Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (46 page)

I’ll show you, Lindsay
said.

Come on, big boy, Lucy said,
and when she gave Bill’s crotch a hard squeeze, he stood up like a
soldier at attention, whereupon like a sleepwalker Bill followed
the directional flow of Lucy’s expert touches and tugs, as she
walked beside him with her hand fluttering like a tiny bird about
the front of his jeans and led him safely from the room.

I don’t think, Alice Ann
said, I’ve ever seen a seeing-eye whore before.

The moment Lucy left the
room, the baby awoke and blinked its eyes. He looked up at Alice
Ann and began to cry. His face remained oddly expressionless as he
cried, but streams of fat tears rolled down his plump brown
cheeks.

There, there, my precious
baby, Alice Ann said, and began walking around the room patting the
crying baby’s back, which only seemed to add a slight hiccup to the
unabated weeping.

Soon the baby was wailing.
—Your momma hasn’t left you, baby. Your momma is here. She is right
here, little lamb, Alice Ann said.

Gosh, Jim said, doesn’t that
wailing have a strange, old-timey quality to it? Like an old-timey
Indian chant, maybe. An ancient, ritualized keen of infinite loss
and mourning for the passing of a whole people.

It sounds old, all right,
Ralph said. —And it’s getting older by the second.

When Lindsay re-entered the
room, she hurried directly to Alice Ann’s side. —What’s wrong with
the little baby-baby? Lindsay cooed, and tickled under the child’s
chin.

Well, Jim said, as nearly as
we can figure out, some kind of infinite loss or other.

Does him miss his mommy?
Lindsay cooed.

He doesn’t miss his
so-called mommy, Alice Ann said.

Alice Ann, hon, Lindsay
said, would you like for me to take him?

Why should you take
him?

I don’t know. Maybe he would
be more used to me.

I do have some experience
with babies, you know, Alice Ann said. —I have had two babies of my
own, you know, to care for night and day virtually
alone.

Alice Ann sat back down at
the table and placed the baby on her knees, where she bounced him
playfully, to no avail. His sobs seemed to come from a place in him
ever deeper.

That squawking kid is
driving me batty, Ralph said. —Can’t its own mother hear the thing
squawking? Maybe somebody should go get the thing’s
mother.

He doesn’t need his
so-called mother, Alice Ann said. —I was a young mother
once.

You’d think its own mother
would come running, Ralph said.

Maybe he simply needs to be
changed, Lindsay said.

I’m telling you-all, Jim
said, what’s bumming the kid out is that old infinite-loss
syndrome.

Maybe Bill is holding that
girl against her will, Ralph said. —We all know what he’s capable
of. Maybe somebody should go bang on their door. Or put that
squawking kid outside it.

Did Lucy have any baby
bottles with her? Lindsay said. —I didn’t see any. Did anybody see
a, oh, baby pouch or something? For, you know, diapers, bottles, a
pacifier. Jim, honey, look around, will you?

I understand this baby’s
needs perfectly well, Alice Ann said. —God knows I’ve had
experience. My own babies were such healthy, happy babies, she
said, and she began to unbutton the front of her blouse.

Alice Ann! Ralph
said.

Alice Ann, hon, Lindsay
said.

Alice Ann, Ralph said, for
the love of God.

Ralph always did act funny
about this beautiful, perfectly natural act, Alice Ann said, as
the child, who had stopped crying, dimpled the flesh of Alice Ann’s
breast with his grasping little fingers and took her nipple into
his mouth.

I’m sure there are baby
bottles around here somewhere, Lindsay said.

Have you no shame, Alice
Ann? Ralph said. He unfolded a cloth table napkin and spread it
over the head of the suckling child and Alice Ann’s
breast.

This is a beautiful act and
a God-given woman’s right and duty, Alice Ann said, and tossed the
napkin back onto the table.

I, for one, Jim said, agree
wholeheartedly with Alice Ann on this matter. Little Tonto there is
clearly going to grow up to be a serious tit man.

Jim, Lindsay said, do you
always have to egg things on?

Baring her bosoms for a
crowd was always one of Alice Ann’s favorite stunts, Ralph said.
—On public transportation was always big with Alice Ann. When our
brats were babies and one of them would make the slightest peep,
Alice Ann would haul out one of the old faithfuls and pop it in the
kid’s mouth for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to gawk at the beautiful
act.

I think the little fellow is
dropping off again, Alice Ann said, smiling down at the baby, whose
eyes were closing. —Ralph, I have wanted to put forth an idea all
evening, but the time hasn’t been right. Ralph, I want us to keep
this beautiful child to raise as our very own.

This time, Ralph said,
you’ve gone around the bend, Alice Ann.

We could give this beautiful
child our name, Alice Ann said, and bent over to kiss the baby’s
forehead. —We could begin again, Ralph. Before it’s too
late.

You’ve gone over the edge,
Ralph said.

Now now, Jim said, you don’t
have to always be automatically a wet blanket, Ralph.

Jim, Lindsay said, zip your
lip.

Ralph, Alice Ann said, we
could be reborn in this beautiful baby. He could redeem us, Ralph.
Couldn’t you, little Ralph; couldn’t you, sweetheart?

How could you even suggest
such a thing, Alice Ann? Ralph said.

Spoilsport, Jim said.
—Killjoy.

Offer that Indian whore
money, Ralph, Alice Ann said. —Any amount. The sky’s the limit. We
still have the house money.

How’s Billy doing? Lindsay
asked Lucy as she walked back into the room at that
moment.

Fuck your buddy and the
horse he rode in on, Lucy said, and then stopped dead in the middle
of the room. —Hey, what’s going on here, anyhow? Lady, just what
the fuck do you think you’re doing with my kid?

Snack time, Jim
said.

Fuck you, pal, Lucy
said.

Ditto, Lindsay
said.

Lucy, hon, Alice Ann said,
we, meaning Ralph and I, Mr. Crawford and I, would in all good
faith, with your own best interests at heart, and the baby’s best
interests, and we mean this sincerely, we would like to make you
an offer, a proposal, as it were, one that we hope you will find
truly impossible to refuse, one that will help you make something
out of your life, help you secure a good future, become somebody
even. Lucy, we would like to adopt your beautiful baby and raise it
as our own. Wouldn’t we, Ralph?

Lady, Lucy said, you are one
fucking fruitcake.

Vast Club

1

After the posse had
disappeared into North Beach that night, Ralph had paced and smoked
and mumbled and grumbled. Lindsay had started doing dinner dishes
back at the sink in the kitchen, while Jim entertained a half tab
of acid and attempted to decide between catching either an old
Bogart flick or a silver- tongued preacher program out of San Jose.
Every now and then, smoking like a stove, Ralph would scurry
mumbling and grumbling down the hallway to peer out the front
windows for any sign of Alice Ann and Bill. Who knows what sort of
trouble those two nuts are capable of getting themselves into,
Ralph muttered vehemently time and again when he loped back into
the kitchen. Somebody should have stopped those two from going out
into the night like nuts, Ralph opined and opined, puffing
furiously each time he loped back into the kitchen to pace and pout
and fume, until Jim abruptly turned the silver-tongued preacher off
and suggested they all undertake a combination booze bolt and
search for the Lost Posse and the missing Queen of
California.

That night San Francisco’s
North Beach was ancient Egyptian in nature to Jim as the acid
kicked anciently in. For one thing, the unusually warm wind that
blew in off the Bay smelled both vaguely vegetal and as oceanic as
sperm, as though it had passed through blooming bushes of
pittosporum and palms thick with parrot life and over the ancient
backs of crocodiles. And that full yellow moon truly looked
tropical and serene and suggestive of a world of mystery in Lower
Egypt during the Old Kingdom, which Jim, not unlike Alice Ann,
found himself recalling vividly.

Neither the Lost Posse nor
the Queen of California was to be found in Powell’s or the
Washington Square Bar & Grill, nor were they to be found at
Capp’s Corner, where the bartender, Hal Tunnis, insisted on buying
a round. Nor were they to be found at that litde hideaway Basque
joint on Broadway, where the mostly blue-haired but hip old
bohemians were dancing to the bouncy albeit sad accordion music of
a tiny, amazingly wrinkled, prune-faced French woman wearing a
long blond wig, who was reputed to have been the most celebrated
courtesan in Paris between the Big Wars, and who wept copiously as
she played her accordion and sang the old songs of Edith Piaf.
Honey, Lindsay said at one point, and took Jim by the hand, are you
crying? Not me, Jim said, batting his eyes like a flirty homecoming
queen.

Across a traffic-clogged
Broadway, Chinatown was a great glowing caterpillar of neon and
noise, hosed sidewalks smelling like burnt oil and eels and the
fresh blood of chickens. Waiting for the light to change at
Columbus and Broadway, Jim and Ralph and Lindsay entertained the
corner strip joint barker’s urgent entreaty to enjoy the infinite
allure of totally nude coeds dancing within. Are they really coeds,
do you think? Ralph asked Jim. Naked, you know, coeds? Yup, Jim
said.

Jim gazed on down that
Broadway boulevard of blinking neon fallen-angel signs while
reflecting on the nature of forbidden desires. Ralph said, You
think they might be in that place, the, er, Condor Club? Maybe we
should take us a little look in the Condor Club, Ralph said,
referring to the club across Columbus, above whose open doorway a
giant red neon figure of Carol Dodo and her famous huge breasts
blinked. Lindsay said, Ralph, you just want to gape at some big
tits. No, Ralph said, you’ve got me wrong about that. Jim was
wondering if it was ever possible to drop your membership in that
vast club of the betrayed and the betrayers. Simply stop paying
your dues and quit cold turkey. Or was that vast club of the
betrayed and the betrayers like the Mafia, where, once you were
initiated, only death could set you free. What Jim wanted to do was
concentrate on somebody outside himself for the rest of his natural
life, like his lovely wife. Jim took Lindsay by the hand and she
looked at him a little surprised and she smiled at him warmly and
his heart leapt.

They poked their heads into
Vesuvio’s, where the bartender, Danny Brannon, bought a round.
Larry Ferlinghetti was playing chess at a back table. They dodged
through traffic across Columbus into Adler Alley and Spec’s. They
ordered vodka martinis, and Jim studied his handsome, tragic face
in the mirror behind the bar. In the mirror he watched Lindsay and
Ralph lean toward one another to talk. Jim strolled back through
the low, dark, smoky, packed room toward the heads. The walls were
plastered with pictures, posters, old signs, dusty funky
memorabilia, all that privileged junk which made Spec’s the
neighborhood museum.

In the narrow back hallway,
Bobby Diamond was talking to two blond dancers from the club
upstairs. All night the topless dancers from the strip club
upstairs snuck down the inner staircase to Spec’s between sets for
quick smokes or belts or to pick up a few extra bucks giving
blowjobs back in Spec’s head. Both girls were tall and thin and
pale as mushrooms. They leaned back against the wall smoking and
talking with Bobby Diamond languidly, their bored, painted
raccoony eyes dark and sad and their mouths red as blood. Their
tits, which Jim could see through their filmy robes, were way too
enormous for the frail stems of their bony bodies. Neither of the
hard-faced, big-titted girls acknowleged Jim as he walked up. Bobby
Diamond had an unlit cigarette dangling from his thin, scarred
lips. Player was Bobby Diamond’s nickname among his small-time hood
and has-been pug pals. It meant pimp in street talk. Maybe 120
pounds dripping wet, Bobby Diamond was a hard-nosed little banty
rooster of a boxer, who could bob and bang and punch all night with
pure heart for fuel. But he could get caught cold and cut easily.
Bobby Diamond had done some time. Between bouts for chump change
Bobby Diamond worked as a bouncer in cheap bars and nude encounter
parlors and spent every free afternoon in those fleabag hotel rooms
he called home writing a novel about a down-and-out boxer
heartbroken because he had blown his one big chance for love with a
good woman. Suddenly the hard- faced, big-titted girls flipped
their cigarette butts to the floor and ducked hurriedly through the
beaded curtains to head back upstairs to the club, their high heels
clacking crazily on the steps.