TRA
OCATION 5
As the train pulled into Trenton, Oreo got hungry. She hauled her backpack from the overhead rack and was about to start in, when she realized she was being selfish — besides, it wouldn’t hurt to have a carload of travelers in her debt. Reserving only a few choice bundles, she enlisted Waverley’s aid and distributed the rest to the other passengers. In a few minutes, groans and moans were heard amidst all the fressing.
Between bites, Waverley kept saying, “Oh my God, it’s so good I’m coming in my pants.”
The whole car broke into applause when Oreo went to get a cup of water. She bowed this way and that as she came back to her seat. She sat there for a while digesting Louise’s Apollonian stuffed grape leaves, her revolutionary piroshki. She was trying to decide what shade of blue the sky was. It was the recycled blue of a pair of fifty-dollar French jeans (or jeannettes) that had been deliberately faded. She decided that from now on, she would call that shade jive blue. Douglas Floors would approve.
Waverley was looking over her shoulder. Suddenly he sat back and sighed. “You’re the first nice person I’ve talked to in a long time. Can I drop my beads?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
He confided that he was not only a traveling executioner, but also a gay traveling executioner.
“Nu, so vot else is new?” she said, doing one of her mother’s voices.
He made a stage swishy gesture. “I’m beginning to think the whole world is.” He then gave a list of movie stars, past and present, who were “that way”; it included everyone except Rin-Tin-Tin and John Wayne. “Even though the Duke’s real name is Marion and he has that funny walk, we’re pretty sure he’s straight, but we’re not all that definite about Rinty. Lassie, of course, is a drag queen from way back.”
Waverley said that he had been very depressed since he and his last lover had split up. At first he had just sat around feeling sorry for himself, typing by day and jerking off by night.
“Then I decided, the hell with that. I did something I’ve never done before. I went out cruising in all the bars. Did all the things I’ve always wanted to do. I felt justified because I was tired of living like a vegetable.”
“You wanted to live like a piece of meat,” Oreo said.
Waverley nodded appreciatively. “Oh, you are evil, e-vil! Anyway, I had all kinds of guys. In the third week, I had my first Oriental.”
“Is it true what they say about Oriental men?”
“What?”
“That their balls are like this”—she placed one fist on top of the other—“instead of side by side?”
Another nod, another “Evil, e-vil!” He said he would top that by starting a rumor that Castilian fags had a double lisp. Then he opened his wallet. “Let me show you some pictures.” He smiled as he looked at the first one. “These are two of my best friends, Phyllis and Billie.”
Oreo nodded. “Phyllis looks like Ava Gardner.”
“That’s Billie, with an i-e. Phyllis is the one who looks like a truck driver. But that just goes to show you looks are deceiving. Phyllis doesn’t drive trucks. She fixes them. My mother got hold of this one — she’s always popping in on me, snooping around, but that’s another story. Anyway, when she saw this, I had to tell her Phyll was Billie’s boyfriend. But if you look close, you can see her bra strap through the tee shirt. I showed it to Phyll’s ex-husband. I thought he would wet his drawers, he laughed so hard. He’s gay, too. A real swish, honey. He’s Filipino and they were going to send him back to the islands. He wanted to stay here and he and Phyll were good buddies, so she married him.” He shook his head, remembering. “You should have seen her at the wedding. She let her hair grow long and looked pretty good, for her. Joe, that’s the guy she married, had to buy her a girdle and stockings and show her how to walk in heels. When she walked, it was a complete panic.” He stood up and did a hoarse, deep-voiced cowhand on stilts. “‘By God, when I get out of these damn things, I’ll never put them on again.’ This was years ago, when girls used to wear dresses to work. But old Phyll would always wear her overalls. Of course, she was a mechanic. If her bosses knew she was a girl, they weren’t saying. She was a damn good mechanic.”
‘‘She looks tough,” said Oreo. “Does she give Billie a hard way to go?”
Waverley looked genuinely shocked. “Of course not. Billie’s the butch. Phyll’s the sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet. She taught me how to knit. Gives cooking lessons to anyone who asks her. She didn’t have to marry Joe. And then there was the baby—”
“The baby?”
“Sure. Joe said he always wanted one, so Phyll said okay. She made the right decision too. Joe’s the best mother a baby could want. But that Billie — she’d break your balls as soon as look at you.”
“Or twist your tits,” Oreo said.
“What?”
“Never mind — a failure of empathy.”
Waverley went on with his adventures. All his talk of cocks he had known and loved reminded Oreo that she had forgotten to pack the gift she had for her father. It was a plaster of Paris mold of Jimmie C. ’s uncircumcised penis. Helen had refused to let the hospital take a hem in her son’s decoration, saying that she considered it mutilation and that when he was old enough, she would let him decide whether he wanted to have it done. He had not decided because Helen had not put the question to him. Helen had not brought it out in the open because she still did not consider Jimmie C. old enough to decide. Jimmie C. brought it out in the open only to go to the bathroom and to conform to Oreo’s special request — no, threat — for a mold. He conformed to her special request because he loved his sister and because she threatened to tell him one of the “suppose” lines that she had been saving up to make him faint. He, in turn, had a special request, which he sang with a hauntingly sweet melodic line: “Nevertheless and winnie-the-pooh, whatever you do, don’t paint it green.” For one fiendish moment, Oreo had contemplated doing just that, but she contented herself with deciding which of two questions she would put to Samuel when she gave him the mold: “How do you like that putz?” or “How do you like that, putz?” She had been leaning toward the second, but now all that was moot, since she had forgotten the putz in question.
As the train approached the next stop, Waverley said, “Well, this is it. Today Newark, tomorrow Rahway. Could you stand such excitement?” They exchanged addresses, and he pulled his black case down from the overhead rack. “Ooo, do I have to pee — the first bar I come to gets the gold,” he said piss elegantly.
“Any pot in the storm,” said Oreo. She had no shame. She watched Honor bound for a tearoom.
8 Sinis
Oreo in a phone booth at Penn Station
She opened the Manhattan directory. There were twenty-six Samuel Schwartzes and twenty-two S. Schwartzes. She made a list of likely Schwartzes, leaving out businesses and other obvious wrong leads. She picked her first try at random.
Oreo checked her backpack in a locker and bought a booklet of New York maps. The maps told her she should take the IRT subway, then switch to the number 5 bus.
Oreo on the subway