Richard Brautigan - The Abortion - An Historical Romance 1966

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.

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.’

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 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.