“Say it, say it!”
“Shut up!”
“You’re welcome.”
“Goldfarb, you’ve got to help!”
“I owe you nothing, sis; nothing but misery.”
“Goldfarb!”
“Agajanian.”
“Agajanian!”
“Give me one good reason!”
“I’m an American, goddamn it!”
He eyed her spitefully. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. I’ll persuade Fawz that you’ve got scrofula. Or psoriasis of the butt. Or——”
“Goldfarb, damn you, get serious! You ask for me every night, you hear? Every night!”
He stared at her intently. “All right. But one thing, huh? Wear lots of perfume or something so——”
She was on her feet shrieking. “Just a minute! Just—one—damn—minute!”
“Yeh?”
“This is strictly platonic!”
“Relax. I wouldn’t have you if——”
“—you could find me!” she stabbed.
His expression was blank. “Touché, garbagehead.”
“Touché.”
He sighed, drew himself up in sections, and walked to a long, low table, picking up a glass and a water carafe. “Now then—there’s just one big condition.”
“I will not fan you with a palm frond.”
“Then maybe you’ll just shut up.” He poured out half a glass of water and gulped it down noisily, for he had changed. Then he eyed her grimly over the empty glass. “You will never,” he said firmly, “never, never ever, mention that you’ve seen me once you’re out of here.”
“Huh?”
“Never!”
“Why not?”
“Never mind why not! Just don’t!”
“You crazy, Garabedian? Go ‘pass’ on a story about an Arab football team? Me?”
Whirrrrrrrr droned the approaching golf cart. Goldfarb’s glass fell smashing to the floor, and he and Jenny ripped back the covers of the bed and knifed under them, snuggling.
“Yes, me-me-me-me-me!” agreed Jenny.
The King’s kaffiyeh poked through the door like shrouded hope. Then his eye widened with disgust. “Still?” he croaked.
“Still!” throated Goldfarb.
Fawz hissed like knotted pythons and then droned off into the distance. Jenny, cowed, eyed Goldfarb. “Is this the drill for every night?”
“God spare me!”
She glared. “Let go!”
He let go. Then she glanced to the door nervously. “But stay close!”
“That’s how the Titanic went down.”
“Huh?”
“Getting too close to an iceberg.”
Her look was not kindly. “Goldfarb, you’ll do well to keep your pants on and your mouth shut.”
Goldfarb threw off the bedcovers angrily and moved to get out, but she pulled at his arm. “Get back!” she squealed, and “He’s gone!” he roared. He pulled free and got up, then paced about the room, his robes snikking silkily. She watched him, ears alert for the cart, as he walked to a casement and braced a hand against the wall on either side of it. He stared out at the starry sky, searching for God’s dark face.
If I could only start all over again with a fresh plane, he pleaded silently. Please! I’ll go to Temple! I’ll give to U.J.A.! I’ll even read Georgie Jessel’s poetry! Anything! Then he thought for a moment and added a probing postscript: You want me to take instruction? I’ll take!
“This thing’s got no lock on it!”
He turned and saw Jenny fiddling with the doorjamb. She looked up at him. “Wipe that lipstick off your face.”
He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe. “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got garlic breath?” he uttered softly.
Her hands flew to her hips. “For your information,” she gritted indignantly, “no one’s ever even——”
“Uh-huh?”
Her cheeks crimsoned. “Oh, you are smug.”
“Godlike.”
“Smug.” She moved to him briskly. “Now let’s straighten out the housekeeping arrangements.”
“Oh?”
“I sleep on the bed; you sleep on the Persian rug.”
“The hell I will!”
“The hell you will.”
“Nuts!”
“Another write-up in Strife? That what you want?”
“You—!”
“Wrong-Way Mohammed, maybe?”
Had he been a Christmas tree his pine needles would have fallen off. “Can I have bathroom privileges?” he asked meekly.
* * *
In the throne room Fawz wheeled furiously in erratic figure eights and simulated Immelmanns, banging into pillars and spitting out plaster. He was a fox surrounded by chickens who had the H-bomb and did not like it. Foosball, moosball! Seventy-six children, and when one of them finally comes to visit me it’s to make an old man cry! Children! I should have listened to that nice Mrs. Sanger that I had flogged for peddling contraceptives outside the harem! His hand longed for the lash, but discovered only his transistor radio. He flipped it on, pursuing his frustrated dartings to the rhythms of the “Anniversary Waltz.”
* * *
Jenny sprawled comfortably in bed while Goldfarb strung together two large chairs, covering them with cushions scented with the King’s favorite perfume, “Night in Trucial Oman.” He stretched out on them gingerly, thought warm gin at Jenny Ericson, and closed his eyes. And fidgeted.
Goldfarb sat up abruptly, searching around the room for another cushion. Seeing none, he stood up, removed his robe, lay down again, and spread the robe over him, for it made an ideal bedsheet. He sighed, closing his eyes, and could hear Jenny tossing. Suddenly the chairs slid apart and he bumped to the floor in a “V” that he did not find listed in his catalogue of heroic postures. Ratpiss! He stood up, pulled the cushions down onto the floor, straightened them out and then lay down. The Organization again: his head was touching the floor.
He sat up and stared over at Jenny. “I need another pillow,” he called softly. No response. “Iceberg?” Deep, regular breathing. He got up wearily and padded to her bedside. She had kicked off most of the covers and lay sprawled over her pillows. Goldfarb reached down a hand and tugged gently at one beneath her head. Fitful sleep noises warned him off. He opted, then, for the one beneath her rump, prying gingerly, gingerly, ever so——
Jenny’s eyes flew open and she stared horrified at Goldfarb in his underwear, never an inspiring sight under any circumstances. “Keep away!” she screeched, and “Shhhhhhhhhh!” he cautioned, slapping a hand over her mouth; “I need another pillow.” She relaxed and he took his hand away.
“Don’t ever do that again!” she gritted.
“Can I—?”
“And you will kindly keep your clothes on at all times!”
He nodded dismally, trudged back to his cushions, pulled on his gown, and toddled back to her bleary-eyed. “Now can I have a—?”
She threw the pillow in his face. He picked it up, took it back to his cushions, smoothed it into place, and lay down. Go to sleep, little toes, he concentrated, remembering an article he had read once in This Week magazine; go to sleep, little ankles, you are tensing.… He tossed and turned.
Peering over her covers, Jenny slyly observed his contortions. The poor boob, she thought. So this is how his world ends: not with a bang but an Arab football team. Funny, funny, funny. And sad, sad, sad. Like Joe Louis wrestling.
She snickered. Goldfarb had now worked himself into an inverted “V”; his rump high, his cheek resting on prayerfully clasped hands.
How can you be angry with a dumb mutt? Jenny wondered. No, not dumb, really, just—Wrong-Way. The essence of cat is catness and the essence of Wrong-Way is Wrong-Way; beyond that he defies definition, like Joxer, or Casey Stengel, or Fiorello LaGuardia. Now will you just look at the poor nut? Oh, that position is too much! Judas, he’s harmless enough.…
“Wrong-Way!”
Goldfarb opened his
left eye fractionally.
“Come over here!”
The U-2 pilot, half awake, grunted and embarked upon a doomed effort to throw off his robe as though it were a bedsheet. After some duration of this brave but futile struggle he recollected that he was now wearing it again, lumbered to his feet, and pattered heavily to the side of the bed. Then closed his eyes.
“Ummmmm?”
“Look, T.E.,” declared Jenny; “I think maybe I can trust you.”
“Ummm.”
“There’s room to spare in this bed—king-size.” She shuddered then, remembering, and edged to the opposite side of the bed. “Fall in,” she offered.
Goldfarb fell, literally. His torso thudded against the mattress while his feet scraped the floor, and he lay frozen in this position while Jenny cuddled, looking out the other way. “But stay at your end,” she threatened, “or out!”
“Ummmm.”
Jenny closed her eyes, thinking things. Then she opened them again. “He’s liable to come after me in the daytime. Know that?”
“Ummmm.”
“Wrong-Way, can—can you take me around with you tomorrow?”
“Ummmm.”
She relaxed and shut her eyes, wondering whether Fawz had a painting of himself that grew younger each day. “But he’s resting right now for a big matinee,” she murmured dreamily. And slept.
* * *
Fawz droned around the throne room in frantic, ever diminishing concentric circles, and at “ground-zero” halted quietly an inch away from Ammud. Fawz glared and thought no-television-for-a-month at him. “You got big mouth!” he grumbled.
* * *
Hours had passed and Jenny awakened with a startled “yip!” upon finding herself sprawled across the sleeping pilot’s chest. She pulled away quickly to the edge of the bed, then retrenched ever so slightly. Naughty, naughty, skin is creepy, never, never touch it! Think! you are on the edge of a precipice; so don’t roll in your sleep or you’ll be glup on the jagged points of stones. Don’t roll, don’t move; think quiet little kitty-cat thoughts and don’t move.
She slipped into that fragrant, warm bath that separates sleep from wakefulness, and when Goldfarb turned in his sleep, flopping his hand over her neck, she groaned with animal pleasure, moving her neck back and forth under its soothing pressure.
Her awakening was sudden. Slanting her eyes wildly at Goldfarb’s hand, she lifted it quickly, gently, and firmly from her neck, then edged as far away from him as possible.
Hell’s bells! What? She turned troubled eyes on Goldfarb. Innocent. In sleep, his face was innocent, wholesome, boyish. Who said handsome? Was I thinking handsome? I never thought handsome! I’m tired. I was almost raped by Dorian Gray’s lunatic grandfather. Sleep, you kook! Forget about those tinglies skittering around trying to kiss your corpuscles! Turn around! … She turned away from him, settling in for sleep with solid determination. There now! … She squirmed a little. Moved her pillow around a little. But her eyes were wide and staring. She slid a hand along her arm. Jesus! Duck bumps! What the—!
She whirled around, sitting up.
“Goldfarb!”
He sputtered and sat up, half awake.
“Wha’?”
“Get out of this bed!”
He eyed her pathetically through drooping lids. “Why?”
“You’re—disturbing me!”
“Oh.” Without another murmur, Goldfarb rolled docilely off the edge of the bed, thumped to the floor, and lay there immobile, dead to a world he had never made.
Jenny sighed deeply and fell back on her pillow. Now what was that all about?
They both leaped upright as the golf cart approached at an incredible speed, whining and then fading past the door with a sound like Indianapolis Raceway. Then they lay back and slept.
The golf cart burst into the harem with a screeching of tires and a smell of burning rubber, and the girls bolted upright, whimpering, as the King unloosed a hackle-raising cry of long-pent-up frustration. Then he burst forward toward Gigi Touloos, knocking the approaching Miss Beaver aside with a deft swat of his teak-brown paw. His thoughts were not religious at all.
Chapter Twenty-nine
THE IMAM sighed, shaking his head sadly. “Never send an asp to do a man’s job.”
“Something more oblique and Arabic,” offered the seer named Uris, “that’s what’s called for.”
“You have another suggestion?” purred the Imam.
“Am I not Uris?”
“Show me your face and let me see,” tempted the Imam slyly. But the seer kept his head.
“You will have to take my word for it,” he braved quietly.
“You have no trust,” the Imam sulked.
“I am Uris.”
“Obviously; you have devious feet.”
The seer’s toes wriggled self-consciously.
“I authorized no wriggling!” thundered the Imam.
The toes froze.
“Nor was I impressed with the obliquity of your last proposal,” continued the Imam, seething. “Who ever heard of stuffing a wooden horse with fedayeen!”
“But you left out the beauty part,” objected the seer timidly. “Remember? We paint EXODUS on the horse’s flank and that way they’ll think——”
“Silence!”
The Imam beckoned the hooded men into the room and leaned over in his chair. “Now give me something oblique!” he syruped ominously. His eyes were separate, particular hells.
Chapter Thirty
THE SUN, nuzzling clouds, splattered the practice field in shifting, pied glory of dappled gold and black. In the end zones ARAMCO technicians erected oil derricks in place of the goal posts, and along the side lines pompon-waving harem girls rehearsed one of Ammud’s deathless creations:
Rah! Rah! Rah!
Shah! Shah! Shah!
Fawz U. ! Fawz U. !
Humbug Irish, Bah!
The girls wore veils and bobby sox and were led by a bleak-eyed muezzin. Across his chest shrieked the words YELL KING! And lower down, in very tiny lettering: “Not Real King.” Fawz watched the cheerleaders with approval, and then, happening to meet Ammud’s gaze, looked quickly away. They were not speaking to each other this morning.
At midfield, Goldfarb eyed his charges grimly. “All right now,” he began.…
“Awrighnow,” chorused the dervishes tonelessly.
Goldfarb’s eyes were hooded cobras. Cautiously he began again. “You know the linesman’s crouch, so——”
“Youknowalima—”
“Shut up!” roared the U-2 pilot wildly. “You don’t speak! I speak! You listen!”
“Weliden,” echoed one of the dervishes quietly. Goldfarb’s glance whipped furiously up and down the line, but the beards made it virtually impossible to pinpoint the offender.
“Coach have big medicine!” threatened Goldfarb inanely, for he was not at all well. “Make bad juju if dervish not tell who make foos palaver!”
The dervishes, who read Robert Ruark’s novels and understood, turned heads simultaneously and eyed one of their number; and instanter the offender, resolving inwardly to give them all the “mark of the squealer,” fell to his knees at Goldfarb’s feet and clutched the coach’s hand imploringly. “Please, sahib, not make torture for poor beastie, sahib, beastie take sahib to temple all gold!” He produced a thuggee pick in support of his claim, and “Kaliiiiiiiiiii” chanted the other dervishes, who had seen Gunga Din several times and adored it. One of them reached for a bugle, for it was his turn to play the lead, and at this point Goldfarb walked off the field. Pausing only to pull Jenny out of the line of cheerleaders, he trekked out toward the palace. The U-2 pilot spoke not a word, but he looked once over his shoulder at Fawz and thought bitterly of Seymour.
Seymour was a grammar school crony who had once persuaded Goldfarb to procure a fifth of liquor for him because he “looked older.” And when Seymour, drunk and caught with the goods, was asked by the school principal to name his intermed
iary, he had gurgled, “I can’t tell! Goldfarb would kill me!”
Betrayed again by someone’s sincere but addled intentions, thought Goldfarb. “Seymour Fawz,” he muttered aloud.
“What?” asked Jenny.
“Nothing.”
They walked silently into the shadow of an enormous sphinx and leaned wearily against its side. We like you, we like you, their skin told the stone; you are cool.
“Thanks ever,” whispered the sphinx.
Jenny folded her arms and eyed Goldfarb. “You know, you’re a real nut,” she said softly.
“I’m a nut!”
“You’re a nut!”
“Hah!”
“Hah-hoo! Coaching a——”
The drone of the golf cart sent them flying into each other’s arms. Jenny felt sand pelting her back, and the King’s transistor drenched them both with the bubbling rhythms of “Lavender Blue”—dilly, dilly. Jenny kissed Goldfarb’s neck.
“Still?” yelped the King incredulously. He could think of women only in terms of hours. Days reeked of unspeakable perversion.
“Still,” retorted Goldfarb evenly over Jenny’s shoulder; and a very nice shoulder, he was noticing.
The King eyed him blackly, his desire for Jenny fanned to white heat by the novelty of unattainability. “Joosh pipple cuckoo!” he growled, and spurted off in a splash of sand, his curses blending oddly with the “Theme from Moulin Rouge.”
Goldfarb watched the cart receding in the distance. “Okay, okay, he’s gone now,” he muttered.
Jenny clung to him. Her face nuzzled into his neck and she watched a droplet of sweat creeping by starts down to his shoulder. She could feel corded muscles bulging, hard, assured, and yet the flesh was pink and somehow soft. It smelled of something musky and not at all unpleasant; not at all.… Duck bumps. Thousands of tiny duck bumps. “He might come back,” she said in a quiet monotone, and watched the droplet of sweat disappear down his robe.
Goldfarb looked down at her. What was this reminding him of? An early summer evening long ago, when he had walked alone and proud along the campus of Ohio State, his shoulders warm with the assurance of his press clippings? Was that it? He’d paused to lean against the trunk of a giant elm, breathing deep the air so cool and so delicate with some longing half felt. And then he had seen the girl. She was walking his way, tap, tap, tap, walking with a cane, her leg deformed. She came closer, and he saw that her face was like that of some girl in dreams who came running to greet you across meadows. But her eyes, though serene, avoided his desperately, and suddenly he knew, he knew: felt the yearning, like a wave, flooding out from that soft and almost glowing skin, and he’d wanted to take her in his arms and cover her with kisses and murmur over and over again, “It’s all right, I know; you’re beautiful, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t…”
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home Page 11