The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966

by Richard Brautigan

  PSA

  The jet was squat and leering and shark-like with its tail. It was the first time I had ever been on an aeroplane. It was a strange experience climbing into that thing.

  Vida caused her usual panic among the male passengers as we got into our seats. We immediately fastened our seat belts. Everybody who got on the aeroplane joined the same brotherhood of nervousness.

  I looked out the window and we were sitting over the wing. Then I was surprised to find a rug on the floor of the aeroplane.

  The walls of the aeroplane had little California scenes on them: cable cars, Hollywood, Coit Tower, the Mount Palomar telescope, a California mission, the Golden Gate Bridge, a zoo, a sailboat, etc, and a building that I couldn’t recognize. I looked very hard at the building. Perhaps it was built while I was in the library.

  The men continued to stare at Vida, though the aeroplane was filled with attractive stewardesses. Vida made the stewardesses invisible, which was probably a rare thing for them.

  ‘I really can’t believe it,’ I said.

  ‘They can have it all if they want it. I’m not trying to do anything,’ Vida said.

  ‘You’re really a prize,’ I said.

  ‘Only because I’m with you,’ she said.

  Before taking off a man talked to us over the plane’s PA system. He welcomed us aboard and told us too much about the weather, the temperature, clouds, the sun and the wind and what weather waited for us down California. We didn’t want to hear that much about the weather. I hoped he was the pilot.

  It was grey and cold outside without any hope for the sun. We were now taking off. We started moving down the runway, slow at first, then faster, faster, faster: my God!

  I looked at the wing below me. The rivets in the wing looked awfully gentle as if they were not able to hold anything up. The wing trembled from time to time ever so gently, but just enough to put the subtle point across.

  ‘How does it feel?’ Vida said. ‘You look a little green around the edges.’

  ‘It’s different,’ I said.

  A medieval flap was hanging down from the wing as we took off. It was the metal intestine of some kind of bird, retractable and visionary.

  We flew above the fog clouds and right into the sun. It was fantastic. The clouds were white and beautiful and grew like flowers to the hills and mountains below, hiding with blossoms the valleys from our sight.

  I looked down on my wing and saw what looked like a coffee stain as if somebody had put a cup of coffee down on the wing. You could see the ring stain of the cup and then a big splashy sound stain to show that the cup had fallen over.

  I was holding Vida’s hand.

  From time to time we hit invisible things in the air that made the plane buck like a phantom horse.

  I looked down at the coffee stain again and I liked it with the world far below. We were going to land at Burbank in Los Angeles in less than an hour to let off and pick up more passengers, then on to San Diego.

  We were travelling so fast that it only took a few moments before we were gone.

  The Coffee Stain

  I was beginning to love the coffee stain on my wing. Somehow it was perfect for the day: like a talisman. I started to think about Tijuana, but then I changed my mind and went back to the coffee stain.

  Things were going on in the aeroplane with the stewardesses. They were taking tickets and offering coffee inside the plane, and making themselves generally liked.

  The stewardesses were like beautiful Playboy nuns coming and going through the corridors of the aeroplane as if the aeroplane were a nunnery. They wore short skirts to show off lovely knees, beautiful legs, but their knees and legs became invisible in front of Vida, who sat quietly in her seat next to me, holding my hand, thinking about her body’s Tijuana destination.

  There was a perfect green pocket in the mountains. It was perhaps a ranch or a field or a pasture. I could have loved that pocket of green forever.

  The speed of the aeroplane made me feel affectionate.

  After a while the clouds reluctantly gave up the valleys, but it was a very desolate land we were travelling over, not even the clouds wanted it. There was nothing human kind below, except a few roads that ran like long dry angleworms in the mountains. Vida remained quiet, beautiful.

  The sun kept swinging back and forth on my wing. I looked down beyond my coffee stain to see that we were flying now above a half-desolate valley that showed the agricultural designs of man in yellow and in green. But the mountains had no trees in them and were barren and sloped like ancient surgical instruments.

  I looked at the medieval intestinal flap of the wing, rising to digest hundreds of miles an hour, beside my coffee stain talisman.

  Vida was perfect, though her eyes were dreaming south.

  The people on the other side of the aeroplane were looking down below at something. I wondered what it was and looked down my side to see a small town and land that looked gentler and there were more towns. The towns began magnifying one another. The gentleness of the land became more and more towns and grew sprawling into Los Angeles and I was looking for a freeway.

  The man I hoped was the pilot or involved in some official capacity with the aeroplane told us that we were going to land in two minutes. We suddenly flew into a cloudy haze that became the Burbank airport. The sun was not shining and everything was murky. It was a yellow murk whereas back in San Francisco it was a grey murk.

  The aeroplane grew empty and then became full again. Vida got a lot of visual action while this was going on. One of the stewardesses lingered for a minute a few seats away and stared at Vida as if to make sure she were really there.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ Vida said.

  A small airliner about the size of a P-38 with rusty-looking propellers taxied by to take off. Its windows were filled with terrified passengers.

  Some businessmen were now sitting in front of us.

  They were talking about a girl. They all wanted to go to bed with her. She was a secretary in a branch office in Phoenix. They were talking about her, using business language. ‘I’d like to get her account! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! ha-ha!’

  The ‘pilot’ welcomed the new people aboard and told us too much about the weather again. Nobody wanted to hear what he had to say.

  ‘We’ll be landing in San Diego in twenty-one minutes,’ he said, finishing his weather report.

  As we took off from Burbank, a train was running parallel with us across from the airport. We left it behind as if it weren’t there and the same with Los Angeles.

  We climbed through the heavy yellow haze and then suddenly the sun was shining calmly away on the wing and my coffee stain looked happy like a surfer, but it was only a passing thing.

  Bing-Bonging to San Diego

  Bing-bong!

  The trip to San Diego was done mostly in the clouds. From time to time a bell tone was heard in the aeroplane. I didn’t know what it was about.

  Bing-bong!

  The stewardesses wanted more tickets and people to like them. The smiles never left their faces. They were smiling even when they weren’t smiling.

  Bing-bong!

  I thought about Foster and the library, then I very rapidly changed the subject in my mind. I didn’t want to think about Foster and the library: grimace.

  Bing-bong!

  Then we flew into heavy fog and the plane made funny noises. The noises were fairly solid. I almost thought that we had landed in San Diego and were moving along the runway when a stewardess told us that we were going to land shortly, so we were still in the air.

  Hmmmmmmmm…

  Bing-bong!

  Hot Water

  From San Francisco our speed had been amazing. We had gathered hundreds of miles effortlessly, as if guided by lyrical poetry. Suddenly we broke out into the clear to find that we had been over the ocean. I saw white waves below breaking against the shore and there was San Diego. I saw a thing that looke
d like a melting park and my ears were popping and we were going down.

  The aeroplane stopped and there were many warships anchored across from the airport and they were in a low grey mist that was the colour of their bodies.

  ‘You can stop being green now,’ Vida said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m new at the tree game. Perhaps it’s not my calling.’

  We got off the aeroplane with Vida causing her customary confusion among the male passengers and resentment among the female passengers.

  Two sailors looked as if their eyes had been jammed with pinball machines and we went on into the terminal. It was small and old-fashioned.

  And I had to go to the toilet.

  The difference between the San Francisco International Airport and the San Diego International Airport is the men’s toilet.

  In the San Francisco International Airport the hot water stays on by itself when you wash your hands, but in the San Diego International Airport, it doesn’t. You have to hold the spigot all the time you want hot water.

  While I was making hot Water observations, Vida had five passes made at her. She brushed them off like flies.

  I felt like having a drink, a very unusual thing for me, but the bar was small, dark and filled with sailors. I didn’t like the looks of the bartender. It didn’t look like a good bar.

  There was more confusion and distraction among the men in the terminal. One man actually fell down. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it. He was lying there on the floor staring up at Vida just as I decided not to have a drink in the bar but a cup of coffee in the cafe instead.

  ‘I think you’ve affected his inner ear,’ I said.

  ‘Poor man,’ Vida said.

  Flying Backwards

  The basic theme of the San Diego airport cafe was small and casual with a great many young people and boxes full of wax flowers.

  The cafe was also filled with a lot of aeroplane folks: stewardesses and pilots and people talking about planes and flight. Vida had her effects on them while I ordered two cups of coffee from a waitress in a white uniform. She was not young or pretty and she was not quite awake either.

  The cafe windows were covered with heavy green curtains that held the light out and you couldn’t see anything outside, not even a wing.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ I said.

  ‘That’s for certain,’ Vida said.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I said.

  ‘I wish it were over,’ Vida said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  There were two men sitting next to us talking about aeroplanes and the wind and the number eighty kept coming up again and again. They were talking about miles per hour.

  ‘Eighty,’ one of them said.

  I lost track of what they were saying because I was thinking about the abortion in Tijuana and then I heard one of them say, ‘At eighty you’d actually be flying the plane backwards.’

  Downtown

  It was an overcast nothing day in San Diego. We took a Yellow Cab downtown. The driver was drinking coffee. We got in and he took a long good look at Vida while he finished with his coffee.

  ‘Where to?’ he said, more to Vida than to me.

  ‘The Green Hotel,’ I said. ‘It’s—’

  ‘I know where it’s at,’ he said to Vida.

  He drove us on to a freeway.

  ‘Do you think the sun will come out?’ I said, not knowing what else to say. Of course I didn’t have to say anything, but he was really staring at Vida in his rear-view mirror.

  ‘It will pop out around twelve or so, but I like it this way,’ he said to Vida.

  So I took a good look at his face in the mirror. He looked as if he had been beaten to death with a wine bottle, but by doing it with the contents of the bottle.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said to Vida, finally pulling up in front of the Green Hotel.

  The fare was one dollar and ten cents, so I gave him a twenty-cent tip. This made him very unhappy. He was staring at the money in his hand as we walked away from the cab and into the Green Hotel.

  He didn’t even say good-bye to Vida.

  The Green Hotel

  The Green Hotel was a four-storey red brick hotel across the street from a parking lot and next to a book-store. I couldn’t help but look at the books in the window. They were different from the books that we had in the library.

  The desk clerk looked up as we came into the hotel. The hotel had a big green plant in the window with enormous leaves.

  ‘Hello, there!’ he said. He was very friendly with a lot of false teeth in his mouth.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  Vida smiled.

  That really pleased him because he became twice as friendly, which was hard to do.

  ‘Foster sent us,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Foster!’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes. Foster. He called and said you were coming and here you are! Mr and Mrs Smith. Foster. Wonderful person! Foster, yes.’

  He was really smiling up a storm now. Maybe he was the father of an airline stewardess.

  ‘I have a lovely room with a bath and view,’ he said. ‘It’s just like home. You’ll adore it,’ he said to Vida. ‘It’s not like a hotel room.’

  For some reason he did not like the idea of Vida staying in a hotel room, though he ran a hotel, and that was only the beginning. ‘Yeah, it’s a beautiful room,’ he said. ‘Very lovely. It’ll help you enjoy your stay in San Diego. How long will you be here? Foster didn’t say much over the telephone. He just said you were coming and here you are.’

  ‘Just a day or so,’ I said.

  ‘Business or pleasure?’ he said.

  ‘We’re visiting her sister,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that sounds nice. She has a small place, huh?’

  ‘I snore,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ the desk clerk said.

  I signed Mr and Mrs Smith of San Francisco on the hotel register. Vida watched me as I signed our new instant married name. She was smiling. My! how beautiful she looked.

  ‘I’ll show you to your room,’ the desk clerk said. ‘It’s a beautiful room. You’ll be happy in it. The walls are thick, too. You’ll be at home.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ I said. ‘My affliction has caused me a lot of embarrassment in the past.’

  ‘Really a loud snorer?’ he said.

  °Yes,’ I said. ‘Like a sawmill.’

  ‘If you’ll please wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring my brother and have him come down and watch the desk while I’m taking you upstairs to the room.’

  He pushed a silent buzzer that summoned his brother down the elevator a few moments later.

  ‘Some nice people here. Mr and Mrs Smith. Friends of Foster,’ the desk clerk said. ‘I’m going to give them Mother’s room.’

  The brother clerk gave Vida a solid once-over as he went behind the desk to take over the wheel from his brother who stepped out and he stepped in.

  They were both middle-aged.

  ‘That’s good,’ the brother desk clerk said, satisfied. They’ll love Mother’s room.’

  ‘Your mother lives here?’ I said, now a little confused.

  ‘No, she’s dead,’ the desk clerk said. ‘But it was her room before she died. This hotel has been in the family for over fifty years. Mother’s room is just the way it was when she died. God bless her. We haven’t touched a thing. We only rent it out to nice people like yourselves.’

  We got into an ancient dinosaur elevator that took us up to the fourth floor and Mother’s room. It was a nice room in a dead mother kind of way.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the desk clerk said.

  ‘Very comfortable,’ I said.

  ‘Lovely,’ Vida said.

  ‘You’ll enjoy San Diego even more with this room,’ he said.

  He pulled up the window shade to show us an excellent view of the parking lot, which was fairly exciting if you’d never seen a parking lot before.

  ‘I’m sure we will,’ I said.

  ‘If there’
s anything you want, just let me know and we’ll take care of it: a call in the morning, anything, just let us know. We’re here to make your stay in San Diego enjoyable, even if you can’t stay at your sister’s because you snore.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  He left and we were alone in the room.

  ‘What’s the snoring thing you told him about?’ Vida said, sitting down on the bed.

  She was smiling.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just seemed like the proper thing to do.’

  ‘You are a caution,’ Vida said. Then she freshened herself up a little, washed the air travel off and we were ready to go visit Dr Garcia in Tijuana.

  ‘Well, I guess we’d better go,’ I said.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Vida said.

  The ghost of the dead mother watched us as we left. She was sitting on the bed knitting a ghost thing.

  The Bus to Tijuana

  I don’t like San Diego. We walked the few blocks to the Greyhound bus depot. There were baskets of flowers hanging from the light posts.

  There was almost a small town flavour to San Diego that morning except for the up-all-night tired sailors or just-starting-out sailors walking along the streets.

  The Greyhound bus depot was jammed with people and games of amusement and vending machines and there were more Mexicans in the bus depot than on the streets of San Diego. It was almost as if the bus depot were the Mexican part of town.

  Vida’s body, perfect face and long lightning hair performed their customary deeds among the men in the bus depot, causing a thing that was just short of panic.

  ‘Well,’ I said.

  Vida replied with a silence.

  The bus to Tijuana left every fifteen minutes and cost sixty cents. There were a lot of Mexican men in the line wearing straw and cowboy hats in sprawled laziness to Tijuana.