Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (35 page)

Are you okay, kiddo? Jim
says.

Nope, Lindsay says, then
says, Actually, yes. It’s just chilly this morning. And I’m tired.
The day hasn’t even started and I’m tired to my bones. But that’s
being whiny and boring, I know.

It ain’t whiny and boring,
Jim says.

Lindsay lights a cigarette
and they sit there on the bench passing the cup of coffee and
silently watching the gulls circle and glide and land to stagger
like drunken sailors across the damp grass. On the far side of the
little park, before a statue of Benjamin Franklin, thirty or so old
Chinese men and women go through their slow, graceful tai chi
exercises. They look like apparitions in the thick fog, as they do
their soundless dance. A big man with a long gray-black beard
wearing a raggedy pea coat sits down on the next bench. Now and
then he takes a pull from a bottle in a brown paper bag. He seems
to be glaring at them, but Jim doesn’t appear to notice, which is
probably a good thing. When Lindsay sees her bus, the 30 Stockton,
rumbling up Columbus Street in the slow but surprisingly quiet
traffic, Lindsay puts out her cigarette and begins rummaging in her
purse for change.

Well, fuck a duck, Lindsay
says. —I’m off to another day in America.

It’ll be a dandy day in
America, Jim says. He hugs Lindsay to him and gives her a quick
kiss on the lips.

A dandy day in America is in
the mail, right? Lindsay says.

You bet.

And you love me,
right?

You bet, Jim says, and they
get up and walk toward the bus stop.

Don’t get into trouble with
Shorty today, okay?

I’m just giving him a hand.
He’s got a line on a load of frozen turkeys that fell off a truck
somewhere, or something crazy like that. I’m just going to drive
down to San Jose and help him cop a few. I’ll meet you at Powell’s
for drinks.

Frozen turkeys? You
bet.

You bet, Jim says, and hugs
and kisses Lindsay again like an affectionate brother. Jim finishes
off the coffee and crumples the cup and tosses it into a trash
container. Just as they pass the bearded man on the next bench, he
shakes his bottle at Jim and growls, What the fuck do you know
about love, anyway?

Jim stops and Lindsay can
feel the muscle of his arm tense through his leather jacket. Her
heart skips a beat.

But Jim simply grins and
says, Not nearly enough.

And they walk on.

2

Lindsay goes to bed alone.
Lindsay goes to bed alone.

Sometimes Jim does come to
bed, but only to fall instantly asleep. Or sometimes he will tuck
Lindsay in, even rub her back, when she has been a good girl and
not bugged him about anything, especially his booze and dope and
dealing. Then back up the long hallway to the kitchen, where he
turns to the TV, or his music, country-song-sad and shit-kicky, but
most of all to his trusty manuscript, his book and its beauty,
night after night given over to its celebration, celebration and
then more booze and dope, waxing sacramental until early morning,
when the wine, the real blood in his veins, usually wins
out.

They do still have some high
times together, Lindsay and Jim, but more and more often only out
at the bars with other revelers, who see them as this fun-filled
rather outrageous couple, or when they have troops back to the
flat, which is often, perhaps too often, for high old times around
the kitchen table, Jim’s tableaux, where he holds forth, telling
story after story; the tales getting taller with each telling, and
more funny, truly, turning the disastrous daily events of their
lives into high comedy, everybody in stitches; and Lindsay does
have fun and she feels love for Jim and even pride, and for
extended moments sees their life together in another
light.

But this night Lindsay waits
awake in the darkness, per usual, slow-dancing in her mind to an
oldie-but-goodie station on the radio. Jim doesn’t come to bed, per
usual. Finally Lindsay masturbates, angry and deliberately
imagining other men, imagining Ralph, that’s who.

3

On that early August night
of particularly wanton nakedness Jim borrows Shorty’s Harley so
that he and Lindsay can make a grand entrance at the opening of
Mary Mississippi’s “Handsome Suicidal Sailors” show at a gallery
south of Market Street. It is evident immediately to Lindsay that
Jim does not really know dick about the handling of a Harley, and
Lindsay buries her face into the back of his leather jacket as they
roar around turns on shining, rain-slick streets. The short
red-leather skirt Jim had begged that Lindsay wear is hiked high on
her spread legs and cold spray stings her bare thighs. Adjusting
his fedora once as they bounce over old trolley tracks, Jim almost
drops the huge machine and Lindsay’s heart jumps into her throat.
At least, Lindsay begs at the top of her lungs into Jim’s back,
take off those fucking shades so you can see the fucking road! But
to no avail. The gallery is in a converted warehouse and Jim
shudders the Harley up to the open double doors and then idles it
on inside the huge, hot, barn-size room as the startled, staring
crowd at first spreads away like a sea of hip people parting, but
then folds back in about them gawking and impressed just as Jim has
hoped.

The striptease starts back
at Mary Mississippi’s loft after her show, when for no particular
reason Jim tosses a boot in Mary’s direction and she tosses it back
along with one of her own little red cowgirl numbers. Mary’s show
has been a great success, and she sold several of her huge
paintings depicting handsome sailors naked save for their caps,
heavily tattooed and amazingly hung, leaping off brightly
illuminated ships that look like floating ocean cities into the
high seas at night.

The big drink, Jim says, as
he takes off his other boot. —That’s why I dig your paintings,
Mary. I understand them things. I almost took the big drink myself
one time, Jim says, and he tosses the boot at Mary Mississippi’s
boyfriend, the aforementioned S. Clay Wilson.

Now why ever did you want to
take the big drink, darlin’? Mary Mississippi asks Jim, in her
relentlessly Southern-belle, blinky, breathless mode. Mary is
sitting on a white rattan couch beneath the skylight beside S.
Clay, who is busy cleaning his fingernails with a switchblade
knife. The high, whitewashed brick walls of the big loft are
illuminated by spotlights directed onto paintings selected from
some of Mary’s earlier series; a couple from her “Falling Window
Washers” series, three from her “Hotel Chinese Insomniacs” series,
a few from her “Sacrificial Virgins and Assorted Burning Saints”
series.

As Jim relates how he once
almost committed suicide by jumping off a bridge because he had
lost the true love of his high- school honey, Lindsay walks around
the huge room looking at the illuminated paintings and touching the
odd collections of items Mary has piled high on shelves and
tabletops everywhere: including a whole shelf covered with the
severed heads of dolls and tiny torn-off dolly limbs, little dolly
arms and legs, which Lindsay runs her fingers over gently. They
make her feel sad. When she picks up a tiny, plastic head, its blue
eyes blink open and Lindsay quickly puts it down.

Mary Mississippi leans
forward, her elbows on her knees, a look of sappy rapt attention on
her pretty face as she listens to Jim hold forth about that time he
balanced himself on the railing in the center of that bridge and
listened to the dark water rush below, cold rain coming in gusts
across his face. Lindsay flutters her fingers over enormous
feathers that are arranged like exotic flowers in antique glass
vases lined along a wall which is covered with a collection of
feathered masks. No, one would have to describe Mary Mississippi’s
face as more than simply pretty, Lindsay decides. It is an odd
face but beautiful in its way, with a slightly upturned nose, faint
freckles, a bud of a mouth, short coppery-blond hair rich with
flickering highlights. Mary always wears long, dangling,
silver-and-turquoise earrings which she designs and makes herself
and often sells for a bundle. Lindsay has not been able to wear
earrings since that night years earlier when she had undressed
hurriedly drunk and ripped an earring caught on a pullover sweater
through her left lobe. Lindsay had not realized this until the next
morning, when she awoke sick as a dog, dizzy, still half-drunk.
Lindsay had awoken to discover the head of a man whose name she
could not for the life of her recall beside her own on a
blood-soaked pillow.

But Jim had got himself an
acute case of the old whirly-birds and had fallen backward onto the
bridge instead of forward into the cold, dark big drink, and he had
passed out cold there in the cold rain, a real fortunate pilgrim
that night. Which explains why Jim responded so strongly to Mary
Mississippi’s depictions of naked, well-endowed sailors leaping
overboard to practice their dead-man floats, for he could
understand why men could do such a thing. Jim tells Mary
Mississippi that he wishes she had a hot tub handy, or some such
body of water wherein he could demonstrate his own dead man’s
float.

Well, darlin’, all I got is
a big ol’ hot and steamy shower. Mary Mississippi winks and blinks
from the deep old South.

I have known suicidal
sadness in my lifetime, too, S. Clay pipes up. —My old ma croaked
when she gave birth to my baby brother, who is this crazily
carnivorous Cyclops child.

Your momma isn’t deceased!
Mary Mississippi exclaims. —You are such a sick puppy for uttering
such a thing.

My baby brother shits
through his ears, S. Clay says.

We could pretend we are
singing in the rain, Jim says. —In your hot and steamy
shower.

I just adore singing in the
rain, Mary Mississippi says.

I hate to bring this up in
mixed company, my little candy lamb, S. Clay says to Mary
Mississippi, my little main squeeze for the moment, my own little
hot, many-holed honey, but, toots, it is just about time to give
your old pork pirate his 3:13 a.m. blowjob.

S. Clay, darlin’, Mary
Mississippi says, why don’t you just retire to a far corner all by
your lonesome and play nice with your old baloney
bayonet.

We can look up and open our
mouths and pretend we are all singing in the rain in your hot and
steamy shower, Jim says, and unbuckles his belt.

I, for one, S. Clay says, am
juiced to the tits.

Turkeys have been known to
drown in the rain, Lindsay says. —But that is because they are
stupid creatures, not suicidal.

Say what? Jim
says.

Turkeys, Lindsay says. —They
are too stupid to come in out of the rain. And sometimes they drown
in it.

Turkeys? Jim says. —No
shit?

Turkeys, Lindsay says. —Rain
starts dropping on a stupid turkey’s head and it gawks up at heaven
in utter amazement. Then sometimes they forget to shut their stupid
mouths, and gulp gulp gulp, they are goners. Mary, maybe you should
paint a stupid-turkeys-drowning-in-the-rain series.

Right now, hon, Mary
Mississippi says, I am busy as a little bee painting a botched
caesarian section series.

Mary Mississippi does the
cutest bump and grind as she matches Jim’s silly striptease piece
for piece. S. Clay gets in the act, stomping about the room in his
motorcycle boots to the beat of the Stones blaring “Satisfaction.’’
So then Lindsay, feeling as though she is being caught up in some
sacrificial fiction, peels off the tight-fitting, sequined, truck
drivers* dream black blouse Jim had begged her to wear. She swirls
it about her head a couple of times and then somewhat
surreptitiously folds it neatly on a table.

Mary Mississippi’s naked
body is as beautiful as Lindsay has feared, perky little tits,
strawberry nipples, two perfect handfuls of hips, a haze of pubic
hair the same soft reddish hue as the tiny tufts under her tanned,
toned arms. Lindsay feels not unlike a heifer lumbering about to
that rock-and-roll beat Mary swings her tight pretty little ass in
perfect time to. As the four of them bop about the room becoming
naked, Lindsay tells herself the trick is to adapt to the moment,
to utterly love the present as an exciting place full of
possibility where you have never been before, that she should push
out of her mind those pressing premonitions of dark turns, escapes
too narrow, that she should resolve to a bottom line of behavior
that will include quitting smoking the first thing tomorrow and
losing ten pounds in a week.

Hey, take a look at
downbody, S. Clay calls out, and Lindsay’s heart stops. —Get down,
jellybutt, S. Clay hoots, but he is pointing at Jim as Jim spins
the perfectly naked Mary Mississippi under his arm. Jim is still
wearing his jockey shorts and he has his fedora pulled low over his
eyes and at some point he has pulled his boots back on.