I said, “Go ahead, Heimie. Define it.”
“But I want first to know how you define it, Arthur.”
“But you had something in mind when you asked Bill and the Schlub over here.”
“Please don’t call me ‘the Schlub over here,’ Arthur,” said the Schlub.
“It’s a term of endearment,” I said. I said, “I call you ‘Schlub’? It means I am comfortable calling you ‘Schlub.’ It means we are acquainted, you and I.”
“Okay,” said the Schlub, sucking tea-dribble from the stain on his shirt. “But when you say ‘the Schlub over here,’ I feel like maybe I’m being a little bullied, belittled.”
“So don’t be such a tender-footed sissy,” I told him.
“You’re right,” said the Schlub. “You’re right.”
“It’s true,” I said. “So then what did you mean by extra mile, Heimie?”
“What did you think I meant, Bill?” Heimie said to the Goy.
“Don’t redirect my question to the Goy,” I said. “I’m asking you, Heimie.”
“I’m not too crazy for when you call me ‘the Goy,’” the Goy said.
“What is this?” I said. “Is this group therapy for whiners? You want to be the Schlub and he’ll be the Goy? You’re a pair of goyische schlubs, the both of you. Still, I suppose, if the Schlub over here agrees to it, we could pull a switcheroonie with the monikers — would you like that?”
“Forget it,” the Goy said. “Have it how you want it.”
“I’m trying my hardest,” I said. “Now answer the question you were asked. Establish us some mundanity so that Heimie can shock us in good faith with hot controversy.”
“What are you saying to me?” said the Goy.
Heimie said, “He means tell us what you think it means, extra mile.”
Unable to see clouds for the blockage of the umbrella, the Goy in his shyness studied pinstripes on cloth. “It means down there,” said the Goy.
“That is a very ambiguous answer,” I said.
“Down there… and the mouth,” added the Schlub.
“The mouth?” I said.
“The mouth and down there,” said the Schlub. “Add two and two, would you? We’re talking about our wives here, may they rest in peace.”
“We’re talking about an act!” said Heimie. “We’re talking about the extra mile! And I don’t know what you mean by down there. Do you know what he means, Arthur?”
“Only vaguely,” I said. “In my experience, there’s more than one down there.”
“There’s the one down there,” said the Goy, “and there’s the other down there. To put the mouth to the one is the extra mile. To put the mouth to the other is filthy and disgusting.”
“I agree,” said the Schlub.
“I disagree!” I said.
“I disagree!” said Heimie, looking a little farklempt. I’d stolen his fire. Or at the very least I’d stolen part of his fire. It was two-on-two now, and he’d expected one-on-three. He said, “And why filthy and disgusting?”
“Because waste comes from the other,” said the Goy.
“Waste comes from everywhere!”
“But this kind of waste causes illness.”
“I was never ill by such waste,” said Heimie.
“Nor was I ever ill by it,” said I.
“This is filthy and disgusting,” said the Schlub.
“Do you eat shrimp?” I said. “The veritable cockroach of the ocean?”
“Yes,” said the Goy.
“Do you eat bacon?” said Heimie. “The meat of a beast who rolls in its own excrement?”
“I love bacon,” said the Schlub. “It’s salty.”
“These crazies,” Heimie said to me.
“Bacon and shrimp for them?” I said. “Indeed. Maybe even some bacon wrapped around a shrimp, but not the other down there, God forbid.”
“Shellfish and pork, Arthur?”
“Please, Heimie,” I said. “Shellfish and pork, but ass no thank you!”
What did they do, the Schlub and the Goy? They left. We didn’t try to stop them. We knew the Goy would return soon enough and, surely, to be rid of the Schlub was a blessing.
“So how often did you go the extra mile, then?” Heimie said to me.
“Which one?”
“Both,” he said.
I told him the truth. I said, “Rarely the one and never the other.”
“Same here,” said Heimie. “It’s regrettable.”
“We should’ve done more,” I said.
FINCH
The fifty-third day in a row we hung out, me and Franco got all these grilled cheese sandwiches at Theo’s BaconBurgerDog from Jin-Woo Kim, who people call “Gino” cause we’re not in Korea or are in Chicago or people are lazy or two of those reasons. Gino’s dad Sun’s the owner of Theo’s, and summer afternoons, he leaves Gino alone there. We went in at three, when the place was the deadest, and Franco said we wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. Right as soon as Gino started making them, though, Franco told him on second thought to make that three sandwiches, so Gino started making a third one too, except then what Franco said was what he’d meant was three apiece, and Gino stopped moving. He was over by the fryer, facing away from us, his hand on the scoop dug into the butter tub.
“What,” Franco told him.
Gino got back to work. Grabbed bread and cheese from the rack on the counter.
“For to go,” Franco said. He lit up a cigarette.
I passed him an ashtray. A bunch were stacked up on the garbage cans behind us.
“Thanks, yo,” he said. “Hey, check this ashtray. Gino’s dad stole.”
That was probably true — all the ashtrays at Theo’s were Burger King ashtrays, the chintzy aluminum kind with crimped edges — and it’s not like I was really that tight with Gino, but we sometimes hung out when no one else was available, and I used to have some classes with him up till last year when we started the seventh and they tracked me into gifted, so I didn’t want to stand there and trash-talk his dad, but you can’t ignore Franco, so I had to do something, so I made a lippy face with my mouth and I shrugged.
Franco shrugged back.
Gino kept cooking. When the sandwiches were finished, he waxpaper-wrapped them, then stacked them in a bag and brought the bag to the register. He said, “Thirteen fifty.”
“Nah,” said Franco. “We don’t have to pay today.”
“You do,” Gino said.
Franco took the bag. “Today it’s on the house,” he said.
“It’s not!” said Gino. “Pay me. Come on.” But what could he do? Franco was sixteen and Gino was my age, plus Franco was big — not tall, but big, and not big like me, but like muscled in a way I bet girls probably talked about. Almost like a man. His mustache wrapped around his chin and wasn’t wispy.
He drummed his shaved skull a few times with his fingers, which looked like “I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” then took a frosted cookie from the cookie-tree display and crushed it in his hand inside of the wrapper. He undid the wrapper and dumped out the crumbs, grabbed another cookie, and told Gino, “What.”
“Fine,” Gino said. There were tears in his eyes. We were ripping him off in his own dad’s joint. He gave me this look.
Franco flipped me the cookie.
I stuck it in my pocket, mouthing the words, “I’ll pay you back soon.” I don’t know if Gino saw, but I meant what I mouthed.