Hermie got scared. “Oscy? Jesus, you okay?”
Oscy pulled himself up straight. “Huh?”
“You okay?”
“Oh, sure. I guess I must’ve—dozed off.”
“Dozed off! How the hell can you doze off?”
“I’m awfully tired, Hermie.” And he shook his head to gather his few remaining senses.
“Did you get to Point Twelve?”
Oscy’s voice was so small as to sound as though it were coming out from behind loose grains of sand. But it was also proud, infinitely proud. “Twelve? Hermie…we are so far past Twelve—”
A gong went off in Hermie’s head. It struck twelve. “But—Twelve is as far as the book goes. What’s after Twelve?” Bong, bong, bong, bong…
Oscy looked at Hermie through dancing eyes. Even though he was tired and probably mortally wounded, those pale-blue eyes had true twinkles in them. “Thirteen.” And then, with a nice wave of the fresh rubber in his hand, he walked away. Then he stopped and turned and said, “Fourteen.” Then he resumed walking only to stop and turn again. “Fifteen. Hermie, you have no idea.” He walked on, being gradually eaten up by the night, all except his voice which seemed to come from a faraway megaphone. “Sixteen. Seventeen.” His voice grew smaller and smaller. “Eighteen.” And he was gone, just like that, counted out. But talk about your long counts. Bong, bong, bong, bong…
Hermie stood there aghast and akimbo. Oscy not only had crossed over, but had also burned all the bridges leading back. Oscy was off into manhood, a walking whorehouse. Oh, sure, Oscy was known to kid a guy from time to time, but never Hermie. And never about anything so serious. No, Oscy had undoubtedly screwed Miriam to a fare-thee-well and then some. And the son of a bitch was going back for more. What stamina. Play that on your Colgate Sports Newsreel, Bill Stern.
Aggie was standing alongside him. Upright. She hadn’t forgotten how to stand. “I think Miriam and I should be getting home.”
“Huh?” Hermie took a moment to evaluate the situation. Yes. He would best be serving Oscy by getting Aggie the hell off the beach. “Oh. Sure. Come on. I’ll take you home.” He took her arm, the one he had once squeezed so tenderly. It meant nothing to him. It was just a thing to grab onto, a way to get her out of the way so that Oscy could enjoy his screwing without any interruptions from tourists or curiosity seekers.
Aggie shook free, calmly determined. “I think I’d better get Miriam.”
“Aggie, I don’t think so.” But she was already in motion, passing Hermie and on her way to where Oscy was last seen. Hermie followed like a dopey puppy. “Listen. Listen, Aggie? I’ll take you home. Aggie?”
Aggie wasn’t buying. Nor was she stopping for anyone. She even accelerated. Her eyes began to fill with tears, and her hair flew about. She was vulnerable and scared and kind of pretty, running like that. Hermie trotted alongside her, inadequately, as if he were asking for her autograph. The moon, unnoticeable when they sat by the fire, was providing Aggie with some very dramatic lighting. Even in her big, loose sweater she looked quite lovable. And her breasts, the little darlings, damned if they didn’t have some bounce to ’em. Hermie reached out and took her wrist and wrenched her to a stop. She wheeled at him, looked at him, pulled her hand free, and started to say something. “Hermie, this—” That’s all she could crank out before taking off again. And Hermie stood there, riveted to the sand, flat-footed and fifteen. He watched her as she reached the trysting place and pulled up short. He watched the back of her as she suddenly went rigid, and he knew pretty damned well that she had found Oscy and Miriam.
Hermie found himself walking toward the spot, his feet like snow plows, his ass full of lead. By the time he arrived there Aggie was leaving. She passed him as though she were a ball that had bounced off a wall without losing a smidgeon of velocity. “Say, Aggie—” He stopped talking because he saw the incredulous look on her face as she swept by. The phrase was “She looked as though she’d just seen a ghost.” But even that could not fully depict Aggie’s clobbered countenance. Hermie had never seen a look like that, except maybe once or twice on his mother’s face when the radio said that a plane had crashed, like the one with Carole Lombard on it because Hermie’s father was supposed to have been on that same plane. His father never again phoned ahead to say what plane he’d be on. He’d always phone from LaGuardia when he arrived, and then the whole family only worried that he might get killed in the taxi drive home. Anyway, Hermie watched her go. It was the last he ever saw of Aggie, the very last. Pretty girl running.
Hermie found his breath coming in spastic bursts as he walked ahead to see what Aggie had seen. He knew what he’d see. It would be no surprise. It wasn’t. And he stopped five feet short of the blanket, driven by curiosity, consumed with disbelief, sinking with despair.
Oscy was on top of Miriam, in her. His pants were down and lassoed around his ankles. His loose belt buckle smacked rhythmically at the blanket. And he hadn’t even bothered to take off his lousy sweat shirt. Miriam’s legs were all around him, the toes of her bare feet clawing at the moon, her blond head stuck over Oscy’s grinding shoulder, her eyes closed, her teeth bared, her arms clamped around Oscy’s back but inside his sweat shirt. The whole thing looked like a wind-up toy with a couple of parts missing, causing erratic misses in its smooth operation. It all filtered into Hermie’s brain like a series of dirty photographs, grainy and cheap. The back of the man’s head, the blurred face of the woman impaled on the unseen lance, dancing on it, hurting from it, loving it. The moon kept slipping in and out, giving the action the look of penny pictures that cranked at Coney Island. It was Point Twelve. Definitely Point Twelve. Point Twelve with bells on. Point Twelve covered by the throb of the hammering surf, steaming on a damp blanket. Point Twelve featuring the crafty despoiler of Claire Trevor aflame in his goddamn sweat shirt. Oscy, the boob-grabber, drilling for oil, stabbing at the center of the earth, firing himself into the bobbing blond marshmallow that lay two thighs to the wind. Hermie turned and got out of there.
18
The sun of the next morning was up but had still to burn through the chilling haze of the night before. It was not yet 7 a.m. and the only thing walking the beach was Hermie. He hadn’t slept well, but he hadn’t gone to bed with any such hope in mind. He looked down at his bare toes, and they seemed to be a mile below. He had experienced that weightlessness from the moment he’d left his bungalow two hours earlier. He wouldn’t be reported missing for another half hour, at which point his mother would look to see if he had taken anything to eat. To throw her off, he’d left the milk bottle out. She’d bitch about the milk spoiling, but she’d be pleased that he’d had his supply of vitamin D. The end result would be that he’d have gained some time. For himself. For thinking.
Life was a blur. The haze was a perfect setting for it. He couldn’t see twenty feet ahead, which was about as far as he could project the remainder of his life. Logic told him that he was passing through a phase that every man had to pass through, like some jungle ritual where you were circumcised around a fire whether you liked it or not, and with a dull knife, to test your bravery and how well you could sing. As far as Hermie knew, Oscy was still screwing Miriam, still blasting his love at her, unless the tide had carried out the pair of them, thus making of them a small craft hazard and a target for the Coast Guard battery, which hadn’t had anything to shoot at since they had fired at some guys in China a half century ago.
Prior to sneaking out of the house Hermie had, without really thinking, put on his OPACS sweater and a pair of bathing trunks, in spite of his decision not to swim that day because of his weakened condition. He trudged the beach, flotsam looking for jetsam, yearning to fight a shark, to drag it to shore by its tail and have his picture taken beside it as it hung headdown on the hoist, largest shark ever captured by man in those or any other waters. He wanted to spot a landing party of Nazis, maybe thirty men in all, sneaking up on America only to encounter the heroic young man who beat them back
into the sea in a manner to be worked out later. He wanted to do something. Anything. Because he felt his life slipping away. All around him there were people who were involved, in things, in events, in life. They were fighting wars, and making movies, and getting laid, and being successful, and writing news dispatches from far-off places. Yet he was doing nothing. All he was doing was eating marshmallows and squeezing arms and watching close friends get laid. He didn’t want to see or even talk to Oscy because he knew he was no longer in a league with Oscy. Oscy had crossed over. Oscy, at fifteen, had gotten laid. In Hermie’s neighborhood, most of the guys waited until they were married to get laid. And many of them were so nervous that they usually didn’t get laid until the second or third night. One guy, he’d heard, took a month to get laid and then it was with the maid because his wife couldn’t wait for him to get it up, so she skipped out. Hermie knew that he could have done with Aggie exactly what Oscy did with Miriam. He had had the same opportunity, the same night, the same beach, the same notes, and three rubbers to Oscy’s one. Why then hadn’t he done it? To keep saying that Aggie was unattractive was a crock. She was just as attractive as, if not more so than, Miriam, except maybe she had a few pounds fewer tits. The thing he had to face up to was his own masculinity—or lack of it. No putting it off any longer. Aggie had been camped on her back the better part of the evening. He could have had her even with two cold hands and with an icicle for a pecker. That “eek” of Aggie’s was nothing. It might even have been some kind of love noise that women make. He had Aggie, on her back, making love noises in the night—and he’d bugged out. Oscy had screwed Miriam all the way to China, but he, Hermie, had to take his erection home with him. And he, Hermie, had to lie on his back all night because the damned thing had a memory like an elephant. It remembered Miriam as she was and Aggie as she should have been. It was like a third eye in his forehead that saw only sex and, as such, gave him no rest. He lay down with it at night, and he woke up with it in the morning. He left the house with it and was walking down the beach with it. It was taking over his life because it wouldn’t go away. It hung around like a mine-sapping device, like a water diviner. And no doubt, when the summer was over, and he’d returned to school, it would ruin all chances of his making the basketball team since he’d foul out of every game within the first five minutes, hacking down opposing players and from two yards away, unless they were sensational hurdlers. Nor would the bloody thing do him much good in biology either since he’d be studying human life next to Winifred McAllister, whom he always ended up next to, and whose watery blue eyes and pert bobby socks had been driving him half out of his mind since the day he first passed within the hallowed Gothic arch of Erasmus Hall.
He tried to think of something else to take his mind off it and perhaps cause it to return to its rightful size. He thought of other things, cabbages and kings, batting averages and song lyrics. Lunch. Boats. Cars. Sea gulls. He looked into the sky to see if his old nemesis was planning some more saturation bombing. Nothing was in the sky, but someone was on the horizon. The woman. Swell. Just what he needed, some more torture. She was sitting on a high dune near her house. Her house. He was walking down the beach toward her house. Why? Why had he done that? His heart donned wings, and the answer flapped in his mind, simple and basic. She. The woman. Her. Her was the reason he couldn’t screw Aggie. Her was the one who was the captor of his heart. Not Aggie. Not Miriam. Not Winifred McAllister. Not Conrad Veidt. But her. Small wonder he had found Aggie so repulsive. His heart and his mind had been elsewhere all along. What was all that stuff about preliminaries? Sometimes a kid comes along who is so good, so quick, that he gets a crack at the title right off campus. How many times had John Garfield done that very thing? Maybe not exactly off campus, but certainly right out of the poolroom.
Hermie looked at her, all huddled up in a sweater a little too large, probably Pete’s, writing, probably a letter, probably to Pete. Hermie walked toward her but via an oblique angle that found him climbing to the top of the dune well before it reached her house. He then proceeded along the dune’s crest and came around behind her turned back, arriving there just as the sun broke through. The sun, the sun! A fucking omen.
She was startled to see the sun break out so sharply all about her and to find herself mantled within a giant shadow. She swiveled her pretty head and looked up at the imposing figure of Hermie. And it pleased him to see her so taken by surprise. Her mouth was open in a searching smile as she tried to make him out. And the adult, full-grown male in Hermie, told him that he had the advantage of her. He fiddled with the buttons of his OPACS club sweater, the one that once had his name embroidered over the left-hand pocket. It had started out as “Hermie” in script. When they ordered the sweaters, the OPACS voted that “Hermie” was what would go on Hermie’s sweater because that’s what his name was. He had stumped for “Herm” because it was more mature and he figured he’d have the sweater for a couple years, so why be hung with a name out of his childhood like “Hermie”? Oscy supported him vocally, and Benjie abstained, but still the sons of bitches voted for “Hermie” over his pocket. It wasn’t too long after the sweaters had arrived that Hermie began to unravel the “e” and then the “i” in the avowed hope of stopping the process and holding at “Herm.” But the whole piece of script was in one chunk, and once he’d pulled out the end, the rest of it couldn’t be deterred from unraveling. He was “Herm” for only one week in spite of the chewing gum he applied to the running wound. He was “Her” for three days which was pretty embarrassing. He was “He” for another three days. He was “H” for a day and a half and not even his mother and her nimble thimble could stop the lousy embroidery from unraveling. After the “H” went, he was nothing for a week before the club fined him sixty-cent damages, ten cents for each letter, because that’s what it had cost. He told the club to go fuck itself and was fined another dime. They settled out of court when autumn came because it was Hermie’s football. In the spring they reinstituted charges against him, but Hermie’s uncle, the Philadelphia lawyer, invoked some kind of statute of limitations and he got Hermie off with only a severe reprimand if he promised under oath never to go against the will of the OPACS again. Hermie told them to go fuck themselves and was fined a quarter. He paid because the Philadelphia lawyer was out of town, but he never again wore the sweater except when no OPACS were around, except for Oscy and Benjie. Because they had supported him in his legal battles, he would, from time to time, wear his nameless sweater in their presence, especially since neither of them was too happy with the names over his own pocket. Benjie had opted for “Ben,” and Oscy had campaigned for “Spike.” They lost. Anyway, all that was far away and behind Hermie as he knelt down behind her, on one dangerous knee, a little to one side. “Hi,” he said. Shit, did he ever sound masculine.
She looked up at the heroic silhouette while shielding her eyes with one of her delectable, Lux-beautiful hands. “Hermie?”
“Right.” He had hoped she might have figured he was Pete because there was a resemblance. No matter. He would keep the sun behind him as long as he could, to keep her off-balance. Just another of the little tricks he was picking up. He was learning.
“Could you come around front, Hermie? It’s so bright.”
Keeping his voice so low that he could have sung “Old Man River,” Hermie spoke. “Think I was someone else?”
“Oh, I knew it was you.” The glare was still bothering her. “Hermie? Could you come around front? Please?”
“Sure.” Her wish was his command. Besides, she was off-balance enough. No sense in blinding her. He came around and sat beside her but was still on higher ground. He enjoyed his height advantage. And the higher he was, the lower his voice. “How’ve you been?”
“Do you have a cold?”
“No.” Enough of that shit. He went back to his normal voice. “Have you been all right these days?”
“Oh, yes. Fine.” That smile. That face. The eyes. The hair. Fuck off, Aggie. “An
d you?”
“Oh, fair to middlin’.” He wasn’t exactly certain what that meant, but he figured she’d know.
She brushed that wisp of hair back from her eyes, but the sea breeze kept throwing it back. It was a losing fight, but she was so intent on seeing the tall guy she was conversing with that she kept fighting the breeze regardless of the outcome. “It’s a lovely morning, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” He wanted to expand on his answer but couldn’t find the additional words. He blamed the dull subject matter for his inability to be more clever. And then it hit him. He had said “yes” just as she used to. It meant that he had an advantage. Good. The wheel had come around full cycle, full fathom five, so to speak. He turned his head to the sea, giving her a chance to see his profile. He, of course, had never seen it, but he’d been told that it was a fine profile. Then he remembered that it had been his mother who told him that, so he stopped the profile bit and faced her again.
“Should be a very nice day.” She was continuing that line of conversation. Maybe she was getting at something. Maybe he should take the hint and follow along.
“Yes. I watched the sun come up. It’s an experience.” He said that with feeling. And he noticed how she looked at him, as though a poet had just spoken. So he went further. “Seeing the sun come up like that…is certainly an experience.” It sounded familiar even to him.
She was all one glowing smile. Even in that dumb oversized sweater she was rapturously exciting. And those long, cool legs in the flattering shorts, stretching toward the ocean in graceful angles and dips—he had to change his position or be strangled by his own bathing suit. “Do you do that often, Hermie?”
“Do what?” he said, thinking she had referred to his movement to rescue his genitals.
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