funnybook French. I met you. And I found out later from Mr Henreid down the block that
my dad put a lien on his car to scare up ‘And now I’ve got you, and we’ve got Todd. I’ve
always thought he was a damned fine boy, and I’ve tried to make sure he’s always had
everything he ever needed … anything that would help him grow into a fine man. I used to
laugh at that old wheeze about a man wanting his son to be better than he was, but as I get
older it seems less funny and more true. I never want Todd to have to wear pants from a
Goodwill box because some wino’s wife got a ham on credit. You understand?’
‘Yes, of course I do,’ she said quietly.
‘Then, about ten years ago, just before my old man finally got tired of fighting off the
urban renewal guys and retired, he had a minor stroke. He was in the hospital for ten
days. And the people from the neighbourhood, the guineas and the krauts, even some of
the jigs that started to move in around 1955 or so – they paid his bill. Every fucking cent.
I couldn’t believe it. They kept the store open, too. Fiona Castellano got four or five of her
friends who were out of work to come in on shifts. When my old man got back, the books
balanced out to the cent.’
‘Wow,’ she said, very softly.
‘You know what he said to me? My old man? That he’d always been afraid of getting
old – of being scared and hurting and all by himself. Of having to go into the hospital and
not being able to make ends meet anymore. Of dying. He said that after the stroke he
wasn’t scared anymore. He said he thought he could die well. “You mean die happy,
pop?” I asked him. “No,” he said. “I don’t think anyone dies happy, Dickie.” He always called me Dickie, still does, and that’s another thing I guess I’ll never be able to like. He
said he didn’t think anyone died happy, but you could die well. That impressed me.’
He was silent for a long, thoughtful time.
“The last five or six years I’ve been able to get some perspective on my old man.
Maybe because he’s down there in Sandoro and out of my hair. I started thinking that
maybe the Left Hand Book wasn’t such a bad idea. That was when I started to worry
about Todd. I kept wanting to tell him about there was mavbe something more to life than
me being able to take all of you to Hawaii for a month or being able to buy Todd pants
that don’t smell like the mothballs they used to put in the Goodwill box. I could never
figure out how to tell him those things. But I think maybe he knows. And it takes a load
off my mind.’
‘Reading to Mr Denker, you mean?’
‘Yes. He’s not getting anything for that. Denker can’t pay him. Here’s this old guy,
thousands of miles from any friends or relatives that might still be living, here’s this guy
that’s everything my father was afraid of. And there’s Todd.’
‘I never thought of it just like that.’
‘Have you noticed the way Todd gets when you talk to him about that old man?’
‘He gets very quiet.’
‘Sure. He gets tongue-tied and embarrassed, like he was doing something nasty. Just
like my pop used to when someone tried to thank him for laying some credit on them.
We’re Todd’s right hand, that’s all. You and me and all the rest – the house, the ski-trips to
Tahoe, the Thunderbird in the garage, his colour TV. All his right hand. And he doesn’t
want us to see what his left hand is up to.’
‘You don’t think he’s seeing too much of Denker, then?’
‘Honey, look at his grades! If they were falling off, I’d be the first one to say hey,
enough is enough, already, don’t go overboard. His grades are the first place trouble
would show up. And how have they been?’
‘As good as ever, after that first slip.’
‘So what are we talking about? Listen, I’ve got a conference at nine, babe. If I don’t get
some sleep, I’m going to be sloppy.’
‘Sure, go to sleep,’ she said indulgently, and as he turned over, she kissed him lightly
on one shoulderblade. ‘I love you.’
‘Love you too,’ he said comfortably, and closed his eyes. ‘Everything’s fine, Monica.
You worry too much.’ •
‘I know I do. Goodnight.’
They slept.
‘Stop looking out the window,’ Dussander said. ‘There is nothing out there to interest
you.’
Todd looked at him sullenly. His history text was open on the table, showing a colour
plate of Teddy Roosevelt cresting San Juan Hill. Helpless Cubans were falling away from
the hooves of Teddy’s horses. Teddy was grinning a wide American grin, the grin of a
man who knew that God was in His heaven and everything was bully. Todd Bowden was
not grinning.
‘You like being a slave-driver, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘I like being a free man,’ Dussander said. ‘Study.’
‘Suck my cock.’
‘As a boy,’ Dussander said, ‘I would have had my mouth washed out with lye soap for
saying such a thing.’
Times change.’
‘Do they?’ Dussander sipped his bourbon. ‘Study.’
Todd stared at Dussander. ‘You’re nothing but a goddamned rummy. You know that?’
‘Study.’
‘Shut up!’ Todd slammed his book shut It made a riflecrack sound in Dussander’s
kitchen. ‘I can never catch up, anyway. Not in time for the test There’s fifty pages of this
shit left, all the way up to World War I. I’ll make a crib in Study Hall 2 tomorrow.’
Harshly, Dussander said: ‘You will do no such thing!’
‘Why not? Who’s going to stop me? You?’
‘Boy, you are still having a hard time comprehending the stakes we play for. Do you
think I enjoy keeping your snivelling brat nose in your books?’ His voice rose,
whipsawing, demanding, commanding. ‘Do you think I enjoy listening to your tantrums,
your kindergarten swears? “Suck my cock”,’ Dussander mimicked savagely in a high,
falsetto voice that made Todd flush darkly. ‘”Suck my cock, so what, who cares, I’l1 do it
tomorrow, suck my cock”!”
‘Well, you like it!’ Todd shouted back. ‘Yeah, you like it! The only time you don’t feel like a zombie is when you’re on my back! So give me a fucking break!’
‘If you are caught with one of these cribbing papers, what do you think will happen?
Who will be told first?’
Todd looked at his hands with their ragged, bitten fingernails and said nothing.
‘Who?’
‘Jesus, you know. Rubber Ed. Then my folks, I guess.’
Dussander nodded. ‘Me, I guess that too. Study. Put your cribbing paper in your head,
where it belongs.’
‘I hate you,’ Todd said dully. ‘I really do.’ But he opened his book again and Teddy
Roosevelt grinned up at him, Teddy galloping into the twentieth century with his sabre in
his hand, Cubans falling back in disarray before him -possibly before the force of his
fierce American grin.
Dussander began to rock again. He held his teacup of bourbon in his hands. “That’s a
good boy,’ he said, almost tenderly.
Todd had his first wet-dream on the last night of April, and awoke to the sound of rain
whispering secretly through the leaves and branches of the tree outside his window.
In the dream, he had been in one of the Patin laboratories. He was standing at the end
of a long, low table. A lush young girl of amazing beauty had been secured to this table
with clamps. Dussander was assisting him. Dussander wore a white butcher’s apron and
nothing else. When he pivoted to turn on the monitoring equipment, Todd could see
Dussander’s scrawny buttocks grinding at each other like misshapen white stones.
He handed something to Todd, something he recognized immediately, although he had
never actually seen one. It was a dildo. The tip of it was polished metal, winking in the
light of the overhead fluorescents like heartless chrome. The dildo was hollow. Snaking
out of it was a black electrical cord that ended in a red rubber bulb.
‘Go ahead,’ Dussander said. ‘The Fuehrer says it’s all right. He says it’s your reward for
studying.’
Todd looked down at himself and saw that he was naked. His small penis was fully
erect, jutting plumply up at an angle from the thin peachdown of his pubic hair. He
slipped the dildo on. The fit was tight but there was some sort of
lubricant in there. The friction was pleasant. No; it was more than pleasant. It was delightful.
He looked down at the girl and felt a strange shift in his thoughts … as if they had
slipped into a perfect groove. Suddenly all things seemed right. Doors had been opened.