Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale

by Chuck Kinder

  Maybe Bill is holding that girl against her will, Ralph said. —We all know what he’s capable of. Maybe somebody should go bang on their door. Or put that squawking kid outside it.

  Did Lucy have any baby bottles with her? Lindsay said. —I didn’t see any. Did anybody see a, oh, baby pouch or something? For, you know, diapers, bottles, a pacifier. Jim, honey, look around, will you?

  I understand this baby’s needs perfectly well, Alice Ann said. —God knows I’ve had experience. My own babies were such healthy, happy babies, she said, and she began to unbutton the front of her blouse.

  Alice Ann! Ralph said.

  Alice Ann, hon, Lindsay said.

  Alice Ann, Ralph said, for the love of God.

  Ralph always did act funny about this beautiful, perfectly natural act, Alice Ann said, as the child, who had stopped crying, dimpled the flesh of Alice Ann’s breast with his grasping little fingers and took her nipple into his mouth.

  I’m sure there are baby bottles around here somewhere, Lindsay said.

  Have you no shame, Alice Ann? Ralph said. He unfolded a cloth table napkin and spread it over the head of the suckling child and Alice Ann’s breast.

  This is a beautiful act and a God-given woman’s right and duty, Alice Ann said, and tossed the napkin back onto the table.

  I, for one, Jim said, agree wholeheartedly with Alice Ann on this matter. Little Tonto there is clearly going to grow up to be a serious tit man.

  Jim, Lindsay said, do you always have to egg things on?

  Baring her bosoms for a crowd was always one of Alice Ann’s favorite stunts, Ralph said. —On public transportation was always big with Alice Ann. When our brats were babies and one of them would make the slightest peep, Alice Ann would haul out one of the old faithfuls and pop it in the kid’s mouth for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to gawk at the beautiful act.

  I think the little fellow is dropping off again, Alice Ann said, smiling down at the baby, whose eyes were closing. —Ralph, I have wanted to put forth an idea all evening, but the time hasn’t been right. Ralph, I want us to keep this beautiful child to raise as our very own.

  This time, Ralph said, you’ve gone around the bend, Alice Ann.

  We could give this beautiful child our name, Alice Ann said, and bent over to kiss the baby’s forehead. —We could begin again, Ralph. Before it’s too late.

  You’ve gone over the edge, Ralph said.

  Now now, Jim said, you don’t have to always be automatically a wet blanket, Ralph.

  Jim, Lindsay said, zip your lip.

  Ralph, Alice Ann said, we could be reborn in this beautiful baby. He could redeem us, Ralph. Couldn’t you, little Ralph; couldn’t you, sweetheart?

  How could you even suggest such a thing, Alice Ann? Ralph said.

  Spoilsport, Jim said. —Killjoy.

  Offer that Indian whore money, Ralph, Alice Ann said. —Any amount. The sky’s the limit. We still have the house money.

  How’s Billy doing? Lindsay asked Lucy as she walked back into the room at that moment.

  Fuck your buddy and the horse he rode in on, Lucy said, and then stopped dead in the middle of the room. —Hey, what’s going on here, anyhow? Lady, just what the fuck do you think you’re doing with my kid?

  Snack time, Jim said.

  Fuck you, pal, Lucy said.

  Ditto, Lindsay said.

  Lucy, hon, Alice Ann said, we, meaning Ralph and I, Mr. Crawford and I, would in all good faith, with your own best interests at heart, and the baby’s best interests, and we mean this sincerely, we would like to make you an offer, a proposal, as it were, one that we hope you will find truly impossible to refuse, one that will help you make something out of your life, help you secure a good future, become somebody even. Lucy, we would like to adopt your beautiful baby and raise it as our own. Wouldn’t we, Ralph?

  Lady, Lucy said, you are one fucking fruitcake.

  Vast Club

  1

  After the posse had disappeared into North Beach that night, Ralph had paced and smoked and mumbled and grumbled. Lindsay had started doing dinner dishes back at the sink in the kitchen, while Jim entertained a half tab of acid and attempted to decide between catching either an old Bogart flick or a silver- tongued preacher program out of San Jose. Every now and then, smoking like a stove, Ralph would scurry mumbling and grumbling down the hallway to peer out the front windows for any sign of Alice Ann and Bill. Who knows what sort of trouble those two nuts are capable of getting themselves into, Ralph muttered vehemently time and again when he loped back into the kitchen. Somebody should have stopped those two from going out into the night like nuts, Ralph opined and opined, puffing furiously each time he loped back into the kitchen to pace and pout and fume, until Jim abruptly turned the silver-tongued preacher off and suggested they all undertake a combination booze bolt and search for the Lost Posse and the missing Queen of California.

  That night San Francisco’s North Beach was ancient Egyptian in nature to Jim as the acid kicked anciently in. For one thing, the unusually warm wind that blew in off the Bay smelled both vaguely vegetal and as oceanic as sperm, as though it had passed through blooming bushes of pittosporum and palms thick with parrot life and over the ancient backs of crocodiles. And that full yellow moon truly looked tropical and serene and suggestive of a world of mystery in Lower Egypt during the Old Kingdom, which Jim, not unlike Alice Ann, found himself recalling vividly.

  Neither the Lost Posse nor the Queen of California was to be found in Powell’s or the Washington Square Bar & Grill, nor were they to be found at Capp’s Corner, where the bartender, Hal Tunnis, insisted on buying a round. Nor were they to be found at that litde hideaway Basque joint on Broadway, where the mostly blue-haired but hip old bohemians were dancing to the bouncy albeit sad accordion music of a tiny, amazingly wrinkled, prune-faced French woman wearing a long blond wig, who was reputed to have been the most celebrated courtesan in Paris between the Big Wars, and who wept copiously as she played her accordion and sang the old songs of Edith Piaf. Honey, Lindsay said at one point, and took Jim by the hand, are you crying? Not me, Jim said, batting his eyes like a flirty homecoming queen.

  Across a traffic-clogged Broadway, Chinatown was a great glowing caterpillar of neon and noise, hosed sidewalks smelling like burnt oil and eels and the fresh blood of chickens. Waiting for the light to change at Columbus and Broadway, Jim and Ralph and Lindsay entertained the corner strip joint barker’s urgent entreaty to enjoy the infinite allure of totally nude coeds dancing within. Are they really coeds, do you think? Ralph asked Jim. Naked, you know, coeds? Yup, Jim said.

  Jim gazed on down that Broadway boulevard of blinking neon fallen-angel signs while reflecting on the nature of forbidden desires. Ralph said, You think they might be in that place, the, er, Condor Club? Maybe we should take us a little look in the Condor Club, Ralph said, referring to the club across Columbus, above whose open doorway a giant red neon figure of Carol Dodo and her famous huge breasts blinked. Lindsay said, Ralph, you just want to gape at some big tits. No, Ralph said, you’ve got me wrong about that. Jim was wondering if it was ever possible to drop your membership in that vast club of the betrayed and the betrayers. Simply stop paying your dues and quit cold turkey. Or was that vast club of the betrayed and the betrayers like the Mafia, where, once you were initiated, only death could set you free. What Jim wanted to do was concentrate on somebody outside himself for the rest of his natural life, like his lovely wife. Jim took Lindsay by the hand and she looked at him a little surprised and she smiled at him warmly and his heart leapt.

  They poked their heads into Vesuvio’s, where the bartender, Danny Brannon, bought a round. Larry Ferlinghetti was playing chess at a back table. They dodged through traffic across Columbus into Adler Alley and Spec’s. They ordered vodka martinis, and Jim studied his handsome, tragic face in the mirror behind the bar. In the mirror he watched Lindsay and Ralph lean toward one another to talk. Jim strolled back through the low, dark, smoky, pac
ked room toward the heads. The walls were plastered with pictures, posters, old signs, dusty funky memorabilia, all that privileged junk which made Spec’s the neighborhood museum.

  In the narrow back hallway, Bobby Diamond was talking to two blond dancers from the club upstairs. All night the topless dancers from the strip club upstairs snuck down the inner staircase to Spec’s between sets for quick smokes or belts or to pick up a few extra bucks giving blowjobs back in Spec’s head. Both girls were tall and thin and pale as mushrooms. They leaned back against the wall smoking and talking with Bobby Diamond languidly, their bored, painted raccoony eyes dark and sad and their mouths red as blood. Their tits, which Jim could see through their filmy robes, were way too enormous for the frail stems of their bony bodies. Neither of the hard-faced, big-titted girls acknowleged Jim as he walked up. Bobby Diamond had an unlit cigarette dangling from his thin, scarred lips. Player was Bobby Diamond’s nickname among his small-time hood and has-been pug pals. It meant pimp in street talk. Maybe 120 pounds dripping wet, Bobby Diamond was a hard-nosed little banty rooster of a boxer, who could bob and bang and punch all night with pure heart for fuel. But he could get caught cold and cut easily. Bobby Diamond had done some time. Between bouts for chump change Bobby Diamond worked as a bouncer in cheap bars and nude encounter parlors and spent every free afternoon in those fleabag hotel rooms he called home writing a novel about a down-and-out boxer heartbroken because he had blown his one big chance for love with a good woman. Suddenly the hard- faced, big-titted girls flipped their cigarette butts to the floor and ducked hurriedly through the beaded curtains to head back upstairs to the club, their high heels clacking crazily on the steps.

  Bobby Diamond turned to look at Jim with angry, albeit sad, eyes. How did you blow it with that great woman? Bobby Diamond hissed at Jim, punching him in the chest with a finger. Yeah, and don’t go acting fucken cool, you dumb jackoff, Bobby Diamond hissed. Jim said, Say what? Bobby Diamond said, I saw your old lady up at Cafe Trieste today, man, and this big dumb goofy-looking guy was hitting on her, man. They were holding hands and he was fucken mooning around. So how did you let that happen, man? You been fucken off, man? Lindsay’d never fuck off if you weren’t fucken off first. Iu. Bobby Diamond said, Well, you want me to do that big dumb goofy guy for you, man. I’ll do him gratis. Jim said, No, man, he’s my job. I’m on top of this situation, man. I got my own plans for that puke. But I gotta wait for the right time. Thanks, anyway, man. Bobby Diamond said, Okay, man. But if you need me, man. Listen, man, what are you holding, man? Any good blow, man? Jim said, Me and Shorty got stuff coming in. I can cover you tomorrow, man. Bobby Diamond said, Okay, man. Now listen, don’t act fucken cool and don’t act fucken stupid, man, and get your situation taken care of, man, you dig? Jim said, Yeah, man, I dig. Can I buy you a belt, man? Naw, man, I’m back in training, Bobby Diamond said, and pointed to the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. I’ve been hitting the heavy bag down at Newman’s for a couple of weeks. I’m making a comeback, man. I’m getting a six-round prelim next month. But I could do with some blow. Blow is what you need for comebacks. Jim said, You got the blow, man.

  Outside Spec’s, the night air about Jim and Lindsay and Ralph was palpable with purpose, like breath, like a gathering and release of air from the lungs of the ancient royalty of a lost race. Jim was certain at that moment he had the future by the short hairs as soon as he took care of business. The lights of North Beach shuddered with energy as Jim and Lindsay and Ralph turned back toward Broadway and Carol Doda’s red blinking tits. They angled onto the narrow, alleylike Grant Street amid the hordes of hooker-witches, drug thugs, and refried freaks left over from a bygone subterranean time. They peeked into the Grant Street saloon, then meandered up the narrow street window- shopping the gaudy funk boutiques, the refugee hippie head shops, the secondhand shops of fancy old clothes, crazy costumes, hats from the thirties and forties, racks of feathered boas, the exotic Chinese herbal shops, and a hardware store with a collection of mystery tools from the Orient in its window.

  They threw a left onto Green. Ralph didn’t like the looks of Gino & Carlo’s on Green, a dark narrow cave of a bar packed with its usual crowd of old wop gangster winos punching operatic arias on the jukebox and scar-faced Sicilian waiters from the Cafe Sport and working girls getting lit for the long night ahead of them, plus an assortment of Grant Street pimps, queens, and dopers. Gino & Carlo’s was an establishment which gave Ralph the willies, and he, for one, wasn’t ashamed to admit it; hence Jim entered that place alone, leaving Ralph and Lindsay outside on the sidewalk smoking. When Jim maneuvered his way into a spot beside him at the bar, Charlie McCabe looked at Jim over glasses perched halfway down his huge bulbous nose and grinned. A heavy, white-haired old fart of a character, Charlie McCabe wrote a column called “Himself’ for the Sun Francisco Examiner, and the corner bar stool nearest the door at Gino & Carlo’s was his office, where he had his own phone, and stacks of papers, magazines, and books abounded. Jim bought Charlie a black brew as thick as molasses and himself a double Jack over. As he and Charlie chatted, Jim gazed through the open doorway at Lindsay and Ralph talking and smoking outside. At one point Lindsay leaned toward Ralph to say something and he bobbed his head in acknowledgment, whereupon Lindsay reached up to pat him on the cheek.

  Jim said to Charlie McCabe, Charlie, I got an item for your column, old sport. It’s about an impending cold-blooded murder in the form of a serious ass kicking, which I predict will occur before the weekend is over and the perpetrator of said ass kicking will get off in a court of law on account of justifiable motherfucken homicide. We are talking about body parts scattered throughout the neighborhood here.

  2

  As they walked up Russian Hill in the early morning, Ralph continued to mumble and grumble and gripe about Bill and Alice Ann probably being under arrest somewhere at that very moment and just who was supposed to come up with bail? Lindsay walked along in silence, as did Jim, who had been stuck carrying the booze-bolt bag. Lindsay had her arms folded over her breasts, as though she was chilly, or simply hugging herself. Now and then she took a long drag from the cigarette that dangled from her lips. The fog had rolled in, and the lights along the street had little yellowy halos glowing around them, and moisture crackled on the wires overhead.

  When they reached the corner of Hyde, Lindsay nodded toward a revolving bubble of blue light atop a police car parked in front of their building on up the hill and said, I have a sinking feeling that Ralph may have a point.

  They’re probably waiting to pick Ralph up, Jim said.

  This may not be funny, Lindsay said. —That’s Bill they’re talking with. God, what now?

  Ralph ducked into a doorway.

  Ralph, you chickenshit, Jim said.

  Why should we be implicated, Ralph whisper-hissed. —In anything Bill has done?

  Old Harry and Jake, Jim said as he and Lindsay walked up to the two uniformed officers who were standing on either side of Bill in the middle of the sidewalk in front of their building. The officers were out of the station on Green Street, right around the corner from the cop watering hole, Powell’s, where Jim joined them often. —My two favorite law dogs in the world. What’s up?

  Do you know this character, Jim? Jake, a heavy-set, acne- scarred Irish cop, said, shining a flashlight on Bill’s face.

  I’ve never seen this sorry sonofabitch in my life, Jim said.

  He’s ours, Lindsay said. —As much as I hate to admit it.

  This is all just a real big mistake, Bill said, rolling his eyes and wagging his head empathically.

  Is this asshole under arrest? Jim said. —If not, he should be. And so should that shady-looking character lurking in the shadows right down the hill. Yeah, him. Take both the sonsofbitches and throw them under the jailhouse is my best advice.

  Just a sad, sorry mistake, Bill said. —That’s what this is.

  He was trying to break into your building, Officer Harry, a young, handsome cop, s
aid. —He about scared your landlady to death. Mrs. Chou called us about a big break-in. She’s not real happy right now, Jim.

  I can tell, Jim said, and gave a little wave and shrug of his shoulders to Mrs. Chou, whose tiny face, its eyes pinpoints of fear and fury, he could see peeking from behind a curtain in her first- floor flat. She ducked back out of sight.

  And then there’s that one, Officer Harry said, and pointed his flashlight at Alice Ann, who was sitting in the entryway smoking.

  There you are, Lindsay said, and walked over to her.