In an act of abject defiance, Hermie slammed the door so hard that Penny Singleton shook. Oscy was looking at the door. “Can you lock it?” Hermie locked the door, but it wasn’t enough for Oscy, who pulled over a chair and propped it up under the doorknob. Next, Oscy went to the bed and—
“Don’t sit on the bed, Oscy.”
“Why not?”
“My mother’ll know.”
“I wasn’t going to sit on it. Jesus.” He threw the filthy sweat shirt on the bed and Hermie winced because he knew his mother would eventually pick up the scent. Oscy untied the knot, pulled aside the sleeves, and there was the book, looking for all the world like the first Bible. Oscy picked it up as though it were a live bomb. He looked around for a place to put it.
“There.” Hermie was pointing to the small table that served as his desk for the summer.
Oscy placed the book upon the table, like a surgeon, and he told his assistant his requirements. “Paper. Pencil.” Hermie nodded. He had them. “Carbon paper.” Oscy added, “Otherwise I have to do it twice.”
“Do what?”
Oscy didn’t answer. He just held his hand out. Hermie shortly filled it with pencil, paper, and the last piece of carbon paper in all the world. The best you could get out of that carbon paper was an echo. Oscy took it and held it to the window. The light poured through. “It’ll do.” Then Oscy pulled a chair up to the table, stuck the carbon paper between two pieces of white paper, and pencil in hand, he consulted the book’s index until he found what he was looking for. “Ah.”
Hermie plopped upon his bed and looked up at the ceiling, where the paint was peeling in a pattern that resembled Gene Tierney’s luscious overbite. “Just what is it you have in mind, Oscy?”
“Your welfare.” Again he said, “Ahhhhhh.”
“What ahhhhh?” Hermie asked, dreadfully bored.
“The sexual act, how to perform it. The twelve steps. Simply stated. Pages six sixty-four through six seventy-eight.” He smiled at Hermie. “It’s here, Hermie. It’s all here. Somebody had the good sense to write it down.”
Hermie rolled over onto the elbow nearest Oscy. He squinted at Oscy as though trying to make him out in the fog. “What are you talking about, Oscy?”
Oscy had already found the pages he wanted and had begun taking his notes. “You just relax, Hermie. I’ll inform you when I need you.”
Hermie plopped again onto his back. It was out of his hands, his entire destiny. Oscy had taken over. What a relief to be free of the responsibility. He looked at the women on his walls. June Haver, freshly up, smiled at him through wild blue eyes. What the hell did she have to smile about—she was no Penny Singleton. He picked up the magazine on his night table. Liberty magazine. Sometimes it had good things. He thumbed through it, looking at the ads. Goodyear claimed that there were “plenty of miles in your old tires yet if you’ll follow this common sense advice now.” The USO said it needed “$32,000,000 by Spring.” Oldsmobile claimed to be “putting the stings in America’s wings.” Armour and Company invited Hermie to “meet the best fed fighters in the world. The U.S. Soldier, Sailor and Marine.” From time to time Hermie heard Oscy groan or just whistle. Eventually Hermie placed the magazine over his face so that a beautiful girl’s mouth fell on his. He dozed off only to awaken at the sound of his breathing fluttering against the buzzing page. He removed the girl’s wet face from his and turned once more to see what Oscy was up to. He called reverently to Oscy so as not to disturb him. “Oscy…”
“Shut up, Hermie. I’m almost finished.” He mopped his sweaty face with the sweat shirt nearby.
“Just what the hell is it that you’re doing?”
“Two copies. One for me. One for you. Keep it with you at all times. Refer to it. Learn it.”
“Oscy, excuse me. Learn what?”
“The sexual act in twelve steps. What the hell do you think I’m doing here, Hermie? Answering my fan mail?”
“The sexual what?”
Oscy was very patronizing. “Hermie, since you can’t go calling on your lady with this book under your arm, I’m condensing it. Point by point. If you stay close to this, you’ll do okay.”
Hermie swung his legs over the side of his bed. It was beginning to dawn on him, what he had suspected for many, many years. “Oscy, you’re crazy.”
“Yeah. Like a fox.” He never stopped making his scribbly little notes. And he never stopped smiling. “Hermie, you’re gonna lay that lady or I’ll know the reason why not.”
Hermie heard, but he couldn’t accept. He even tried to laugh because the idea was so preposterous. “Oscy, I can’t lay that lady. Ha-ha-ha.”
“If you put your heart in it, you can.” He never looked up, just kept writing. Seemingly volumes.
“Oscy, I can’t.” He heard himself laugh again but knew it wasn’t funny.
Oscy stopped writing and looked at Hermie disbelievingly. “Don’t you want to?”
“Well, sure I want to but—ha-ha-ha.”
“Then you will. Stick with me.” He resumed writing.
Hermie grew immediately thoughtful. Actually, it wasn’t such a bad idea. If you could overlook the fact that it was completely impossible, it wasn’t a bad idea. As a matter of fact, the more he thought about it, the less completely impossible it became. It would be nice to lay her. Very nice. And charming. Nice and charming for her, too, because he’d be very gentle. He’d also know all the right things to do, thanks to Oscy, who was setting it all down on paper, if only the paper didn’t combust spontaneously. Watching Oscy like that, knowing that Oscy was devising a foolproof approach, gave Hermie supreme confidence. After all, it wasn’t as though she didn’t like him. Hadn’t she kissed him that very morning? Hadn’t she bitten his leg and changed his dressing? Hadn’t she ripped open his NBC pants and fondled his gargantuan penis? If all that wasn’t an expression of her interest and affection, then there was certainly something rotten in Denmark, what? Hermie kept watching Oscy. Faithful, unselfish Oscy, so seldom wrong. So inventive and courageous. With Oscy in the wings it was a guaranteed certainty. Hermie not only believed he could lay her, he also believed that it was totally up to him just where and when it would take place. Her place or his? Hers. Only—that photograph of Pete would have to go. Hermie thought of her lying beneath him, her eyes glazed with passion, giving him tit for tat and then some because he was such a gentleman leaning on his elbows like that. He thought of her tawny legs around him, grinding him into her just like in the picture book. He thought of it all, and an image of Sheena of the Jungle swung through his mind, coming in one ear and going out the other. And by the time it went out he realized that he was nothing more than a dirty, frightened little boy with no rights to such evil thoughts or plans. It was all crass. Terribly crass. Not because he didn’t want to lay her, but because—“Oscy, I respect her. I don’t want to just…lay her.” His voice was pitiful and young.
Oscy, without looking up, put his pencil aside like somebody’s grandfather. Then he turned and looked up at Hermie as Thomas Edison must have looked at all who doubted him. “Hermie, there’s something you don’t seem to understand. It’s all right to respect a lady. It’s fine. And very democratic. Only, she’s not gonna respect you if you don’t try to lay her.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true. My brother told me. That’s the way ladies are. They want you to try even if they don’t let you, because, even though they don’t let you, they want you to. Which is why you have to.”
“I think I understand.” But never, never in a thousand years would Hermie understand such warped and misshapen logic. And he began to wonder about Oscy. Oscy. Stupid Oscy. Wasn’t he the guy who said they’d never be caught spitting marbles off the balcony railing of the Loew’s Kings? They were banned for three weeks. Even missed King Kong and Gunga Din. And wasn’t Oscy wrong when he told Rollo Herzog that rich Wacky Foster wouldn’t even notice that his racing bike was stolen? Rollo was arrested. And wasn’t
it Oscy who said they could steal all the G-man cards in Gelband’s store without fear? Gelband beat the shit out of both of them. No, Oscy was not to be listened to if you valued your future life. Listen to Oscy and you could end up in jail or dead or both.
Oscy got up and walked over to Hermie and gave him his copy of the document. “Here, Hermie. If you can count up to twelve, you can get laid. I’m giving you the original and taking this crummy carbon for myself. Greater love hath no man. Start memorizing.” Hermie watched Oscy return to his chair and start memorizing.
Hermie looked at the paper in his hand. One page. In numbers one to twelve the sexual act had been written down by Oscy as if it were the Ten Commandments. “Oscy—”
“Shut up, Hermie. I’m memorizing.”
“Oscy—”
“Hermie, shut up!”
Hermie kept shut up for as long as he could, studying the paper with the funny words that Oscy had to have misspelled. Then he broke radio silence. “Oscy, this is crazy.”
“What?” Oscy was glaring at him.
“Point Three.”
“What’s crazy about it?” His fingers were thumping the table, just this side of becoming a fist.
“I never even heard of the word.”
“It’s Latin.” Oscy was exasperated. “The original guys were Latins.” He resumed his studying. “Jesus.”
“I wouldn’t even know how to pronounce it.”
Oscy slammed his paper down. The paper made no noise. It was his fist that seemed to crack the table. “You don’t pronounce it! You just do it!”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t even know where it is!” Hermie didn’t like being yelled at, especially by a young imbecile like Oscy. “And what the hell is this, in Number Four!”
Oscy consulted his list to see what the trouble was. “That’s Latin, too!” He looked over at Hermie, kind of appealing to him not to be so dense. “It’s all in Latin, Hermie. Jesus.”
Hermie was beginning to feel just a mite ornery. “Yeah? Well, I may just have to ask her where some of these things are!”
Oscy was looking at the ceiling, awaiting divine assistance and speaking with the patience of a fucking saint. “They are all approximately in the same place. Look and ye shall find.” He looked at Hermie and tried to smile. “Besides, she’s supposed to be helping you.”
Hermie was certainly being contrary. “She gonna have a copy of these fucking twelve points, too?”
Oscy was still patient. “She won’t need them. That’s why she’ll be helping you.”
“I hope so, because I’m gonna need all the help I can get.” Seeing it in print like that, so arithmetically laid out, was a drain on Hermie’s confidence. He was good in math, but Latin had never been his strong point. All he really knew of Latin was that Gaul was divided into three parts. And the only reason he knew that was because he was good in math.
Oscy was talking, tapping his paper pedantically. “Point Six, Hermie. Very important.”
Hermie looked at his list. Point Six, no matter how Oscy spelled it, was foreplay. “Foreplay,” said Hermie, as though the whole thing were as well known as the Declaration of Independence.
“Right,” said Oscy. “That word keeps cropping up.”
Hermie was feisty. “I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What do I say—‘Hi, lady, how about a little foreplay?’”
“I keep telling you, you don’t have to say a word.”
“Yeah? Well, Point Two here definitely states that we’re supposed to converse.”
“Swell, Hermie. Very good. And very observant. But that’s Point Two. When you get to Point Six, you’ll notice that there’s no more talking. Just moaning and sighing. You moan and sigh.”
“She’ll think I’m sick.”
“She’ll be moaning and sighing, too.”
“Gonna get pretty noisy.”
“Turn on the radio.”
“What if there’s no radio?”
“Then don’t turn it on.” Oscy hurled himself into a quick lather. “Hermie, God damn you! I am trying to memorize this shit, and you’re not letting me!”
That stopped Hermie. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but Oscy had made a copy for himself. “What the hell you memorizing it for?”
“Miriam.”
“Miriam?”
“Yeah. Miriam. Remember Miriam? Well, I have rights, too.”
“You gonna lay Miriam?”
“You’re goddamn right I’m gonna lay Miriam. I happened to overhear a couple lifeguards discussing her, and from what I gather, once she gets started she’s really something.”
“How do you know it’s the same Miriam?”
“It’s the same Miriam. Don’t try to throw me off.”
“Miriam’s a pretty common name.”
“Yeah, but those tits ain’t so common. You don’t come across tits like that every day in the week. They were talking about the same Miriam. My Miriam.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I got confidence, Hermie. Too bad you don’t. If you had confidence, I wouldn’t have to lead you around like a pet duck.”
“I got plenty of confidence, Oscy. All I need. It just so happens that I’m a little more realistic than you.” He was getting very angry. His voice was rising. If the phantom mother was floating around nearby, there could be trouble. But Hermie couldn’t stop himself. “And where the hell do you come off calling me a pet duck?”
“Quack-quack.”
“I’ll tell you something, Oscy. If I follow these twelve points, she might just have a baby. And I can’t afford a baby at this stage of my life, so the whole deal is off. Also—fuck you.”
Oscy stared at him. Not angry, just nonplussed. “You are so dumb.”
“Just watch yourself. You’re in my house.”
“So dumb I can’t believe it.”
“I may be dumb, but I’m not gonna be a father. Two wrongs don’t make a right. So fuck you.” Hermie was really spoiling for a fight. He looked around to see what weapons were available. The best thing was a blunt object, the eugenics book.
Oscy showed commendable restraint. He had had, roughly, thirty-eight proper provocations to punch Hermie out, but still he withheld. “You use protection, Hermie. You use a rubber. Ever heard of a rubber? A prophylactic device? A contraceptive?”
Hermie didn’t bother to answer because of course he knew what a rubber was. He stood, crumpled up his paper of notes, and let it drop to the floor, an expression of his total lack of interest. The gauntlet had been hurled. The ball was very dramatically rolling around in Oscy’s court.
Oscy got up and came over. Hermie’s fists were clenched. He knew enough about law to realize that he could kill Oscy and get away with it on the grounds that Oscy had broken and entered. Oscy stood in front of him, just looking at Hermie. He stood there for five hours and thirty-six minutes. Then he bent down and picked up the crumpled piece of paper. Hermie could have easily delivered unto the back of Oscy’s neck a fine judo chop. But that would have been a Jap trick, and whatever you thought about Oscy, he was still a bona fide American. Oscy stood up, smiled at Hermie, and walked back to the table where he proceeded to uncrumple the paper and smooth it out. “Lucky for you, Hermie, that this is the original. If it was the carbon, it’d be smudged into oblivion and you’d be shit out of luck.”
“Fuck you, Oscy.” Hermie was feeling powerful, unbeatable. He wanted to demonstrate his inhuman strength on Oscy’s nose, where, once before, he had laid out an example of his pluck and spunk. Whatever it took to provoke Oscy, he’d do it. Like repetition. “Fuck you, Oscy. In spades.”
Oscy sighed, not even looking at Hermie, just smoothing out the notes. “A man gets tired of always hearing those words from a so-called friend, Hermie.”
“Fuck you, Oscy. You’re an idiot. Hear that?”
“I’d expect that from Benjie. Not from you.”
“Quack-quack. Go fuck a duck.”
Oscy dug
deep into his pocket and pulled out his leather wallet, all four corners of which had been bent round. He opened the wallet. “As it just so happens, Hermie, I already have my rubber.” He wiggled his fingers into the wallet’s secret compartment. “When my brother went into service, he willed it to me.” And he fished out a small foil-wrapped packet that had seen better days but that was still sealed. “I been carrying it around ever since. It so happens that it’s my lucky charm.”
Hermie looked at the packet in Oscy’s upturned palm. It caught the light and glistened even more than his Band-Aid. It was about as sexy an item as he’d ever laid eyes on. And wrapped in foil like that, it looked like a precious gem. Hermie wanted it. He wanted it more than a Schwinn racer or a new Joe Medwick glove. And he suddenly understood how men could kill just to possess rare and beautiful objects.
Oscy saw the reflection in Hermie’s eyes, and he knew he had him. Deliberately he wiggled his palm so that it would catch a few rays of sun and thereby thrust Hermie into a hypnotic state, not a difficult task since Hermie usually walked around half-hypnotized anyway. “It’s in here, Hermie. All you need.” He was whispering like some kind of Far Eastern Hindu. “Your paper with your instructions—and this. You kiss that lady a couple times, excuse yourself politely, and then return with the contents of this package wrapped around your pecker and you’re home. There’s no way a woman can resist. It’s like catnip.” He wiggled the packet a little more. Hermie’s eyes dilated like mad. His emotions soared. It was a great test of his Jockey shorts and his poor fly’s three buttons. “Whaddya say, Hermie? Whaddya say, eh?”
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