Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (39 page)

Not tonight, Alice Ann,
Ralph said. —Some other time.

We have to leave, really,
Mr. Myers said. —Really we do. We are sorry, you understand. We
truly are.

Our kids will be heartsick
if they don’t get to meet you folks, Alice Ann said. —Ralph,
goddamn it, fix the fucking drinks.

Really, not for us, Mr.
Myers said. —Perhaps another time. We really have to be going.
People are waiting for us. We are expected somewhere.

At three or four o’clock in
the fucking morning? Alice Ann said. —Don’t make me
laugh.

Our children are not at
home, is that it, Ralph? Ralph, tell me where our children are at
three or four fucking o’clock in the morning.

Mr. Crawford . „. Mr. Myers
said.

Ralph to you, Alice Ann
said.

Somebody professional, Mr.
Crawford, Mr. Myers said. —Somebody recommended. A good
doctor.

Did you know, Mr. and Mrs.
Myers, that my husband, Mr. Crawford, is a famous
author?

Please, Alice Ann, Ralph
said. —Please.

Don’t be so modest, Mr.
Crawford, Alice Ann said. —Haven’t you folks heard of Ralph
Crawford, the famous author?

Well, to tell you the truth,
Mr. Myers said, I’m not very conversant with contemporary authors.
A fact I am rather ashamed to admit, since I’m a professor of
literature at San Jose State. My area of concern is the Victorian
period. I am something of an Arnoldian, I must confess.

He is very prominent in his
field, Mrs. Myers said.

I will make it a point to
look up your work, however, Mr. Crawford, Mr. Myers said, and
withdrew a small notebook from his coat pocket. —Perhaps you could
give me some of the tides of your books.

No, that’s all right, Ralph
said. —Really. Just forget about it. I’d much rather that you
forget everything about tonight, if you can.

My husband, Mr. Crawford,
won’t forget anything about this night, Alice Ann said. —My husband
is probably making this into a story right now. Tell him the
stories of your lives, Mr. and Mrs. Myers. Go on, I dare
you.

Well, it has been nice to
meet you folks, Ralph said to the Myerses, who stood there frozen
in an attitude of departure. —Even under these trying
circumstances.

Mrs. Myers, Alice Ann said,
and raised a hand toward Mrs. Myers, I simply cannot tell you how
much you remind me of my mother. She was beautiful and kind, as you
are. I got my hair from her, and my voice. My mother would have
looked exactly like you, Mrs. Myers, if her brain had not exploded,
Alice Ann said, and picked up the empty half-pint bottle from the
table. She shook it and looked at it in the light.

I’m afraid that little baby
is history, Ralph said. —To tell the sad truth, I don’t think
there’s a drop of anything in the whole house for a nightcap. I
don’t suppose you have a little drop of something with you, do you,
Mr. Myers?

When Mr. and Mrs. Myers
turned hurriedly for the door, Mr. Myers stumbled over a scrambling
cat. Alice Ann jumped up from the table and rushed after
them.

Let’s stay in touch, Alice
Ann called from the doorway to the departing Myerses.

Sea of Love

1

The Beach Chalet was a
two-story Byzantine dream of a bar. Once a fabled watering hole for
the wealthy, it was now an aging, once-grand Beaux Arts building on
the curb of the Great Highway, with the Pacific Ocean as a view
and inspiration for serious boozing. A vast cathedral of a gin
joint, it was flooded with a smoky lyric light that left you with
an illusion of flying buttresses and a floating cloudy dome of a
ceiling dim and distant and rich with mysterious portents as
meaningful for some as a Sistine Chapel, beneath which its
generally lowlife but dedicated disciples could get truly
religious about their drinking—graybeard biker types and their
sagging bleached-blond babes; old salts nodding with nostalgia as
they nursed the last, sad beers of their lives; fading, tattooed
trollops tottering around the room, as they slow-danced in lonely
self-hugs and awaited the second coming of desire. They all took
turns plugging silver into an enormous Mexican folk altar of a
jukebox packed with those sentimental, plaintive country tunes in
which self-pity just comes natural, in which at the end of long
suffering you get to be just who you have always suspected you are,
the real star of the song.

Jim gazed across the room,
that smoky shadowland of sudden love and its attendant loss, to
where Mary Mississippi was shooting pool with a tall, one-armed
biker whose pure white hair hung in a ponytail nearly to his butt.
Mary had taken off her motorcycle jacket, and each time she bent
forward to shoot a ball her small, firm breasts pressed against the
cotton of her sleeveless cut-off black T-shirt. Her hair was still
damp from the rainy day outside, and its red ringlets were pasted
around her shining penny of a face. As Mary took each studied shot,
Jim looked with lust at the supple ripple of sleek muscle beneath
the tanned, toned flesh of Mary’s arms. Her wide sea-green eyes had
that show-me-something-I- haven’t-seen-before look in them, and
when she raised a fist in the air after a very good shot, Jim could
see a haze of red hair under her arm. Within that slant of autumnal
ocean light in which she moved languidly around the table, Mary’s
hair and flesh shed the soft glow of a sunset. The aging biker, who
had your basic battered, been- around face and, Jim had to
acknowledge, a true elegance of motion as he deftly handled the
pool cue one-handed, was clearly entranced by Mary, and Jim knew
the name of that song.

Jim saw Mary touch the old
biker fart on his shoulder when he made a poor shot, and she
fluttered her fingers there as they spoke for a few moments, their
heads inclined intimately. Mary poked the old biker in the ribs
with a forefinger as she nodded her head against his chest and
laughed at something wonderfully funny he said. After another game
of pool, they strolled over to the jukebox together, Mary and the
old biker fuck, and Mary stood with the side of her hip pressed
against the old biker’s leg, while they took turns punching
selections. When they began to slow-dance, the old biker bent
forward so that his face was against Mary’s upturned face. They
barely moved as they danced in place in front of the jukebox, and
Mary’s eyes were closed. The old biker’s one huge hand, his left,
rested at the upper swell of Mary’s hips. Mary had one of her hands
up under the old biker’s white ponytail on his neck and the other
she had hooked over the back of his belt by a thumb. When the song
ended Mary stood on tiptoe to whisper something into the old
biker’s ear, and then she stepped back away from him and smiled
wide-eyed and blinky up into his old, craggy, take-no-prisoners
face. The old biker wagged his head in what appeared to Jim’s
trained eye utter disbelief, and then after saying something to
Mary, he hurried off toward the entrance to the men’s room. Mary
looked over her shoulder at Jim with that sexy, shadowy smile he
knew so well, and then she turned and walked toward him, looking
down at her feet as she came, her hands clasped behind her back,
biting her full lower lip, like a naughty little girl who had some
big explaining to do.

Mary Mississippi nuzzled her
face into Jim’s neck and ran her tongue along the side of his beard
to his ear, whose lobe she sucked between her lips. She hooked the
fingers of her right hand behind Jim’s belt buckle and pressed the
palm of her hand against the amazing bulge of the boner strangling
in his jeans.

Well, my gracious, Mary
said, laughing, you old hot dog, you.

What’s a boy to
do?

So, how’ve you been amusing
yourself while I was off shooting pool with that old
guy?

And slow-dancing.

Yup.

Oh, not much. You know. The
usual. I’ve just been sitting here brooding about the fact that the
bottom line of life is the indestructibility of hope.

I’ll say. Been lonesome for
me.

You bet. So how have you
been amusing yourself besides rubbing up against that old
fart?

That’s about the long and
short of it, darlin’, Mary said, and cocked her head cutely.
—Here’s the problem, sugar, I haven’t been a real bad little girl
much this past week hardly at all. I hardly have any juicy stories
for you at all. Oh, let’s see. I fucked Spain on Tuesday, but I
wasn’t much in the mood and we didn’t do anything real dirty. I
fucked Clay last night. I ran into him down on 24th at the Celtic
Tavern and one thing led to another and I really hadn’t fucked Clay
in a month of Sundays and he was peeved. Oh, and we did do a little
trick that might tickle your fancy. You ever heard of a snowjob? I
hadn’t, which is pretty hard to believe. What Clay did was put a
line of coke on his boner, which I did just before I gave him head.
That’s what Clay called a snowjob. That just about cracked me up! I
could hardly suck him off I was giggling so bad. Anyway, that’s
about all she wrote in the old suckin’ and fuckin’ department this
week. So what will that add up to, anyhow? About five or six little
spanks is all, I bet. My little bottom will hardly get rosy with
five or six little spanks. Sugar, will that snowjob get me a few
extra little spanks when we get back over to my place?

A couple, I reckon, Jim
said, and patted Mary’s ass.

Shootfire, boy, is that
all?

Let me guess, Jim said, and
cupped Mary’s hips in his hands. —You got your heart set on doing
that old fart?

What’s a girl to do? Mary
said, and pressed her pelvis against Jim’s leg. —I mean, I have
never made it with a one-armed man before. Hey, and he tells me
he’s got a dick that needs a dashboard! I won’t do it if you tell
me not to, sugar.

Do what you want to
do.

Okeydokey. I just plan on
giving him some head, so it won’t take too long, I betcha. Do you
want to watch?

Not today.

Okeydokey, babe. When I lick
my lips and come up smilin’, I’ll be thinking of you down in my
heart, and only you. And I’ll commit every single little juicy
thing to memory, and when we get back over to my place, I’ll drive
you plum nuts with the dirty details, sugar. It’ll be my little
goodbye gift to you, okay? Mary said, smiling up at Jim like a
choirgirl. —Jim, you may have my heart in your back pocket, baby,
but I have your number good.

When the old fart of a biker
returned from the restroom, Mary was waiting for him by the front
door. As he opened the door for her, Mary slipped a hand into one
of the old biker’s back pockets. Mary gave Jim a last look over her
shoulder and a big smile, and Jim tipped his fedora toward her just
as the heavy door swung shut behind the happy couple.

2

As soon as Jim saw the old
biker stagger back in the door maybe twenty minutes later, looking
palsied and dazed, Jim polished off his shot of tequila and headed
out. At which moment, as that farcical cosmic gravy called fate
would have it, he ran right into S. Clay Wilson coming in the door.
Clay was leading his usual entourage of sleazy, shanghaied
strumpets, thundering dummies, and cave-life cretins, all of whom,
Clay informed Jim grandly, had spent a typical morning touring the
low-rent bars to hunt and gather and collect offerings of any sort
for the Higher Echelon Fallen Angels Beer Blast, Barbecue and
Swimming Party Fund, of which Clay was the master of last
rites.

Gah’damn, sumbitch, it’s my
old pal Jimmy, Clay had yelled at the short, muscular woman with a
mustache, whose name was Femme Fatale and who was Clay’s main
squeeze for the morning. It’s fucken farcical cosmic gravy, Clay
yelled into Femme’s ear, for he had been thinking about his old pal
Jim ever since that morning when he took this monster dump and
that giant two-toned turd laying there grinning up at him had
looked just like his old pal Jimmy.

Jim begged off, had to
almost wrestle Clay to get loose, saying some shit was hitting the
fan elsewhere, one of his and Shorty’s deals gone sour, a situation
he had to attend to pronto, but he’d call Clay tonight and they’d
tie up. Clay hovered at the door, however, and watched as Jim made
his way across the rain- slick Great Highway to the parking area,
where Clay spotted that chopped-top, lowered, midnight-blue ’52
Hudson classic, a car Clay recognized even before Jim reached it
and hopped in. Whereupon the Hudson peeled out, leaving rubber even
on the wet pavement, and Clay knew the name of that song. Whereupon
Clay did what seemed sensible and rewarding. He joined his scumbag
entourage at the bar and began downing double shots of Sausa
Commemorative tequila with warm Dutch beers back.

For a few forlorn minutes,
S. Clay considered the possibility of swearing off women and the
pain they caused as routinely as taking a shit. Returning perhaps
to that fag bar in the Castro he and his thundering thug buddies
had terrorized earlier in the morning, the Mildred Pierce Annex,
where he had harassed a covey of cute cabin boys off a Swedish
liner anchored in the bay until all the sweet things swore they
would never disembark in America again. Perhaps Clay could make
things up to them, those cute cabin boys, convince them to take him
in, care for him, be gentle and understanding and patient with him
as he learned their secret ways. Then Clay felt Femme Fatale, who
could read him like a book, cozy up beside him. Whereupon, cooing
the soft sounds of sympathy, she took things in hand, rubbing his
horn of honey beneath the bar. As he tried to focus his wet,
crossed eyes upon the thick, muscular form of this angel of
masturbation, who was also one of a hell of a professional
wrestler, Clay suddenly perceived the wondrous light emanating from
her lonely but lovely inner self. What Clay had come to understand
was the wisdom of loving a selfless, ugly woman, who was also
perfectly capable of kicking some ass.