Room at the Inn

Watkins wandered with the other ghosts in North Beach on Christmas Eve--the divorced, the bereft, the deserted, the left out. It was more in accord with his nature to be a lonely ghost than a happy drunk, he decided. The important question remaining was to find how to end the night decently with sleep.

He tried the door of City Lights Bookstore, but it was locked for the holiday, the staff having a family glass of wine and waving him away through the glass. Watkins wasn't of this family.

At the Trieste Caffe, also about to close, red-and-green wrappings lay strewn about, along with spackles, the snow that was a necessary part of the Christmas decor here in San Francisco, where it never snowed. Everyone, like Watkins, was trying hard. He moved on up Grant, heading against the chill currents of damp, invisible fog gusting down the slanting street. The last Christmas sellers were giving up; iron grilles clanked; soon store for rent signs would open the street for next year's hopeful merchants.

"Yo! Watkins!"

"Pardon?"

"Turn right, man; how many time I have to tell you?"

It was Rodney, the laughing black sociologist from the Hoover Institute. He liked to balance his ideology--formerly Ronald Reagan, now George Bush--with some of the street style of his brothers. As far as he was concerned, the estrangement came from the brothers' side, and he personally was ready to make peace by telling the brothers how to do right, as he did.

"You be alone like me, hey, man? Nothing happening on this pre--holy day?"

"Nothing much." Watkins wanted to live up to his reputation for telling the truth. "So how I beat my Christmas depression is I give in. I like to have a good long, sweaty walk, a hot bath before midnight, and so to bed, like Tiny Tim."

"I bet you do," Rodney said. "I bet what you really do prefer is a long walk, a hot soak, and then down to your pallet on the floor, alone by your majestic solitude, where nobody can bother you to rub her back or things. I bet."

Watkins shrugged.

"Listen, I got a party for both of us. You're invited, plenty for everybody. This rich lady live up on Stockton. She just love horny intellectuals."

"Do I qualify?"

"She know a superfluity of lawyers, man. One in seventy-two adults in the Bay Area passes the state bar--that's the statistic. Merry Christmas, brother." The sociologist went close and peered earnestly into Watkins' face, a street-lamp gleam coming off the steel rims of his glasses. Rodney, a compassionate, neoconservative soul, took Watkins' arm, took no noes for an answer (Watkins hadn't bothered) and steered tightly. "There'll be cold turkey and hot possibility, brother, plus all the nice people just as wrecked as you are this holiday season. Being an honest man, I include myself.... Hey, remind me again about Tiny Tim, would you?"

•

The door was unlocked. It had a little card Scotch-taped above the knob: Upstairs. Coats, Cares & Weapons in Bedroom. Merrie Xmas all.

Watkins and Rodney strolled into a room lined with three long couches and knees bumping off them. A turkey was being escorted toward a low driftwood coffee table already equipped with platters of cole slaw, cranberry sauce, Italian bread sticks and sliced canned beets. The hostess and cook remarked by way of greeting, "Hi, I'm Sheila. Move the ashtrays."

"I'm Watkins. Thanks for having me."

"I said, move the ashtrays."

The other guests, who seemed paralyzed on the couches, didn't jump to help. Watkins, blinking at the sudden appearance of a crowd, didn't understand this direct command. But sharp, high-I.Q. Rodney moved the ashtrays, beamed and said, "Voila!" He also helped lower the platter. "Um, good-oh, we're just in time."

"You're welcome," Sheila said. "You Watkins, the public-interest attorney?" She wiped her fingers on her apron and then extended them. "I'm happy and proud to meet you at last. Called your office to offer a class-action suit against the purveyors of sugared coffee--I suspect it's more sugar than gourmet Viennese roast--and all I got was the brush-off."

"Must have been one of the associates," Watkins said. "I'd remember if I talked with you. They pass the bar, that's how they are."

"If it's more sugar than coffee," she asked, "shouldn't it be sold as a sugar product rather than a coffee product?"

This kind, generous, intelligent, good-looking in the slightly over-the-hill way that Watkins, at his stage in life, preferred ... this good-natured, perceptive lady was one of those legal nags. The medical nags corner the doctors: "Hey, I got this persistent ache in my left ear when I drink herbal tea"; "What do you do for a scaly ankle, doc?"; "All my family dies of the sugar diabetes. Think I should give up Mars Bars?"

"But we never did the lab tests," Sheila was saying, "because your office wouldn't give us the time of day. If it's forty-nine percent coffee, do we still have a case?"

"I'd love to hear from you during office hours," Watkins said. "Really. Trouble is, on Christmas Eve, I can't think of litigation, not even General Foods."

"Good will toward mankind, huh, counselor? And a multinational corporation is legally an entity, a human being? You're a kick, Watkins."

"Thank you. And it's good of you to sort of invite me."

She waved to the platter. "Have some turkey, white or dark. I give you these options so you can come to your own ruling."

Those sunk into the couches began to stir, vibrating a little as their motors idled, and then, as they realized they didn't run the danger of being first in line, to push and jostle at the platters of food. Soon other platters arrived. A slow sighing filled the room. On this Christmas Eve far from childhood, there might not be love, family, trust, connection, there might be an absence of solid holiday cheer, but there would be enough food. Two jugs of wine, one white, one red, stood flanked by little bottles of high-fashion water. The gas of the fireplace hissed. Some of the men were wearing sweaters with that woolly bulge over the gut. Some of the women were wearing sensible pants suits. It was cold outside; steam on the windows. The rumor that San Francisco took part in sunny California was not confirmed by the evidence.

One woman caught Watkins' interest. Her name was Beatrice. She was long and bony, with interesting sharp planes in her face and a shiny gambler's vest over a white blouse. Lean and rangy, he thought, and wondered why someone wasn't crowding those skinny knees, that coltish body. Her hair was carelessly major-hand-tousled. He could imagine her taking off her glasses and a man in the movie saying, "Why, you're beautiful!" But she wasn't wearing glasses, only the slightly gleamy look of contact lenses. She didn't invite him to her with a glance. He went anyway and she smiled when he said, "Merry pre-Christmas. Why aren't you eating?"

"I was waiting for someone to ask."

So he took her elbow and steered himself and her to the table. She picked a very small amount of everything in a way that suggested she didn't want to waste and wouldn't necessarily be finishing even these small mounds of white meat, mushroom-and-walnut dressing, cranberry sauce. With her fingers, she added a sprig of parsley from a water-filled bowl.

"Hey," Ferd was saying--he was a North Beach coffee merchant with both retail and wholesale outlets, but the wholesale outlet had been closed as a by-product of his divorce--"Hey, we could all be buddies in times of adversity, like Frank Sinatra, Dino Martin and"--raising his voice as he glanced at Rodney--"Sammy Junior Davis, like a modern-day version of the Mouse Pack--"

"Davis Junior," Watkins murmured, unable to avoid correcting the errant liberal.

"Only the first of several problems with what he stated," Beatrice said. "Rats. Rat Pack. He's been studying ancient history." Her smile was wide and ungoverned, the look of the sort of woman who selected the party-pack of winsome smiles in a mirror. It was an old-fashioned grin. It blew away the whiff of schoolmarm and made her seem younger than her actual, oh, maybe 38 years.

"Hey, that's nice," he said. "You're a corrector, too."

"Only the first of my problems," she said. "I like you, also." He hadn't said he liked her--but if he had, would that be a problem? But she was reading him correctly.

"Are you always a little ahead of people?"

"I'm always a little out of sync. For example, back when--" A rosiness appeared in her cheeks. She was blushing! And she plowed right ahead with what was making her blush. "Back when nobody was wearing a, wearing a bra ... I wore one."

"I noticed."

"How could you? Didn't know me then. But now I don't--do things in my own time."

"That's what I meant I noticed."

"Oh." She laughed. She said nothing. She let the blush fade and then appear again. And then she buttoned up one of (continued on page 217)Room at the Inn(continued from page 120) the buttons on her blouse, leaving the top two as they were.

He noted the gesture, he let her know about the notation, he let her wonder whether he would let it pass. He let it pass. He liked the hang of her vest, some kind of find from the Barbary Coast Antique Clothier. "What is it now," he asked, "nineteen eighty-eight or so?"

That was his way of letting it pass. He didn't expect any answer. He had grown rusty at party banter. But he kind of liked this Beatrice, liked her as much now, when she might have worn a bra to a Christmas Eve get-together for those who didn't go home for the holidays. The kind-of-like system worked with plump and also sometimes worked with lean and rangy. "I'm Watkins," he said. "That's my funny name I've been learning to live with."

"Watkins. You're right. Well, probably, a handicap like that is terrific for your character."

The system slipped into gear when certain life problems laid a person open: Can't go home for the holidays, or no money; or don't want to go home or no home to go to. Or nobody to tease about the funny names a fellow gets.

"You two have plates," Sheila said, peering into each of their faces, making her own estimate of the preholiday situation. "You have food on your plates, silverware, at least one of you is showing a napkin. But you're not eating."

"Hey, we're getting organized."

Beatrice dropped to a step leading to the door and Watkins sat alongside. First he tried to put the plate on his knees; that didn't work so well. Then he tried the floor, but it was too great a bend and reach. Beatrice was laughing at him. People were jostling around them. He didn't like shoes so close to his turkey and fixings. Beatrice was still studying him and laughing about what she had learned. "Not used to partying much, are you?" she asked. "Normally a loner, are you?"

"Normally an eater at tables," he admitted grimly. She was delighted. The smile wouldn't quit.

The light in the room was yellow and warm. The people were not talking very much, pending the start of wine-fueled jollity, but there was a busy clash of teeth and silver. That helped. It was the noise of ice being broken. Sheila's house was filled with things--souvenirs, posters, season's greetings propped up on mantels--not a menacing rich woman's house. In a corner, on a pedestal where a person might expect a sculpture or an Egyptoid lamp, stood a complex bit of machinery with jagged teeth on its snout and the message on a plaque: Oldest Orange-Juice maker known to California.

And alongside Watkins was an attractive, not-too-beautiful woman, the warmth of her flanks communicated to his. He should surely be feeling better about life. And having successfully argued the case for felicity against himself, he suddenly did. Feel better.

"You don't have any olives," he said. "Let that lack be remedied."

Beatrice plucked a black olive from his plate and neatly removed the pit from her mouth with the same fingers. She was easy with him and easy with herself. She didn't demand that life bring her only pitless black olives. Surely, all of that suggested a promising situation for a lonely divorced male. She had reached into his plate as if she belonged there. If anything can be slightly aphrodisiac to the parties concerned, it's the ameliorating of the normal holiday depression by good luck and a bold reach. "That's the case," he said.

"Pardon?"

"I think aloud sometimes, even when I'm talking with people."

"Nice, Wat. A little controlled schizophrenia is a very attractive quality in a man."

"Maybe you better run that by me one more time."

They were good buddies already. They joked. She called him Wat. They sat very close on the carpeted step. They were the envy of everyone, though Sheila looked only half-envious. Her pride in the art and craft of hostessing compensated her, or perhaps it was only that she didn't really find Watkins her sort.

"The law of averages," Kenny Jones was saying, too near to them, meaning to be overheard, "is that someone in this room has AIDS or syndrome."

"The law of averages also states," Sheila remarked, her patience as a hostess beginning to be tried, "that we'll all be dead in due course. So let's be careful. What're you trying to suggest?"

He shrugged. "Just small talk, like anybody else. It's on my mind."

Reassuringly, Sheila leaned over and patted Watkins and Beatrice, in turn, on the shoulders. "Don't you worry; I'll vouch for both of you, especially if you obey safe practices. Let me get you some carrot and celery sticks--picks up the immune system, just in case."

When she turned toward the other guests, Watkins asked, "Are we doing the right thing?"

The cool gray eyes of Beatrice--long eyes, lean eyes, like the rest of her--widened. "What are we doing?" she asked. He had assumed too much. He was unskilled in the matter of Christmas Eve flirtation.

"Talking only to each other," he said. "Perhaps we're rude."

"Good recovery," said Beatrice. "Way to go." She took another olive from his plate, another black one, and again removed the pit from her mouth with the same two fingers. "Let's not decide if we're going to spend the night together till later. Then we'll poll the jury."

"Have you had legal experience?"

"Neither a plaintiff nor a defendant," she said, "but I keep up with my reading."

They had got past that tender point in the discussion, the moment when a person might go to get a drink and forget to return. He didn't know for sure if they were just joking. He wasn't even sure of the legal status of the term just joking. On Christmas Eve, far from home, or maybe no real home, perhaps certain rules were suspended, like alternate-side parking. He saw the point of food, drink, music and other people in such situations. They gave a legitimate reason for distraction. A person could fall silent and still seem to be paying attention. Apparently, Beatrice had been going through her own process of rumination. There was a dreamy and abstracted vagueness on her face, as of someone running various precise scenarios through her head. Apparently, the decision came suddenly in a collision of scenarios. She asked, "Your place or mine?" so loudly that, two bodies away, Kenny Jones jumped.

Watkins was ready to admit when he was wrong in both small matters and large. He had predicted that Beatrice wouldn't finish her plate. She had eaten methodically through the little mounds--creamy slaw, vinegary slaw, turkey, cranberry sauce, dressing, other festive stuff--and had finished with the parsley. Now that she had decided, she looked up at him, grinning, a bit of parsley on one tooth, and said, "Aren't you going to finish? Too nervous to eat in company?"

"Do you mean it?" he asked.

She frowned. She picked the parsley out. She tried to give him an answer. "People needed to do this sort of thing back in the Sixties, didn't they? Make all these statements to prove it did or didn't mean something?" She put an olive pit back into her mouth, giggled and removed it. "Nervouser than you can imagine. Me, too."

"I like that about you, Beatrice."

"Do you shoot people? Are you a pervert? Are you an emotional mess?"

These days, all that had to be covered, also. "Not for me to say. But I'm not in a risk group."

"Well, then," she said, "it's Christmas Eve and there's got to be room at the inn. Let's be on our way."

Falling silent, the other guests stared, chewing turkey, sipping wine, as Beatrice and Watkins went for their coats. It wasn't a true silence. It was a kind of reverent hum. Sheila stared over the edge of a bowl. It was how she liked her coffee. She had the rights of a hostess and householder to her own large coffee bowl. Beatrice and Watkins hurried down the stairway. This wasn't France, where a person had to shake hands goodbye with everybody. This was America, where things can happen abruptly.

Friendly, neoconservative Rodney stood swaying at the top of the stairs, holding a plate piled with slaw. "Bless you, anyway, Tiny Tim. Just remember you owe me now. Is that agreed?"

" 'Let's not decide if we're going to spend the night together till later,' Beatrice said."