Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (33 page)

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.