Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (34 page)

The layer of light over the
downtown buildings is rosy and an impossible purple. The night air
smells like exotic spices. Lindsay watches her husband kick at
demons in the dark, and questions come to her as clear and
mysterious as lines from poems. How dependent is she upon desire?
Can she discard the plots of her old dreams? Can she imagine moving
into yet another runaway life? Can she patch up her life in secret?
What are the causes for love? Is surviving saying yes to
everything? Is ruin an impossible habit to break? What was the
nature of this longing that could find no shelter? What does dear
old rotten Ralph hope to gain by rubbing his bony knees up and
down her back as she watches her new husband dance madly in the
dark?

Alice Ann laughs and swirls
about the dark yard, her beautiful white face an image of smoke,
her thin, pale arms lifted above her head, long blond hair thrown
back, as though in a spell, an apparition weaving in and about the
shadowy swim of Shorty’s and Jim’s shapes. Jim’s trick, Lindsay has
come to understand, is to catch people up, making up the rules as
he goes along. Lindsay feels Ralph’s bony knees press and rub
almost painfully into her back as she watches Jim carry on and on,
the sort of guy who might set his own hair on fire so that one
would notice him in the dark.

When Shorty pulls out his
ceremonial Jap hari-kari dagger and begins to flash it about, Jim
entertains a bright idea. It is high time he and Shorty became
blood brothers. They would cut their thumbs and clasp their
bleeding wounds together. They would mingle their blood, let their
stories and memories mingle, let themselves fold into one great
mutual myth. Shorty thinks it’s a groovy idea, freaking far-out,
man! Ralph mumbles something to the effect that he is utterly
appalled by such an idea. The idea! Ralph mumbles disdainfully. Jim
takes the dagger and carefully nicks Shorty’s thumb, which Shorty
holds aloft, and hoots into the night. Shorty excitedly takes the
dagger, and while Jim stoically gazes toward the lights of the
city, Shorty nearly severs Jim’s thumb. For a few moments Jim
simply stares at the gushing blood. Shorty is flabbergasted at his
work, his jaw drops in shock. Ralph clasps his hands over his mouth
and gags. Alice Ann strolls leisurely over to Jim and touches his
face. Jim looks up at Lindsay with an expression of sappy surprise
bordering bewilderment on his face, and he grins bravely for a
moment or two, before his eyes roll back in his head and he keels
over in the grass.

At Mission Emergency the
Chicano doc informs Jim that he is one lucky dude to get off with
merely nine stitches, man, and no apparent serious damage done, for
all the good that news does Lindsay, who cannot stop shaking for
hours.

Out of the Blue

Ralph studied his face in
the restroom mirror and dabbed tenderly at his nose with a damp
paper towel. The bleeding had stopped, but there were still traces
of blood around the edges of his nostrils, and it looked to Ralph
as though his nose had about doubled in size and was rapidly
turning purple. Before his very eyes, Ralph’s nose was rapidly
beginning to resemble an eggplant. It occurred to Ralph that the
stricken look on that sorry face with an eggplant for a nose
staring back at him from the mirror might have been a visage
carved from his worst dream of public humiliation. His whole face
looked purple now, in that godawful fluorescent light, as though
some purple veil of sick, sad flesh had been lowered over the
features of his real face. Ralph shut his left eye and looked
intently at that stranger with the purple face and purple clown
nose. Then Ralph shut his right eye and took a long look at that
purple face full of grief and pain and astonishment, for all the
insight that provided him.

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 far 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.