Summer of '42

by Herman Raucher

  “Watch the sunrise?”

  “Oh, yes. Well—no.” It was getting a bit sticky, that subject, so he switched over to something he knew more about. “How are those boxes we put away? Any trouble?”

  “Oh, no trouble. They’re still up there.” She said it with pride, intending for Hermie to take it as a compliment, which he did.

  “I think they’ll be all right.” He wasn’t really aware of it, but he was brushing some grains of sand from his Band-Aid so that the flashing neon could be seen.

  She leaned in and noticed. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  He was taken a bit by surprise and pulled back. “Oh—that.”

  She was looking right at it. Could she see it glowing? Would she kiss it again? Would the animal chained within her come gnashing out again? “I noticed it the other day.”

  You bet your sweet ass you noticed it. You put it there. “It’s not serious.”

  “Shouldn’t you change that Band-Aid?”

  It was time. Time to get at it. Time to stop beating about the Band-Aid. “I’m thinking of keeping it on as long as possible.” Was that enough to the point, oh, blessed loved one?

  She seemed to back off. “Oh.”

  “Is that okay with you?”

  “I guess so.” Could she have forgotten so soon?

  He’d help her. “I don’t do this often.”

  “I see.”

  He’d help her some more. “It’s a special Band-Aid.”

  “Is it medicated?”

  “It’s enchanted.” Could Hemingway have paid greater homage to a Band-Aid? Could Edwin Arlington Robinson? Could Edgar Guest? Could Nick Kenny?

  “Oh.” She turned back to her writing.

  Hermie had to admit to himself that the Band-Aid bit hadn’t gone over so well. Perhaps she had just plain forgotten that she herself had put the Band-Aid there to cover the fang marks she made with her bloodsucking. Maybe she plastered Band-Aids on guys all over the island. Maybe every guy who came to her house—plumbers, electricians, burglars—maybe they all got in on a little of her sex-crazed bloodsucking. Maybe you could tell how many times a guy had been to her house by the number of Band-Aids on him, like swastikas on the fuselages of RAF Spitfires. Maybe she was some kind of Band-Aid fiend. Maybe she flew around at midnight sucking on guys’ legs. Maybe he’d better drop the whole thing because, very likely, all of it was only vicious rumors. “Writing a letter?” he said. Brilliant. That was like telling her that he just happened to notice that she was breathing.

  She smiled without looking up. “Yes.” She was getting used to the way he talked. Might as well, he wasn’t going away.

  “I’d ask you to the movies, but it’s the same picture. Like to see it again?” He surprised himself by resorting to so direct an approach. But he immediately felt good. It was manly to be forthright about asking for a date. How often he had heard his sister after a telephone conversation with some jerk, complaining to his mother that the guy never got to the point which was why she had no respect for him.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t blame you. Once you know the ending, it kills the thrill. There’ll be a new picture playing soon. Maybe you’d like to see it.”

  “Well, I really don’t go to too many movies.” Maybe she’d heard that he was a sex-crazed arm squeezer.

  “It’s a good one. I saw the posters. H. M. Pulham Esquire. Robert Young, Hedy Lamarr, and Ruth Hussey. I put Ruth Hussey in the same class as John Loder. She’s pretty, but she never seems to do too well.”

  She kept writing, just nodding to let him know that she had heard but that she wasn’t really all that interested.

  He wasn’t sure where the courage came from, but it arrived and he spoke. “I’d be pleased to take you.” She looked up and smiled. She was another of the world’s great smilers. People with false teeth smiled a lot, but he was pretty sure all of hers were real. “H. M. Pulham Esquire. I think it’s Paramount.”

  She finished up her letter. Skinny V-mail tissue. She licked it shut, and when her darting tongue flicked the glue to life, he felt it right in the groin. “Oh, Hermie, I don’t think so. But thank you. It’s very sweet of you to ask me.”

  He was losing ground. He figured he’d drop back to old reliable. “Do you have any more heavy objects at home that need moving?”

  “None that occur to me.” She was paying more attention to the goddamn envelope than to him.

  He was beginning to feel silly. “Well, if you think of any, feel free.”

  She stood. “Thank you, Hermie. You’re very thoughtful.”

  He stood, too. Good, he was definitely taller. It gave him new courage. And he’d need it for the next thing he was going to say. “Will you be at home tonight?”

  “Pardon?” She stiffened, and the smile she flashed was slightly lunatic.

  Once again he had her off-balance. Therefore, move in. But with delicacy and aplomb. “I thought I might drop by. I have to be in that neighborhood.” Some neighborhood. Hers was the only house for half a mile.

  “Oh. Well—feel free to drop by.” The breeze was busier when she was standing, and she had to keep pushing the hair from her face. Hermie would have liked to have done it for her. He’d like to have put his fingers through her hair. It had to be a sensational feeling. Like satin.

  “I’m not saying I’ll be there for sure, so don’t count on it.” He said that to cover himself, in case it turned out that he’d prove chicken and not show up. He had chickened out with Aggie; he might chicken out with her. Who knew? He was capable of definitely not showing up, and he was aware of it and didn’t want to cause her any inconvenience if she went and prepared things. With a lover already in service, what gorgeous woman needed a shitty kid not showing up after she’d gone to the trouble of Cheezits and coffee?

  “Goodness, it’s getting late. I have to run this letter down to the post office.”

  “I’ll run it down for you.” Bullshit. He’d burn it. But first he’d read it and see how she really felt about Pete. Maybe it would turn out to be a “Dear John” letter. If it did, Hermie would be at her house for damned sure. He might even move in. All was fair in love and war, so fuck you, Pete.

  She must have read his mind. “No. No, thanks. It’s very tricky postage. Overseas and all that. Well—” She turned to go back up to her house. “Bye, Hermie.”

  He watched her walk away, and it hit him like a howitzer. He didn’t know her name! What the hell was that! He was hung up on a woman, and he didn’t even know her name! He didn’t even know her initials! If nothing else, it was discourteous never to have even asked. No wonder she wanted to get away from him. Imagine a gentleman wanting to screw a lady and never even taking a moment out to ask her her name. Worse, what if her name turned out to be Frenesie or Tallulah or something so equally idiotic that he’d never be able to say aloud, “I love you, LaZonga.” He called to her. “Hello?”

  She stopped on the first of the fourteen steps and faced him. And in her too big sweater she looked like the Little Match Girl. “Excuse me,” Hermie said, “but I don’t even know your name.” He waited four hundred years for her answer to make its way through the air.

  “Dorothy.”

  “I had a cat named Dorothy… Got hit by a truck.”

  Dorothy smiled. Dorothy. She had a name, and it was beautiful. Beautiful Dorothy. And she waved and smiled and climbed the fourteen steps like a Ziegfeld Girl and at the top of the stairs she turned again and smiled again. “Dorothy on the Porch,” by Rembrandt. She went into the house. “Dorothy Going Through the Door,” by Da Vinci. “Dorothy Out of Sight,” by Michelangelo. “Door,” by Salva Door Dali. Yuk.

  Hermie let himself walk down toward the ocean, feeling as high as a tidal wave, give or take a couple cowlicks. “Dorothy in My Heart,” by Rubens. He looked at the house again, up there on the high dune. “Dorothy in Her House,” by the sea. “Dorothy, I’ll See You Tonight,” by God. “Dorothy, Break Out the Cheezits,” by Na
bisco.

  Hermie on the Beach.

  Hermie in the Ocean, Swimming.

  Hermie in Love, Damned Near Drowning.

  Shazam.

  Hi-Ho, Silver.

  Yaaaaaaa, Sheena!

  19

  Hermie, on the beach drying. For about fifteen minutes. He was one of those fast driers, though his bathing suit took a little longer, especially the supporter, which could remain wet until September if you didn’t watch it. In another fifteen minutes he was in town, sitting at the counter in Margie’s Pie Place. He was having a kind of breakfast, orange juice, apple pie, coffee, peach pie, coffee, a cruller, and water. The only other customers that early were fishermen, who, having completed their dawn labors, had come in for some breakfast cheer. They had brought into port such things as cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o, and they had a tendency to give the place a fishy smell, though Margie never complained. There were three salt-crusted fishermen, fresh off a Fletcher’s Castoria calendar, all sitting at the far end of the place, stuffing their craws with bacon and eggs and toast and endless amounts of coffee. Their voices were gruff, and Hermie knew that though no one in the world ever truly said, “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” those three fishermen were capable of saying things like “Jib the boom and mizzen the mains’l and fire a shot across their scow, me hearties!”

  Hermie sipped his coffee, feeling very good and very belonging. He watched Margie from over the rim of his cup and through the steam that made it look as though her quaint ass were burning. Margie was about thirty, maybe fifty, but she was neat and firm, and in her white starched dress the swells and curves of her body were avast and what is the name of your ship? Nor were her legs exactly covered with barnacles. They were fine. Margie, you could tell, was a sailor’s wife. She was supposed to have a husband in the Navy somewhere because he used to pilot one of the ferries before the war, so what the hell would he be doing in the Army? With his new awareness of the sensuality of women, Hermie knew that no normal woman could go too long without a proper screwing for old times’ sake. And that was true of Margie, too, because on that crummy island she had a lot of time to sit around and think and do nothing but listen to foghorns. Hermie shifted his gaze to the three fishermen, and he determined that not a one of them was under eighty-six. Therefore, if Margie was suddenly called upon to favor a man right then and there with some hot sex, by all that was logical, Hermie had to be the first choice. Hermie was aware of the sexy way he was beginning to look at things and people. Whatever mystery women once held for him had gone up in a puff of Oscy. Miriam was a woman, and she screwed. Aggie was a woman, and she’d be hurting that morning because Hermie hadn’t blasted her quarter deck with his six-incher. Dorothy? Dorothy was something else. Dorothy was the Dark Lady in Shakespeare’s sonnets in English class. Yes, Dorothy had a need for sex, just like Miriam and Aggie, but it was different. With Dorothy it was romantic and adorable. And where Miriam and Aggie would just lay it on the line for the first guy to come by and ply them with marshmallows, Dorothy kept it locked up and primed for the day a noble prince would come by and ask for it in a nice way like “Hello, there, my lady. I have traveled far this night and my steed is tired and can go no further. So what ho you and I rejoin to the inn for a few moments of reverie in your chambers, where I will regale you with authentic ballads on my ukulele…”

  “Will that be all?”

  Margie was looking at him as she mopped up the counter with her dish rag. His eyes met hers. Yesterday he’d have been the first to quit, the first to back off. But that was yesterday, and today was today. He kept looking at Margie, and damned if she didn’t look away first, and with a funny look of embarrassment and defeat on her face. A surge of power shot right through Hermie’s pecker, extending his self-esteem and forcing him to raise his knees, which then proceeded to bump up against the underside of the counter, which hurt.

  Margie made a few circles with the dish rag on the counter and then returned to try again. “Want anything else?”

  Yeah, baby. I want something else. I want you. Right on the counter, thanks for cleaning it. I want you to lie down and spread out and don’t give me any nonsense. And when I’m through, baby, I’ll tip my hat and clink a doubloon on the counter and go out and fuck my way through all of Port Royal, leaving wenches lying on benches, their skirts over their heads, their muffled voices calling for more grog.

  Margie tried again. “More coffee?” She was smiling at him, which could mean many things. How long had her husband been at sea for Margie to be so in need of sex? The top button of her blouse was unbuttoned, and her good-sized chest was all coiled up inside like a crouched tiger. If he leaned over and pressed her belly button, her charming boobs would shoot out at him and go right past his head, one to starboard and one to port, and Hermie’d be amidships, somewhere in the boiler room, sending up more steam until the old hull was headed for Portsmouth Harbor at a pace that would make Lloyds of London jump with joy and sing sea chanties. Hermie’s knees were pressed so hard and high against the counter that if he didn’t lower the pressure soon, he’d be bent like Lionel Barrymore for the rest of his life. So he slid off the stool and straightened up ever so slowly. “What do I owe you?” He said that like a sailor who’d just finished off a whore.

  Margie closed her eyes and added up the tally. For all he imagined of her, he figured he owed her a good hundred dollars. So when she said eighty-five cents, the whole bubble burst, and there was immediately more room in his supporter. He dug out the four quarters from the waterlogged pocket of his bathing suit, and he plunked them onto the counter. One of them rolled off, so he had to pick it up which killed some of the mood. He didn’t wait for any change. It was all for her, for doing such a good job on him. He left Margie’s Pie Place, swearing to return when the proprietress was alone, at which point he’d give her such a hearty banging that she’d pay him and beg him to open an account with her which she would never send out bills on. He scoffed at the thought of her appeals and walked out with less room in his supporter than ever.

  Foremost in his mind was the avoiding of Oscy and Benjie because, as he had always known it would one day happen, he had grown far too mature for them. Sure Oscy had gotten laid. But anyone could lay Miriam. The trick was not to dirty one’s self with unworthy women. That’s why he had turned down screwing Aggie. Screwing Aggie would have been a step backward. Screwing Margie, on the marble countertop, though more of an accomplishment and a little on the chilly side, would not have been much better. A guy’s first lay should be a love lay. Dorothy. Dorothy would be a love lay. Love lay beautiful Dorothy. Oh, he knew the difficulties he’d encounter in pulling off a love lay with Dorothy, but somehow he knew that it was ordained to happen. That it was fate and kismet. Also a lot of luck. Anyway, he wanted to be alone all day, and since the island was so small and a guy with a towering erection so noticeable, he took the ferry to the mainland.

  He sat up front, in the prow so to speak, letting the cool spray play on his jaggedly heroic features. He watched the gulls flitting about but had little fear that Johnny Stella was among them because, as everyone knew, even when he was alive, Johnny Stella and water were incompatible. Johnny Stella had a sweat shirt that made Oscy’s sweat shirt smell like Loretta Young’s kimono.

  There were no women aboard who interested him, unless he cared to lavish a few imaginations on the chunky girl who bore a far off resemblance to Eugene Pallette. An he didn’t care for that, not after having invested fifty cents in a round trip so that he could get away from all the things that were bothering him.

  When the ferry docked at the mainland, however, there was a girl who sparked his creativity. A tall, thin job, with straw-colored hair brushed into a neat pageboy. She was flat in the boobs, but fine of fanny, and for her, Hermie selected the telephone booth just near the ticket window. He had her standing against the glass door and he was giving it to her real good, sticking quarters into her mouth while he was on the phone telling his mother that he w
as having a nice time and would she please give his regards to Oscy who was probably jerking off into a bottle of warm water, which he once tried doing in the basement of 31 Ocean Parkway, much to the amusement of the entire membership of the OPACS, each of whom had put up a nickel a man to see Oscy do it. Oscy didn’t quite do it, though the water flew. Vociferously he claimed he had done it, but a careful examination of the water by impartial observers proved that Oscy was a liar. He then asked for two cents apiece from the members because of A for effort, but he was turned down on that, though, in all fairness, the membership allowed him a penny a man against the original nickel for the next time Oscy would attempt the watery feat. Oscy never attempted it again and was lucky to even get his pecker out of the bottle because either it was too small or Oscy was King Kong. As a matter of actual fact, it was touch and go for quite some time, with the president of the OPACS, newly elected for the usual two-week term, about to smash the bottle with his trusty gavel when Oscy, through a superhuman effort, plus some honest-to-goodness fright, managed to pull free from the bottle with such suction that it sounded as if a bomb went off and with such force that Oscy flew backward, his bare ass bouncing off the hot furnace and flying drops of water hissing on the steaming metal like people hooting at the villain in a Frankenstein movie. Anyway, with his penny a man, Oscy bought himself the latest edition of Wings comic book, which was full of hot nurses and leggy aviatrixes, and nobody saw Oscy for a week because he was such a slow reader. Hermie’s fantasy ended quickly when a tall man with a chin right out of Andy Gump entered the phone booth. Hermie just didn’t find him attractive enough to plunk as much as one imaginary quarter into his tiny mouth even if the man had one.

  Hermie hung around the ferry pier until lunch-time, watching the ferries lazily come and go, picking up and depositing people, among them a lady or two that Hermie wouldn’t have minded sharing a diving bell with. He had just enough money for lunch, which consisted of a shrimp salad sandwich, two Cokes, a dish of banana ice cream, and, while he was waiting, a basket of oysterettes, each of which he broke open and ate in hopes of discovering a pearl but without any luck.