Summer Accommodations: A Novel

by Sidney Hart

  “Hey Martha, got yourself a rich Jewboy?” None of us spoke. I felt the fear creep up my neck and my mouth went dry. My muscles became rubbery like they’d been detached from my bones.

  “Hey Jewboy, Martha is my girlfriend. What are you doing with my girlfriend?”

  “I’m not your girl, Joe. Don’t listen to him, Ronnie, lets just go inside and have some fun.” Ron had stopped walking and stood facing the two men. They were of average height and build. They were both wearing jeans and boots and smoking cigarettes. The slightly taller one had his cigarette pack rolled up in one sleeve of his T-shirt, an affectation of some street toughs I knew. They wore cocky, leering smiles on their faces.

  “I think you owe me an apology for calling me Jewboy,” Ron said in a cold and flat voice.

  “An apology! Did you hear that Joe? He thinks that you owe him an apology. Why don’t you give him one,” he said stepping forward, “or should I.”

  “Why that’s very kind of you Johnny,” Joe said.

  Ron pulled off his glasses and handed them to Martha. He started to open the clasp on the expansion band of his wrist-watch when the one called Johnny leapt at him and took a roundhouse swing. Leaning back as the punch arrived, the man’s fist grazing his chin, Ron just continued removing his watch. He flipped it to me quickly, caught the off balance Johnny from behind, lifted him off the ground as if he were no heavier than a feather pillow, and threw him through the air to the brick wall framing the plate glass window of Freddy’s.

  “Joe, you asshole, I said I think you owe me an apology,” Ron said. Joe looked over at Johnny who lay moaning on the ground. “I never use the same wall twice. That means I’ll have to heave you through the window. Ever fly through a plate glass window Joe? It really hurts. Very bloody.” He took a step forward and Joe’s arms flew up in the air, his empty palms framing his face.

  “Hey, it was just a joke, only kidding around. Martha will tell you I’m a real kidder, right Martha?” Martha turned away silently.

  “I guess you just told me a lie too,” Ron said. Then the one named Joe turned and ran away. Johnny rolled over and sat up.

  “Let’s go, Ron, this place is too crowded,” I said with bravado.

  “Your pal really takes good care of you, Johnny, doesn’t he. But understand that’s what Jews do for each other, we take good care.” Ron stood over the one he had flung through the air and looked down at the blood oozing out of a gash on his elbow. “I still haven’t heard you say you’re sorry for what Joe said to me.” Johnny snickered. “Ohh, I wish you hadn’t done that.” Ron bent down and placed his face close to Johnny’s. “You can say ‘I’m sorry’ or you can go home with your nose pointing at your ear, it’s your choice. No? I guess you want me to hurt you.” But as he closed his fist and cocked his arm Johnny said, “Sorry.”

  “Let’s just go,” I said. Ron glared at me.

  “You’re lucky that Jack is feeling sorry for you. His head is as soft as his heart. Martha, Rosie, I want you to tell all of your friends about what happened to Johnny and as for you Johnny, the next time that you’re feeling tough remember that it was a Jew who kicked your ass. And learn to show some respect for your betters,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. He motioned to us to go with him and we all got back into the car. “Well, I guess Freddy’s is out of the question,” he said starting the engine, and we all laughed.

  4.

  When we got back to the hotel Martha wanted to go to the recreation hall to dance but Ron said he wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t in the mood either. All I could think about was when Joe and Johnny would find their way to Braverman’s and get even. Rosie came up to me, slipped her arm around my waist and said, “I have a portable radio in my room. Why don’t we get that, go down to the storage shed and dance there?” The shed was where the pool furniture was stored during the winter. In the summer it was empty save for some broken chairs and umbrellas. “Great! Come on Ron lets do that,” Martha said.

  Ron looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “Jack? Are you in?”

  “Sure,” I said. My mind had been dwelling on how long it would take Joe and Johnny to round up their gang of thug friends and descend on the waiters’ quarters to kill us all. A thought like that can have a definite dampening effect on one’s libido. What the hell, I thought, if I was going to die I might just as well have a crack at Rosie first.

  Rosie and Martha went for the radio, a clumsy hunk of plastic that ran on four large flashlight batteries, while Ron and I went back to our room to get some blankets.

  “You never give those fuckers an inch, understand?”

  “Who?”

  “You shmuck, the Joes and Johnnys of the world. The only thing that they understand is power. Once you have it over them you exercise it to the limit. There’ll always be some Yahoo assholes waiting to get their hands on you and you must show them that you will crush their hands.” He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. “They feel no pity for you, don’t waste your pity on them.” He was breathing very hard and I saw tears in his eyes. I stared at him but said nothing feeling frightened by his display of rage, afraid that if I reacted in the wrong way he might turn it on me. He pulled the blanket from his bed and squeezed it into a ball. Then he seemed to relax all at once.

  “My father saw all of his friends and two of his brothers die in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He escaped just before the Nazis completely destroyed it. I will never walk away from a bully. I will lift him off the ground and fling him against a wall, and I will do the same for you or any other Jew if you are too afraid to do it for yourself. As for Martha she’s just another one of them. Fucking her takes nothing away from Vivian.”

  We met at the shed. Ron and I had spread our wool blankets in opposite corners of the space piling some of the broken umbrellas and chaises in the center to create a blind and to provide each of us an illusion of privacy. Rosie and Martha had put on perfume and brought a bottle of Seagram’s Seven and one of Seven-Up with them. Rosie turned on the radio. “The Great Pretender” was playing.

  “I love this song!” she said passionately, joining in with the lyric at “pretending that I’m not afraid”. That makes two of us, pretending, I thought to myself. Ron and Martha began to dance, holding each other tightly, staring intently into one anothers’eyes, rubbing their groins together.

  “So, Rosie, you wanna dance?” She clicked her chewing gum a few times and nodded.

  “You’re cute,” she said when I put my arms in place, and she closed the space between us as the song ended. I started to move away but Rosie held on. “Wait, there’ll be another song soon,” she said, and the words were barely out of her mouth when the radio began to play Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” and I thought of what Harlan had said about Elvis, that he was a mutineer of the sexual order. With Elvis crooning and Rosie hanging on to me pressing her pelvis hard against mine, I began to think about sexual mutiny and wondering what exactly that would entail; at times of stress I had a tendency to intellectualize. Understand that it was not all that sexually exciting to be with Rosie. She was not attractive, not even remotely pretty, and up close the sulphuric smell of her anti-acne medicine was too strong for the perfume she wore in an attempt to disguise it. She was pudgy, very pudgy, bordering on fat not simply overweight. Her body felt soft, but like something that is overripe not vital, and with the engulfing, enclosing quality of a giant amoeba. Nonetheless, we continued to grind our way across the makeshift dance floor exciting ourselves with the warmth and pressure of the other’s body and the sight of Ron and Martha doing the same. Ron had pulled Martha’s blouse out of her shorts and had his hands under it on her breasts. Martha grasped his buttocks and held him tightly against her while they kissed, their tongues licking languidly at each other’s mouths. Unquestionably, it was more exciting watching them than being with Rosie but, being a quick learner, I pulled her shirt out of her toreador pants and slid my hands underneath its cover to her breasts. They were nothing like the br
easts of other girls I had fondled. These breasts seemed curiously lifeless, without buoyancy or resilience or smoothness. Her breasts felt like plastic baggies filled with tap water.

  “Kiss me,” Rosie moaned. Ron and Martha must have heard her because they both groaned “go on” to me before disappearing behind the blind Ron and I had laid out earlier. “Don’t be shy, kiss me,” Rosie said more insistently, and she bit me on the lip and then licked it with her tongue. “Love me tender, I’m the pecker bender,” she said nipping my ear lobe and grabbing at my crotch. We sank slowly to the floor, Rosie coming to rest underneath me on her back, and suddenly I was sure that I didn’t want any part of this initiation. I was disgusted and ashamed and without any sexual desire for her whatsoever. Another tonsillectomy would have been better than this. With these thoughts and feelings, my erection began to disappear as surely as if it had been dipped in ice water and Rosie, experiencing it shrivel in her hand, tried to pump some life back into it further forcing its retreat.

  “Hey,” she said, a look of surprise and annoyance on her face. The radio was now playing a commercial in which a singing group was insisting that we would “wonder where the yellow went” when we brushed our teeth with Pepsodent, but it certainly wasn’t the disappearing yellow that Rosie was wondering about. Then Martha screamed out Ron’s name three times, “Ron! Ron! Ron!” and ended her set with a long and satisfied groan that glided slowly across the room towards Rosie and me like a complacent cat.

  “What’s the matter Jack, don’t you like me?” Her voice was tense and she was clearly feeling challenged.

  “No, that’s not it at all,” I dissembled while struggling to fabricate another excuse, “it’s just that I like to have a little party first, you know, a seven and seven or two. Didn’t you bring seven and seven?” I asked, stroking her face. Her lips puckered with the effort of her concentration and she stared intently into my eyes.

  “Are you telling me the truth, Jack?”

  “Of course I am, Rosie, I swear.” It amazed me that one could lie so often and so easily without incurring an immediate penalty. “C’mon, let’s pour our drinks.”

  Rosie opened the whiskey and took out the paper cups and soda she and Martha had brought down in a beach bag. Across the room Ron and Martha, who were now playfully relaxed in their postcoital satiety, slapped at each other with light love taps that made them giggle and purr. They seemed totally oblivious of us, but Rosie and I began listening more closely to the two of them. The smell of their excited effort wafted across the shed towards us and their giggling became muffled in a new embrace. When the drinks were mixed Rosie and I lifted our cups to each other, nodded a silent toast, and then drank. Rosie shifted herself closer to me and, taking another large swallow of the whiskey, I placed my hand on her thigh and began stroking her. The breathing across the shed deepened and quickened and the sound of their bodies undulating on the floor began to revive my erection. Touching Rosie’s thigh was pleasant but imagining that maybe Martha would crawl over already wet with excitement and begin to lick my neck aroused me almost instantaneously. Ron was right, she had a hell of a body. Then she and Ron were at it again. I closed my eyes and embraced Rosie wondering all the while what the one word aural equivalent of voyeur was. By keeping an image of Martha’s body in my mind I was able to stir some passion with Rosie and proceeded to undress her. She began to moan. The whiskey on her breath and the sulfuric smell of her anti-acne cream challenged my ardor and I took another swig of my seven and seven. The thought of making love to her held no excitement and Martha’s image was fading fast.

  “Do you love me Jack?”

  “What!!?”

  “Say you love me Jack.” Knowingly, Rosie took my hand and pressed it against the moist and furry cleft between her legs, while grabbing my member with her other hand. “Say it.”

  “I …” The door to the shed creaked open and the beam of a flashlight caught me full in the face before circling left to Rosie and darting to the opposite corner and capturing the full moon of Ron’s buttocks. A girl’s tittering preceded Harlan’s clear and emphatic “Sorry!” and then the door creaked shut. “Shit!” Rosie said. I had come in her hand.

  When we got back to our room I was feeling wretched, disgusted with myself and with Rosie. As usual, Harlan was not there. Ron looked at Harlan’s cot and snickered.

  “I guess he doesn’t get to see enough of my ass in here so he had to chase me down in the storage shed. I wonder what Heidi thought about what she saw. Who knows, maybe she’ll start playing up to me. A Jew is much sexier than a smooth skinned, pale toned bland goy. Rye bread versus white bread. What’s the matter with you?” he said, noticing my dejection.

  “Nothing.” I was feeling a terrible sadness, the ache of a reproving conscience which, like a black hole, had sucked in all my hope and hollowed me out in the pit of my stomach.

  “Why do people always say ‘nothing’ when they don’t mean nothing.” He took off his shirt, threw it on his bed and went to the mirror on the back of the door to our room. He studied his face and then took a deep breath. Expanding his chest and sucking in his stomach he admired his muscular build. “So how was Rosie?” he asked, turning sideways to get a look at his body in profile.

  “All right, I guess.” I didn’t think for a minute that I could tell him how thoroughly sordid and shabby I felt about myself and the entire experience.

  “Why don’t you just say ‘nothing’ again?” He turned around and stood facing me. “Admit it, you feel like shit.”

  “No, it’s just. …

  “Don’t bullshit me Melvin. You looked like you were going to cry when we left the shed.” I started to protest but Ron raised his hand to stop me. “I told you, you’d have to risk a variety of venereal infections but the worst would be the afters. Looks tome like you have a classic case of the afters.” He grinned. “Classic.”

  “I thought you were going to be a lawyer, not a doctor.”

  “Why can’t you admit that I’m right? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone goes through it at one time or another. Just hope that you didn’t make her pregnant.”

  “Well, I couldn’t have done that. I never got inside her.”

  “Uh oh. Feeling this bad and still a virgin? This maybe worse than I thought.” He scratched his head, grabbed a book from under his bed and riffled through its pages as if in search of something that he knew would be in there. “Ahh, yes, here it is. ‘Coitus Failurus Afterus: The subject is feeling degraded and disgusted as much for the failure to penetrate as for the choice of object with whom he has struckout. The remedy for this requires that the subject quickly identify and acquire access to a more attractive and desirable object.’ Well Mel, I guess it’s time for Diana.”

  I grabbed the book out of Ron’s hand and then laughed when I saw what it was, “Love Without Fear” by Dr. Eustace Chesser, the marital sex manual of its day.

  “Do you really think this Diana will go out with me?” All at once I was feeling much better.

  “Oh yes. Leave it to me. She’s a number, but I think she’ll go for you.”

  “What do you mean by a number?”

  “Patience Melvin. Recover from Rosie first. Don’t get greedy on me.”

  5.

  The tapping woke us before the alarm clocks went off in the quarters. Ron groaned but Harlan sat bolt upright and stared at the door. The metallic tapping, as if with a coin not a knuckle, resumed and was accompanied by the muffled sound of Harlan’s name being uttered against the panel of the door. Harlan pulled his covers aside and jumped out of bed. I heard Ron sit up in the bunk below me. Moving quickly and quietly Harlan went to the door, opened it a crack then slipped through the doorway into the hall pulling the door closed behind him as he talked to his visitor.

  “What the fuck is that?” Ron said. We could hear their voices and though I couldn’t make out what they were saying the visitor sounded more distressed and seemed to be pressing Harlan for something. When the door
opened again Harlan backed into the room saying, “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry, I’ll make good on it.”

  “Yeah, but I want it on Sunday when you get your tips, not later than Sunday, Harlan, I need it.”

  The door closed and Harlan, sighing, a frown on his face, walked back to his bed and flopped down. I recognized the voice as Artie Stein’s, Ivan Goldman’s busboy, and so did Ron.

  “What did you do now, Hawthorne, rob poor little pimply Artie?”

  “What a pain. He won some money from me at cards and you’d think his life depended on getting that thirty dollars.”

  “No, maybe he just knows who it is that owes him the cash and how hard it will be to collect.”

  “On what basis do you say a thing like that, Ron, on what grounds?” He sat up tense and irate.

  “You don’t know about your reputation around here I suppose.”

  “What reputation?” I said.

  “You don’t have to defend Harlan, Melvin, he’s a big boy and he can take care of himself.”

  “Yeah, but what reputation,” I asked again.