“… shoulda never married your drunk ass…”
“… yabba yabba. You ever stop?”
“… least my first ex husband had all his teeth.”
“Yeah? Well, least my third wife had an ass smaller than a Hummer.
“This reminds me,” I say to Tommy. “Your wife wants you to call her first chance you get.”
Tommy rolls his eyes and pounds the warped door with the bottom of his fist.
“If I’d had a licka sense I would have stayed single,” shouts the man’s voice.
“Well, there you go. You ain’t got a lick of no sense, let alone nothin’ to go on.”
“‘Nothin’ to… That don’t even make no sense.”
“See,” the old lady on the other porch shouts, surprisingly loud for as old and frail as she is. “Drunker than two sailors on shore leave. Where’s your nightsticks? You never got your goddamn nightsticks!”
Tommy turns the handle and the door opens. “Police,” he says through the crack. “Portland Police. May we come in?”
The door jerks open all the way. “Who the hell called the cops,” a pajama-wearing, vomit-covered, fifty-year-old balding man sputters. “That old beater next door? Yeah, it was her. Always bitchin’ ‘bout something.” He leans around the door facing. “You call the cops, Annie? You old witch bitch. Witch bitch, witch bitch.”
‘I hope they beat you like Rodney,” the old woman shouts back.
“Hey you!” coos an equally vomit-covered middle-aged woman, slipping under the man’s arm and heading straight toward me, her well-fed body rolling like thunder under her short, pink transparent nightie. “You’re one fine-looking man. Look like that one on the TV, what the hell’s his name? That good lookin’ guy on… what the fuck is the name of that show? Except you’re thirty years younger. And you’re a white man.” She reaches for my arm. “I’m Hildie, what’s yours?”
I sidestep her and follow Tommy into the living room, or at least what used to be one before a Category Five hit it. There is a five-foot high pile of chairs and end tables against the fireplace. Broken flowerpots, dirt, and ripped-up houseplants cover the hardwood floor, torn curtains dangle from the windows, and at least three lamps lie broken next to a screen-shattered television. Part way up a staircase, a tattered orange sofa rests on its side and a few steps up from that a yellow and chrome upside down dinette table.
“Your housekeeper Typhoon Mary?” Tommy asks, scrunching his face at the old timer’s splattered blue pajamas.
The woman, whose see-through pink nightie leaves nothing of her two-hundred quivering pounds to the imagination, slurs, “Housekeeper? Shit, don’t need no damn housekeeper.” The puke starts in her hair, covers most of the nightie, with splatters here and there on her cellulite-covered legs and the tops of her bare feet.
I’ve seen homes trashed like this before in family fights, but I’ve never seen two people covered in throw-up. How did they even accomplish that? How did the woman puke in her own hair? Some of it is fresh and some of it’s dried from… last night? I’m this close to losing the peanut butter-covered English muffin I had for breakfast.
Hildie, advances on me again, her bloodshot eyes drunk and lusting. “God, you’re handsome,” she breathes on me. Stay down muffin, stay down. She places both palms on my chest and whispers something, but I sidestep away quickly, not hearing it.
“I’m thinking,” Tommy says over his shoulder as he sheepdogs the man next to the pile of furniture by the fireplace, “that you and Hildie could team up with me and that waitress at the Kick Start for a double date.”
“Are you two married,” I ask Hildie, ignoring Tommy.
“Hey, copper,” Tommy’s man shouts louder than necessary. “My wife fancies you. Take her. She’s pretty good; better when she’s cleaned up, I ought’a say.”
“So you two are married?” I ask again, brushing her hands off me. I so don’t want to touch her. Her stench makes my eyes water.
She nods. “But it’s okay. Bruce doesn’t care.”
“What are you arguing about? Has he hit you?”
“No one has hit anyone,” the man calls over to me. “We’re just arguing. Lover’s quarrel.”
“He’s right,” she says, crotch gazing me. “You’re built good. You got a good package, too?”
The man cackles at that. “Yup-a-roonie, Hildie loves a good package.”
“How long you been married?” I ask, feeling my face heat up.
“You like these?” she lifts her ponderous breasts that have been swaying about under her pukey nightie. She could knock someone out with those.
“Since Wednesday,” the man calls over, giggling at his wife. “Those are some big-ass hangers, ain’t they, officer?”
Tommy has stopped trying to talk to Bruce, apparently deciding that it’s more fun to watch my predicament.
“We got married Thursday, you dumb shit turd,” the woman snaps, letting her breasts drop. Seems like that would’ve hurt.
“Wednesday!”
“Thursday!”
“You guys talking about last week?” I ask. “You got married last week?”
“Five days ago,” the man says.
“Four, you damn ass turd!” Then cooingly to me, “You like a big ass?” She turns around and pulls up her nightie a little. Amazingly, she has puke on the back of her legs and her bottom. “More cushion to the pushin’,” she says over her shoulder.
I look at the ceiling for a moment to cleanse my eyes. Reluctantly, I look back at her. “How long have you been fighting?”
“All night,” she says, eyeing my package again. I’m starting to feel violated.
“That’s about right,” the man offers. He thinks about it for a moment. “Yup, ‘bout right.”
The woman reaches for me again, but I step around her and move to the center of the debris. Time to take charge. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to go. No one has hit anyone, right?’
“No, we don’t do that,” Bruce says.
“Big ass and big tits, all yours,” Hildie reminds me, sashaying my way.
Tommy isn’t even trying to keep his laughter in.
I thrust my palm toward her. “Hildie, Stop!” Incredibly she does, but with hurt in her eyes. “Okay, thank you. You been married a few days and—”
Hildie nods. “Three. Four, I mean.”
“—aaaaand you are supposedly on your honeymoon.”
“Yeah, we’re on our honeymoon,” she says, looking over at her husband.
“Then you know what you’re supposed to be doing, right?”
They both look at me, then at each other, then back to me again.
“Right?”
She nods first, then he does, both solemn.
“Where’s your bedroom?’
The man smiles and points upstairs.
“You wanna go up there?” Hildie asks me, with a look of anticipation and a nod of her head toward the stairs.
“Hildie, stop talking!”
She makes a zipper motion across her mouth and snaps to attention, which sets