Richard Brautigan - The Abortion - An Historical Romance 1966

I went from the priest’s interest in Vida to wondering about Foster at the library, how he was handling the books that were coming in that day.

I hoped he was welcoming them the right way and making the authors feel comfortable and wanted as I made them feel.

‘Well, we’ll be home soon,’ Vida said to me after a long silence that was noisy with thought. The priest’s composure vibrated with tension when Vida spoke.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about that.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I could hear the noise in your mind. I think everything’s all right at the library. Foster’s doing a good job.’

‘You’re doing a good job yourself,’ I said.

Thank you,’ she said. ‘It will be good to get home. Back to the library and some sleep.’

I was very pleased that she considered the library her home. I looked out the window at my talisman. I loved it as much as the coffee stain flying down.

Things are different at night. The houses and towns far below demand their beauty and get it in distant lights twinkling with incredible passion. Landing at Los Angeles was like landing inside a diamond ring

The priest didn’t want to get off the plane at Los Angeles, but he had to because that’s where he was going. Perhaps Vida reminded him of somebody. Perhaps his mother was very beautiful and he didn’t know how to handle it and that’s what drove him to the Cloth and now to see that beauty again in Vida was like swirling back through the mirrors of time.

Perhaps he was thinking about something completely different from what I have ever thought about in my life and his thoughts were of the highest nature and should have been made into a statue… perhaps. To quote Foster, ‘Too many perhapses in the world and not enough people.’

I was suddenly wondering about my library again and missed the actual departure of the priest to become part of Los Angeles, to add his share to its size and to take memories of Vida into whatever.

‘Did you see that?’ Vida said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

This has been happening ever since I was eleven,’ she said.

The stewardesses on this flight were fantastically shallow and had been born from half a woman into a world that possessed absolutely no character except chrome smiles. All of them were of course beautiful.

One of them was pushing a little cart down the aisle, trying to sell us cocktails. She had a singsong inhuman voice that I’m positive was pre-recorded by a computer.

‘Purchase a cocktail.

‘Purchase a cocktail.

‘Purchase a cocktail.’

While pushing her little cart down the sky.

‘Purchase a cocktail.

‘Purchase a cocktail.

‘Purchase a cocktail.’

There were no lights below.

Shine on, O talisman!

I pushed my face against the window and looked very hard and saw a star and I made a wish but I won’t tell. Why should I? Purchase a cocktail from pretty Miss Zero and find your own star. There’s one for everyone in the evening sky.

There were two women behind us talking about nail polish for the thirty-nine-minute way to San Francisco. One of them thought that fingernails without polish should be put under rocks.

Vida had no polish on her fingernails but she didn’t care and gave the women’s conversation no attention.

From time to time the aeroplane was bucked by an invisible horse in the sky but it didn’t bother me because I was falling in love with the 727 jet, my sky home, my air love.

The pilot or some male voice told us that if we looked out the window, we could see the lights of Fresno and were 3½ minutes away from the lights of Salinas.

I was already looking for Salinas, but something happened on the plane. One of the women spilt her fingernail polish on a cat ten years ago and I looked away for a moment to wonder about that and missed Salinas, so I pretended my talisman was Salinas.

We were about to land at San Francisco when the women behind us finished their conversation about fingernail polish.

‘I wouldn’t be caught dead without fingernail polish,’ one of them said.

‘You’re right,’ the other one said.

We were only three miles away from landing and I couldn’t see the wing that led like a black highway to my talisman. It seemed as if we were going to land without a wing, only a talisman.

Ah, the wing appeared magically just as we touched the ground.

There were soldiers everywhere in the terminal. It was as if an army were encamped there. They flipped when they saw Vida. She was increasing the United States Army sperm count by about three tons as we walked through the place, heading towards the van in the parking lot.

Vida also affected the civilian population by causing a man who looked like a banker to walk directly into an Oriental woman, knocking the woman down. She was rather surprised because she had just flown in from Saigon and didn’t expect this to happen on her first visit to America.

Alas, another victim of Vida’s thing.

‘Do you think you can take it?’ Vida said.

‘We ought to bottle what you’ve got,’ I said.

‘Vida Pop,’ Vida said.

‘How do you feel?’ I said with my arm around her.

‘Glad to be home,’ she said.

Even though the San Francisco International Airport acted like a Playboy cybernetic palace wanting to do things for us that we were not quite ready to have done, at that moment I felt that the International Airport was our first home back from Tijuana.

I was also anxious to get back to the library and see Foster.

The Bufano statue waited for us with a peace that we couldn’t understand with its strange people fastened projectile-like upon a huge bullet.

As we got into the van, I thought there should be a statue for the Saint of Abortion, whoever that was, somewhere in the parking lot for the thousands of women who had made the same trip Vida and I had just finished, flying into the Kingdom of Fire and Water, the waiting and counting hands of Dr Garcia and his associates in Mexico.

Thank God, the van had an intimate, relaxed human feeling to it. The van reflected Foster in its smells and ways of life. It felt very good to be in the van after having travelled the story of California.

I put my hand on Vida’s lap and that’s where it stayed following the red lights of cars in front of us shining back like roses in San Francisco.

When we arrived back at the library the first thing we saw was Foster sitting out on the steps in his traditional T-shirt, even though it was now dark and cold.

The lights were on in the library and I wondered what Foster was doing sitting outside on the steps. That didn’t seem to be the correct way to run a library.

Foster stood up and waved that big friendly wave of his.

‘Hello, there, strangers,’ he said. ‘How did it go?’

‘Fine,’ I said, getting out of the van. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘How’s my baby?’ said Foster to Vida.

‘Great,’ she said.

‘Why aren’t you inside?’ I said.

‘Tired, honey?’ Foster said to Vida. He put his arm gently around her.

‘A little,’ she said.

‘Well, that’s the way it should be, but it won’t last long.’

‘The library?’ I said.

‘Good girl,’ Foster said to Vida. ‘Am I glad to see you! You look like a million dollars in small change. What a sight!’ giving her a kiss on the cheek.

‘The library?’ I said.

Foster turned towards me. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said, then turning to Vida, ‘Oh, what a girl!’