long suffering you get to be just who you have always suspected you are, the real star of the song.
Jim gazed across the room, that smoky shadowland of sudden love and its attendant loss, to where Mary Mississippi was shooting pool with a tall, one-armed biker whose pure white hair hung in a ponytail nearly to his butt. Mary had taken off her motorcycle jacket, and each time she bent forward to shoot a ball her small, firm breasts pressed against the cotton of her sleeveless cut-off black T-shirt. Her hair was still damp from the rainy day outside, and its red ringlets were pasted around her shining penny of a face. As Mary took each studied shot, Jim looked with lust at the supple ripple of sleek muscle beneath the tanned, toned flesh of Mary’s arms. Her wide sea-green eyes had that show-me-something-I- haven’t-seen-before look in them, and when she raised a fist in the air after a very good shot, Jim could see a haze of red hair under her arm. Within that slant of autumnal ocean light in which she moved languidly around the table, Mary’s hair and flesh shed the soft glow of a sunset. The aging biker, who had your basic battered, been- around face and, Jim had to acknowledge, a true elegance of motion as he deftly handled the pool cue one-handed, was clearly entranced by Mary, and Jim knew the name of that song.
Jim saw Mary touch the old biker fart on his shoulder when he made a poor shot, and she fluttered her fingers there as they spoke for a few moments, their heads inclined intimately. Mary poked the old biker in the ribs with a forefinger as she nodded her head against his chest and laughed at something wonderfully funny he said. After another game of pool, they strolled over to the jukebox together, Mary and the old biker fuck, and Mary stood with the side of her hip pressed against the old biker’s leg, while they took turns punching selections. When they began to slow-dance, the old biker bent forward so that his face was against Mary’s upturned face. They barely moved as they danced in place in front of the jukebox, and Mary’s eyes were closed. The old biker’s one huge hand, his left, rested at the upper swell of Mary’s hips. Mary had one of her hands up under the old biker’s white ponytail on his neck and the other she had hooked over the back of his belt by a thumb. When the song ended Mary stood on tiptoe to whisper something into the old biker’s ear, and then she stepped back away from him and smiled wide-eyed and blinky up into his old, craggy, take-no-prisoners face. The old biker wagged his head in what appeared to Jim’s trained eye utter disbelief, and then after saying something to Mary, he hurried off toward the entrance to the men’s room. Mary looked over her shoulder at Jim with that sexy, shadowy smile he knew so well, and then she turned and walked toward him, looking down at her feet as she came, her hands clasped behind her back, biting her full lower lip, like a naughty little girl who had some big explaining to do.
Mary Mississippi nuzzled her face into Jim’s neck and ran her tongue along the side of his beard to his ear, whose lobe she sucked between her lips. She hooked the fingers of her right hand behind Jim’s belt buckle and pressed the palm of her hand against the amazing bulge of the boner strangling in his jeans.
Well, my gracious, Mary said, laughing, you old hot dog, you.
What’s a boy to do?
So, how’ve you been amusing yourself while I was off shooting pool with that old guy?
And slow-dancing.
Yup.
Oh, not much. You know. The usual. I’ve just bee
n sitting here brooding about the fact that the bottom line of life is the indestructibility of hope.
