to perform at all.
‘What are you, anyway?’ Betty had asked petulantly. After twenty minutes of
manipulating his lax penis, she was dishevelled and out of patience. ‘Are you one of those
AC/DC guys’?’
He very nearly strangled her on the spot. And if he’d had his.30-.30-
‘Well, I’l1 be a son of a gun! Congratulations, son!’
‘Huh?’ He looked up and out of his black study.
‘You made the Southern Cat High School All-Stars!’ His father was grinning with
pride and pleasure.
‘Is that so?’ For a moment he hardly knew what his father was talking about; he had
to grope for the meaning of the words. ‘Say, yeah, Coach Haller mentioned something to
me about that at the end of the year. Said he was putting me and Billy DeLyons up. I
never expected anything to happen.’
‘Well Jesus, you don’t seem very excited about it!’
‘I’m still trying
(who gives a ripe fuck?)
to get used to the idea.’ With a huge effort, he managed a grin. ‘Can I see the article?’
His father handed the paper across the table to Todd and got to his feet ‘I’m going
to wake Monica up. She’s got to see this before we leave.’
No, God -I can’t face both of them this morning.
‘Aw, don’t do that You know she won’t be able to get back to sleep if you wake her up.
Well leave it for her on the table.’
‘Yes, I suppose we could do that. You’re a damned thoughtful boy, Todd.’ He clapped
Todd on the back, and Todd squeezed his eyes closed. At the same time he shrugged his
shoulders in an aw-shucks gesture that made his father laugh. Todd opened his eyes
again and looked at the paper.
4 BOYS NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS, the headline read. Beneath were
pictures of them in their uniforms – the catcher and left-fielder from Fairview High, the
jigaboo shortstop from Mountford, and Todd to the far right, grinning openly out at the
world from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He read the story and saw that Billy
DeLyons had made the second squad. That, at least, was something to feel happy about
DeLyons could claim he was a Methodist until his tongue fell out, if it made him feel
good, but he wasn’t fooling Todd. He knew perfectly well what Billy DeLyons was. Maybe
he ought to introduce him to Betty Trask, she was another sheeny. He had wondered
about that for a long time, and last night he had decided for sure. The Trasks were
passing for white. One look at her nose and that olive complexion – her old man’s was
even worse — and you knew. That was probably why he hadn’t been able to get it up. It
was simple: his cock had known the difference before his brain. Who did they think they
were kidding, calling themselves Trask?
‘Congratulations again, son.’
He looked up and first saw his father’s hand stuck out, then his father’s foolishly
grinning face.
Your buddy Trask is a yid! He heard himself yelling into his father’s face. That’s why I was impotent with his slut of a daughter last night! That’s the reason! Then, on the heels
of that, the cold voice that sometimes came at moments like this rose up from deep inside
him, shutting off the rising flood of irrationality, as if
(GET HOLD OF YOURSELF RIGHT NOW)
behind steel gates.
He took his father’s hand and shook it. Smiled guilelessly into his father’s proud face.
Said: ‘Jeez, thanks, dad.’
They left that page of the newspaper folded back and a note for Monica, which Dick
insisted Todd write and sign: Your All-Star Son, Todd.
22
Ed French, aka ‘Pucker’ French, aka Sneaker Pete and The Ked Man, also aka Rubber Ed French, was in the small and lovely seaside town of San Remo for a guidance
counsellors’ convention. It was a waste of time if ever there had been one – all guidance
counsellors could ever agree on was not to agree on anything – and he grew bored with
the papers, seminars, and discussion periods after a single day. Halfway through the
second day, he discovered he was also bored with San Remo, and that of the adjectives
small, lovely, and seaside, the key adjective was probably small. Gorgeous views and redwood trees aside, San Remo didn’t have a movie theatre or a bowling alley, and Ed
hadn’t wanted to go in the place’s only bar – it had a dirt parking lot filled with pick-up
trucks, and most of the pick-ups had Reagan stickers on their rusty bumpers and
tailgates. He wasn’t afraid of being picked on, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an evening
looking at men in cowboy hats and listening to Loretta Lynn on the jukebox.
So here he was on the third day of a convention which stretched out over an incredible
four days; here he was in room 217 of the Holiday Inn, his wife and daughter at home,
the TV broken, an unpleasant smell hanging around in the bathroom. There was a
swimming pool, but his eczema was so bad this summer that he wouldn’t have been
caught dead in a bathing suit. From the shins down he looked like a leper. He had an
hour before the next workshop (Helping the Vocally Challenged Child – what they meant was doing something for kids who stuttered or who had cleft palates, but we wouldn’t
want to come right out and say that, Christ no, someone might lower our salaries), he had eaten lunch at San Remo’s only restaurant, he didn’t feel like a nap, and the TV’s one
station was showing a rerun of Bewitched.
So he sat down with the telephone book and began to flip through it aimlessly, hardly
aware of what he was doing, wondering distantly if he knew anyone crazy enough about
either small, lovely, or seaside to live in San Remo. He supposed this was what all the
bored people in all the Holiday Inns all over the world ended up doing – looking for a
forgotten friend or relative to call up on the phone. It was that, Bewitched, or the Gideon Bible. And if you did happen to get hold of somebody, what the hell did you say? ‘Frank!
How the hell are you? And by the way, which was it — small, lovely, or seaside?’ Sure.
Right Give that man a cigar and set him on fire.
Yet, as he lay on the bed flipping through the thin San Remo white pages and half-
scanning the columns, it seemed to him that he did know somebody in San Remo. A book salesman? One of Sondra’s nieces or nephews, of which there were marching battalions?
A poker buddy from college? The relative of a student? That seemed to ring a bell, but he
couldn’t fine it down any more tightly.
He kept thumbing, and found he was sleepy after all. He had almost dozed off when it
came to him and he sat up, wide awake again.
Lord Peter!
They were rerunning those Wimsey stories on PBS just lately – Clouds of Witness,
Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors. He and Sondra were hooked. A man named
Ian Carmichael played Wimsey, and Sondra was nuts for him. So nuts, in fact, that Ed,
who didn’t think Carmichael looked like Lord Peter at all, actually became quite
irritated.
‘Sandy, the shape of his face is all wrong. And he’s wearing false teeth, for heaven’s
sake!’
‘Poo,’ Sondra had replied airily from the couch where she was curled up. ‘You’re just
jealous. He’s so handsome.’
‘Daddy’s jealous, Daddy’s jealous,’ little Norma sang, prancing around the living
room in her duck pyjamas.
‘You should have been in bed an hour ago,’ Ed told her, gazing at his daughter with a
jaundiced eye. ‘And if I keep noticing you’re here, I’l1 probably remember that you aren’t there.’
Little Norma was momentarily abashed. Ed turned back to Sondra.
‘I remember back three or four years ago. I had a kid named Todd Bowden, and his
grandfather came in for a conference. Now that guy looked like Wimsey. A very old Wimsey, but the shape of his face was right, and -‘
‘Wim-zee, Wim-zee, Dim-zee, Jim-zee,’ little Norma sang. ‘ Wim-zee, Dim-zee,
doodle-oodle-ooo-doo -‘
‘Shh, both of you,’ Sondra said. ‘I think he’s the most beautiful man.’ Irritating woman!
But hadn’t Todd Bowden’s grandfather retired to San Remo? Sure. Todd had been one
of the brightest boys in that year’s ninth grade class. Then, all at once, his grades had
gone to hell. The old man had come in, told a familiar tale of marital difficulties, and had
persuaded Ed to let the situation alone for a while and see if things didn’t straighten
themselves out Ed’s view was that the old laissez-faire bit didn’t work -if you told a teenage kid to root, hog, or die, the kid usually died. But the old man had been almost