Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (21 page)

That gentleman is my
husband, Alice Ann said. —Now get your fucking hands off of him,
please.

Jesus, lady, the guard
grunted.

He’s got me in a hold! Ralph
croaked. —He jumped me by surprise, Alice Ann. Alice Ann, help
me!

Lady, this man is naked in
public, the guard gasped. He tightened his grip on Ralph’s
head.

Give him one, Alice Ann,
Ralph whimpered. —Kick him!

My husband is ill, Alice Ann
said, her voice calm now. —He walks in his sleep. He needs
assistance, not this physical abuse. He is under a doctor’s care.
My husband needs medical attention.

Lady, what we have here is a
real drunk man, the guard said. —A drunk, naked man.

A woman opened the door of
the room across the hall from Ralph and Alice Ann’s room. She stood
there motionless, watching this scene, one hand on the doorknob,
the other at her throat.

Would you call down to the
desk for me, please? the guard asked the woman. —Get the manager.
Get anybody down there.

Another door opened down the
hall and a gray-haired man stuck his head out.

Are you people getting your
eyes full? Alice Ann said. —A sick man is being assaulted before
your very eyes and you people just gawk. This poor man needs
somebody’s help!

Call the desk, somebody, the
guard said. —Have them send somebody up here quick.
Please!

This man is an important
American author! Alice Ann said. —How can something like this
happen in America? Where is this, Germany? Are we in the Soviet
Union?

Somebody just call the desk,
please! the guard said.

Don’t you people dare look
upon my husband’s nakedness! Alice Ann screamed. —Shut your fucking
doors! All of you fuck¬ing rubberneckers! You shut your doors now!
Alice Ann screamed, and stepped toward the woman. The woman backed
into her room and slammed the door. Alice Ann glared at the man up
the hall. He shut his door.

Call the desk, someone! the
guard called out. —These are crazy people!

That does it, asshole, Alice
Ann said. —Who do you think you are? Who are you, anyway? That man
is an important American author.

Kick him! Ralph croaked. —Do
it, Alice Ann!

Come on, lady, the guard
said.

The guard ducked away just
in time from Alice Ann's round¬house right, but it caught him
behind his right ear and knocked his cap flipping to the floor.
Ralph broke the guard's hold and lunged for the door. Ralph slammed
the door behind him. The guard bent to pick up his cap, and Alice
Ann aimed a kick at his face which he barely blocked with an elbow.
The guard ran sev¬eral yards down the hallway before turning and
shaking a finger at Alice Ann.

Lady, you are under arrest!
the guard yelled.

I will sue you for every
nickel you have, Alice Ann said. —We have friends in high places.
Senator Ted Kennedy is a personal friend. And I mean really
personal!

The woman from across the
hall cracked her door again.

Lady, I just don’t want no
more trouble, the guard said, and he hurried down the hallway
toward the stairwell exit.

God bless you, Alice Ann
said to the woman hovering behind the door. —God only knows what
that brute would have done to me if you hadn’t been my
witness.

The woman closed her door.
Alice Ann knocked on the door to Ralph’s and her room.

Open up, Ralph.

When there was no answer,
Alice Ann pounded on the door.

Let me in, Ralph.

Who is it? Ralph mumbled
from behind the door.

Who do you think it is,
goddamn it! Open this goddamn door, Ralph!

Is there anybody with
you?

Open the goddamn door,
Ralph, or I’ll kick it in!

This is the worst thing that
has happened to me in my life up to now, Ralph said. He shut the
door behind Alice Ann and locked it. He was dressed.

This is just too much for
one man to handle, Ralph said. He stumbled over and sat on the bed.
He put his face in his hands. —I was innocent, Alice Ann. I was
just hunting for the bathroom. It was an honest mistake, Alice Ann.
I just opened the wrong door. Which is the story of my life, I
guess. This is the straw that broke this old camel’s
back.

Get your things together,
sweetie, Alice Ann said. She began packing her overnight case on
the dresser with her makeup.

Being nude out there in that
hallway was my worst dream come true, Ralph said. He lay back on
the bed. He pulled the covers up over his head.

Come on, sweetie, Alice Ann
said. —Where did you put your shaving kit?

Let them come and get me,
Ralph said. He rolled into a ball under the covers. —Let them just
take me away.

This is like old times,
Alice Ann said, and laughed. She put her robe and nightgown into
the suitcase. She dressed quickly in her jeans and blouse. She
quickly began packing Ralph’s things into her suitcase. —Do I have
everything of yours here, Ralph?

I guess, Ralph said. —Except
my underwear. I forgot to put it back on when I got dressed. That’s
how rattled I was.

Where is it? I don’t see it
anywhere.

In my pocket, Ralph said. —I
packed it in my pocket. Did you get that asshole with a good
one?

Not really, Alice Ann said.
—Come on, honey, get out from under those covers. You should have
seen it all. He ran down the hall, then turned and announced that I
was under arrest.

You mean you’re under
arrest? Ralph said, and peeked from beneath the covers.

Can’t you tell, Alice Ann
said, and laughed. She held the opened champagne bottle up before
the television’s light and shook it. She split its final inches
between two plastic cups and carried them to the bed.

Am I under arrest, too?
Ralph said.

Here, baby, Alice Ann said,
and sat down on the bed by Ralph. —Look what Momma has for
us.

Ralph pulled the covers from
over his head and sat up. Alice Ann handed him a cup.

I guess we’re just outlaws,
Alice Ann said, and laughed. —No matter how rich and famous we get
we’ll just always be outlaws. Let’s have a toast, Ralph.

To what? Ralph said. —My
God, to what?

To whatever, Alice Ann said.
—To our fresh start. I don’t know, Ralph. You make the toast,
sweetie.

All right, Ralph said. —I
will. To Disneyland, Ralph said.

To Disneyland? Alice Ann
said. —To Disneyland, Ralph?

You bet, Ralph said. —To our
trip to Disneyland when we get on our feet. I want to be the sort
of man who takes his wife to Disneyland if that’s where she wants
to go.

What about the kids? Alice
Ann said.

What about the kids? Ralph
said. —We’ll get those little gang-sters stoned out of their minds
and drag them along. They’ll love Disneyland. They’ll think
Disneyland is a trip, especially if they’re on acid. We’ll cover
every inch of that Caddy convertible with stickers.

Ralph, what I said about
your stories, you know I didn’t mean it, Alice Ann said. —I think
you’re a genius, Ralph, you know that. I love your stories. I’ve
always been your champion. Your stories are spiritual,
Ralph.

Really? Ralph said. —Do you
really think so, Alice Ann?

Your stories are the most
spiritual stories being written in our time, Ralph, Alice Ann said.
—And you are spiritual. You are a very spiritual man, Ralph. More
than even you know.

Honest to God, Alice
Ann?

You are, Ralph. Trust me on
that, sweetie.

Sometimes I worry I’m just
turning into an old worthless drunk, Ralph said. —Who’ll be down on
his luck for life.

We just need to get on our
feet, Alice Ann said.

There was a loud knock at
the door.

They’re here, Ralph
whispered.

To Disneyland, Alice Ann
said, and raised her cup. —Come on, sweetie, to fucking
Disneyland.

Right on, Ralph said. —You
bet. Why not? To Disneyland.

Alice Ann and Ralph touched
cups, whereupon they drank the champagne down.

Hey, Ralph said, furrowing
his brow. —This stuff has already gone flat.

There was another loud knock
on the door.

Well, sweetie, Alice Ann
said, and grinned, we can always call room service.

Brand-New Life

1

Jim had returned to teach at
Stanford in the fall, after a summer of amazingly emotional ups and
downs with Lindsay, but he was desperately in love with her, and he
had not minded the dark, cheap room he had rented at a midtown Palo
Alto residential hotel, with its single-channel, blurry
black-and-white, fifteen- inch television set and the scumbag
bathroom up the hall he had to share with three outpatients from
the V.A. hospital. Jim had not minded eating the cheap chop suey at
the Seven Seas Cafe, or shuffling endlessly along in line with
senile senior citizens at mystery meat-loaf cafeterias. Jim even
let old coots ahead of him in line. Jim happily let a blue-hair
have that last stuffed pork chop he coveted. Jim had not minded
lying in that narrow bed in the dark listening to the lonesome
sound of late-night downtown traffic, the sad sounds of distant
sirens, faint midnight music from the bars down the street, a
woman’s sudden, drunken laughter from the sidewalk below,
relentless coughing from the rooms around him, rats running in the
walls. Jim had not minded the sad air of defeat at the end of the
faded hallway, or the ancient air of loneliness and despair that
settled like shadows into the corners of his crummy room. Jim
breathed in a green cloud of desperate decay, and he did not give a
shit. Happy as a clam, Jim lay there in the hot dark of his crummy
room, sipping a warm bottle of beer, the television on soundlessly,
his one window open. Down the street a country-western bar had its
door propped open in the heat and Jim could hear a Merle Haggard
tune about an outlaw moving town to town on the run. Down every
road there’s always one more city, old Merle sang. Jim grinned in
the hot dark, a legendary outlaw of love who had found his one more
city, whose running days were over.

Because Jim was in love, he
was only bemused by undergraduate girls’ winks and blinks. Night
after night he killed time at the Oasis Bar on El Camino, carving
heart-enclosed Jim Loves Lindsays in the thick wooden tables with
his switchblade knife. Jim was in love with the astonishing idea
that Lindsay, with those beautiful, wide eyes, that generous,
smiling mouth, full, sensuous lips, loved a big bizarre bozo who
affected a fedora. All that previous summer, Lindsay had kept a
calendar of passion, had pasted silver stars marking each day’s
acts of lust. Jim would lie alone in bed in his dingy room like a
monk astronomer whole nights sometimes poring over that celestial
chart. He marveled at that calendar pasted thick with summer love’s
constellations of silver. Jim reimagined the memory of each star,
its spinning planets and their moons.

Jim reimagined everything
about last summer. Those silly, sentimental ice-cream-cone walks by
the evening river. Making garbage bags full of buttered popcorn and
watching old movies until dawn, then sipping coffee on the back
porch in the cool birdsong sunrise. That trip up to Browning for
the rodeo and Indian Days, the drunken cowboys’ and Indians’ sweaty
eyes watching Lindsay sweep along. Fishing way up the Bitterroot
that time, the sun hot on his bare back, the water icy on his
waders, Lindsay lying on a quilt up in the long grass topless, that
first bite. Jim had glanced up at Lindsay. She was up on her
elbows, face tilted to the sun, eyes closed, her breasts getting
brown. A picnic of two small, sweet trout fried fresh on the spot,
Chablis chilled ice cold in the river, oily, sun-baked sex on the
bank. How they swept into the bars those cool Montana nights, brown
and babbling a mile a minute, people looking up, that sudden
silence, their envious eyes widening, their nostrils flaring in the
sexual scent of Jim and Lindsay’s wake. How they slow- danced to
boogie music out at the cabin, at the Am-Vets, even at the Trail’s
End, where serious, high-betting, good-old-boy pool players paused
to watch. How they wrote letters to each other daily, and talked on
the phone for hours now that they were apart.