Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (28 page)

Jesus, Jim said, and quit
honking the horn.

You might as well honk it,
Ralph said. —It’s our only hope, so to speak. That’s Paco’s Harley
over there in front of the garage. There are little lakes of oil
all over the driveway. I slid in one the other day. I was carrying
out the garbage. There I was one moment, just a regular fellow in
America going about his everyday life carrying out his everyday
garbage. The next moment I was flying through the air like some
cartoon character. Then I was Dagwood Bumstead sitting on his butt
in a pool of oil. Hair full of coffee grounds. An orange rind
hanging off an ear. A lap full of shitty kitty litter. Surrounded
by a snow of used tampons. I can’t really pretend to understand
anything about my life, such as it is.

You ought to put your foot
down around here, Jim said. —Kick a little ass.

First thing in the morning,
Ralph said. —What I should probably do is just stick my pitiful
foot out the window right now and get it over with. Let Killer chew
it off and bury it in the back yard.

You just don’t know, old
Jim. Things were turning around for us. The advance money for the
book, money which is ancient history now. The book. Things were
looking up for a week or two. Now there’s a blizzard of bad checks
flying back at us. We hired this Chicano crew to shape up the yard.
To beautify it, in Alice Ann’s parlance. The check we wrote them
bounced and now they are requesting cash in hand in return for not
coming back over here and plowing up the ground with my teeth. The
electricity is going to be cut off. I’m in the process of
plea-bargaining with the phone company. I’d get down on my knees
and send up a prayer if I knew where to aim it.

Hey, old dog, Jim said, and
tapped Ralph on his shoulder. — You just had a book of groovy
stories published by a hardball house. Life could be
worse.

Do you really think they’re
groovy, old Jim?

You bet. You know I do. And,
who knows, what with all those swell blurbs from your famous
friends, the book might not sink out of sight in a week like most
collections of short stories.

Jim, I haven’t told you the
whole sad story, Ralph said. —All that rubber-check business, big
deal. I’ve hung paper all my adult life. I’ve lived like a pathetic
caveman without electricity in my life, too. Big deal. But the mess
I’m in now is a different can of worms entirely.

What can of worms is
different, Ralph?

This latest bad business.
This is serious city. I’m going to jail, Jim, without passing Go.
That’s the long and short of it.

You mean there is some
justice in this wretched world?

Yeah, you laugh. You think
I’m fooling. Well, I’m not.

Why are you going to jail
without passing Go, Ralph?

Hit the horn some more,
Ralph said. It’s a long and sordid story. It’s a pitiful
story.

All your stories are
somewhat pitiful, Ralph.

The neighbors don’t even
speak to us anymore. They close their doors in our faces. They call
the sheriff on us. And who can blame them, I ask you? Sometimes
this whole driveway is packed with hoods on Harleys. Revving up
their monstrous machines as they shoot up heroin in broad daylight.
Paco and his pals drag-race up and down the street like crazy men.
This is a residential street, for God’s sake! This is a tree-lined
residential white-bread street. Paco and his pals give each other
points for running over the neighbors’ pets. They take aim at the
neighborhood kids. Not that I give a rat’s ass for the scumbag
kids in this neighborhood.

But why are you going to
jail, Ralph? Jim said, and took a paper bag from beneath the front
seat. He pulled a pint of Jack Daniel’s out of the paper bag and
opened it. He took a half tab of windowpane acid and downed it with
a long drink and hit the horn.

Those little neighborhood
scumbags turn over my garbage cans. My windows stay soaped with
obscene comments. Every night in this horrible neighborhood is
Halloween for my house. I don’t suppose I could have a drop of
that, could I?

Why are you going to jail,
Ralph?

I don’t belong in jail,
Ralph said. —It’s simply a big misunderstanding. So I made a
little mistake. Why make a federal case out of a little mistake,
that’s my question. I really could use a little nip, old
Jim.

Just don't guzzle it, okay,
Ralph, Jim said, and passed the pint to Ralph. —Just cut to the
chase, Ralph. Why are you going to jail without passing
Go?

Okay. This fellow came to my
door today. He caught me off guard. I hadn't heard him drive up. He
was from the prosecuting attorney's office. That's how serious it
is. So all right. So I mistakenly cashed a couple of unemployment
checks after I started teaching that term at Berkeley. A very human
kind of error in my book. A foolish mistake on my part. I'll be the
first one to admit it. But you would have thought I'd robbed a bank
or something.

How many unemployment checks
did you mistakenly cash while you were teaching, Ralph?

Oh, I don’t know exactly. I
don’t remember exactly. You know me, old Jim. I don’t have any head
for numbers.

About how many?

Eleven.

Goodbye, Ralph.

What? What?

Adios, amigo. I’ll write you
from time to time.

Really? Really do you
think?

Cell-block city, old
Ralph.

How do you know that? You
don’t really know that.

Look at it like this, Ralph.
You’ll have plenty of time to write. When you’re not out on the
chain gang anyway.

Now I know better than that.
Chain gangs aren’t allowed in an enlightened state like California
in this day and time. Are they? Anyway, it’s not like I’m some sort
of hardened criminal like some people I know. I’ve never armed
myself and gone out to commit criminal acts like some people I
could mention.

You’re going to be singing
the cell-block city blues, old Ralph. That’s simply the long and
short of it.

I wasn’t myself. I was
muddled. I’ll plead that, temporary muddleness. Something.
Anything. Did I tell you my old mom is going blind? News like that
would muddle a lot better man than me even.

Sure, Ralph.

She’ll fake it, Ralph said.
—I’ll get her a white cane. She’ll wear dark glasses and stumble
into the courtroom. That old bat owes me that much. I think I’m
going to just leave the country. Flee for my life, such as it
is.

The law has long arms,
Ralph, Jim said, and hit the horn. —Pass the bottle,
Ralph.

I’ll cross borders under
cover of darkness. I'll vanish off the face of the earth. I’ll live
and write under an assumed name. Like that mysterious B. Travis
fellow, or Tavern, whatever, who disappeared into the wilds of
Mexico. I’ll hide out in a little Mexican fishing village. I’ll
disguise myself, wear a wig, if it comes to that. I’ll be the
mysterious fellow writing at the corner table in the smoky cantina.
Wearing a wig and writing under an assumed name. Alice Ann has
always wanted to get south of the border.

Pass that bottle of Jack,
goddamn it, Ralph, or whatever your name is, Jim said, and hit the
horn.

Killer suddenly rose up on
his great hind legs and put paws the size of pillows on the hood of
the car. This was not a good thing in Jim’s mind, especially since
the acid had kicked in faster and more fireworky than he had
expected. When the Cutlass seemed to tilt forward, Jim ducked
around the steering wheel and banged his head as he tried to dive
under the dashboard.

What is the wolf trying to
do now, Ralph? Jim inquired, rubbing the rising knot on his
forehead.

I think Killer is in love,
Ralph said. —With your car. But don’t worry too much. It will
probably pass. Killer is sort of fickle for a wolf.

Jim peeked above the
dashboard. He was almost in Ralph’s lap. Killer’s terrible yellow
eyes flashed with a look of what? desperate yearning, lust? Killer
bared teeth like dripping sabers. Killer raised his huge head and
howled into the night. Frothing fiercely from his cavern of a
mouth, Killer arched his enormous neck forward. With a blood-red
tongue the approximate size of Jim’s arm, Killer licked the
windshield. Like filthy soapsuds, saliva blurred the glass, and
without thinking Jim clicked on the windshield wipers. There was a
great howl of pain and vast annoyance, then an astonishing silence.
Jim pressed both hands on the horn and held them there. Ralph
clasped his hands over his ears. Porch lights flashed on from
houses up and down the street. The growl that followed was unlike
any sound Jim had heard in his life. It seemed to grow from
something huge rising from deep under the earth. The blaring horn
was a small, feathered, fluttering, hopeless thing. When the car
began to rock violently, Jim clutched Ralph around his neck.
Ralph’s eyes bulged as he struggled for breath.

An amazingly muscular young
man walked out of the kitchen door. He stood there framed in the
kitchen doorway’s light, a glowing cigarette dangling from the
center of his dark face. He was wearing only black bikini briefs.
He flicked his cigarette and snapped his fingers. Killer
belly-crawled across the driveway to him. The muscular young man
opened the kitchen’s screen door and he and Killer disappeared
inside Ralph’s house.

2

Ralph opened the
refrigerator door and stuck his head in, while Jim, after shooing a
big orange cat off a chair, sat down at the kitchen table. Two cats
were curled up asleep on the tabletop. Other cats roamed about the
kitchen counters sniffing and licking stacked dirty dishes. All
the various cats around the room appeared to pulse, to grow larger,
then noticeably smaller with each breath. They were pulsing pussies
to Jim’s eyes, and a rainbow of colors. A cat whose heart Jim
could see visibly beating beneath its glowing green fur jumped up
on the table and sniffed at a cup half full of cold coffee with
cigarette butts floating in it like little dead albino fish. A
purple cat drank from a dripping faucet, its pink little tongue
darting in and out. When it had satisfied its thirst, the purple
cat rubbed a paw over its face and then roamed along the counter
until it came upon what appeared to be a small glass pyramid in
which Jim was certain he could see an egg, a carrot, a piece of
celery, and what could have been a blue- green sandwich.

What’s that, Ralph? Jim
said.

What’s what?

The contraption on the
counter over there that the purple cat is licking. The little glass
pyramid thing, or whatever.

That’s living proof, Ralph
said. —This is the final straw, I’m here to tell you. I don’t
believe this. Alice Ann was up until the wee hours working on some
of the world’s most serious snacks. In case you guys actually came
over. And for what I ask you?

Living proof of what, Ralph?
Jim said.

I just really don’t believe
it, Ralph said. He took a large oval platter from the refrigerator
and placed it on the table in front of Jim. On its wide white
surface were four deviled eggs, three pieces of cream
cheese-stuffed celery, maybe a half dozen tidbits of this and that.
—That platter was jam-packed with fancy goodies, I’m telling you.
And those were, too, Ralph said, pointing to two other empty
platters on the kitchen counter that colorful cats were licking.
Ralph stepped to the kitchen sink and scattered the colorful cats.
He took an empty bowl from the sink and waved it in the air. —As
late as three o’clock this very afternoon there was a tangy
blue-cheese dip in this bowl.

We can always order in
pizza, Jim said, and snatched a deviled egg from under a blue cat’s
nose. The blue cat looked at Jim and mewed fuck you.

And you know what was in
that bowl? Ralph said, and pointed to a large, flat bowl on the
kitchen floor by the door to the dining room.

Tell me, please, Jim said,
and grabbed another egg in the nick of time. When Jim plopped the
egg into his mouth, it possessed, like the previous egg, the
texture of tiny feathers which fluttered faintly going down his
throat.

Steak tartare! Ralph said,
and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. He took a long drink of
Jack Daniel’s from the bottle Jim offered him. Ralph leaned forward
and looked into the cup of cold coffee and floating tiny dead fish.
—This is not my cup, I’ll have you know. This place was neat as a
pin as late as three o’clock this afternoon, which is when we
walked out the door to meet you guys.

Ralph, you have to explain
the little glass contraption to me, Jim said. —I need to
understand, Ralph.