Naked Came the Stranger

by Penelope Ashe

  “Rabbi Turnbull, are you all right?”

  “Never mind me,” he hissed. “Think of Rabbi Elisha.”

  Gillian was solicitous. The poor man was in obvious pain and she searched for ways to comfort him. “Would you like a massage?” she asked. The mere suggestion caused Turnbull to swoon into a comatose state. A half hour passed before his moribund powers were restored. And no sooner had feeling returned to the affected parts than he once again reached out for Gillian.

  “Your clothes,” he gasped. “Take off your clothes.”

  She laughed, pulled away, teased. That crazy shiksa, she wants me to work. In this condition, she wants me to work. He managed to rip off her dress. The sight of her long, faintly tanned legs below black net panties set off new explosions of lust in his belly. Avoiding the bedpost, he pounced again. Gillian tried to kick loose, but he had her pinned this time and was covering her mouth with wet kisses. Then, holding her fast, he began working his way down. He traced her navel with his tongue and reached for her smooth, high, arched buttocks when the phone on the night table began ringing.

  “Don’t answer it,” he whispered.

  “Why are you whispering?” she said.

  The phone kept ringing, insisting, a noisy witness to an act rendered suddenly ludicrous.

  “Forget about it,” the rabbi said. “Forget about that fucking phone.”

  “Rabbi!” The shock in her voice caused him to loosen his hold. “I can’t forget it, it’s probably William. If I don’t answer, he’ll be suspicious.”

  Turnbull groaned, relaxed. She rolled away from him and picked up the phone.

  “Hello. Yes, everything’s fine. Why?”

  “William?” the rabbi whispered.

  No, she indicated. Turnbull clapped his hand over his eyes, groaned aloud. Gillian continued to chat aimlessly for fifteen minutes despite his imploring hand signals. It seemed to be the smallest talk possible. From time to time he reached out to touch her, but she brushed him away. By the end of the call, he was doubled over on the bed again, muttering incoherently. As the thought of strangling her with the phone cord came to him, Gillian calmly hung up.

  “Why didn’t you hang up right away?” he asked.

  “Am I answering to you already, rabbi?”

  “Joshua,” he said, “call me Joshua.”

  “Well, Joshua, that happened to be Mario Vella.”

  “The gangster fellow?”

  “The same,” she said. “I don’t understand why he calls me, but sometimes he says he just wants to talk. And I don’t think it would be particularly wise to hang up on him.”

  “But Mrs. Blake, Gillian, when a man and a woman are in bed.…”

  “… The world doesn’t end,” she finished it.

  Turnbull looked at her for a moment. She was kneeling opposite him on the bed. He unhooked her brassiere, and this time Gillian offered no resistance. He removed it and bit softly at her breasts. They waved at him, pennants in the wind of lust, and he bit deeply into the acid of her dugs. Then he pulled off the black net panties—there was a cellophane sound as they were peeled past her thighs. They stuck at her knees. What he had hoped (and prayed, even) would be a smooth operation was spoiled as he had to fumble about her knees and she arched to let him finish slipping them off. Turnbull rose from the bed and then, clad only in his beard, rejoined her. He watched with the patience of the sages as Gillian removed the earrings and the bracelet.

  Turnbull delayed it, made it last, stared at the naked woman waiting on the sheets for him. Then, as if making an elaborate bow, he took hold of her and pressed hard against her slightly parted legs. He sewed her body with a thread of bites and kisses, dwelling on the tight high pack of her working hips and patching them with little pink squares. Finally he rose up over her, shadowed her with the majesty of his manhood, noticed that her legs were still closed.

  “Not yet, Joshua,” she said. “Not yet. Kiss my knees first.”

  “Your knees?”

  “My knees.”

  “Would you prefer the caps or the hollows?”

  “Just kiss them, Joshua.”

  One nut-girl in this town, he thought, one lovely shiksa nut-girl and I had to pick her. Turnbull bent uncomplaining to his new labors. Gillian’s knees were well fleshed and dimpled and certainly not unattractive, if one happened to be a kneeman. For ten long minutes he improvised on the knee theme—it wasn’t his specialty, but he was always flexible in such matters—and he was rewarded by the sounds of irregular breathing and little growls. He felt her knees starting to part and he rose, but she stiff-armed him neatly.

  “More,” she cried out.

  Oy, oy, oy. Trying to preserve his patience, the rabbi returned to the knees. The growls deepened. It sounded to Turnbull almost animal-like and, in some uncanny way, as though the noise was coming from behind him. A moment later, in horror, he realized it was coming from behind him. It was Rolf. The dog. The dog who had somehow escaped from the garage, from the lawn mower, and now he stood in the bedroom doorway growling at what must have been an incomprehensible sight.

  During the instant of recognition, Turnbull, buttocks exposed, knelt frozen in terror. And that one instant was all he had. Rolf leaped. Turnbull felt a searing pain flash through his right hip. Then a clamped set of needles dug into his rump and held fast. Gillian at first felt the rabbi had been transported into a state of exultation that beggared her past experience, and it was only his wild bellowing that made her realize there was an intruder. She crawled around Turnbull, pulled Rolf by an ear and smacked him.

  “Naughty dog!” she said, slapping him repeatedly. The beating did no more than cause Rolf to seek an even tighter grip on Turnbull’s rump. Finally, tugging at both ears, Gillian managed to pry him from his prey. It must be said to the dog’s credit that he did not loosen his grip. It was simply that a portion of the rabbi came free with the dog. Turnbull collapsed on his stomach, moaning, holding his wounds.

  “Naughty, naughty dog,” Gillian continued. “Now drop that.”

  Rolf refused to discard his small prize, and Gillian led him to the garage and once again locked him in. Turnbull had not moved.

  “I’ll get rabies,” he moaned.

  “Rolf’s had all the shots,” she assured him. “And it’s not all that terrible. William’s been after me to throw out this bedspread for an awfully long time.”

  She found bandages in the bathroom medicine chest, returned and patched Turnbull up.

  “You mustn’t worry about Rolf,” she said again. “He may seem a little testy, but he’s certainly not insane. There, that should be better. Well, what did you have in mind next?”

  Gillian was sitting cross-legged on the bed before him. The view was too much, even for a newly wounded man. He reached out for one of those magnificent legs, then the other, and he propped himself up on them. Her thighs, he noticed, were springy and firm, the haunches of a lioness. He embraced her in a clumsy bear hug, pushed her heavily down on the bed. He was through with the game playing. He grabbed at her moving thighs and kneaded her swift buttocks. He bit her neck, then her shoulders and pressed himself down on her. Her lips were open in a small smile. Her eyes were closed. The sweat of her body made him weak with desire. Her legs were parted in a wide welcoming arc. The moment had come. Turnbull mounted over the throbbing, waiting woman.

  The doorbell rang.

  “My God, what’s that? What now?”

  “Oh, drat,” she said. “It must be the girls from the bridge club. I wasn’t expecting them until nine.”

  “Bridge club?”

  “I just joined last week,” she said. “They meet Wednesday nights.”

  “Don’t answer the door,” he pleaded. “Tell them you weren’t home.”

  “The lights are on,” she said. “The car is in the driveway. My, wasn’t it fortunate you didn’t park your car in the driveway. We can be thankful for that.”

  The bell rang again and Turnbull rolled off.

&nbs
p; “Mrs. Blake,” he said, “if you knew you were going to have company, why this?”

  “It might have worked out,” she said. “You’ll have to admit, Joshua, you did fumble a bit.”

  Another ring.

  “Joshua, you really have to leave.”

  “How am I going to get out of here?”

  Gillian quickly charted the escape route. Down the stairs, into the den, through the plate glass windows, onto the patio and out the driveway. She would entertain the ladies in the dining room while he made his escape. Even as she was explaining his retreat, Gillian straightened the bedclothes with quick precise movements. Then she climbed into a long, modest frock and, without once looking back at her aspirant lover, left the room.

  Turnbull, eyes glazed, sat on the bed until the door clicked shut. Then, still in a weakened condition, he managed to pull himself together. He scrambled into his clothes and, carrying the bloodstained bedspread under his arm, managed to creep out the back way. Despite a narrow escape from a swimming pool waiting for him in the night, the rabbi managed to find the driveway, then the road, then his car. Seated painfully in the safety of his automobile, the rabbi began to consider the entire evening. Was it possible? Was it possible a woman could plan something like that? The invitation, the ferocious dog, the bridge club, even the moans—was it possible that this had been staged for his benefit? Yes, he decided, it was possible.

  The following week, Gillian received two phone calls from the rabbi. She was noncommittal, evasive. The next four phone calls she was politely unavailable. The following week—and by this time he heard rumors that Gillian Blake had been seen at a drive-in hamburger stand with Mario Vella, a common gangster—Rabbi Turnbull began sending her presents. The gifts were returned, unopened, to his office beside the Temple.

  The more she rejected him, the more he craved her. For just the chance to kiss her knees. He decided that even the dog, Rolf, was not too bad, quite probably a very effective watchdog.

  And then he began to hate her.

  Love and hate, mingled as they often are in the same current, coursed through his veins and pounded at his temples. Turnbull could not control the demons. And when Gillian began to hang up the phone at the first sound of his voice, he knew the demons would claim him.

  He snapped at the members of the ladies’ auxiliary. At Temple meetings he seemed distracted and morose, then engaged some of the most important donors in senseless argument. He arrived drunk at Friday night service. Saturday he was seen at a roadhouse with a notorious woman. Acquaintances sought him out to talk to him, but he would have none of it.

  In a way, a strange way, Turnbull became more popular in the community than he had ever been. Scandal is a community service and a free entertainment at that; witnesses generally feel obliged to pay admission with sympathy. Turnbull scorned their sympathy, slapped his wife, shouted at his children and, just before the scheduled appearance of Jonah and the Wails, disappeared for three days.

  Cooler heads in the Temple said that this was all for the better, and no police report was issued. Rabbi Lerman, Turnbull’s inarticulate assistant, was given specific instructions to get the services over with as quickly as possible.

  The services that Friday night were expectably well attended. Reporters and photographers fattened the congregation considerably, and the first half of the proceedings went smoothly. Jonah and the Wails, four grave young men dressed neatly in Mod black, made a fairly conservative entrance if one could overlook the blond wigs. They wore wide leather ties with leaping sperm whales spraying toward the knots. They made their music with two electric guitars, a tambourine and a whale’s jawbone that was banged against a single kettle drum. The second half of the service began with the Torah removed from the holy ark and Jonah leading the group in song—

  Open the doors

  Git out the book

  Uh-Uh-uh-uh-uh

  And take a look.

  We all prayin’

  (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

  We all prayin’.…

  It was an instantaneous success, and some in the audience saw a twinge of irony in the fact that Rabbi Joshua Turnbull could not be there to savor his most hard-fought victory. The second song, “Kneelin’ and Feelin’ and Prayin’ and Sayin’,” was launched in splendid fashion, with flash bulbs providing punctuation, when the spectre appeared.

  Rabbi Turnbull, mantled in a potato sack, his eyes red and wild, marched upon Jonah and the Wails, commanded them to stop. They did. Turnbull mounted the lectern and, foaming with rage, denounced Jonah as a false prophet. He turned to his horrified board of directors and accused them of the sin of the biblical Jonah, ignoring the will of God.

  “We are in mortal peril!” he shouted.

  Turnbull, holding onto the lectern like a forecastle, felled three Temple vice presidents and was holding his own with a fourth when the police arrived.

  “Philistines,” he cried, “I’ll take the jawbone from this ass and lay your thousand low.”

  Jonah gave up his bone and fled into the crowd. Turnbull, discovering that it was rubber, threw it at the last of the retreating Wails. Finally, hemmed in by superior forces, Turnbull was overpowered and carted off. The remainder of the service was canceled. And, though the Temple did not press charges against its rabbi, he disappeared forever from King’s Neck.

  It was rumored in later years that he had changed his name to Brodsky and had found employment as a beadle in a deteriorating Orthodox synagogue in East New York, where he remained, penitent, a recluse, who flagellated himself ritualis-tically. But that was only a rumor, of course.

  EXCERPT FROM “THE BILLY & GILLY SHOW,” NOVEMBER 28TH

  Billy: Yes, Gilly, with Thanksgiving gone, can Christmas be far behind?

  Gilly: And don’t forget Chanukah. Equal time, you know. Anyway, that comes first, doesn’t it?

  Billy: I think so. By the way, Gilly, I think we should express our regret at what happened to Rabbi Joshua Turnbull, who was on the show with us not long ago. I’m sure everybody read about his unfortunate breakdown.

  Gilly: Yes, the papers certainly had a picnic with it.

  Billy: The man must have been under fantastic pressure.

  Gilly: You can’t imagine how sorry I felt. That good, saintly man. It just proves what a strain religious leaders are under today. It’s the world we. live in.

  Billy: Right. I’ll tell you, Rabbi Turnbull was especially interested in reaching young people, and that could have done it.

  Gilly: I’m not sure I follow you, dear.

  Billy: Well, these kids today, they don’t care about anything. They don’t identify with anything.

  Gilly: Wait a minute, dear. Certainly today’s young people show a great deal of alienation, but I think you’re being extreme. I’m sure youth has its important values.

  Billy: Yeah, marijuana and LSD. Look, how about the kids you see walking around the Village?

  Gilly: Those are hippies. Or they want you to think they are. And anyway, I don’t think they’re representative of all young people.

  Billy: Maybe not, but there are an awful lot of them. Listen, you even see them in the suburbs nowadays.

  Gilly: That’s true. But even then, you can’t always judge a book by its cover.

  Billy: Well, all I can say is that some of them, the ones with super-long hair and sandals, have some pretty unappealing covers.

  Gilly: Perhaps, but I can remember what it was like when I was in college. We weren’t all angels.

  Billy: You were, dear. I’m sure you’ve always been an angel.

  Gilly: Well, it’s nice of you to think so.

  Billy: Seriously, sweetheart, some of these kids today are frightening. Take sexual promiscuity, for instance.

  Gilly: Yes, I know what you mean. But I think you’re generalizing.

  Billy: I’m not so sure.

  Gilly: I still think most young people are terribly stimulating.

  ARTHUR FRANHOP

  RAINA FRANHOP
slipped the amphetamine tablet into Cat’s water bowl with the sincere hope that it would compensate for his waning sex life. (Domestic animals, of course, were not permitted to run free in the unincorporated village of King’s Neck and, on his last excursion into the great outdoors, Cat had attempted to mount a gray squirrel, only to be severely rebuffed.) The drug took effect immediately. Unfortunately, Cat overreacted. He sped from one end of the living room to the other, banging his head noisily against the wall-board to mark the end of each lap. Arthur Franhop could not help but notice that Cat was caught up in an orgasm of ecstasy.

  “Barbaric!” he screamed.

  “Hypocrite!” she screamed back.

  Raina realized that Arthur’s concern was over the loss of the pill, not for the well-being of her beloved Cat. And, all too true, it was becoming harder and harder to score safely. But they still had the twenty pounds of Acapulco Gold they had smuggled out of Mexico in whimsically painted Christmas balls, and Arthur had no right to blow his cool over one lousy goof-ball.

  What really upset Raina was being called barbaric. She did not like, and she did not need, to be reminded of it. Often she felt that she was just about to slip over the edge of humanity into an abyss of pure violence. During a recent LSD session she had been transformed into a banzai-shouting, teeth-baring maniac; she still wasn’t sure she had returned safely from that particular trip.

  Eventually Cat slowed down and collapsed. By that time, Arthur and Raina were lying nude on the Mexican serape reading the East Village Other and some lesser publications.

  “Here’s one,” Arthur said. “Pretty groovy. ‘Housewife, 42, interested in chains. Formal practical nurse, has knowledge of piercing. Willing to oblige women in particular.’ Interesting.”

  “Yes, but her address is Kenosha, Wisconsin.” Raina said, reading over his shoulder. “You don’t have the bread to bring her all the way out here.”

  Raina never neglected an opportunity to mention Arthur’s relative poverty. Her father had paid twenty-eight thousand dollars for the split-level home on the outskirts of King’s Neck—quite likely with the hope that a material possession, especially one in the world capital of material possessions, would give them some sense of responsibility. Possibly even push them into formal marriage. (Though they shared Arthur’s last name, the marriage ceremony had never been performed by a lawfully appointed official—it was sanctified by a bearded nineteen-year-old Zen-reader during a monthly meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the League for Sexual Freedom.) At any rate, Raina liked to keep reminding Arthur that, even if she wasn’t indispensable to him, her father’s money was.