by Chuck Kinder
We were just trying to get in, Jim, Bill said. —That’s the absolute long and short of it. A sorry mistake.
You got a real choice friend here, Jim, officer Jake said, shining his flashlight back on Bill’s stricken, sorry face.
Your pal here was trying to jimmy open Mrs. Chou’s side window, Officer Harry said. —He’s lucky she didn’t plug him.
I was just trying to get in, Bill said. —We didn’t have a key and Alice Ann had to go potty pronto.
Jesus, Billy, Jim said, you big dumb fuck. I live on the second fucken floor.
I forgot, Bill said. —I got confused. I’m not from around here, Officers. Alice Ann had to go real bad, Jim. I was doing it for her. I told her to just squat and do it in the entry, but you know how women are bashful about some silly stuff. So, strictly speaking, this is all Alice Ann’s fault.
Just do us a favor, Jim, Officer Jake said. —Get these people off the street. And keep them under lock and key.
Thanks, boys, Jim said. —Christ on a crutch, I’m sorry about all this bullshit. I owe you guys a couple.
Don’t sweat it, Jim, Officer Jake said. The officers walked to the patrol car shaking their heads. They got in, turned the flashing light off, and pulled out from the curb.
Hey, Alice Ann, Jim said, and walked over to the entry.
Hey, your own self, Alice Ann said, and stubbed her cigarette out in a flower pot. —If I don’t get upstairs in about ten seconds, I’m going to become very damp.
Lindsay pulled her key from her purse and hurried across the entryway.
Goodbye, Billy, Alice Ann said over her shoulder as she passed by Lindsay at the opened door.
Adios, Alice Ann, Bill said.
Ralph! Jim yelled down the street. —Get your worthless ass up here, buddy!
Hush, Lindsay said. —Quiet down.
Well, Jim said.
It was all a sad, sorry mistake, Lindsay, Bill said. —I swear it.
As soon as the patrol car had passed through the light down the hill at Union and Powell, Ralph stepped from the dark doorway and scrambled up the hill.
Hey there, old Ralphie, Bill said.
Hey there, old Buffalo, Ralph said.
Another close call, Bill said, and he and Ralph laughed and hugged each other around the neck.
Another disaster narrowly avoided, Ralph said, and he and Bill banged each other on the back and hooted with laughter.
You guys, Lindsay hissed, quiet down.
Okay okay, they mouthed in unison, clasping their hands over their respective mouths.
Lookie! Bill suddenly said, and whipped a fat wad of bills from his jeans* front pocket and waved it in the air. —My little darlin’ didn’t do it! My little darlin’ was innocent the whole time. My little darlin’ didn’t rob me blind, after all.
I told you, Lindsay said.
Holy cow, Ralph said, where did you find it?
Down around my balls, that’s where, Bill said. —Pardon my French, Lindsay. I guess I had stuffed it down in my jockey shorts at some point. For safekeeping, I guess. Because I didn’t have the good sense to trust my little darlin’, and that’s why I went and lost her in the end. Let that be a lesson to you boys.
So, when did you find it? Jim said.
Oh, I didn’t find it. Alice Ann found it.
Say what? Jim said.
What? Ralph said. —What?
I mean, Bill said, it fell out. When I got out of the car at some point. We were, or had been, you know, driving around hunting for Lulu.
Lucy, Lindsay said. —I knew Lucy was innocent.
Right, Bill said. —We were driving around looking high and low for my little darlin*. Then I pulled into a, oh, gas station. To get gas. And to take a, you know, leak. That’s when Alice Ann found it.
When you were taking a leak? Jim said.
No, amigo, Bill said. —When it fell out. On the ground by the car. It had sort of worked its way down my pant leg, I guess. That’s what. And it fell out and Alice Ann spotted it.
Old eagle-eye Alice Ann, Jim said.
Right, Bill said.
You better buckle your belt, Buffalo, Jim said. —You must have forgotten to buckle up after you took your leak. The old Buffalo, as everybody knows, always sits down like a sissy to pee. Right, Bill?
I sometimes do. I do. When I’m dog-tired or drunk, I do. Well, folks, it’s been fun, but I gotta hit the road. Adios, amigos.
Bill, just where do you think you’re going? Lindsay said. —It’s almost two in the morning.
Home, Bill said. —Back to the Big Sky country, where I really belong. I just remembered I’m supposed to give a final bright and early Monday morning. I owe it to my students to be there. I’ve taken some sick leave lately.
Bill, Lindsay said, you need to get some sleep first.
No, ma’am, Bill said, it’s time for me to leave now. My work is done here. Like Shane, it’s time for me to ride off alone back into the mythological mountains, those mystical Tetons, never to be seen or heard from again. I showed my class Shane and they thought it sucked. They thought that it was dopey and sentimental. They didn’t understand the holy and innocent hero who comes in from the wilderness to do civilization’s dirty work, then rides away like a movie star, like Shane, like me, folks. They didn’t understand the nature of that lonely outsider with rules and magical skills and a code of conduct. I tried to teach the little shits, but I didn’t get anywhere. Heroes are an ancient problem. Especially old, worn-out heroes like Shane, like me. Oh well, like I always say, when the old way of doing things wears thin, you gotta find a new one. When the story we’re in isn’t working out right, we make up a new one to inhabit. I’m gonna give those little smartass sumbitches that final on Monday, then I’m gonna flunk them all. Anyway, like I said, my work is done here. Adios, amigos. Bye-bye, Bill said, and lumbered down the hill.
Billy, Lindsay called out, what about your boots?
Billy! Jim called out. —Come back, Billy! Ralph needs you, Billy! Alice Ann wants you, too!
Bill paused at the corner of Mason and stood there weaving under the streetlight for a few moments, while he gazed about for his vehicle and tried to recall the best road back to Montana, and then Bill lurched across Union Street and was gone.
3
Back upstairs Lindsay found that Alice Ann had disappeared into the spare bedroom. Lindsay went into the bathroom and locked the door. She sat on the edge of the tub and smoked a cigarette, flipping the ashes into the sink. When she had finished, she ran water over the butt, then dropped it into the wastebasket. She filled the sink with hot water and washed her face, then rinsed it with cold water. She studied her face in the mirror. She began to reapply makeup, but stopped.
Lindsay found Ralph standing at the stove in the kitchen stirring something in a pan. Jim’s little black-and-white television set was playing soundlessly on the counter by the sink. Ralph didn’t look at her when Lindsay walked into the room.
It’s okay, Ralph, Lindsay said.
I’m sorry about all the problems Alice Ann has caused around here, Ralph said.
It’s not Alice Ann’s fault, Ralph.
Well, I know I’m a part of the problems. And I’m sorry.
We are all a part of the problems, Lindsay said. —We are all in the same boat of bullshit
Well, Ralph said, poop floats.
Maybe so, Lindsay said. —But you can’t keep pretending that a turd in the punch bowl of life is a chocolate ice cube. Dear God, where did that one come from? I sounded like bullshit Billy. Bill shows up for a single evening of craziness and his special brand of bullshit and I am utterly undone. Where’s Jim?
I don’t know where your husband is.
Maybe you should find your wife, Ralph. See if she’s okay.
Right. Maybe tell her a bedtime story. Except my wife knows all my stories by heart. She made up most of my stories anyway herself. Just go ask her. Why don’t you sit down for a minute? Let’s smoke a cigarette. Where�
�s the harm in us having a nice relaxing cigarette together? You want any soup?
Go check on your wife, Ralph, Lindsay said.
I want to talk some more, Ralph said. —We need to. Nothing is settled. We need to talk some more.
Everything & settled, Ralph, Lindsay said. —Oh, Ralph, Lindsay said, and mussed his hair. —Ralph, Ralph. I need to go check on my own husband.
4
Jim was lying bareback on his old sleeping bag before the front- room fire with little Sappho curled asleep on his broad hairy chest. Lindsay studied Jim’s bearded face in the faint light of the dying fire. Who was he? Whom did he love? Lindsay sat down on the sleeping bag beside Jim. She put Sappho on the hardwood floor in a slant of streetlight, where Sappho had an immediate cute-attack, rolling about on her back, twisting her head, the star of her own litde kitty movie. Lindsay laughed quietly and rubbed her cat’s tummy.
Lindsay ran her fingers over the skin of Jim’s muscled arms. She loved the feel of his skin, faintly moist, smooth. She loved his skin’s smell and its taste. Milo’s skin had been dry and had an acrid odor. More than anything, Lindsay wanted to be a real person at last. She wanted to be a real woman, a real wife, a real mother with breasts filled with real milk. How in God’s name was her life going to turn out? Would she ever have a life with her husband full of common purpose, shared motives? Shared vulnerability, security, repetition? What scared Lindsay the most about Jim, besides the facts that he drank too much and did too many drugs and was essentially a criminal who could end up behind bars, was the manner in which he always seemed to be writing things up somewhere in his mind, always mining his life, their life, for material. What Lindsay feared the most was becoming a character, the wife, in somebody’s collected stories, forced into fiction. Please God, no more fucking hopeful beginnings, crises, crash landings. Please God, no more three-act fucking melodramas.
Lindsay slowly unzipped Jim’s jeans and spread his fly wide open. She gently tugged his shorts down and took his penis in her hand and studied it intently, rolling its foreskin gently with her thumb. Jim farted a little fart and smacked his lips in his sleep, and Lindsay laughed quietly. She squeezed his penis lightly and he farted again. Sappho lifted her little black face and looked at Lindsay and mewed softly. Lindsay scratched the top of her little cat’s head, and Sappho licked her fingers and then yawned greatly.
Lindsay bent forward and licked the skin of Jim’s shoulder then sniffed it. She rubbed her nose lightly around the ridges of an underarm. She parted the hair over a nipple, then flicked it lightly with the tip of her tongue. Then suddenly Lindsay thought of Ralph, his huge wonderful, gentle hands, the wonderful way he smelled. Lindsay shut her eyes and shook her head. When she opened her eyes, she traced a finger along those two long scars barely visible through thick hair that carved a V down Jim’s lower abdomen, whose point was his limp penis, which she began to rub gently, until Jim mumbled in his sleep. It sounded as though he had mumbled a name. Lindsay bent over him, put her ear next to his mouth, as though listening for her husband’s last words.
Jim mumbled again. Natalie, was that the name? Natalie, Lindsay whispered back into Jim’s dream, while she gently pulled upon his stiffening penis. Natalie, Jim mumbled again, then mumbled another name. Sally? Sally, Lindsay whispered in Jim’s ear. Whereupon Jim mumbled Susie. Then Jim mumbled Annie, Peggy, Jenny, Belinda, Bobby Ann, Bobbie Jean, Lolita, Mary Louise, Robin, Janet Sue, Jackie, June, Mae, Martha, Megan, Diane, Donna, Molly, Margaret, Annie, Lynn, Camille, Connie, Amy, Leslie, Debbie, Bev, Beth, Bossy .
You turkey, Lindsay said, and laughed. —You’re not asleep, Stark. Bossy? Who the fuck was Bossy?
I loved Bossy, Jim mumbled, grinning, but with his eyes still shut. —When I was a boy back on the farm, Bossy and I would meet out in the old barn late at night. Mooooooo, Bossy would go when she came. Mooooooooooooo.
You turkey, Lindsay said, and gave Jim’s member a mighty squeeze. —Consider this one extremely choked chicken.
Yeow, holy cow! Jim cried, then gasped, Lindsay Lindsay Lindsay Lindsay Lindsay Lindsay Lindsay ...
Whereupon Jim sat up and rubbed his eyes. For a time he simply sat there staring into the dying fire.
What are you thinking about, honey? Lindsay said.
Nothing much, Jim said. He stood and zipped up his jeans, then walked over to the table in the turret. He took a drink of wine from a long-stemmed glass, then picked up a roach resting in an ashtray and lit it. He clicked on his little portable radio, which was on the table, dialed to that station he liked out of San Jose that played Mexican music all night; border-town gunfight music, Jim always called it. Jim sat down and began cleaning his gun, which was on a newspaper spread out on the table. Jim looked up at Lindsay as she walked over to the table.
What are you doing, Jim? Lindsay said.
I’m cleaning my heater, Jim said. —My rod, my roscoe.
Why are you cleaning your roscoe, Jim?
You never know when you might need your roscoe, Jim said, and took a long drag on the joint, letting the smoke swirl dramatically up over his shadowy face.
You know I hate that thing.
Shorty and I are going target-shooting. Take a gander out at Alcatraz tonight. It looks like either a great ghost ship anchored in the dark bay or an island city of the dead. I can’t make up my mind. Are you glad you married me instead of Ralph? Jim said.
Ralph was never serious about marrying me, Lindsay said.
That don’t really answer my question, ma’am.
I hate when you call me ma’am. You know that. I love you, Jim. So, are you going back to New York?
I ain’t studying on no New York. Where is everybody?
Here and there. I’m going to bed.
I’m right behind you.
Good night, honey.
I’m right behind you, I said.
Good night, Jim.
5
The canopy draped above the bed resembled a pyramid only vaguely. The thin hollow metal tubing of its frame had been bent and wobbled like delicate old bones when Lindsay sat down on the edge of the bed. The tent’s tie-dyed fabric felt wet and slippery like silk and was as thinly translucent as a scarf.
When in the world and why did Alice Ann put this up, Lindsay wondered. Lindsay undressed and lay down naked on top of the covers, gazing upward at the canopy. In the soft glow from her vanity lamp across the room the filmy material above her shimmered like stained glass turned molten with her breath. A foghorn sounded its distant, forlorn low from the Bay, like the boohoo of some pathetic, drowning cow. The plaintive albeit menacing Mexican music drifted in from the front room, where Jim sat drinking his wine and smoking his dope and cleaning his roscoe. Good night, Jim. Sleep tight, Jim. The pang Lindsay felt she thought would burst her heart. Across this box of broken dreams was her grandmother’s antique vanity and chiffonier and that ancient cradle wherein she and her mother and grandmother had been rocked to sleep. Lindsay felt her life tremble. Her memories felt like an undertow.
Sappho jumped up on the bed and came mewing toward her, then stopped to sniff between Lindsay’s legs. Come on, honey, Lindsay said, and reached down to scratch her kitty’s head. Don’t be a dirty litde kitty. Come on, Lindsay said, and lifted her kitty up beside her own face on the pillow. They breathed into each other’s faces for a few moments, and then Sappho curled up on the pillow in the cusp of Lindsay’s neck. Lindsay bit her lip until it hurt. She made her mouth water, then tasted and swallowed it like a bitter kiss. She touched her right nipple. Good night, Jim, Lindsay said to herself as her fingertips brushed her nipples. She felt the heat rise in her stomach. Good night, Ralph. Good night, Alice Ann. Sleep tight, Lindsay whispered as her fingertips traveled slowly down the starry sides of her night body.